Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.
Whoever wins the Nevada Democratic caucus would also make a champion Amway salesman. Or saleswoman.
That's because the key to winning a caucus, wherein voters have to show up at a specific time and place to voice their preference publicly, is an ever -widening pyramid of supporters, each new one promising to gather more volunteers and voters to pass up the pyramid.
So while the candidates whisk into town and draw some media notice, the real work goes on every day and night, as the campaigns work furiously to create the kind of organization required to win.
It's a gargantuan task, requiring dozens of paid organizers, thousands of volunteers and reams of data collection and analysis.
The campaign uses sophisticated databases to keep track of where it stands with all people it contacts, to know whether they are supporters or can be converted to supporters, or can be talked out of defecting if their support wavers.
Workers must also train supporters on what to do on caucus day, which can be confusing and intimidating - and will determine the winner.
The effort combines order and chaos, technology with old-fashioned face-to-face conversation, top-down edicts with bottom-up volunteerism.
The campaigns have invested heavily here. Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has spent the most in Nevada, according to rough estimates culled from federal campaign finance reports. He's spent $570,279 over the first three quarters of the year, or $98,000 more than New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson comes in third, followed by former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
The dollar figures are estimates because they could fail to include staff working here who have a permanent address in another state, as well as money spent here on out-of-state vendors.
Hillary Clinton
As Jimmy Carter's campaign showed in Iowa in 1976, a solid caucus organization can propel a candidate to the top of a field, bypassing candidates with better national poll numbers.
This is precisely the fear animating the campaign of the frontrunner , Clinton.
The caucus format initially posed a challenge to the Clinton campaign, which inherited much of its organizational machine from President Clinton.
"Bill Clinton didn't play in Iowa in 1992, so the idea of the Iowa caucus is sort of foreign to the way we campaign," Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's national campaign manager, told the Sun last month. They're building organization here and in Iowa, she added.
Clinton's Nevada machine was in full effect on a Saturday in late August, when about 300 supporters showed up at Green Valley High School.
"Everybody who is here was asked to be here because you made a commitment to this campaign," Clinton's state director , Robby Mook , told the crowd, after a PowerPoint presentation detailing the campaign's buildup.
He detailed the pyramid effect: Organizers recruit precinct captains who in turn recruit volunteers who in turn recruit supporters.
Since late August, the campaign has been involved in an intense push to identify supporters and get them to pledge loyalty to Clinton. "The glue to all of this is commitment," Mook told the crowd.
And then a personal appeal: "I worked for a candidate named Howard Dean."
Tepid applause.
Dean is like a specter hanging over the race.
On the one hand, Dean, like Clinton now, was the favorite in October 2003 to win the nomination. Then the Iowa caucus showed his support was soft, his organization chimerical. The Clinton campaign has its share of Dean veterans desperate to avoid repeating mistakes.
On the other hand, Dean's campaign was catalyzed by enthusiasm, like that generated by Obama. That enthusiasm has many observers comparing Obama to Dean, which Obama staff and supporters reject at every opportunity.
At Green Valley High, the Clinton crowd moved to a series of classrooms, breaking into groups of 30. Ryan Williams led one group. Half the attendees had already signed up to be precinct captains.
Caucus organizers rate Nevada Democrats on a scale of one to five. A one is a guaranteed supporter. The whole object of a field operation is gathering "hard ones."
Williams told the group they would be the campaign's most effective organizing tool. "A neighbor's story means so much more to people than me knocking on their door," he said.
Williams epitomized the power of this personal interaction. At one point an elderly woman named Luerne asked him what time the two of them would attend church the next day.
Donald Green, a political scientist at Yale University and author of a book on voter turnout, said face-to-face contact is the most reliable turnout tool, especially in a caucus, when voters might need reassurance that their views will be heard.
He said campaigns have one mission in the critical weeks before a caucus: Keep them in the fold. "So many of the Dean supporters left him when they were in the caucus rooms themselves," Green said.
Mook, who's young and manages to be at once hyperactive and hyper-focused, looks like a man determined to avoid the mistakes of four years ago.
The campaign has been demanding, asking supporters not only to sign cards committing to turning out and voting for Clinton but also to volunteer - in a sense, proving their commitment.
