TAMPA -- The battle for Florida and its 29 electoral votes is being fought by folks such as Matt Bellina and Ferguson Yacyshyn.
Here
in Hillsborough County, a politically bifurcated swath of Florida
that's been won by the eventual presidential winner in every contest but
one since 1960, volunteers such as Bellina, 22, who backs Mitt Romney,
and Yacyshyn, 21, who supports President Obama, are among the campaigns'
soldiers doing the gritty work of getting out the vote.
They're
the door-knockers and cold callers that both Obama's and Romney's
campaign aides point to as the reason why their man will win the
Sunshine State, the biggest prize in terms of electoral votes among the
swing states. And as polls show Romney and Obama knotted closely, both
sides say it's their ground games that are going to make the difference.
Within
this battleground state, perhaps no area is being fought over with the
gusto that both sides have put into winning Hillsborough County, an area
that Obama won by 2.4 percentage points in 2008, mirroring his slim
margin of victory in the state.
"Tampa is the dead set center
ground zero" of the campaign, said Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former chief of
staff and the current mayor of Chicago, who was dispatched by the
campaign to Florida on Saturday to fire up volunteers. "You think you've
knocked on your last door? You got 10 more. You think you've made your
last phone call? You've got 10 more. Never give in. Never give up."
The stakes are well understood by Bellina and Yacyshyn.
On
Saturday afternoon, Bellina, a University of South Florida student, was
pounding the pavement in south Tampa on behalf of Romney.
Along
with 12 fraternity brothers he recruited to volunteer for the day,
Bellina would spend the afternoon knocking on doors in a leafy,
well-heeled south Tampa neighborhood.
Bellina, who has already
volunteered more than 400 hours to the Romney campaign, and his buddies
from Kappa Sigma were to check in with voters that the Romney campaign
had identified as leaning their way as well as with precious undecided
voters, a species in the Florida electorate coveted by both sides.
He hit pay dirt when he knocked on the door of Debbi Buckenheimer. He wouldn't, however, get a definitive answer on this day.
"I'm
still undecided," Buckenheimer said. "I thought I'd have a better idea
after the first two debates, but I'm still not happy with what I've
heard from either of them."
Bellina handed her some campaign
literature, thanked her for her time, and marked her as "undecided" on
his door-knock sheet. She'll almost certainly be hearing from the Romney
campaign again in the coming days.
TEDIOUS WORK
Just
north of the city in the working-class suburb of Temple Terrace,
Yacyshyn was sitting in a backroom of an Obama field office, on the
phone.
Many of his fellow volunteers were out knocking on doors,
but Yacyshyn, who is using crutches after injuring himself in a recent
bicycle accident, hung back to hit the phones. His task for much of the
afternoon was to dial hundreds of area residents who had previously
identified themselves as Obama supporters and ask them whether they'd be
willing to lend a few hours to volunteer.
Team Obama has long
boasted of having a better ground game in the state. They've opened 103
field offices throughout Florida (compared with 47 by the Romney
campaign) and say that 20,000 supporters completed the extensive
voter-registration training required before volunteers were allowed to
register voters.
But even with that army of volunteers, they
aren't done recruiting, and Yacyshyn spent a good chunk of his Saturday
on the phone doing his part to make certain that the Temple Terrace
field office will be able to flood the area with canvassers and man its
phone banking operations in the final days of the campaign.
His task is tedious, but Yacyshyn said he doesn't mind. In fact, he said he feels obligated to do his part.
Yacyshyn,
who has volunteered more than 200 hours to the campaign, explains that
he has relied on government loans and grants while working two jobs to
pay his way through the University of South Florida. He notes that Obama
has championed government loan programs and Pell Grants for students,
while Romney has questioned government education spending and suggested
he would "refocus" grant spending.
"Without Pell Grants, I'd probably have to settle for community college," he said.
THE STATE OF THE RACE
Romney
holds a 2.1-point lead over Obama in the state, according to an average
of polls by RealClearPolitics. While the lead is small, Romney has
gained momentum in the state since his widely perceived victory over
Obama in the first presidential debate in Denver earlier this month.
For
Romney, the path to 270 electoral votes - the magic number to win the
presidency - is difficult to reach without Florida. For Obama, who has
more paths to victory, he could lose the state but still win the
election.
Yet, neither side is showing any signs of letting up.
Both
GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan and Vice President Biden
crisscrossed the state late last week. And Romney, who has held 74
events in the state since he launched his presidential campaign, joined
Ryan for a big outdoor rally on Friday night in Daytona Beach.
It
was the former Massachusetts governor's last scheduled campaign
appearance before Monday night's third and final presidential debate in
Boca Raton. Obama is also scheduled to return for a campaign stop on
Thursday back in Tampa.
THE SUPER BOWL OF POLITICS
Brett
Doster, an adviser to the Romney campaign in Florida and a longtime
political operative in the state, compared Florida to the "Super Bowl of
politics." The state, which George W. Bush won by only 500 votes in
2000, is always fiercely competitive. More than 33 million ballots have
been cast in presidential races in Florida since 1992, and the average
separation between the two parties in each race has been about 60,000
votes.
"It's rare that someone wins the Super Bowl by three or
four touchdowns," Doster said. "It's usually a good game. The race here
is going to be close to the end."
Despite Romney's momentum in the
polls in the state in recent weeks, the Obama campaign believes its
ground game has already put it on the path to eke out a win in what will
be a close contest.
At this point in the race in 2008, registered
Republican voters in the state had requested nearly 250,000 mail-in
ballots more than Democratic voters. On Oct. 16, the edge was only
61,000 for Republicans, noted Ashley Walker, the Obama for America state
director for Florida.
Taking advantage of a wrinkle in voting
rules, the Obama camp also launched an initiative calling on voters to
request an absentee ballot in person from their local Supervisors of
Elections and fill it out on the spot and return it before leaving the
counter. The tactic effectively lengthens the period for early voting,
which begins on Oct. 27 in the state.
Meanwhile, the Romney camp
says their ground game has gained steam since the first presidential
debate, in which Obama has since acknowledged that he delivered a subpar
performance.
Just before the first debate, Doster, the Romney
adviser, said the campaign was approaching 9 million voter contacts.
After the debate, Romney volunteers made 2 million more phone or
face-to-face contacts with Florida voters, he said.
"We're at the
point where we're having to add capacity," Doster said. "We're having to
purchase new phones and open new victory centers."
For Florida
voters, all the attention is overwhelming. More than $137 million has
already been spent on advertising by both campaigns and outside groups
in the state, according to an analysis by National Journal. In addition, voters here say they're drowning in a tsunami of mailings from the campaigns.
"It's just too much," said Doris Guenther, 74, a South Florida resident who said she will vote for Romney.
Yet,
despite the avalanche of information that has hit Florida voters from
both sides, there are still plenty of undecided voters -- maybe between
7% and 9% of the state's electorate, Doster says.
"It's a late
breaking state, people wait to the last days to harden their positions,"
said Doster, adding that a large segment of the state's retiree
community leaves the state in the summer months and isn't fully engaged
in the election until the final weeks of the campaign.
Blanche
Turner, 74, who has been volunteering at phone banks for Obama since
May, said that she's somewhat perplexed by the number of undecided
voters she is still coming across in her calls. "How can you be about
two weeks out, or whatever it is, and still be undecided?" she said.
Joni Dougerty, 39, whose been working phone banks for the Romney campaign further east in Kissimmee, agrees.
"I just hope they like the sound of my voice and throw their support to Romney," she said.
USA Today