PRESIDENTIAL RACE Campaigns labor for every vote

No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
LOS ANGELES TIMES
BLUE ASH, Ohio -- Zach Tolbert is just 15, so he doesn't have a driver's license and isn't old enough to vote. His real passions are skiing, his church youth group and his alto saxophone.
But one night last week, he was hunkered down at a desk in a suburban Cincinnati office, dressed in a T-shirt and baggy pants, calling Ohio voters.
"President Bush is committed to defending America in the war on terror, growing the economy and providing affordable and accessible health care," said Zach, reading from an official script and doodling on the printed list of names in front of him. "Can President Bush count on your support?"
Zach is part of the fierce ground war of the 2004 presidential campaign, a grinding fight that already has resulted in a surge of newly registered voters nationwide. With the registration deadline in Ohio and several other states having passed Monday, campaign combatants are quickly transitioning to the next phase: massive efforts by each side to get as many of their voters as possible to the polls or, just as good, to a mailbox.
These bids to maximize turnout could determine whether Bush or Sen. John Kerry wins the White House. And here in the critical swing state of Ohio, Zach Tolbert is among the tens of thousands of people involved in the dueling get-out-the-vote drives, viewed by many experts as the most intense for any election.
Reason for support
Zach says he supports the president because he sees him "as a better person, a more moral person" than Kerry.
He does have an additional motivation: Zach's work is earning him credit in advanced-placement U.S. history at Cincinnati's Walnut Hills High School.
The teacher, Scott Grunder, says Zach is one of eight students at the school helping the Bush campaign, while 57 are helping the Kerry campaign.
In campaign jargon, Zach and the 27 other volunteers making calls for Bush the other evening were on an "absentee ballot chase." They contact people who have requested such ballots to make sure they complete and mail them.
In the campaign's final days, workers on both sides will be calling, cajoling, even offering rides to voters get to the polls Nov. 2.
Kerry's effort
Although Ohio may be especially critical to the Bush campaign -- no Republican candidate has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio -- the effort by Kerry's backers in the state is no less exhaustive.
With the help of organized labor and advocacy groups that are technically unaffiliated with the Kerry campaign, the Democrats have scoured the Buckeye state, registering new voters and contacting those who are registered but have voted erratically or not at all in the past.
A spokeswoman for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union said that more than 10 percent of its 120,000 members in Ohio were involved in the campaign, and that it has registered 11,000 members out of 29,000 who were not on voting rolls.
Experts who analyze registration and voting patterns in Ohio say it appears that the pace of new registrations is higher in traditionally Democratic-voting areas, such as its major urban areas in the state's northeast, than in historically GOP-leaning suburbs, exurbs and rural areas. (People applying to vote here do not have to indicate a party preference.)
But while that would seem great news for Kerry, the analysts caution that making sure the newly registered actually vote is a much more arduous proposition than getting them to sign the form that allows them to do so.
Edge to Democrats
"We do know that all indications are the Democrats have done a better job of getting more cards turned in, registering more voters," said John C. Green, an expert on Ohio politics at the University of Akron. "The Democrats are counting on a big turnout, but many of these people have never participated in the process before. ... We know they won't all show up. The big question is, how many are going to show up?"
The secretary of state's office in Columbus says it will not be able to verify the precise number of new registrants for several days, or even weeks.
Whatever the final figure, it will certainly far exceed the number 177,000 -- Bush's margin in carrying Ohio in 2000. Bush received 50 percent of the vote, to about 46.5 percent for Democrat Al Gore.
Volunteers
The Bush campaign said it has nearly 70,000 volunteers working in Ohio to help him win its 20 electoral votes this year. The 28 making phone calls in Blue Ash last week ranged from Zach and other high school students to Eileen Stebbins, a realtor and antiques dealer in her 70s.
In a nearby cubicle, Kathryn Cascella, a health-care executive and mother of three, was having better luck: a real person on the other end of the line.
"President Bush can count on your support?" said Cascella. "All four of you? Great!" She hung up.
"Yes!!!" she said, pumping her fist. "Four for four!"
Supporters of the Kerry-Edwards campaign, paid and unpaid, are making similar calls these days, with many helping out by phoning voters in Ohio and other hotly contested states from their homes in states considered less competitive.
A variety of polls conducted last month showed Bush with a consistently solid lead in Ohio. But Kerry has clearly closed the gap in recent days, especially following the first candidates' debate last Thursday in Miami.
Issues
The Kerry campaign remains hopeful that Ohio's economic woes make it potentially fertile ground for him.
The state's steady loss of jobs -- about 250,000 in the Bush term, many in highly visible manufacturing industries such as steel and rubber -- remains a major issue here.
But the Bush campaign can count on general support among Ohioans for his leadership in the Iraq war, as well as the state's culturally conservative tendencies. The president also could benefit from strong support for a Nov. 2 measure that would ban gay marriage, which Bush endorses.
In Butler County, out in the Cincinnati exurbs, the Bush campaign worked overtime last week to turn out supporters for a rally at Voice of America Park, where the U.S. once operated a giant transmitter that beamed Cold War-era programs around the world. Local authorities estimated the crowd at 40,000 to 50,000, which would make it the largest Bush rally of the campaign.
The president did not take long to get to the point after he alighted from a bus wrapped with a giant decal that said, "A Safer World, A More Hopeful America -- Bush-Cheney '04."
Bush campaign workers at a card table managed to sign up a few in the crowd who were unregistered. And in an indication of the ferocity of the national contest, those entering the park found no shortage of Kerry-Edwards volunteers, engaged in a fervent bid of their own to find last-minute registrants or switch minds.