The Multilevel Marketing of the President

The Multilevel Marketing of the President
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/magazine/25GROUNDWAR.html?ex=1083470400&en=6647a578650e2c5b&ei=5062
By MATT BAI -- Published: April 25, 2004

Republicans in Clark County, Ohio, held their annual Lincoln Day fund-raising dinner in February, at a rustic golf club surrounded by an ocean of farmland. Clark County, comprising both the city of Springfield and a block of agricultural townships, is one of those fast-disappearing places where Republican and Democratic voters are still more or less in balance. Al Gore won here in 2000, but by less than a percentage point. This year, Republicans have declared Clark to be one of their target counties.

I had come to the dinner to find Betty Kitchen, the white-haired, 66-year-old retiree who had been drafted to lead Bush's re-election campaign in Clark County. It was a job with which she was entrusted after years as a faithful and much-loved volunteer in various local campaigns. (''You'd think someone with that name could bake,'' David Gallagher, a party operative, told me as we drove the hour from Columbus. ''And she really can.'') In past Republican campaigns, state and county organizations were free to assemble their local efforts any way they liked, the assumption being that they knew more about their own communities than someone in Washington. But now the Bush campaign was sending an altogether different message; word had come down from the national headquarters that Ohio's 88 county chairmen were to form full steering committees in each county by February, and then they needed to show proof that they were busy recruiting a statewide total of 51,000 volunteers, including captains for each of the state's 12,000 voting precincts. It was a titanic assignment, and I wanted to ask Betty how things were going.

I caught up with her near the fruit salad, made with a generous helping of mayonnaise. ''It's my fault we're behind,'' Betty confessed, her voice lowered to a whisper. ''When they asked me to be the county chair, I said, 'Well, sure.' Everybody does their turn, right? But I thought it would start in August or September, like it usually does. Not in February!''

The Bush campaign, Betty said, instructed her to recruit 643 volunteers. Not 640 volunteers or 650, but 643. I wondered aloud what the big deal was. What would they do if she didn't hit her deadlines?

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''That's the difference between 2000 and 2004,'' DeWine said. ''In 2000, they said, 'Yeah, sure, we'll use your local headquarters, whenever you can get it up and running, great.' This year, it's, 'Yeah, we'll use your headquarters, and we need it open right now, and we want phone banks and mailing lists, da-dah, da-dah, da-dah. . . . ' '' He ticked off imaginary demands on his fingers. ''I think it's because the president could lose, and they're nervous. And they should be.''