Obama making plans for Alaskans to travel by plane to knock on doors.

madfloridian

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Mon Aug-04-08 09:35 PM
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Obama making plans for Alaskans to travel by plane to knock on doors.

I love this article...I like that both Howard Dean and Barack Obama are not afraid to stake out new territory in this state.

Alaskans for Obama: A Rare Democratic Push in the Last Frontier

ANCHORAGE -- In what might be the fullest realization of Barack Obama's pledge to run hard in parts of the country largely untouched by presidential campaigning, the Democrat's Alaska operation is making plans for organizers to hopscotch the state's vast and sparsely populated interior by bush plane, knocking on doors in remote outposts for their candidate.

"Go around, put up signs, shake some hands, see some of the important people in the village," said state representative and professional pilot Woodie Salmon (D), describing his own campaign tactics in a legislative district that includes 94 villages, 70 of which can be reached only by air. "Get things stirred up and leave again."

Conservative and quirky, Alaska last went for a Democratic presidential candidate 44 years ago. No nominee from either party has even visited since Richard Nixon's journey to glad-hand in Anchorage on the last weekend of the 1960 campaign, a stop that some argue cost him the razor-thin election.

Obama, who often boasts of having visited the other 49 states, has yet to commit to a stop here. But his vibrant campaign operation here is stoking expectations and mounting the most prodigious presidential effort Alaska has seen.

Howard Dean traveled there in 2006 and took reporter Matt Bai with him on the trip. He offered money to rebuild the party there.

Putting the Last Frontier into play.

In paying for two new staffers, Dean had, virtually overnight, doubled the size of Alaska�s beleaguered state party, which used to consist of only an executive director and a part-time fund-raiser. But now, as Dean considered the vastness of the state�s landscape, he decided that one organizer wasn�t enough. �In most states, we have three or four,� Dean said, thinking out loud. �Seems like you should really have more. We should be able to find that money in the budget.�

.....In just a few hours, Dean had nicely demonstrated why so many leading Democrats in Washington wish he would spend even more time in Alaska � preferably hiking the tundra for a few months, without a cellphone. It�s not that Democrats in Congress don�t like the idea of building better organizations in the party�s forgotten rural outposts. Everyone in Democratic politics agrees, in principle, that party organizations in states like Alaska could use help from Washington to become competitive again, as opposed to the rusted-out machines they have become. But doing so, at this particular moment and in this particular way, would seem to suck away critical resources at a time when every close House and Senate race has the potential to decide who will control the nation�s post-election agenda, and when the party should, theoretically, be focused on mobilizing its base voters � the kind of people who live in big cities and listen religiously to Air America.

Obama's campaign office opened there in Alaska on July 8. In the words of a longtime activist, Vic Fischer..."it's a miracle."