Political armies map out pre-primary strategy

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- As the candidates prepare for their first major network prime-time debates tonight, armies of campaign staffers and volunteers are fanning out across the state in a town-by-town, block for block struggle to get out of the vote for their candidates on Tuesday.

At Hillary Clinton's headquarters in downtown Manchester, where phone bank volunteers are urged to "dial like a champion," officials are accommodating 1,000 additional volunteers from out of state, including bus loads from Worcester, Boston, and Springfield, and a planeload from Arkansas.

The campaign hopes to knock on 100,000 doors this weekend, officials said, more than a quarter of those it has reached all year.

The New York Democrat, like other candidates, is also bringing in some political star power, including several members of the Kennedy clan, including the late Robert F. Kennedy's children Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

On the Republican side, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is also counting on additional volunteers, many of them from the Bay State.

Craig Stevens, his New Hampshire spokesman, says "we continue to ramp up the volunteers," adding that the campaign now "focused on reaching undecided voters."

He said office space at the campaign's headquarters on Elm Street in Manchester has doubled in recent days to accommodate hundreds of volunteers flowing in from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and elsewhere.

Romney's get-out-the-vote phone banks will be operating from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. through primary day and his campaign team plans to knock on "tens of thousands" of doors across the state to roust supporters to the polls, Stevens said.

The campaign of Democrat Barack Obama, too, has an "aggressive five day schedule," said Ben LaBolt, the Illinois senator's spokesman in New Hampshire. But while other Democratic and GOP campaigns are bringing in volunteers from out of state for the final push, he said the campaign feels it has enough troops already in-state.

"We have the most expansive field operation," LaBolt boasted,

Aides for former Senator John Edwards said he, too, has a ground operation to rival his two main opponents -- what spokeswoman Colleen Murray referred to as a "neighbor-to-neighbor model."

"The vast majority of our field work is done by New Hampshire volunteers who are reaching out to their own neighbors and friends the most persuasive way to contact a voter," she said.

Edwards's supporters have knocked on more than 309,000 doors since the campaign began, she said.

"To put this in perspective, 220,000 people voted in the 2004 New Hampshire primary. That means our team is capable of reaching every single likely New Hampshire primary voter."