The General Election: Obama's organizing skills now face a bigger test

LAT: Obama's organizing skills now face a bigger test
To win the general election, he must rebuild his machinery almost from scratch. He and staffers turn first to Florida, where they'll try to drum up young and African American voters.
By Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 20, 2008

....Now, with a three-day swing through Florida that begins Wednesday, Obama kicks off his effort to use his organizing tactics to win the general election, campaigning in a big, important battleground state where he has not been seen in public since August....

Though the nominating fight with Clinton helped Obama build volunteer networks and burnish his get-out-the-vote techniques in smaller general-election battleground states, winning Florida's 27 electoral votes requires Obama to build his organizing machinery almost from scratch. Obama did not compete in the state's disputed January primary, losing that vote to Clinton by a wide margin. But by winning Florida in November, Obama would do serious damage to the Republican game plan for building a majority in the Electoral College....

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The Florida efforts are being replicated nationally, with staff being dispatched to Michigan, where Obama's name did not appear on that state's disputed primary ballot, as well as the battlegrounds of Ohio and Colorado.

As in Florida, Obama's campaign has begun a national voter registration drive that uses some of the same "microtargeting" techniques honed by Republicans in the 2004 presidential campaign to locate new, GOP-leaning voters who might otherwise have been overlooked.

For Obama, enlarging the pool of voters who turn out in November is crucial. Not only will he face stiff competition from presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who appeals to independents and conservative Democrats, but he has had trouble winning support in the primaries from lower-income white voters, a large and potentially decisive group in several of the large battleground states. Obama campaign strategists are scouring consumer marketing data for young people, women, African Americans and other liberal-leaning potential supporters who can be added to the voter rolls.

The drive relies in part on a large corps of volunteers, such as the more than 500 Obama backers who showed up on a recent Saturday morning at six Florida locations to be trained in tracking potential new supporters.

In the fall, the campaign will target high school seniors, many of whom will be 18 by election day, and will work to ensure that college students are properly registered, so they can vote while at school. Also on the Obama target list: young, female Republicans and political independents.

"The general election is going to allow us to expand our already voluminous forces and turn that up a notch where thousands and thousands of new volunteers will come in," said deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-assess21-2008may21,0,7000903.story