GOP uses traditionally Democratic tools to woo voters

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http://www.boston.com/news/politics/advertising/articles/2004/08/31/leaving_no_stone_unturned/

GOP uses traditionally Democratic tools to woo voters
By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | August 31, 2004

NEW YORK -- After breakfast, Ohio delegates to the Republican National Convention got more than a pep talk from two of George W. Bush's biggest political guns yesterday. They received some instructions too.

Sounding at times more like ward heeler than chief political strategist to the president of the United States, Karl Rove exhorted the delegates to participate in the most elementary of campaign tasks -- individual voter contact. As part of what is being billed as the GOP's greatest grass-roots organizational effort in history, Rove told the delegates: ''Do more than you've ever done before . . . We need to ask everyone we know to get involved in this crusade."

Following him to the podium in a Times Square hotel meeting room, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman urged the Ohioans to register new voters and help with absentee and early voting efforts.

At a convention to renominate a president, in an election that polls show could be as close as 2000, and in a state that could be among those that determine the November election, prominent party leaders were being asked to perform functions once reserved for volunteers and college students.

For all the megamillion-dollar television advertising buys and all the news stories written about this campaign, Republicans and Democrats alike are pouring vast sums into old-fashioned field organizations. Once the province of urban Democratic machines and labor unions, the ground game is making a 21st-century comeback as both sides recall the presidential race of four years ago when the electoral votes of five states -- Florida, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Oregon -- were determined by less than half a percent of the vote.<snip>