Pantagraph.com Weather forecast, local radar and more
NewsSaturday, March 15, 2008 10:07 PM CDT
Comments Comments (12) | E-mail this page E-mail this page | Print this page Print this page | Enlarge type Enlarge type | Reduce type Reduce type | Search archives Search archives | RSS RSS feeds | Add to My Yahoo! Add to My Yahoo!
Inspired students skip spring break to volunteer on campaigns
By Ellen Gamerman
The Wall Street Journal
Advertisement

PHILADELPHIA -- It’s noon Sunday at an early St. Patrick’s Day Parade and roving packs of college kids on spring break are already drunk. Tyler Williams approaches a woman swigging from a beer-filled squirt bottle and tells her he’s supporting Sen. Barack Obama. | Interactive: Primary calendar, map

“What if I decide John McCain is the hottest guy ever?” says the woman, wearing strands of green Mardi Gras beads. Mr. Williams, a jazz studies major at Virginia Commonwealth University, fires back: “First of all, I’d think that’s really gross.” After a minute of flirtatious back-and-forth, the woman tucks her bottle under one arm and registers as a Democrat.

Mr. Williams arrived in Philadelphia from Virginia on Saturday with $1 in his wallet, an address for Obama headquarters and nine days of spring break. He was among a small army of college students who traded vacation plans at home or the beach for work as a campaign volunteer in advance of the April 22 Democratic primary in Pennsylvania.

Nearly every four years since 18-year-old citizens got the right to vote, politicians and activists have talked about rallying young adults, ages 18 to 29. But that age group usually has been the most apathetic, going to the polls at numbers well below their share of the population of eligible voters. The trend turned four years ago, and, this year, the under-30 vote is soaring. Sen. Obama is driving much of the turnout and the growing numbers of young volunteers.

The Obama campaign has a formal program for “springterns,” shorthand for spring-break interns. Meredith Segal, a senior at Bowdoin College in Maine and the national director of Students for Barack Obama, says more than 600 college students inquired about spending their vacation registering voters and enlisting supporters.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is also mobilizing college students, sending them out with yard signs and orders to help fill rallies and enlist recruits. Sen. McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee, but some of his young supporters also are on working vacations. Samuel Tasher, a junior at Duke University, says he is bringing his laptop to Orlando, Fla., so he can organize a campus chapter of McCain for President during his spring-break golf trip.

Alex McNeill, 21, cut short a visit to Washington, D.C., and took an all-night bus after hearing Sen. Clinton’s campaign needed help at a rally. “I said, ‘I’ll be there. I don’t know how or when, but I’ll be there,”‘ she says. Ms. McNeill arrived in Pittsburgh at 7 a.m. Tuesday and ate a salad at the Greyhound terminal while waiting for a cab. She made the rally in time. Milling through the crowd on 4-inch stilettos, she says she’s happy to give up spring break at Slippery Rock University to sign up Clinton volunteers. It’ll be an “excellent line for your resume,” she tells one young man.

Ms. McNeill, a junior majoring in political science and president of her campus Democratic club, persuaded her Republican father to switch parties. Now she’s working on getting him to back Sen. Clinton because of her health-care plan. “I’m a persuasive little bugger,” she says. Boston University sophomore Stephanie Gottsch used the same pressure tactics on her father, getting him to vote for Sen. Obama in the New Jersey primary. “He knows how much this means to me,” says the political-science major. She is spending her break with the campaign in Philadelphia.

Young people make up a fifth of the U.S. voting age population. So far this year, more than twice as many of them voted in presidential primaries compared with the 2004 election. Campaign strategists figure college students listen better to their peers. One online tally this week shows Sen. Obama’s advantage: He has 320,522 MySpace friends, compared with 189,737 for Sen. Clinton and 48,451 for Sen. McCain, according to techPresident.com. For students, the campaign work is a chance to take part in a historic, neck-and-neck campaign that could elect the first woman or African American as president.

Mr. Williams says he got passionate about Sen. Obama while listening to the candidate’s victory speech after the Iowa caucuses. He says he thinks Sen. Obama is the best candidate to beat Sen. McCain and he talks about him constantly. During a break from registering voters, he notices the slogan for Wendy’s new Spicy Baconator hamburger: “Get Fired Up,” which echoes Sen. Obama’s slogan, “Fired Up! Ready to Go!” Staring up at the restaurant’s menu board, Mr. Williams says, “We should put a sticker up there.”

Friends had invited Mr. Williams to spend spring break on the white sugar-sand beach in Cancun, Mexico. The 20-year-old student says his pals didn’t understand that he preferred sleeping on a dorm-room floor at Swarthmore: “They’re like, ‘You’re doing what for spring break?”‘ His parents got it. Mr. Williams says they took him to rallies protesting the Gulf War and other causes when he was a kid.

