拜登试图以老派方式建立胜利，一次建立一个实体竞选办公室

【中美创新时报2024 年 6 月10 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）威斯康星州梅诺莫尼，在唐纳德·特朗普四年前轻松获胜的一个农村县的中心地带，拜登总统和民主党人以老派的方式插上了他们的旗帜，试图在这个战场州再赢一场。《波士顿环球报》记者吉姆·普赞格拉（Jim Puzzanghera）对此作了下述报道。

邓恩县民主党人的新家位于 94 号州际公路通往梅诺莫尼市中心的主要道路上，蓝白相间的标志向过往的司机宣告，该党在威斯康星州西北部这片红色地带占有一席之地。这家位于自助洗衣店旁边的简陋店面是全州 47 个实体中心之一，基层民众通过这里争取尽可能多的选票，而威斯康星州的选举预计再次以微弱优势决定胜负。

“这里再显眼不过了，”县民主党主席皮特·哈夫 (Pete Huff) 在最近的一个下午说道，当时办公室里的志愿者们正在打包一盘盘的烘焙义卖饼干，为第二天的党派筹款活动做着其他准备。“我们最大的任务就是缩小差距……这样邓恩县就不会完全被击败。”

拜登竞选官员试图利用他们相对于特朗普的早期资金优势（最近据报道，这位前总统在纽约被定罪后筹集了巨额资金，这一优势很可能正在缩小），来建设他们认为将在激烈的竞选中带来回报的实体基础设施。他们现在在威斯康星州和其他七个战场州拥有超过 175 个民主党竞选办公室。

“最终还是要用老办法敲门，”拜登在 3 月访问民主党位于密尔沃基的新州竞选总部时告诉工作人员和志愿者。“不，真的是这样。”

在社交媒体时代，这似乎是一种过时的方法，就像 1972 年拜登第一次参加参议院竞选时使用的方法一样。但他的竞选团队正试图将现代网络策略与久经考验的实地策略相结合，以寻找和激励那些尚未关注 2020 年重选的人。

“我们处在一个真正决定这次选举的选民尚未参与的环境中。他们不关注政治媒体。他们不看有线电视，”负责拜登竞选战场州工作的丹·卡尼宁 (Dan Kanninen) 说。“需要找到他们，你必须努力走到他们面前，与他们交谈。”

报道总统和国会竞选活动的无党派出版物《选举内幕》的编辑内森·冈萨雷斯 (Nathan Gonzales) 表示，民主党在 2020 年基本将基层竞选活动拱手让给了共和党，由于疫情，他们限制了挨家挨户的拉票和现场组织活动。他们对竞选办公室的关注表明他们决心不再这样做。

“现代竞选活动应该尽可能地利用与选民的接触机会，”冈萨雷斯说，并指出拜登竞选团队有足够的资金（4 月底为 8400 万美元）来​​开设办公室并配备人员，而不会限制广告和其他优先事项。“在势均力敌的州，一切都很重要。”

据分析网站 FiveThirtyEight 称，拜登在主要战场的民调平均水平上略微落后于特朗普，包括在威斯康星州落后 1 个百分点。

拜登竞选团队表示，他们在这八个州（威斯康星州、新罕布什尔州、宾夕法尼亚州、密歇根州、北卡罗来纳州、乔治亚州、内华达州和亚利桑那州）以及另外四个二线州（缅因州、明尼苏达州、弗吉尼亚州和佛罗里达州）共有 700 名工作人员。拜登竞选团队没有详细说明协调工作的成本，这些成本由拜登竞选团队、民主党全国委员会和办公室和工作人员所在的州政党分担。

“无论选民在哪里，我们都会与他们争夺选票，而削减红县的差距正是唐纳德·特朗普在 2016 年对民主党所做的相反的事情，”卡尼宁说，他指的是特朗普当年在所谓的蓝墙州威斯康星州、密歇根州和宾夕法尼亚州以微弱优势获胜。“我认为，在其中一些地区缺乏影响力确实伤害了民主党。作为一个政党，我们做得更好，而且这次竞选活动也完全接受了这一点，那就是需要无处不在。”

特朗普竞选团队和共和党全国委员会的官员也在进行协调一致的努力，他们表示，他们有一个“积极而经验丰富的行动”来拉票，但没有透露具体细节。

特朗普竞选团队发言人卡罗琳·莱维特在一份声明中表示：“我们在每个战场州都雇佣了工作人员和志愿者开展实地项目，而且这些项目每天都在扩大。”

尽管如此，拜登团队相信，凭借对战场州基础设施的早期投资，他们拥有优势。卡尼宁表示，虽然特朗普及其盟友可能会赶上筹款进度，但“他们无法挽回时间。”

