In shorts, a Phillies hat, and his third pair of sneakers in five months, Jeremy Baker trekked through a Bucks County neighborhood one afternoon last week, hoping to somehow shape the outcome of a wild election.
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He and two colleagues from American for Prosperity, an independent group backing conservative causes, walked door to door in Richboro, carrying iPads and a stack of political door-hangers slamming Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty.
They found a live wire in Eric Oelschlegel, a truck driver with five deer heads mounted in his garage. As Oelschlegel took the anti-McGinty literature, he shouted in recognition - he'd seen the ads attacking her on TV.
"She's in it for the money," he told the crew, saying he definitely won't support her on Election Day.
Mission accomplished, it seemed.
But as the Americans for Prosperity team walked away, Oelschlegel, 52, acknowledged he also didn't plan to vote for her opponent, Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. He'd seen the Democratic ads, too: Toomey wants to cut funding for Planned Parenthood.
Shouldn't a woman decide what to do with her body? Oelschlegel called out. "What are we doing? Sharia law now?"
With the election weeks away, and the Senate race in Pennsylvania among the tightest and most crucial nationwide, the AFP trio are part of a swarm of partisans and activists fanning out to persuade or motivate targeted slices of the state's 8.5 million voters.
Planned Parenthood's political arm, for example, is urging undecided and independent women, as well as people under 35, to support McGinty and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The group has 500 volunteers in Pennsylvania, its largest contingent in any state.
"I'm trying to make sure everyone knows how many of their rights would be at stake," said one, Dighan Kelly, a University of Pittsburgh freshman. Each weekend, she stands for hours at a bus stop or another spot to talk to voters or tell them Toomey's views on Planned Parenthood.
A Democratic super PAC, For Pennsylvania's Future, is teaming up with organizations to stir the "sporadic" voters who turned out for President Obama, particularly minorities and millennials, but might be less excited about Clinton and McGinty. Together, they have knocked on doors 560,000 times in 11 counties (though that includes some homes visited more than once).
NextGen Climate PA, founded by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, used volunteers on 90 college campuses in Pennsylvania to register nearly 80,000 voters, with lures like Pokemon Go!, texts, and solar-powered charging stations. And last week, an alliance of liberal groups, including Pennsylvania Working Families, began canvassing Philadelphia, telling loyal Democrats that McGinty would raise the minimum wage to $15.
Operatives in both parties hope the small armies provide an edge in a neck-and-neck race.
"We know the one-on-one conversations can influence how folks are viewing the conversation," said Beth Anne Mumford, state director for Americans for Prosperity, the group allied with the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers that has spent $1.4 million on the Senate race here.
Mumford travels the state in a Chevy SUV painted with McGinty's face and the phrase "Can't Afford Katie."
Each group is working in addition to staffs pulled together by the national political parties, the presidential nominees, and the Toomey and McGinty camps.
The ground effort starts with millions of phone calls to voters, to determine who may be on the fence, who is open to new arguments, and who needs a push to vote. Information from those conversations is compiled and cross-referenced with public data to determine which homes to visit.
Americans for Prosperity has targeted 660,000 Pennsylvania voters: those they believe can be persuaded to oppose McGinty and those inclined to support conservative causes but who aren't showing much enthusiasm about the Senate race.
Their targets are compiled into "walk books," digital maps highlighting which homes to approach. After each visit, field staffers tap their iPads to color-code the homes: blue for no answer, red for refused to talk, green for a "take" - someone who listened to AFP's questions and took its literature.
The data streams across the state. Checking her iPhone, Mumford saw that by 1:30 p.m. Thursday her team had knocked on 1,200 doors statewide.
Baker, 28, is one of three full-time field directors for AFP-Pennsylvania. In Bucks, he was joined by Chris and Ed Saterstad, brothers with short-cropped hair. On that afternoon, the three were greeted more often by barking dogs than voters - most houses got marked blue.
For McGinty and Toomey, the methods are as different as their party's presidential nominees.
Clinton has made retaking the Senate a priority, and her campaign is actively coordinating with local Democratic leaders, supplying money and muscle for a ground game and get-out-the-vote effort.
State Democrats and the Clinton campaign have opened 56 coordinated offices across the state, including nearly two dozen in the Philadelphia region.
There, volunteers call voters, train, and gather for canvassing blitzes - launched four times a day Friday through Sunday. Occasionally, a big name drops by. Last Friday in Bucks it was Vice President Biden.
The campaign is even more coordinated than the 2012 Obama campaign, said Brian McGinnis, chair of the Chester County Democratic Party. "We have it coordinated down to the precinct level."
For Toomey, the task is more complicated. Donald Trump is relying on big rallies and __news coverage to gin up support, while building little ground-level apparatus.
Toomey aides say having their own operation lets them zero in on the specific swing voters they'll need to overcome Democrats' voter registration edge.
"They knew they had to build their own infrastructure," said Vince Galko, a GOP consultant from Chester County. "They've had a pretty scientific way of working through this."
AFP staffers might help.
Their teams fan out to spread the message, starting every day at 9 a.m. and working until dark.
The goal, Baker said, is to wake up after Election Day and feel as if he did all he could.
jtamari@phillynews.com
@JonathanTamari
www.philly.com/capitolinq
The Philadelphia Inquirer
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