America Coming Together (ACT) & DrivingVotes.org are going to swing NV to Kerry

[freedomburns]

Myself, and about 200-250 other activists showed up in Reno, NV on Friday night.  We spent the night, and rallied in Taylor Park to grab our clipboards and get some instruction from our field leaders before fanning out in teams of six to canvass neighborhoods.  We went door to door doing voter ID by asking a few polling questions and then registered anyone who we thought sounded like a progressive voter.  (i.e. Democrat who would vote for Kerry).    We had printed lists of likely supporters identified.  Team leaders used Palm Pilots for the same purpose.  

Some people went to a couple of fertile locations to do tabling and voter reg there, too.  All told, we will register over 1000 Democrats this weekend in the Reno/Sparks area.  I registered eight myself yesterday.  I will post exact figures.  This is happening every weekend as Reno is only a four-hour drive from the Bay Area.  There was a similar number of volunteers each of the last few weekends.  Last weekend several dozen volunteers organized by the Sierra Club showed up in Reno to do the same thing.  They registered over 800 Democrats last weekend.  I want to do tabling because I am really good at his stuff.  Tabling folks were registering about 50 voters per day; I'm sure I could do at least 100 new registrants per day in the right location (WalMart).

The canvassing is being organized by a coalition of several organizations, including America Coming Together (ACT), the League of Pissed off Voters (LOPOV), DrivingVotes.org, the East Bay League of Progressive Voters and others, all 527s and being careful to follow the applicable rules on these new non-profits.  We were not able to coordinate with the Democrats.  I was going to go with DV, but some friends were going with LOPOV and they paid for our hotel rooms, gas and food on the trip.  

An equal effort is taking place in Las Vegas every weekend with volunteers from LA.  This will go on every weekend until October 2, which is the final day to register voters unless you are an have had official training on Voter Registration, in which case you can register voters until October 12.  After that we will organize around GOTV efforts, phone calls and issue ID and then sending pinpoint literature on issues.  Nevada has been a generally conservative state.  I also encountered a lot of strong libertarian opinions there while canvassing.

The canvassing is being organized by a coalition of several groups, including America Coming Together, the League of Pissed off Voters, DrivingVotes.org, the East Bay League of Progressive Voters and others, all 527s being careful to follow the applicable rules on these new non-profits.  We were not able to coordinate with the Democrats.  I was going to go with DV, but some friends were going with TLOPV and they paid for our hotel rooms, gas and food on the trip.  I didn’t have to spend a thing the whole trip.  I even won some money playing blackjack because this cute activist chick named Kathryn taught me how to count cards.  And, she helped us by adjusting her hair for us when she knew the card count was in favor of a betting big.  It was great fun.  She won lots of money.  

Many people were able to stay for two days, some of us had to come back Saturday night so that we could post on the forum rather than doing our chores on a Sunday.  Recent polls go back and forth between showing Bush or Kerry up by a point or two.  All of these polls are well within the margin of error.  They also tend to sample too heavily from LV, and not enough from RV.  We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, these newest polls spell very bad news for Bush and the Republicans.  Bush won CO by 8 points in 2000. However, it's still early, and I still cannot predict CO to go Dem this year. The best news is that Kerry leads among independents 49-38, and this is fairly consistent in all swing states.

The Republicans are in a lot of trouble long-term if current polling trends continue. Many states in the south have a rapidly growing Hispanic population that is strongly Dem.  In 2012 or 2016, how will the Republicans fair when, NV, AZ, CO, VA, NH and maybe NC are all leaning-Dem, and FL, NM, WV & OR are solid Dem? Even if IA, WI, MN and OH head their way long-term, we come out with a big advantage. It looks everything is coming up roses.

[mddem2004]

Someones taking notice of this too FreedomBurns.....

Excerpts from the Baltimore Sun today:

LAS VEGAS, N.M. - Four years ago, Tony E. Marquez Jr. proudly backed George W. Bush for president. Today, he bitterly regrets his vote.

Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada - with a combined 47 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election - are the most fiercely contested Hispanic

......as Bush prepares to be renominated at a convention that will boast a record number of Hispanic delegates, polls show his standing with Hispanic voters has slipped. Among their concerns: health care, education, jobs and, increasingly, the war in Iraq.

This year, the biggest surge in anti-war sentiment has been among minority voters, according to a poll released last week by the Associated Press. It found that 80 percent of non-whites think the Bush administration made a mistake in going to war, a jump of 40 points since December.....

The 2004 campaign is the most intense and expensive effort yet to reach the nation's vast and rapidly growing Hispanic population, estimated at 40 million.

However, the real targets are Hispanic swing voters - recent immigrants - who are a small part of the 7.4 million Latinos likely to turn out this year, according to the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.

Kerry's prospects also may be aided by special circumstances in the Latino battleground states.

In Florida, his campaign is hoping to capitalize on a surge in Puerto Rican immigrants, a group that usually tilts toward Democrats, and on opposition among some Cuban-Americans to Bush's tough new policy on travel to Cuba.

In Arizona, a state that Al Gore did not contest in 2000, Democrats say a ballot measure promoted by opponents of illegal immigration will drive up Hispanic turnout.

In Nevada, an initiative to raise the minimum wage is expected to draw union members, many of them Hispanic, who might otherwise stay home. And in New Mexico, Richardson's election two years ago replaced a Republican with a popular Democrat who is also the nation's highest-ranking Hispanic official.

But Kerry's biggest advantage may be the voter registration drives and door-to-door canvassing begun months ago by the Democratic Party and allied groups, such as America Coming Together, which is mounting what it says is a $75 million-plus national turnout effort.

A New Mexico Republican strategist, who predicted Bush would lose that state if the election were today, called the Democratic ground campaign the best he has seen in 30 years.

In fast-growing Clark County, Nev., the Democrats have already signed up 10,000 more new voters than Republicans have in a state Bush won by just more than 21,000 votes. Larry Lomax, the county registrar of voters, said, "There's no question the Latino parts of town are where we're seeing the greatest increases."

Nationally, Bush's goal is to add 5 percent to the 35 percent share of the Hispanic vote he got last time, as measured by network exit polling.

"If they get an extra 5 percent, they win the election," said Richardson, who predicts that the Latino vote will decide the presidential race.

Bush may have difficulty gaining a much larger share of the Hispanic vote, yet even Democratic strategists don't expect him to fall too far below his 2000 vote.

But with the possibility of another close finish in November, if Kerry "can even shave off 2 or 3 percent" of Bush's Latino vote, it would be enough to tip states the president won last time, such as Nevada and Arizona, to Kerry, said Luis Navarro, former national political director of Kerry's campaign and now ACT's western coordinator.

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Keep up the Good Work Freedomburns

[freedomburns]

I signed up one 70 year old Latina woman on Saturday.  The other seven were white.  Sparks is a pretty white town.

[freedomburns]

Here are the final stats.  I am pleased to note that just in the Reno area this weekend we registered and talked to Democratic leaning voters at 4000 doors or left them literature on the campaign.  Many times several people would gather to hear me talk about how important this election is.  GOTV efforts will continue throughout the year.

I write to report some very exciting news.  This weekend, 130 volunteers descended upon Reno to spread the progressive message.  And what a day we had!   Together, we:


Walked the equivalent of 327 miles!
Knocked on over 4000 doors!
Spoke to over 1500 voters about the issues!
Registered 219 new voters!
Wrote nearly 100 letters to unregistered women!


Thank you all so much!  And a special thanks to Kris and Larry Engstrom and Pam Gormly for housing volunteers!

Please join us for the next Election Action Day on September 18th!  To sign-up now, click here <http://www.acthere.com/signup.php?eventID=1656>.  Give us a call at 775-337-2555 with any questions.  We hope to see you there!  

To victory.

freedomburns

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

It's gonna be VERY close there.  I' say Kerry has the advantage as of right now.