Florida is a battleground state in the polls once again but it IS winnable THIS year with YOUR HELP.

There are a number of things going on this year which make Florida much more likely to be won by the Democrats than in the last 2 cycles but it requires YOUR HELP.

Florida represents 10% of the total electoral college vote needed to win, 27 votes. The difference between winning and losing Florida is a 54 vote swing in the electoral college. It is also the difference between winning and losing the White House.

Right now, Republicans control the state house and the executive mansion and the congressional delegation but the momentum is on the Democrats side.

The Republicans have been losing state house seats since 2006 (9 since then) throughout the 2006 election and a series of special elections. Alan Grayson looks set to take back Ric Keller's congressional seat (CD8) in Central Florida and all in all it looks like a year for Dems to win here.

Obama has a huge ground game here in Orlando and I see a lot more Obama signs and stickers and buttons around town than McCain signs and stickers.

South Florida will definitely be Democrat, North Florida will definitely be Republican except for Alachua county (University of Florida) and Leon County (state capitol of Tallahassee).

The battleground is here in Central Florida with the I-4 corridor and we've been working our asses off here for a while building a ground game.

Especially helpful will be the Grayson campaign in CD8 which covers parts of Orange, Lake, Marion, and Osceola counties in Central FL and which has a tremendous ground game that has been registering voters and getting thousands of Democrats to sign up for absentee ballots. Grayson beat his establishment (read DLC) opponent and previous Democratic standard bearer Charlie Stuart by a 20 point margin in the primaries in a 5 way race 48% to 28% (and no one else even close) because of his ground game and a really good ad. (You can help Grayson by donating at his website)

Also helpful in Central Florida is ACORN which has registered tens of thousands of new voters in the last couple of years. Because of their efforts, registration in Orange County has shifted from nearly even to a 60,000 vote Democratic lead (230,000 to 170,000) over Republicans.

If you live in the area please come out and volunteer for one of the local campaigns, one of the Congressional campaigns and/or the Obama campaign.

I am getting ready to take a job in South Florida and won't be able to help as much up here as I have in the past in Orlando (I'll still be back on weekends) but I'll try to do what I can remotely and try to help out in Broward County where I lived from 2000-2004 with their candidates and campaigns during the week if possible, but overall I'm still going to have to cut back.

If you can't help locally because you don't live in Florida but if you live in a solidly blue state: (California, Massachutsetts, New York, New Jersey, etc.) and would like to help us win Florida here are several things you can do:

1) Move to Florida if you can and register to vote and vote down here. Books close one month before the election, move here for 3 months (mid September to mid December) and if you don't like it move home afterwards.. :)

2) Take a working vacation to Florida and find a campaign to work on down here. Hey we have nice winters! Make it a weekend, a week, a month, whatever works for you.

3) DONATE DONATE DONATE. If you can't come down to Florida, send your money to Florida instead... Money is very important, find a campaign you like (not just Obama's) and donate to it.

4) Send me your name and contact info through a private message here and I can try to coordinate a remote phone banking effort between you and the Obama campaign (or one of the Central Florida Congressional or Florida state legislature campaigns.) Remote phone banking helped us win Orange County in 2004 for Kerry by a slim margin because we used them to chase our absentee ballots and got nearly all of them back (which was a substantial improvement over past elections.)

The point is that if you live in a solidly blue state you won't really change the Presidential race there by helping there but you can if you pick a battle ground state (it doesn't have to be Florida but I would rather you helped us since we have a good ground game going here already) to help out remotely.

Thanks,

Doug De Clue
Orlando, FL
ddeclue@bellsouth.com
Please help!