‘Most important election of my lifetime’

Sen. Obama’s opposition to the Iraq war helped Amy Miller decide to skip a spring-break trip to Los Angeles to instead work on his campaign. Ms. Miller, a 26-year-old graduate student in education at the University of Pennsylvania, has 1,000 pages of reading due when she returns. She grew up in a military family and attended school in South Korea. Many former schoolmates have enlisted, she says, and one has died in Iraq. “This is the most important election of my lifetime,” she says.

Ms. Miller was trying to register voters in front of a Whole Foods store during a downpour Saturday on South Street in Philadelphia. Ms. Miller, her sneakers soaked, moved to an awning in front of a sandwich shop. A man stood next to her long enough to light a cigarette. He says he just moved. Yes, he says, he’ll re-register at his new address, giving Ms. Miller her first small victory of the day.

Marketing major Roger Chanes had better luck. The 25-year-old senior at the University of Texas at Brownsville withdrew $600 from his savings after Sen. Obama’s defeat in Texas to fly to Philadelphia. He swept through the cafeteria at Drexel University trolling for prospects. With his longish brown hair, faded baseball cap and his iPod, Mr. Chanes looked like any other student but sounded more polished. “Just sign below the arrow and put a date and you’re good to go,” he said as he registered another Democrat, one of more than 30 new voters he snagged on the trip.

Immigrant issues figure big in Mr. Chanes’s politics. His mother runs a beauty salon out of her home in Brownsville, Texas, and his divorced father works as a pediatrician in nearby Matamoros, Mexico. He says he likes Sen. Obama’s ideas to promote development in Mexico and crack down on abuse of illegal immigrant workers.

Yale University freshman Ben Stango was planning to read “War and Peace” during his break. But he decided to volunteer when he heard Sen. Clinton would be speaking Tuesday at Temple University. He drove from his mother’s house in Merion Station, Pa., to work the Clinton rally. He arrived three hours early, signing up volunteers, hustling through the crowd to stay warm. He’d forgotten his hat and gloves.

Rally organizers directed him to the front of the stage to help keep enthusiastic supporters from blocking the view of TV-news cameras. Mr. Stango wore a Clinton volunteer badge that allowed him to cut through the crowd. When Sen. Clinton took the stage, he joined the chants of “Hillary! Hillary!” and screamed until his throat was sore. Mr. Stango had converted his father, a Republican, with an impassioned phone call. He also got his 82-year-old grandmother to switch parties. When she was in the hospital, Mr. Stango sent her a photo of him at a previous Clinton campaign rally.

Standing in the front row, Mr. Stango figured he might be able to get Sen. Clinton’s autograph or at least catch her eye. As she began shaking hands with supporters in the front row, he yelled, “Yale loves you, Senator.” She turned to him and called back, “I love Yale! Thank you for all your work,” and moved on.

Take a look
Mississippi University for Women senior Leigh Pourciau, wearing a T-shirt that reads "Barack You Like A Hurricane," volunteers at the Democratic presidential campaign for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., on March 10 in Columbus, Miss. (AP Photo/Kristen Hines)
Video
Most commented stories
Browse online archives
Recent issues:
Reader comments on this story - 12 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

jaybs wrote on Mar 16, 2008 2:21 PM:

" What an inspiration young supporters like Tyler Williams are, this just sums up the Barack Obama 08 Campaign, at last young people are interested in politics. Peoples of all ages, race and sex are getting out to Vote for Obama many first time voters and making donations to the campaign, they know that CHANGE can happen if we work TOGETHER.

Any election campaign should be based on policy alone, not stooping so low to the level of the gutter, with the use of lies, smears and nasty personal attacks, Barack Obama though has continued to keep his standards high.

No way should Barack have to be side tracked by the campaign of comments about his Pastor, as someone with a Faith, no way would I be responsible for what my Pastor may say or not say and anyway I would not be aware of every sermon.

We don't want the politics of the past any longer, why should we be controlled by "The Dynasty" - we have to bring HOPE and CHANGE! - and only Barack Obama can deliver, TOGETHER we can do it. "

ktlin wrote on Mar 16, 2008 8:11 AM:

" to the original JD:Question? How many people actually make educated decisions regarding candidates. How many look up authentic websites and find authentic details in authentic places not some biased diatribe? How many just vote by party? How many just believe what they hear without checking it out or noting the source of those remarks. Like on tv when you see a person opining, look down to the bottom of the screen. That will indicate what the person is going to say. And apparently most of them have scripts which they are to stick to. That is not education. That is hearing what the advisors for Hillary or Obama or McCain want you to hear. Isn't it more important to see and hear what comes out of their mouths and what credible people have to say about them. For instance if a credible person said what the candidate was saying was silly it is probably silly and untrue. If you pay attention you can sort out the credible from the make believe. That is happening a lot. "

ktlin wrote on Mar 16, 2008 8:02 AM:

