Campaign teams plan final play

"It's like that football team from two counties over," the Republican operative said. "You never see them, but you hear they're really big."

O'Brien will see the opposition in action tomorrow, on Election Day.

On paper, the get-out-the-vote ground game is always a mismatch in Massachusetts -- undermanned Republicans against the Democrats and their allies in organized labor. But the GOP has improved in recent cycles, with troops on the ground helping to win the last two elections to extend the party's gubernatorial lock to 16 years.

For more than 18 months, though, Patrick's team has been building a grass-roots campaign of the type not seen in Massachusetts in nearly a quarter century. After his lopsided win in a three-way primary, Patrick's organization grew significantly as workers from other Democratic campaigns came aboard.

What they lack in organizational size, however, Republicans hope to compensate for in nimbleness, using "microtargeting," a sophisticated corporate-type marketing tool, to increase the efficiency of their voter outreach and identification efforts.

If David used a slingshot to fell Goliath, the lieutenant governor's GOP campaign hopes its database can stop the behemoth of Patrick's organization.

Conventional wisdom holds that the ground game can be worth a few percentage points when the votes are counted on Election Day. For Patrick's troops, however, the campaign has been a relentless organizational exercise. His troops overran the party caucuses in February, crushed two opponents at the June endorsing convention, and rolled up half the vote in the primary.

Jack Corrigan , an architect of the organization that helped elect Michael S. Dukakis governor in 1982, is struck by the dimensions of the Patrick network.

"Objectively, you'd have to say it's bigger than '82, certainly in the general election," said Corrigan, who has volunteered at Patrick headquarters since the primary.

Using its web site as a communications and rallying tool, the campaign now has 7,000 supporters who use its "community tool," campaign manager John Walsh said. These foot soldiers have access to the database of registered voters, which they then use to add supporters and build crowds at campaign-related events.

When Patrick supporters rallied on Boston Common last month, people were handed a list with the names and phone numbers of 10 voters and asked to make calls. "We trust the grass roots," Walsh said.

The Healey and Patrick campaigns say they have identified 250,000 certain supporters, among well over 2 million expected to vote.

But the Patrick campaign has an apparent built-in advantage beyond that. His campaign has started with what it considers to be an additional 441,000 voters who were not contacted until this weekend because they were known to have a "high propensity" to vote Democratic.

Moreover, the Patrick campaign plans to target households in 240 "rising precincts" in Boston and 25 other urban areas. These are primarily in areas with high percentages of minority voters, and on Election Day, the campaign plans to blanket the precincts with sound trucks, signs, and canvassers to get voters to the polls.

Every night, voter identification data from Patrick phone banking is entered into a computer sorted and coded for the state's 2,157 precincts. Color-coded precinct maps of 21 regions are generated by computer each morning and hung on a wall at Patrick headquarters in Charlestown.

Lighter colors indicate precincts that are falling short of the campaign's voter targets. Each night the phone calls are directed to those precincts.

The sprawling field organization is layered with coordinators led by a field director, Nancy Stolberg; a deputy campaign manager, Ron Bell; and a veteran operative Paul Shone, who is directing the Election Day operation.

Bell predicted that "something extraordinary will happen in Boston."

The city has a rich but factionalized mix of experienced political hands, many loyal to Mayor Thomas M. Menino , who backed one of Patrick's Democratic opponents, Thomas F. Reilly , in the primary, but is now solidly behind the nominee.

On the Saturday after the primary, about 300 operatives from various backgrounds and loyalties met with Patrick at the Boston Teachers Union headquarters in Dorchester.

"People who hadn't spoken to each other since busing were in that room talking to each other," said Bell, referring to the period in the mid-1970s when court-ordered school desegregation split the city.

On the Republican side, the challenge is not only turnout of Healey voters but persuading late fence sitters.

To hold the governor's office, the GOP must win the battle for independent voters, who constitute half the electorate. Republican victory margins traditionally have come from Cape Cod, the North and South shores, and, in more recent years, the Merrimack Valley, the I-495 ring, and the towns of Worcester County.

The campaign has more than 50 phone banks operating each night, campaign field director Nick Connors said, and peaked with about 9,000 hours of calling time over the weekend. The micro-targeted data helps narrow the focus.

Healey's campaign is getting no help from mercenaries, O'Brien said, noting that one local labor union is offering members $75 a day to help the Patrick effort. "We don't have the Beacon Hill machine driving this thing," he said.

In Healey's operation, voters are profiled by various criteria, such as consumer habits, that tend to indicate whether they are more or less likely to support a Republican, be responsive to certain positions Healey has taken, or show up to vote on election day. The campaign can then generate call lists of a certain type of voters, then fill in their answers to questions on standardized test-type "bubble sheets" which are scanned for computer input.

"Persuading the undecided is an important part of it," O'Brien said. "A personal call can be more powerful than a television or radio ad, or a piece of mail. It's not glamorous but it's the blocking and tackling that can make a difference."