The ground game: Obama with 7 to 1 advantage in offices, Palin bump creating ‘dramatic’ expansion for McCain

Various Ohio politicos have made the point this election cycle that the presidential election in Ohio will hinge on person-to-person campaigning – community members getting out, pounding the pavement and making their case to friends and neighbors in support of one candidate or the other.

The ground game of each presidential campaign is a lynchpin of that process, with volunteers and staffers getting out the candidate’s message in various communities. To that end, each campaign has been setting up offices throughout Ohio over the past months to drive public opinion.

The offices act as local headquarters for the campaign, where supporters can rally for canvassing efforts, sign-up to volunteers and gather campaign materials for distribution. The headquarters can also serve as locations for phone banks and places to coordinate with local campaigns.

Barack Obama has set up 70 city, town and municipality offices in the state of Ohio to John McCain’s nine county-based offices. But a Republican official tells PolitickerOH.com that the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate has brought influx of volunteers and Ohio’s “Victory operation,” the official said, “will be expanding dramatically in the state in the coming days and weeks.”

McCain (R-Ariz.) has focused his offices on the traditional model of county-wide headquarters, coordinating his campaign with local efforts and volunteers from the nine offices.

The McCain campaign’s offices are in Butler, Cuyahoga, Delaware, Franklin, Greene, Hamilton, Lucas, Montgomery and Stark Counties. McCain Ohio campaign chair Mike DeWine said that the McCain campaign is also sharing space with county party offices in some cases.

Since the Ohio primary, McCain has visited Columbus and Cleveland four times each, Youngstown, Dayton and Cincinnati twice each, as well as Portsmouth, New Albany, Jackson, Dublin, Lima, Lebanon and Liberty Township.

Obama (D-Ill.) has set up 70 offices throughout Ohio -- in cities, towns and municipalities -- to act as a base of operations specialized to each of the local communities.

Obama has visited Youngstown, Cleveland, Marengo, Columbus, Lima, Toledo, New Philadelphia, Dillonvale, Jefferson County, Zanesville, Dayton and Riverside.

Greg Haas, a Democratic strategist who was the coordinated campaign director in 1992 when Bill Clinton was the presidential nominee, lauded the localized campaign efforts of Obama. Haas pointed out that the number of offices Obama has set up displays a campaign with efforts focused across demographic lines to every corner of the state.

“When you talk about 70 cities, you’re talking about a great variation in terms of demographics,” Haas said. “At 70 cities, you’re going everywhere from populations of 15 to 20,000 up to Columbus. That’s a pretty darn localized campaign for every part of the state.”

Haas said the offices were reflective of the “massive grassroots operation that Obama has had.”

When asked if it was possible that Obama was spreading himself thin, Haas pointed to the sheer size of his operation as evidence that he wasn’t.

Haas said that in 1992 they had the “biggest, most massive” operation that people had seen “in a long, long time, if ever.” Haas said that campaign consisted of eight to ten country/regional headquarters.

Haas said that in the past both sides went with the county/regional approach to offices “because we didn’t have the personnel.”

“It sure looks like from the volume of staff and volunteers that Obama has that there’s a pretty good ground operation,” Haas said. “I think that the more traditional, county approach that McCain’s got is probably reflective of just smaller ground forces.”
DeWine, the former U.S. Senator from Springfield, would disagree.

DeWine said that, even with the deficit in offices, the McCain campaign was spread out throughout the state.

“We’re spread out working through the local county organization, working through the local county party – it may be their headquarters we’re working out of,” DeWine said.

DeWine said that the discrepancy in official offices is a little misleading about each side’s approach to the campaign.

“The ground game is always important,” DeWine said. “I think both sides are fully engaged in Ohio with the ground game. I think what you see on the McCain side is a great reliance on volunteers.”

DeWine said that he’s sure Obama has many more paid staff, but said that pattern started emerging four years ago.

“A lot of the work was being done by people, on the Democrats’ side, for John Kerry, a lot of the work was being done by people from out-of-state, who came in here,” DeWine said. “What McCain has done is relied on volunteers from Ohio – local volunteers. So someone who volunteered in Greene County will work in Greene County, someone from Adams County will work in Adams County. That appears to me to be the biggest difference between these two operations.”

DeWine said that, candidly, he doesn’t know the intricacies of what’s going on with the Obama operation. DeWine pointed out the coordinated efforts between the McCain campaign and the political operation in a given county.

“You have to operate from the local situation, and you have to use people locally to do that,” DeWine said. “You don’t have somebody from Alaska, literally, or somebody from California trying to knock on a door. That is not the best thing to do generally. Local people contacting local people is the best method.”

Ohio Republican Party deputy chair Kevin DeWine said that the Republican plan for the ground game was to compete for every vote in every county.

“We have volunteers and staff employed in every corner of the state that are covering every county in the state,” K. DeWine said. “We are very fortunate that over the last 13 days we have seen a major uptick in excitement, in enthusiasm, in volunteers for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin.”

DeWine said that the result was such that Republicans are making more voter contacts at this point in the 2008 campaign than they were at the same point in 2004.