" to sigh: The banner was in a cubicle that a news crew filmed when visiting an Obama site. It was indicated that Obama did not push or agree with that. And everyone needs to check the dates of those videos on the preacher. I am imagine there were years between each one.They were not constant. And I heard Rod Parsley who supports McCain yell and scream too. Only McCain hasn't denounced him yet. Are we going to have dueling preachers? At any rate check out the truthometer at Politici.com or something like that. Its neat they have pants on fire remarks, falsehoods, half truth, and barely true. YOu can even ask them to check out things for you. But then once you know you should no longer distort the facts. "

ktlin wrote on Mar 16, 2008 7:55 AM:

" to 91241. I can't either specifically but I do know he has worked for 20 years trying to solve problems for poor people in none other than the great state of Illinois. That is why he was where he was listening to the preacher. I hear he voted 4000 times in the Illinois senate and helped pass ethics standards which we sorely need and is responsible at least in part for videos on police cars. Now depending which side of the law you are on you make like them or not. But I think they help find out what is most important - the truth. And what about the notion that what he has voted on can't be summed up in a couple of lines. Sometimes when you have done a lot it is harder to say what you have done that when you have only done 1 or 2 things. At least he doesn't have to invent things like bringing peace in N Ireland, rough trips to Bosnia and being responsible for Schips when people who were involved say you didn't have anything to do with that. "

The original JD wrote on Mar 15, 2008 10:17 PM:

" Too bad the vast majority of college students fall for the hype, and lack the ability to make an educated decision regarding presidential elections. They, like the majority of Americans, do not do their homework, and vote (when they do vote) for the latest propaganda video they have seen, or how the media/parties tell them how they should vote. When are Americans going to realize that when you continue to vote for the same old parties, spouting the same old rhetoric, you are going to get the same old politics which is destroying what was once a leader in the world? "

sigh wrote on Mar 15, 2008 5:43 PM:

" +1 on what brsc said. Where is that story in the Pantagraph today, anyway? It should be on the front in big bold letters. Ok, here are some facts on Obama:
- His campaign supporters displayed large Cuban flags with pictures of Che on them (about the same as having a nazi flag with Hitler or a Chinese flag with Chairman Mao on it) in two seperate offices in Texas. DId anyone see that story here? If it had been a Republican I bet you would have. (Socialist)
- His Church is one of the most racist organizations out there in this day and age. Don't believe me? Go and read around their official website. (Racist)
- Obama said he had never directly heard his spiritual leader say anything offensive but somehow used a quote from a very racist speech in his book. (Liar)
- Obama has proposed 850 billion a year in new spending and increased government programs, that is $10,000 extra a year out of your pocket and makes the cost of the Iraq war pale in comparison. (Socialist) "

Not so Political wrote on Mar 15, 2008 4:16 PM:

" College kids, all blow and no go! Seeing them at the voting booth will be slim !! "

The Messenger wrote on Mar 15, 2008 4:00 PM:

" Such a shame, a wasted youth (vote). All such hope will be lost in Denver. When the elite white limousine liberal establishment crowns Hillary queen of the Democrat party. Will all these excited youth fall in line? It is going to happen folks, momentum is swinging her way. Michigan revotes. Florida revotes. Do you think these two States would even consider revoting if the shoe was on the other foot? If it were Senator Obama who stood to gain from it. NO. Wake up Dems. This is your party, a party that is soon to resurrect Jim Crow from his slumber and send Obama and all of his supporters to the back of the bus in Denver. Just wait, just watch it happen. It is out of your hands now. The rich, white, elite limousine liberal establishment of the Democrat party still owns the process. Your vote means nothing to them. "

brsc wrote on Mar 15, 2008 2:43 PM:

" His "spiritual advisor" for the past twenty years just put him out of the race. What a dangerous racists. Now it is clear that Sen Obam is both a racist and socialist. Not a good combo for Pres of US. "

91241 wrote on Mar 15, 2008 2:29 PM:

" Duh!!! I am for change! Wake up people! Change to what and how??? Talk is cheap! Give us some specifics. I honestly can not think of one plan or program that Obama or Clinton has proposed that would SOLVE any challenge we have today. "

Woodford Pundit wrote on Mar 15, 2008 2:17 PM:

" The Deaniacs without the beenies. "

Meh wrote on Mar 15, 2008 12:28 PM:

" I just hope they remember to come out and vote... "
Add your own comments

Please read the rules before posting comments.

You must be logged in to leave comments.
If you don't have a member ID, please register.

*Member ID:
*Password:
Remember login?
(requires cookies)
  Forgot Your Password?
 
Lee Enterprises Customer Service | 301 W. Washington St., PO Box 2907, Bloomington, IL 61701-2907 | Ph. 309-829-9000 | 800-747-7323
Copyright © 2008, Pantagraph Publishing Co. and Lee Enterprises. All rights reserved. | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy