Obama team stakes out N.C. [The Charlotte Observer, N.C.]

Dec. 11--While Republicans bruise each other in the volatile race for their party's nomination, supporters of President Barack Obama are already quietly at work in the battleground states likely to decide who wins the White House next year.

Nowhere is that more evident than in North Carolina. A diverse army of Obama-in-2012 volunteers has been active in the state for months, knocking on doors, hosting house parties, and, every day of the week, all over the state, registering people to vote.

"In a state we only won by 14,000 votes (in 2008), every single vote matters," says Lindsay Siler, Raleigh-based director of Obama's N.C. organization. "There's no county that's going to be ignored."

But the Democratic president's team is especially committed to engaging the kinds of voters who helped elect him in 2008. Ten months before Election Day, they've rolled out "Women 4 Obama," "Greater Together/Young Americans" and -- soon to come to North Carolina -- "Barbershop and Beauty Salon," a program designed to mobilize African-American voters.

Also expected to get special attention: Hispanics, gays and lesbians, seniors, Jews and veterans. Winning these voter groups for Obama is especially important to compensate for the lack of support he'll get from working-class whites, one-time Democratic voters that polls say have never really warmed to the president.

And judging by Siler's frequent talk of "expanding the electorate," it's also clear Team Obama has an eye on new North Carolinians. And for good reason.

In 2010, 263,256 people moved to North Carolina from other states, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Of that number, a big majority -- 172,921 -- came from states that supported Obama in 2008.

"You're seeing a lot of Northerners moving in," says Cameron French, a UNC Charlotte graduate who's the press secretary for Organizing for America, the official name for Obama's N.C. effort.

With a booming war chest, the Obama campaign can afford to reach all these voters and open four field offices in North Carolina. Besides Raleigh, they are in Charlotte, Greensboro and Fayetteville.

So far, Obama has raised $86.2 million nationally -- nearly equal to all the Republican presidential candidates combined. In North Carolina, the president's total through the third quarter was $681,270 -- compared with $583,655 for the GOP contenders.

Even N.C. Republicans acknowledge they're up against a formidable Obama ground game going into 2012.

"Their campaign never left North Carolina, and they never let their infrastructure crumble," state GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood says of the Obama effort. "It's a real force."

And a practiced one.

Some Charlotte-area Obama volunteers, for example, made phone calls and knocked on doors last month for Mayor Anthony Foxx's successful re-election campaign.

Next year's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte should also offer opportunity for Obama's N.C. team to swell -- and energize -- its ranks of volunteers.

But for all the organizing, a repeat N.C. win for Obama is far from a sure thing. The state's unemployment rate, at 10.4 percent, is higher than the national average. And the percentage of Tar Heel voters who approve of the president's performance is stuck in the low 40s. When he won the state in 2008, Obama was a candidate for change. In 2012, he'll be the incumbent with a record.

"He can invest as much money as he wants here (in staff and organizing). But, to quote the Beatles, 'can't buy me love,' " Lockwood says. "If voters don't feel that optimism (for the future), they're not going to vote for him."

Siler's answer: Volunteers are reminding neighbors, friends and others how Obama is fighting for the middle class. They're also saying that 2012 will come down to a choice.

"Once there's a opponent, that choice will become even more clear," she says, casting GOP officeholders -- from Congress to the N.C. legislature -- as beholden to a tea party that has proven, since the 2010 mid-term elections, to be "too over-reaching and too extreme." Securing 'core communities'

Charlotte'sLeah Hill, 24, is on the front lines in the fight for North Carolina's 15 electoral votes.

While political pundits and the media are focusing more these days on South Carolina -- site of a key GOP presidential primary Jan. 21 -- it's just across the state line where the grunt work by Hill and her fellow Obama volunteers may ultimately prove more crucial.

She registers people to vote -- including a lot of students.

Young people are among the president's "core communities," as the Obama campaign's national office in Chicago characterizes them. And in 2008, Obama carried more than 70 percent of N.C. voters, ages 18-29.

One day last week, Hill and two other volunteers worked the midday shift, grabbing their clipboards and hiking down to the campus of Central Piedmont Community College. She's also registered students at Queens University of Charlotte and UNC Charlotte.

