Working to step out of presidential shadows

With presidential candidates sucking up most of the money and headlines this year, Minnesota's U.S. Senate candidates are scrambling for attention and support as Tuesday's caucuses draw near.

The presidential thriller adds another complication for the Senate hopefuls: Regular caucus-goers may be swamped by thousands of first-timers eager to cast a presidential preference ballot.

"Those people could be up for grabs," said veteran political strategist Jeff Blodgett, the guru behind the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. "This is where organization pays off."

Organization happens backstage, in campaign offices, caucus training sessions and endless meet-and-greet receptions, often one voter at a time.

No stopping

Sitting in a windowless, 10- by 15-foot office, Jon-David Schlough taps away at the latest vision to leap from his fevered brain to the computer screen: Caucus Organizing Greatness, an elegant software tool that he hopes will help drive up turnout for DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken.

"It used to be Caucus Organizing Goodness," Schlough deadpanned. "But at some point we just decided to go for it."

Ciresi's campaign communications director, Leslie Sandberg, is trying to juggle the release of a third TV ad while shepherding Ciresi through a radio interview and getting him to the Belle Plaine library by 3 p.m. to greet likely caucus-goers and campaign gawkers.

"It feels like you never stop," she said.

At the insurgent campaign office of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer over in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, nobody worries about TV ads or sophisticated software. There's a gritty, old-fashioned, daily hunt for delegates.

"We clearly don't have the same name recognition," said Larry Weiss, a campaign adviser to Nelson-Pallmeyer. "But lots of our people have been to caucuses before. They know this process and they know how to hang in there."

Even the man all the DFLers are trying to beat -- incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman -- doesn't get to rest. "We're busy cranking up the network," said Coleman spokesman Tom Erickson. "He hasn't run since 2002, so we're getting everything going again."

The immediate challenge is greatest on the DFL side, where candidates must sift through the universe of Minnesota's 3.1 million registered voters to find those willing to trudge to their neighborhood caucus.

And this year that's not just committed Democrats.

Ann Pate, 73, attended a caucus once before, "so long ago I can't remember when," and readily acknowledges that "I haven't always voted DFL." But the retired schoolteacher will be a DFL precinct captain in Apple Valley on Tuesday night, mostly because of a phone call from a campaign volunteer "begging me," she said with a laugh.

Unlike more impersonal primary elections, caucuses are intimate, voter-to-voter affairs. It's neighbor persuading neighbor, swapping anxieties over job insecurity, global warming, the housing collapse.

Caucus-goers can find themselves switching candidates mid-evening if someone -- especially someone they know -- makes a persuasive argument on their issue.

Casting a broad net helps, McGrath said, but when a hot roomful of caucus-goers is fighting over a few delegate spots, nothing beats deep support.

Mustering the forces

Picture a pink-cheeked, enthusiastic drill instructor. That's Will Howell, a 21-year-old Macalester College student. His task is to take roomfuls of political newbies and in the course of one afternoon's caucus training, whip them into a crack force that can compete for Franken in a walking subcaucus.

He is not above pleading.

"We need to keep our supporters in the room," he implored the 60-plus folks who packed an Eagan library community room recently. "It will be a long process, but it will be very rewarding, I promise you."

"I just felt like this time we all have to do what we can to make meaningful change," she said.

Nelson-Pallmeyer told the crowd at Brown's how a crippling football injury set him on a different path, why he once turned down a luxury room in India after seeing the homeless camp out on the side of the road, why they should take a chance on a political unknown against one of the country's top trial lawyers and a famous satirist and entertainer.

Franken and Ciresi, too, labor to hit upon the right combination of personality, passion and position that yields converts.

At the home of former legislator Ember Reichgott Junge, Ciresi finds himself deep in conversation with DFLer Rosemary Thorsen on the role of water in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More than 50 other people in the room wait for face time with the candidate, but there is no cutting answers short in a process like this.

"I like the way you look at the problem," a satisfied Thorsen told Ciresi.

At the Levee Cafe in downtown Hastings, Franken was all business, with none of the satire that has been his trademark for decades.

It is, he admits, a conscious effort to help voters see him in a different light.

He succeeded with James Sill of Hastings. "He has a lot of wit," Sill said. "I wanted to see how much wisdom he has."