"We're focused on building a campaign of real relationships with people, relationships that are tested and proven," Mook said. "We're expecting them to come (on caucus day) and we're emphasizing that someone will be disappointed if they don't come. A lot of people can express interest in your candidate, but it's not good enough until they prove they're committed and we establish a relationship with them."
As the Green Valley High School session wrapped, more than half the supporters in Williams' small group committed to holding organizing meetings. Each was put on the spot and each committed to a specific date.
"You have to be able to count - and test - what you have," Mook said. "And we count very carefully."
Barack Obama
The Obama campaign's early state director is Steve Hildebrand, who ran Iowa for Al Gore in 2000. And the Nevada campaign includes veterans of Sen. John Kerry's Iowa caucus victory.
Given that experience, they are confident they know how to win a caucus and aren't afraid to offer a good-natured jab at the Dean veterans on Clinton's staff.
Prominent Democrats who have observed the campaign operations here , but are neutral and wish to remain anonymous , said they think Obama's campaign is having success expanding the typical universe of potential voters and attracting volunteers willing to work hard and take orders.
Many campaigns banking on new or disaffected voters have failed spectacularly, including Dean's. But Obama's staff says this time will be different because their field staff is well organized.
The Obama campaign has added three offices this month , in North Las Vegas, West Las Vegas and Carson City, with another coming in Pahrump, which will bring the statewide total to seven - the most of any candidate in Nevada. The campaign has 50 field organizers and will start advertising soon.
Like Clinton, the Obama campaign claims to have thousands of active volunteers, meaning Nevadans doing actual work - making phone calls, knocking on doors, hosting parties, attending events.
A neutral Democratic activist observing the campaigns said it was a credible claim.
"Our focus has been on building an organization precinct by precinct in Nevada," David Plouffe, Obama's national campaign manager, told reporters in a conference call this month. "You need to be organized in all of them."
The campaign, he said, has had to work hard to recruit precinct captains and volunteers because "we're building this from the ground up ... There's no history here."
Like Mook, Plouffe said the campaign is focused on relationships, not just raw numbers: "It's not just about cold calling a bunch of people," Plouffe said.
Robert Donahue, who ran the Iowa caucus for Carter in 1980 and for Michael Dukakis in 1988, emphasized the importance of continual contact. "Once you nail them, you keep coming back and treat them like gold," Donahue said. "Five contacts before the election is not enough. I don't need a daytime conversion. I want someone going in the water and coming out born again."
John Edwards
The campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is filled with veterans of his 2004 campaign in Iowa, where he made a late surge to finish a strong second behind Kerry.
The Nevada campaign was stung this year when Edwards pulled staff members and sent them to Iowa. No matter, state director Bill Hyers said. The campaign continued to meet its goals for volunteers and precinct captains.
He said the Edwards campaign here is building a net, so that if and when Edwards wins the Iowa caucus and the momentum moves toward him, it will be able to capture the new supporters. This is precisely what happened in Iowa in 2004, Hyers said.
At a recent meeting in the campaign's office for some of the precinct captains , many of the volunteers showed a striking loyalty to the candidate they call "John."
Edwards' volunteers are rewarded in small ways, such as the chance to drive Edwards and his wife , Elizabeth, when they're in town.
Terri Truex is a small-business woman who told her husband and children last spring that, though she had never worked in politics, she felt she needed to volunteer 10 hours a week for Edwards to help end the Iraq war.
Truex walks her precinct and has recruited at least a dozen other volunteers and more than 100 voters who will caucus for Edwards. Her experience shows how labor-intensive the process is.
Every caucus voter has consumed an hour of her time.
Edwards' people point out how much can change on caucus day.
That's because there's a threshold number of votes a candidate has to receive to survive the first round of voting. If he doesn't receive the threshold, the candidate is out. Those voters can then move to another candidate if they choose to.
So if Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd gets only two votes in the first round and doesn't meet the threshold, his supporters can support someone else for the second round. (This also illustrates how a caucus can eat up an entire afternoon, which means voters have to be committed.)
That's when persuasion and horse-trading become crucial, and the campaign most adept at training its supporters in these skills can alter the outcome significantly.
Well-trained volunteers in the precinct meetings are critical, Donahue said.
"Volunteers are the heartbeat of the operation," he said. "After the first round of voting, that's when you go to work. You can steal a lot of votes that way. If volunteers aren't trained, they'll get their pockets picked."
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