Tag: Ted Strickland

The Barack Obama campaign gave a prime speaking spot to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland on Tuesday night. Naturally, Ohio is a battleground state, and according to Strickland, the Obama team knows what they’re doing.

Strickland said he told Obama campaign leaders in Chicago that there are two ways to run statewide in Ohio: the Kerry strategy, focused on the metropolitan areas, or the “Strickland-Brown” strategy of focusing on all parts of Ohio, specifically suburban cities and counties as well as the rural areas.

“I believe the fact that the Obama campaign has already deployed the field staff they have, and the fact that every part of this state is being targeted, means that Senator Obama will not repeat the Kerry mistake,” Strickland said. “I have never seen a presidential campaign in Ohio come anywhere close to where this campaign is, organizationally and in terms of having actual man and woman power in the field.”

To reach out to rural and suburban areas, the Obama campaign is recruiting “neighborhood team leaders” to build networks of local volunteers to persuade voters on face-to-face, instead of relying on television advertisements alone. There is one leader for each of the designated 1,200 neighborhoods in Ohio, which contains 5 to 10 precincts, according to Pickrell.

First, the team leader assembles a neighborhood volunteers and then sends them to knock and call on homes to persuade voters. Pickrell said this operation is the heart of the Ohio campaign.

“This is really the crux of it,” Pickrell said. “The neighbor to neighbor approach is exactly the way we need to go about it here to win.”

Pickrell said office openings in far-flung areas have attracted great enthusiasm from locals, like the 300 who turned out in Lima for the Obama office opening.

For all of the enthusiasm, Strickland said Obama won’t win every county, but that isn’t the absolute goal.

“I want to be candid with you,” Strickland said. “Is Senator Obama going to win every county? Is he going to win every region? Probably not, but in some of these heavily Republican counties, we can go from 29 percent to perhaps 38 percent. And in some counties we can go from 38 percent to 44 percent. So I’m confident that the strategy that’s being followed here will be effective because it’s going to be an attempt to reach every voter in every part of Ohio.”

It’s so refreshing to see a Democratic campaign for President that actually gets it. Some have criticized the Obama campaign for using resources in long-shot states like Georgia and Montana, but it’s clear they are not neglecting the swing states.