Also this year, she did some field work for Foxx's campaign, making some of the campaign's 200,000 phone calls and knocking on a lot of doors.

"We're going to be a really great battleground state," says Hill, a Duke University graduate in public policy who is volunteering for Obama after working two years with Teach for America. "We went blue in '08, and I want to make sure we do the same in '12."

She says there's another, more personal, reason for donating her time to the president's re-election.

"I'm on my parents' health insurance," she says, referring to a provision in the health reform law -- Obama's still-controversial achievement -- that lets parents pay to keep their children on insurance until they're 26.

Joining with Hill for the foray at CPCC were two other seasoned volunteers: Alex Monahan, a 26-year-old professional cook, who says Obama is "bringing people together," and Leigh Westerfield, 57, a former English teacher at Queens University of Charlotte, who says she enjoys "telling people how their vote matters."

Watching the volunteers stop people along Elizabeth Avenue to ask them if they're registered to vote, French said, "It's a scene played out every day across the state."

A disciplined group

The trio working CPCC are based in the Obama field office on Elizabeth Avenue in Charlotte, which will get a grand reopening early in the new year.

Pasted on walls: volunteers' gold and blue pledge cards.

"Team leader for Hispanic America Democrats," reads one. And another: "Team Dangerous will 1) Register voters 2) Establish more team leaders 3) Continue to rock!"

In the Raleigh office, a block from the N.C. Capitol, a banner dominates the main work room. "Organize Like a Champion," it reads.

Besides registering voters on college campuses, Obama volunteers also work the crowds at big public events: at the Juneteenth celebration in Charlotte, for example, and -- even though it was a taxpayer-funded affair -- at Obama's recent speech at West Wilkes High School in Millers Creek.

Team Obama runs a disciplined shop that tries hard to control the message about its operations.

French drove from Raleigh to Charlotte last week to accompany the Observer during the hourlong voter registration effort at CPCC.

French, the public voice and face of the N.C. organization, wouldn't let the Observer interview the campaign's director for voter registration. And he wouldn't disclose how many voters they've registered, saying, "It would be fair to say we have hundreds of voter registration events."

Siler says the campaign has logged about 84,000 "one-on-one conversations" with North Carolinians, which includes volunteers sitting down with people over lunch, in coffee shops or at house parties to explain why they're working for Obama.

The N.C. campaign has a paid staff of under 20, but it'll grow as the election gets closer. Those on board now include a field director, a data director and a digital director. They and French work for Organizing for America, which is technically under the umbrella of the N.C. Democratic Party. Siler, meanwhile, is with Obama for America, the national campaign based in Chicago.

She says she can pick up the phone "daily, hourly, any second" to talk with the Obama campaign's Southern regional director, its national field director and its battleground states director -- all of them based in Chicago. The Obama outfit -- in North Carolina and nationally -- prides itself on reaching out and speaking to voter groups "where they are," as another Chicago-based Obama operative put it.

Team Obama in North Carolina had 10,744 likes on Facebook, as of last week, for example. And though the recent kickoff of "Greater Together/Young Americans" was held at the University of Pennsylvania, students at UNC Charlotte, Johnson C. Smith and other N.C. schools joined in via live streaming on the Internet.

Republicans in North Carolina are also registering voters, though not on the same scale or with the same regularity.

In October, it targeted 14,000 independent and center-right households -- 14,000 because that was Obama's winning margin in the state in 2008.

Lockwood of the N.C. GOP says the party will ramp up next year, and especially so after it has a nominee.

Obama's N.C. effort, meanwhile, is well under way, with a state map on its website ( www.barackobama.com/state/NC) that charts its voter registration events and a new slogan: "We Can't Wait."

With money and staff, a corps of energized volunteers and no Democratic primary opposition for Obama, they have the luxury to start early.

"This time in 2007, we were in a very different position," says Clo Ewing, a spokeswoman who works at Obama headquarters in Chicago. "Then, we were getting ready for a tough primary. We didn't have as much time to build. Now we have more time."

Adds Siler in Raleigh: "This state is clearly in play. And we're going to do our jobs and build an organization that can talk to North Carolinians about what's at stake and about the importance of getting out and voting."

Database reporter Gavin Off contributed.

Funk: 704-358-5703

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