The Shilling Fields

The candidates roll our their GOTV operations.

by Anonymous


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Published: Apr 11, 2007

During the past five months, mayoral candidates and campaign staffers have been running across the city attending forums, raising money, announcing policy papers, accepting endorsements, raising more money, recruiting volunteers, filming television commercials, shaking hands with voters at SEPTA stops and raising even more money.

But with just five weeks remaining until election day, what are the campaigns doing right now? They are finalizing plans for their get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operations.

It's a critical part of any campaign because all of the voters needed to win can't be expected to get to the polls by themselves.We'd all like to believe that — upon inspiration by democracy, and the candidates' messages and experience — voters would flock to the polls, but campaigns have to drag people there.

In addition to omnipresent television and radio ads, voters will be inundated with pieces of direct mail, automated phone calls and doorstep visits.All are designed to ensure that a candidate's supporters get to the polls. If voters are unable to get there themselves — whether because they are infirm or do not have a ride — the campaigns will get them an absentee ballot or arrange for someone to pick them up. But not every voter will be contacted by every campaign for the simple reason that every campaign does not want every voter to come to the polls.They want only the people who are going to vote for them.

Targeting these voters is part science and part art, which is why the people responsible for turning out the vote on election day — field directors — are often called "generals."Good field operations in a campaign this size are massive, with thousands of people involved.

Planning is intensive and the logistics are intimidating since good field plans must operate with precision. Food has to be bought for all election day workers.Canvassers need flashlights and clipboards. Vans need to be rented to bring workers to targeted areas and to drive voters to the polls. And drivers need to be identified and trained.

At about 6 a.m. on election day, volunteers will gather at staging sites across the city. Each site will have a manager whose job it is to get volunteers knocking on doors.Each volunteer will have a list of voters to get to the polls as well as packets of materials to use.

They'll make a morning, midday and post-work sweep for voters, all of which are reinforced by phone-bank volunteers who crunch the numbers.Every staging area has to track where its volunteers are, who has voted and which voters still need to be dragged to the polls.

What makes this election so interesting is that there will be a clash of two vaunted (and in some quarters, mocked) field organizations. Bob Brady controls the ward structure and, as such, thousands of committeepeople whose job it is to bring voters to the polls.Meanwhile, Chaka Fattah has always bypassed the ward structure, establishing his own street program.

Both dismiss the efficacy of the other.

So, how much is a good election-day field effort worth? In a close race — as this likely will be — a solid team can make the difference between winning and losing.Experts usually credit a good field team for being worth an extra 2 percent to 3 percent of the vote.With five candidates in the race, I'm betting it will be a late night and that the winner wins by two points.

(editorial@citypaper.net)

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