FINDLAY, Ohio — Riding a bus south along I-75 Thursday,
Jennifer Ridgely smiled as a passing truck driver honked his horn
several times in greeting. “Isn’t that awesome?” said Ridgely, a
press coordinator with Americans for Prosperity.
AFP’s custom bus is emblazoned with the slogan “Obama’s Failing Agenda Tour” and
eye-catching graphics. Each side displays quotes from the president
— “The private sector is doing fine” and “You didn’t build that”
— as well as a listing: “The Failures Just Keep Piling Up — $1.7
Trillion Health Care Takeover; More Than 42 Straight Months of
Unemployment Above 8%; $16 Trillion National Debt; Billions Wasted
on Solyndra & Green Energy Scams.” As it travels across Ohio,
this rolling billboard produces spontaneous reactions from passing
motorists, and when yet another passing trucker honks his support,
Ridgely smiles again. “It just never gets old for me.”
AFP is a grassroots organization that claims 3 million members
and has worked to help keep the Tea Party movement thriving. The
bus traveling across Ohio this week is one of three buses
simultaneously crisscrossing the country, focusing on key
battleground states in the upcoming election. Launched a month ago,
the “Failing Agenda” tour is the largest in AFP’s history, and will
have visited 380 cities in 25 states before November 6. Events
range from meet-and-greets in small towns to rallies in larger
cities, such as the “Hands of Our Health Care” rally yesterday on
the square in downtown Findlay. One of the biggest dates on the
tour will be Oct. 6 in
Columbus, Ohio, with talk-radio hostess Laura Ingraham headlining
an event at the Convention Center that is expected to draw at
least 2,000 people.
Beyond holding rallies, AFP is working with activists to engage
in door-to-door canvassing. Aboard the bus, Ridgely showed off a
Samsung Galaxy computer tablet loaded with special software for
their “Prosperity Knocks” program. The tablet features a canvassing
questionnaire that activists use when interviewing voters, and the
software immediately uploads the information to AFP’s online
database. “The goal is to build a long-term grassroots network,”
Ridgely explains. “It’s not just about this election.”
While AFP has its own long-term organizational goals, the
intended near-term consequences of such grassroots activism are
obvious enough. These efforts could have a major impact on the
outcome of the election in Ohio and other key states. Several other
conservative groups are making similar efforts in the weeks leading
up to Election Day. On a table at Thursday’s rally in Findlay, Tea
Party activists could pick up a variety of flyers and handbills,
one promoting the 60 Plus Association (a conservative group for
senior citizens), another advertising a Friday event featuring U.S.
Rep. Bob Latta sponsored by Citizens for Community Values, and a
third urging attendance at a lecture next week by constitutional
scholar KrisAnne Hall at the local American Legion hall. All of
this is part of a large, multi-layered effort involving numerous
organizations acting independently yet sharing the same basic goal:
To energize conservatives and reach out to independents, to
persuade, identify, and turn out enough votes to defeat Obama this
November.
This is what political strategists call the “ground game” of
campaigning, as opposed to the “air war” of advertising that
permeates TV and radio during election season, especially in key
states like Ohio. At some point in these battlegrounds, TV
commercials reach such a saturation level that they cease doing
much to influence voters’ decisions. When both campaigns (as well
as independent groups that now include so-called “super PACs”) are
filling the airwaves with attack ads, they effectively cancel each
other out. Furthermore, as more people make up their minds and the
number of undecided voters shrinks, the job of swaying mass opinion
eventually becomes less important than the job of getting your
supporters to vote.
The increased popularity of early voting — now underway in Ohio
and many other states — means that the get-out-the-vote “ground
game” also begins early. And whereas Obama’s organizational effort
in the 2008 campaign was a marvel of such astonishing efficiency as
to overwhelm anything John McCain’s campaign could produce, there
are reasons to believe that Mitt Romney this year will benefit from
a ground-game effort equal or superior to the Democrats’ operation.
Exhibit A in this case is the 2010 mid-term election when
Republicans won a historic landslide, a result widely
attributed to the energizing effects of the Tea Party movement, but
also sparked by an outstanding “ground game” to push GOP turnout.
Exhibit B is the Wisconsin recall election in June, when Republican
Gov. Scott Walker easily survived an all-or-nothing effort by
Democrats and their labor-union allies to drive him from
office.
With polls currently showing Obama leading Romney by 10 points
in Ohio, it is important to note that pollsters failed to predict
the 7-point margin of Walker’s victory in June. Conservatives have
good reason to be skeptical toward the suggestion (implicit in the
samples of several recent polls) that Democrats will enjoy a
substantial turnout advantage November 6. Liberal writer Jonathan
Chait has
derided myself and other skeptics as “poll denialists,” but the
evident energy and enthusiasm of Republican voters here in Ohio
cannot be safely ignored, no matter what the polls may say.
Several observers, including Republican National Committee
chairman Reince Priebus, have described Ohio as “ground zero” of
this year’s election. Americans for Prosperity was one of the
organizations most active in helping defend Walker in the Wisconsin
election. No one should be surprised if their current effort to
educate Ohio voters about “Obama’s Failing Agenda” produces similar
success here.
