Obama’s first Pennsylvania field office to open in Allentown [The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.]

Jan. 10--With Republicans waging primary election battles in New Hampshire and South Carolina, President Barack Obama'sPennsylvania re-election campaign is ratcheting up.

The campaign will open its first Pennsylvania field office at 1031 W. Linden Street in Allentown on Thursday night to go with its state headquarters, which is in Philadelphia.

In the 2008 campaign, tens of thousands of volunteers worked out of dozens of storefront offices and volunteers' homes across the state to help Obama carry Pennsylvania and win the White House. That included two field offices in Allentown, one in Bethlehem and one in Easton.

The 2008 grass-roots effort, powered by volunteers and a sophisticated online campaign, registered and turned out hundreds of thousands of new voters.

With Pennsylvania looking to be tightly contested in 2012, the Obama campaign is hoping to bring many of those volunteers back and to register more first-time voters. By November 2008, the campaign had 81 field offices and 300 paid staff members in the state.

With Pennsylvania's primary three months away, none of the potential Republican challengers' campaigns have launched significant ground operations in Pennsylvania. But GOP volunteers at all levels are fully motivated to help defeat Obama by talking about his policy failures, say party officials.

Volunteers played a big role in GOP gains in the 2011 and 2010 elections, said Valerie Caras, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

"Even if we don't have a competitive primary, I think people are focused on the goal of getting [Obama] out of the White House," she said. "If we do have a spirited primary, it helps keep the candidates in the voters' minds." State committee members will convene later this month to decide whether to endorse.

Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, a Democrat who will appear at an open house to be held at the new office from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, said the choice of the state's third-largest city for Obama's first Pennsylvania field office makes sense, he said.

"Allentown is important, as well as the whole Lehigh Valley," Pawlowski said. "The state of Pennsylvania will be critically important in this presidential election. I don't think there is any map where you can get to the White House without somehow winning Pennsylvania."

He said he thinks Obama's re-election message will resonate locally, especially when compared with that of the eventual Republican nominee.

Local Obama volunteers are hoping to duplicate their 2008 election effort. Larry Lauritzen, the Easton area Obama volunteer leader, said he's expecting to see an Easton office open in the first quarter.

Novices in 2008, Obama's experienced volunteers are more seasoned and savvy today, Lauritzen said.

"We have actually been working at it for a while now," he said.

After Obama took office, his campaign staff morphed into Organizing For America under the Democratic National Committee, but the volunteer organization, which mobilized around issues like health care reform, could not duplicate the enthusiasm of the 2008 campaign.

Still, volunteers have made 300,000 phone calls since Obama announced his re-election effort in April, according to the campaign.

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