In West Iowa, Obama’s Man Thinks Locally

[ClarkUSA]

The New York Times has a profile of Obama's West Iowa field operation, featuring a 29-year-old former marine who is hoping a personal touch turns voters into Obama recruiters in essential territory.

Mr. Steele, a 29-year-old former marine who has worked as a truck driver in the Pacific Northwest and a crab fisherman in Alaska, is the face of the Obama campaign in western Iowa. His territory of 21 counties, the largest in the state, is an essential front line in one of the most competitive presidential races that anyone here can recall.

The outcome of the Iowa caucuses, a set of 1,781 precinct meetings to take place across the state on Jan. 3, hinges on creating a strong and loyal person-to-person network. Mr. Steele is among the hundreds of Democratic and Republican campaign aides stationed in Iowa responsible for building — and sustaining — those networks throughout the state’s 99 counties.

That is precisely what took Mr. Steele to the soybean field. In August, Mr. McIntosh signed on as Mr. Obama’s Harrison County co-chairman, so Mr. Steele drops by from time to time to see if Mr. McIntosh is satisfied with the campaign’s direction and to replenish a supply of Obama DVDs he lends to neighbors.

“If I could make one suggestion, I would get the senator to Dunlap or Ottaway or Missouri Valley,” said Mr. McIntosh, 64, talking over the combine’s purr as he referred to three nearby towns. “I realize he can’t go everywhere, but we really need to get him over here.”

On Saturday, after more than a month of negotiating and planning by his campaign, Mr. Obama bounded onto the auctioneer’s platform at the Dunlap Livestock Auction and was greeted with applause from more than 300 people who filled the orange seats usually occupied by cattle buyers. (The campaign advance team wanted to hold the event in the local high school, but Mr. Steele and other aides fought that option, which pleased Mr. McIntosh.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/us/politics/26organizer.html

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