Campaigns gear up to turn out caucus voters

Iowans can run. They can hide. The campaigns will try to find you.

Volunteers and campaign staff of 14 presidential candidates are in the final frantic days before Monday’s Iowa caucuses, making calls and knocking on doors. Two questions are often heard:

"Hello? … Hello?"

A volunteer was on the phone at Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s Ankeny office in a strip mall next to a law office and a dry cleaner.

“I’m calling for Senator Marco Rubio …

“Hello? … Hello?”

The volunteer hung up and dialed again.

Another volunteer on Des Moines’ south side stood on a home’s stoop, knocking on a door that remained unopened. So he shouted through the door.

“I’m here representing Senator Bernie Sanders …

“Hello? … Hello?"

He tromped through the snowy yard to the next house.

The 11 Republicans and three Democrats campaigning in Iowa are pulling out all the stops — and aren't stopped by being ignored.

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The campaign for Republican Rand Paul has made 800,000 calls and is shooting for a million — and, yes, cellphone numbers can be found by crafty campaign staff. Republican Jeb Bush’s campaign has promised a chance at a dinner with the Republican if you can lure six people to the caucus, “No purchase necessary.”

Sixty people are canvassing for Republican Carly Fiorina, and other supporters are showing a screening of a documentary about her in their homes. Republican Donald Trump’s campaign is firing out emails asking for people to make calls: “You don’t have to bring anything at all — and we’ll provide you with food and beverages. We’ll even have contests and special prizes for our top performers.”

The campaigns are promising rides to the caucuses, luring celebrities to Iowa, such as Jamie Lee Curtis for Democrat Hillary Clinton. They are employing family surrogates, such as Democrat Martin O’Malley’s three adult children.

But the best method may be the most old-fashioned: Neighbors and fellow Iowans knock on your door for a little face-to-face convincing.

“Research has shown that direct, personal contact works better than campaign brochures and the like, and face-to-face contact, particularly from friends and relatives, works best,” said Dennis Goldford, professor of political science at Drake University.

'I think they like the attention'

Freddy Chavez, representing Sanders' campaign, had knocked on about a half-dozen doors last Sunday on the south side. He came to Iowa from his home in Berkeley, Calif., not as a neighbor but as a volunteer with a pedigree. He’s the nephew of famous farm labor activist Cesar Chavez.

Most people didn’t answer the door so he resorted to shouting his mission from outside in English and Spanish. The campaign had targeted this heavily Latino neighborhood, but on any block, Iowans aren’t used to people knocking, as in the days of vacuum cleaner salesmen.

Chavez is asked what these pleas in the last week can do after Iowans have been bombarded with advertisements, media reports and politicians for more than 18 months.

“Here in Iowa people wait until the last minute to decide,” he said, before smiling. “I think they like the attention.”

Joining him was Michael Vega, 21, of Des Moines, who is paid by the campaign. He wanted to learn from Chavez, who marched with his uncle. And Vega wanted to spread a message about income inequality.

Vega said he’s seen his family struggle to get by because of discrimination and low pay. “My mom works in fast food, and my dad works in a factory.”

Chavez said he came from a tradition of revolution among ancestors fighting income disparity in Mexico early in the last century. He said Latinos connect with Sanders’ call to “Join the Revolution.”

MORE ON CAUCUSES:

• VOTER DATA: See party registration data for Iowa voters by county, by city
• COMPARE THE CANDIDATES: See candidates’ stances on the issues

After several door knocks, Chavez and Vega caught two men in a garage fixing a pickup. Only one spoke English.

David Allison, 30, crawled out from under the truck and assured Chavez that he is voting for Sanders but didn’t know about the caucus or where it was. Chavez told him that he might not be able to vote for Sanders in the general election if he doesn’t go to caucus, because Sanders needs to win the Democratic party's nomination first.

“So it’s like a rally?” Allison asked.

“No,” Chavez said, “it’s like a meeting of the Democratic Party.”

“So it’s a big thing, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s really important.”

Allison may have been uneducated about the caucus, but he knew the issues. He got into a nuanced discussion with Chavez about the minimum wage, taxes and health care.

Chavez may have talked him into attending after all.

“All the eyes of the nation are here now,” Chavez told him before going to the next house.

Just don't call us at dinner

For months, Iowans have been hearing the term “ground game.” It’s a football analogy. No fancy-pants forward passes to quickly move down the field will win it here. Just a grind-it-out, one-on-one blocking approach to move the ball 2 yards at a time.

And that’s what happens at the call center for Rubio. One call at a time.

“People want to be asked for their vote,” said Jordan Russell, a spokesman for Rubio in Iowa. “When people hear from neighbors, somebody they know or a volunteer who speaks from the heart, that’s most important.”

