Callers in state dial it up for nominees

Volunteers in the Obama campaign office in North Little Rock make calls Thursday to North Carolina. Clockwise from top are Judy Gaines, Beverly Kirklin and Sara Thomas.
Volunteers in the Obama campaign office in North Little Rock make calls Thursday to North Carolina. Clockwise from top are Judy Gaines, Beverly Kirklin and Sara Thomas.

— Arkansas has been a sleepy backwater in the 2012 presidential campaign, with polls and political observers predicting a comfortable victory for Republican nominee Mitt Romney on Tuesday.

While the state’s six electoral votes will almost certainly fall into Romney’s column Tuesday, Arkansas volunteers from both parties aren’t resting easy.

They’re calling battleground states - often from their home phones - and making road trips to those few remaining tossups on the electoral map to have a say in the next occupant of the Oval Office.

At P resident Barack Obama’s state headquarters in North Little Rock, less than a week before the election, Darrell Stephens, the Obama campaign’s state get-out-the-vote director, said all volunteers there are focused on helping Obama win somewhere else: North Carolina.

“Arkansas is not in play. North Carolina is our ‘sister state.’ All our efforts go to North Carolina,” Stephens said.

Obama narrowly carried North Carolina in 2008, but is trailing in most polls taken there over the past month.

But the Obama campaign hasn’t pulled the plug there yet.

About 50-60 Arkansas volunteers a day have worked in the past several weeks making calls all over the Tarheel State, he said. The typical volunteer makes about 70 calls an hour in a two-hour shift, he said.

One of those volunteers, Paul Wilborn, 61, was sitting in a cubicle making calls one recent afternoon. He said he gets a lot of wrong numbers or people who aren’t at home, but still has managed to connect with plenty of North Carolina voters.

Wilborn, a North Little Rock resident, said he thinks his 10 or so phone sessions have been worthwhile, even if many of the people he talks to have already voted.

“This is part of the secret weapon. You hear a lot about how Obama has such a good ground game and has so many more offices in some states, but they don’t talk about offices like this, because this is a North Carolina field office. We just happen to be in Arkansas,” Wilborn said.

State Republicans are also focusing some of their efforts on states still in play, said Katherine Vasilos, the party’s spokesman.

Much of the emphasis for the party this year is on state legislative races, she said, but many county committees have coordinated phone-bank efforts with the Romney campaign.

Although there is no way to know the exact number of calls made, Vasilos said, the state party headquarters has received “hundreds” of calls from people interested in stumping by telephone for Romney.

The party’s “Phone from Home” program, in which people use their home phones instead of traveling to traditional phone banks, has been the primary focus this cycle, Vasilos said.

But some, including Mark Shaffer, 43, are taking it a step further. The Republican activist from Van Buren says he “got fired up” at the national GOP convention in Tampa,Fla., in August, where he was an alternate delegate. Afterward, he decided to ramp up his efforts to send Romney to the White House.

He has made three trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania in recent months, spending much of his time volunteering for the Romney campaign in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, and Pittsburgh.

“There is nothing more important than boots on the ground. The most efficient thing is one-on-one contact,” Shaffer said.

Mostly, Shaffer knocked on doors, but he also waved signs. He said he sometimes gets into “debates” with potential voters, but they are impressed by his willingness to spend his own money - by his accounting between $2,000 and $3,000 - to share his passion.

“They realize you [are] taking the time to come all the way from down there. And they always love the Southern accent,” Shaffer said.

While Shaffer is working to flip blue states, Democrats from Arkansas are fighting to keep states out of the red column, traveling and working until the very end.

Stephens, the North Little Rock-based Obama supporter, said nearly two dozen Arkansas volunteers traveled by bus to North Carolina in mid-October. And another 27 hit the road Friday, headed for Winston-Salem and Greensboro in that state.

A cadre of Arkansas volunteers will stay in North Carolina until after the election polls close.

In North Carolina, Stephens said, “it’s still up for grabs. That’s why we’re sending people down there - to grab it up and keep it blue.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/04/2012

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