COLUMBUS — With his long, gray ponytail and flashy turquoise rings, 46-year-old Wallace Clevenger stands out amid the clean-cut young conservatives working in the Ohio campaign headquarters for George W. Bush.

        As he stuck address labels on stacks of envelopes, Mr. Clevenger acknowledged that he usually votes Democratic in presidential elections. But this year, the former Marine cited two reasons for helping Mr. Bush.

        “He's talking about boosting the military,” Mr. Clevenger explained, “And I'm a member of the NRA.”

        He says he agrees with Mr. Bush's stand against strict gun-control laws. He grinned and added, “I believe in home protection, and there are some things my pit bull can't get around.”

        Much of the focus in the last months of this presidential campaign has centered on the candidates' television ads, stump speeches and nationally televised debates.

Volunteer Tricia Eckfield, who works for a Columbus employment agency, spends her evenings making phone calls at the Bush headquarters in Columbus. (Glenn Hartong photos) | ZOOM |

        But in a battleground state such as Ohio, the success of huge get-out-the-vote efforts run by little-known campaign workers — with help from volunteers like Mr. Clevenger — could determine who squeaks out a victory here on Nov. 7.

        “This isn't a national campaign, it's a state-by-state campaign,” said Bob Paduchik, 34, executive director of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.

        J.B. Poersch, 38, head of field operations in Ohio for Mr. Gore, said grass- roots efforts are particularly critical for Democrats.

        “In a state with a strong Republican statewide presence, we have to work extra hard,” he said. “We have to emphasize turnout.”

        These Bush and Gore strategists, who spend their days in cramped downtown offices just blocks from each other, are in charge of deciding how to coordinate thousands of Ohio volunteers and how to distribute leaflets, yard signs, buttons and bumper stickers.

Kevin Rhoades from Dublin, Ohio, and Wendy Dray of Columbus are among volunteers at the Gore headquarters in Columbus. | ZOOM |

        Along with a handful of others, they also lobby for candidates to visit Ohio more often, handle statewide media requests and wrestle with a deluge of daily questions such as what to put on a candidate's Web site.

        “We're here early and we leave late. The janitor knows us pretty well,” a bleary-eyed Mr. Poersch said, taking a rare afternoon break to explain his job. “Everybody knows there's not much sleep to be had anymore.”

        With just 25 days to go until the election, he and 11 other workers in Columbus are frantically working on efforts such as getting Gore literature to 1 million Ohio households.

        They are also coordinating with county party leaders around the state to ensure that Democrats are walking precincts and staffing phone banks to urge Gore backers to the polls. They are most intensely focused on turning out voters in Ohio Democratic strongholds such as Cleveland, Youngstown and Canton.

        “We concentrate our efforts on making contact,” Mr. Poersch said. “We have to think about individual communities. How many people are doing literature drops in Canton? How many phones do we have operating in Youngstown?”

VOTER TURNOUT

Both presidential campaigns stress voter turnout on Election Day.     Here are voter turnouts in the last two presidential elections in Ohio:     • 1996 — 6,879,687 registered voters; 4,534,434 voted. Turnout: 66 percent.     • 1992: 6,542,931 registered voters; 5,043,094 voted. Turnout: 77 percent.

        The pace is no less intense in the Bush headquarters, where three people work for Mr. Bush and and five others work with Victory 2000 — a coalition responsible for get-out-the-Republican-vote efforts for Bush as well as other Republican candidates. These operatives are focused on getting voters to the polls in Hamilton County and other predominantly Republican areas of Ohio.

        “When you have 50,000 yard signs you are trying to get out to 88 counties, 30,000 bumper stickers and a half a million pieces of literature, it's a massive logistical effort,” Mr. Paduchik said. “Like with yard signs, we try to get them up all at once for the psychological effect. Going from zero to 3,000 signs in Hamilton County shows good organization.”

        Mr. Paduchik said although he had expected such a frenzied pace, it does require personal sacrifices. When he asked his fiancee to marry him last Christmas, for example, he told her they had to have a May wedding.

        “It was the only month between the primary and the start of campaigning for the general election,” he said. “I told her there was no way I could be planning a wedding during a campaign.”

        Mr. Paduchik said the pace is so intense in part because field operatives like himself must help the national campaign staff in Austin, Texas, make sense of Ohio politics.

        “They don't always understand that what's going to work in Cleveland won't work in Cincinnati,” Mr. Paduchik said. “Differ ent messages resonate in different ways. Mr. Bush talks more about his position on tax cuts in Cincinnati, and his plan to save Social Security in Cleveland.”

        Whatever message Mr. Bush delivers, Mr. Paduchik said Republican leaders — who occupy every statewide office in Ohio — help the campaign disseminate it. Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, for example, is chairman of the Ohio Bush campaign and frequently stumps for Mr. Bush across the state.

        “When Bob Taft says George W. Bush is fighting a battle against drugs, it means something much more than someone from outside Ohio saying it,” Mr. Paduchik said.

        Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Dave Leland plays down the role of Republican statewide officeholders, however, noting that they didn't keep President Clinton from winning Ohio four years ago.

        Mr. Leland said the party has already mailed out 400,000 absentee ballots to Democratic-leaning voters and is working with labor unions on other efforts to get more Democrats to the polls.

        Both sides said the work of such volunteers is key to winning. Volunteers are the ones who call voters, take them to the polls, pass out literature, put up yard signs and do most of the grunt work required in a campaign.

        Anna Lea Barry, a retired teacher working a voter-registration table one sunny day outside Ohio Democratic Party headquarters, said she volunteers for Mr. Gore because she likes his stand on the environment.

        “We still have dirty water and filthy rivers and he knows what needs to be done,” she said. “He wrote a book about it.”

        Volunteers in the Bush headquarters on nearby Gay Street expressed equally intense devotion.

        Although Tricia Eckfield spends her days in Columbus scheduling appointments for an employment agency, she still spends her evenings in a room bare but for a few campaign posters, scheduling work times for other Bush volunteers.

        “I'm really against abortion,” she said, explaining why she works so hard for Mr. Bush. “It's a big issue for a lot of volunteers.”
       

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