Mostly young adults line long tables with call lists and phones. Under the table is indoor-outdoor carpet with white lines like a football field. The walls are plastered with cut-out paper footballs positioned on a paper field. The balls carrying the names of the top call performers have advanced farthest up the field.

Volunteer Alex Richmond, 25, moved here from Michigan 18 months ago to work on Rubio’s campaign and said he has found Iowans polite, except when he interrupts their dinner.

One of the elder statesman volunteers is Dixie Watters, who is in her 50s and lives just outside of Des Moines. She claims to have made 1,500 calls.

“I just turned one (to Rubio) tonight,” she said. “She was undecided.”

Move that woman’s football.

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Watters moved into Rubio’s ranks only a few months ago, after Scott Walker dropped out of the race. She said her 20-year-old son got her into politics. She’s concerned about the America of his future and thinks Rubio’s “charisma, faith, values and principles” are the answer.

The obstacle to convince others is what veteran political strategist Steve Grubbs calls “fragmentation.”

“Today’s eyeballs are in all sorts of places,” he said, including a bombardment from social media and numerous Internet news sources. “So we knocked on doors all summer and are now hitting the calls.”

As Rand Paul’s chief strategist, Grubbs has employed a traveling phone bank so volunteers don’t have to come to Des Moines, in addition to a call-from-home program. He’s hoping to nab a significant number of Iowans registered as no party, just as Rand’s father, Ron Paul, did in 2012.

“We need to find them and make sure they get to the polls,” he said. “If they need a ride, we’ll go get them.”

Political experts have told the Register that the Democrats won’t match the record 2008 turnout of 240,000 spurred by the field of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other party luminaries. With the Republicans' large field, they could do better than the record 121,500 that went to caucus in 2012.

Typically, less than 20 percent of registered voters turn out for the caucuses. That makes the final push vital to the campaigns.

Full-throttle last week push

By late afternoon Sunday, Scott Thompson of Des Moines wasn’t trying to find new Hillary Clinton supporters. He was making sure the front-runner’s committed supporters remember to show up Monday to caucus.

He tromped down the sidewalk of the southwest side with a list in hand as the sun sank behind the tree-lined streets and in the distance another person was approaching the door. "Probably another canvasser. I can see it in her eyes, the look of 'Why am I here?' "

A woman answers the door and peeks her head out.

“I just want to remind you of the caucus on the 1st,” Thompson told the woman.

“We are planning on it,” she said.

At the next door, a woman said she was going to support Clinton, and he asked if he could put a campaign sign in her yard. “My husband would kill me,” she joked.

MORE ON CAUCUSES: 

• CAUCUS HISTORY: Find all caucus results by county, candidate since 1976
• CANDIDATE TRACKER: Track presidential campaign visits across the state

Thompson, 54, is a doctoral student in rural sociology at Iowa State. He lost his job as a salesman at Schwan’s and went back to school after putting out 412 resumes and landing only four interviews. He switched from Republican to Democrat after hearing Republicans talk of the unemployed like they were “a lazy drain on the economy,” he said.

“I came to realize those people don’t represent me,” said Thompson, who became a Clinton precinct captain.

Some Democratic precinct captains are also busy on the telephones in the waning days trying to recruit not only undecided Iowans but those backers of other candidates who might not reach the 15 percent needed to be viable in a precinct. That makes them prime targets for persuasion to join the caucus huddle of another candidate.

Republican candidates who are polling in the single digits are even doing last-minute introductions.

“Twenty-six percent don’t even know who she is,” said Audrey Scagnelli, press secretary for Carly Fiorina. “But 70 percent don’t know who they are going to caucus for.”

Fiorina’s campaign has 353 “community captains” directing their charges up to the final hour.

Over in West Des Moines, Trump’s call center is busy at Mass Markets, which provides “business process outsourcing,” according to the company’s website. Several young people were checked through locked doors on a recent afternoon, and one woman said she was applying for a job to make calls.

Mass Markets and Trump campaign officials refused comment.

The Trump campaign also made a last-week push via email to remind military veterans they can vote absentee in the caucus.

Passion keeps volunteers going

Behind the hard-nosed campaign strategies are often volunteers that have given up time because they believe in the cause.

Only five days after their fellow campaign volunteer and friend Braden Joplin, 25, died in a car crash in western Iowa, Californians Ryan Shellooe, 23, and Aaron Ohnemus, 18, were back making calls in Republican candidate Ben Carson’s Urbandale office.

Both were in the vehicle with Joplin. Shellooe escaped with no injuries. Ohnemus had his foot elevated, wearing an orthopedic boot from an ankle injury from the crash, his phone in hand to make calls.

“Aaron and I were resolute in our decision to stay,” Shellooe said. “We believe in Dr. Carson. Braden believed in Dr. Carson, and the best way we can honor him is to keep working.”

“We came here for one reason,” added Ohnemus. “Now it’s two reasons.”