Lukas McGowan is focused on getting voters out on Election Day. "Once we register them," he says, "that's only half the
The most pressing matter inside this field office for Senator Barack Obama was not the next debate or the latest scorching exchange with Senator John McCain but getting every possible voter to the polls. As Mr. McGowan surveyed an assembly line of activity, a more immediate question popped into his mind: have all the spots been filled in the 6 to 8 p.m. shift for walking neighborhood precincts?
"When we identify sporadic voters, we want to go back to their house until they can't stand us any more," said Mr. McGowan, 23, who oversees the Obama operation in Fairfax County, Virginia's largest. With a smile, he added, "As long as we're kind and respectful."
If the primary race was an experiment in building the capacity of the Obama organization, the general election will show whether a political campaign has the ability to change the electoral map.
In a half-dozen states where polling suggests the candidates are deadlocked, Mr. Obama is seeking to capitalize on a devoted grass-roots enthusiasm and an unprecedented investment of money to push the get-out-the-vote effort to a new level. The Obama campaign is hoping to gain that edge in perennial battlegrounds like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The campaign is also seeking to use its army of employees and volunteers to help shift the electoral map by putting in play states like Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia, where changing demographics combined with the challenging political environment for Republicans nationwide have given Democrats hope.
The outcome of the next three weeks, in neighborhoods across the country, will help answer whether the organizing principles, backed by Mr. Obama's fund-raising advantage over Mr. McCain, are made of myth or muscle when it comes to presidential politics.
"Are they a mile wide and an inch deep?" asked Trey Walker, the McCain campaign's Mid-Atlantic campaign manager, whose territory includes Virginia. "We'll find out on Election Day."
Mr. Obama, whose career in public service began in community organizing in Chicago, dropped by a training session on Friday evening in Ohio, and even through his encouraging words, he sounded a note of wonder about whether the system will work.
"We've been designing and we've been engineering and we've been at the drawing board and we've been tinkering," Mr. Obama said. "Now, it's time to just take it for a drive. Let's see how this baby runs."
One piece of this effort can be found in a former beauty school here along South Washington Street in the suburbs of the nation's capital, only nine miles from the White House. No cable television is blaring. Mr. McGowan and his team need to know only one piece of strategy: If Mr. Obama wins Virginia, a Democratic feat not achieved in 44 years, he may well win the White House.
These satellite offices, a campaign trademark that contributed to Mr. Obama's first victory in Iowa, have been set up with the swiftness of a Starbucks franchise. While local buy-in is encouraged at the more than 700 field offices across the country, the uniformity is remarkable, down to the cardboard cutout of Mr. Obama near the front door in many locations.
What started out organically — campaign officials saw organizational promise in Virginia last year, when 18,000 signatures were gathered in one day to place Mr. Obama on the primary ballot — has come full circle. Now, people driving by the storefront offices are drawn in by their visibility and put to work.
The Obama campaign has broken the country into a collection of battleground states, which are dissected into precincts that are parceled one more time into neighborhood teams. (Ohio, for example, is divided into 1,231 neighborhoods.) And each of these teams, if the recruiting is up to speed, has a leader who, ideally, lives just down the block from all those doors that need to be knocked on.
"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. "
Napoleon Bonaparte
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