Leaving no stone unturned

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.

Using the Internet, along with the old reliable tools -- the postal service and telephones -- both campaigns are building sophisticated databases of likely supporters to be pulled to the polls on Nov. 2.

Strategist-operative Ralph E. Reed Jr. is not only a key architect of the Bush-Cheney organization, he is among the Republicans who in recent years have employed traditionally Democratic tools to make the GOP competitive on the ground in elections. Reed helped build Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition into a political powerhouse in the 1990s, and in 2002, as Republican chairman in Georgia, oversaw a sophisticated organizational effort that stunned Democrats, ousting an incumbent governor, senator, and longtime speaker of the House.

Technically, Reed is a volunteer chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida and four other southern states. But his role is much broader, comparable to that of his Democratic counterpart, Michael Whouley, the Massachusetts operative who served as organizational troubleshooter in the Democratic presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and, this year, John F. Kerry.

Reed said he has traveled to virtually all of the roughly 20 swing states on behalf of the Bush campaign.

''Usually, we have a training seminar for grass-roots activists on the blocking and tackling of shoe-leather politics," he said during an interview yesterday outside Madison Square Garden, site of the convention. He also serves as a scout for Bush-Cheney headquarters, reporting back to political director Terry Nelson with suggestions on what Reed would only describe as ''some tactical aspect of the program."

Reed learned the benefit of organizing at an early age. He won the senior class presidency at Stephens County High School in Georgia by using help from a teacher and the school's computer to fashion personalized letters to classmates. In modern political parlance, that would be considered a direct mail campaign.

Whether the Republicans can offset the Democrats' traditional advantage is a matter of speculation. Labor unions and ''527s," politically active nonprofits named for the tax code section under which they exist, have said they will pour hundreds of millions of dollars into voter registration and identification, and election-day operations, many manned for Democrats by highly experienced workers.

Reed and others, however, say the Republican model has been built meticulously since the establishment of the ''72-hour task force" after the razor-thin 2000 election. The 72-hours refers to the last three days of a campaign when the final voter mobilization occurs. Rove, in his remarks to Ohio delegates, said the emphasis on grass-roots organizing, is also a priority of Bush, who believes it carried him to victory four years ago.

Since then, the GOP has tested various methods of voter outreach, in special elections, and the 2002 off-year contests, to determine those which are most effective. The result is an operation that relies heavily on the ''team leader" or personal contact concept. Well over 1 million have signed on to support Bush, according to the Republican National Committee, taking responsibility to find and deliver to the polls Bush supporters they know through areas of common interest.

''People have the geographic precinct they live in, but they also have the sort of precinct they work in and they relate to other people in," said Nelson, the campaign political director. ''Whether it's a Boy Scout group, or the church, or a veterans' hall, or a PTA group, we try to organize them in as many places as possible."

Reed, with his deep ties to conservative Christian communities, vigorously disputed news media reports that suggested the Bush-Cheney campaign is trying to obtain church membership lists from religious leaders, which could jeopardize the nonprofit status of a religious organization.

''We don't go to a pastor and ask for a membership directory," he said. ''We go to citizens and ask for an e-mail, a veterans' hall list, or a Rotary Club list, or any other lists of people they can provide."

Those are then used for outreach to, as Reed often says, ''touch" potential voters and determine whether they will support Bush.

In the case of lists of people involved in church activities, Reed said, ''We match it against voter files. It's simple: here's who's registered; here's who's not. Go register the unregistered."

This is the type of organization-building Rove preached to the Ohio delegates yesterday. ''Build it, stoke it, and build it again," he urged them.

Against the Democrats, for whom the ground game is second nature, it could be critical in a close race.