“我们将有几个月的时间来发展他们没有的关系，我坚信，在秋季真正重要的时候，这种关系会得到回报，”他说。

6 月 1 日，民主党开始在欧克莱尔播撒更多种子，欧克莱尔是一座约 7 万人口的城市，是共和党占多数的威斯康星州西北部民主党据点。大约 20 名志愿者在一个细雨蒙蒙的早晨聚集在党的总部，在真人大小的露丝·巴德·金斯伯格纸板剪影的注视下喝着现煮的咖啡，然后前往竞选活动，在 11 月大选前的第一次拉票活动中上门拜访。

“我从未见过我们的办公室在 6 月的下雨天挤满了愿意出门的人，”当地民主党州众议员乔迪·埃默森在给志愿者们打气后说道。 “我的意思是，我们在那里时，那种兴奋就像八月和九月的兴奋一样。”

欧克莱尔县民主党办公室自 2016 年左右以来一直位于同一地点——一个住宅区内一家用隔板围起来的前街角杂货店。除了在战场州设立的数十个新外地办事处外，协调竞选团队还利用许多现有办事处作为基地，以支持拜登和其他民主党候选人，例如威斯康星州参议员 Tammy Baldwin。

协调竞选团队在该地区有三名现场组织者。其中一位是 34 岁的梅诺莫尼县的卡姆登·哈格罗夫（Camden Hargrove），负责邓恩县、圣克罗伊县和皮尔斯县。特朗普在 2020 年的每场选举中都以至少 13 个百分点的优势获胜，尽管拜登在该州以大约 21,000 票的优势险胜​​。每个县都有一个民主党办公室——今年有两个是新办公室——帮助该党与选民建立联系，同时提供志愿者培训、候选人论坛和竞选标志存放场所。

“我们只是在办公室里，人们会进来打招呼，‘嗨，看看吧。’……他们会拿到标牌。他们会问问题，”哈格罗夫说。“有些人走进来，告诉我们共和党正在发生的事情，以便我们随时关注。”

哈格罗夫说，该党出现在共和党县的一个重要原因就是让民主党人知道他们并不孤单。自豪地宣布他们的蓝色效忠是哈夫在 6 月 1 日邓恩县民主党筹款活动上宣传的一部分：在梅诺明湖岸边的一个公园亭子里举行午餐、烘焙义卖和无声拍卖。通往活动现场的绿树成荫的道路被拜登竞选院子里的标牌包围着。

“我们必须尽一切可能让乔·拜登和卡马拉·哈里斯连任，”哈夫对大约 75 人的人群说，他们一边吃着炒菜午餐，一边喝着漂浮沙士来消暑。他敦促他们拿免费的院子标志，这样他们就可以在共和党县插上自己的小民主党旗帜——即使这可能会让他们受到支持特朗普的邻居的骚扰。

“我今天早些时候和一个人聊天，她说她对挂拜登的标志感到有点不舒服，”他继续说。“这是我们接下来几个月都要经历的不适，因为如果你没有任何不适，你就无法让人们在威斯康星州西部当选。”

题图：3 月 11 日，拜登总统在位于新罕布什尔州曼彻斯特的民主党协调竞选总部与支持者交谈时停下来问候一位老兵，这是他首次访问他在全国战场州的 175 多个竞选办公室之一。JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

附原英文报道：

Biden tries to build victory old-school style, one brick-and-mortar campaign office at a time

By Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff,Updated June 6, 2024 

MENOMONIE, Wis. — In the heart of a rural county that Donald Trump handily won four years ago, President Biden and the Democrats have planted their flag in an old-school attempt to eke out another victory in this battleground state.

The blue-and-white Dunn County Democrats sign above their new home on the main road from Interstate 94 to downtown Menomonie proclaims to passing drivers that the party has a presence in this red swath of northwest Wisconsin. And the modest storefront next to a laundromat serves as a brick-and-mortar hub — one of 47 statewide — for grass-roots efforts to harvest as many votes as possible in a Wisconsin election once again expected to be decided by a razor-thin margin.

“It couldn’t be in a more high-visibility location,” Pete Huff, the county Democratic chair, said one recent afternoon as volunteers in the office wrapped plates of bake-sale cookies and made other preparations for a party fund-raiser the next day. “Our biggest thing is just trying to close the gap … so it’s not like a complete blowout in Dunn County. ”

Biden campaign officials have sought to leverage their early cash advantage over Trump (one that likely is shrinking after huge fund-raising hauls recently reported by the former president following his conviction in New York) to build the physical infrastructure they believe will pay dividends in a tight race. They now boast more than 175 Democratic campaign offices spread across Wisconsin and seven other battleground states.

“It’s going to get down to knocking on doors the old-fashioned way,” Biden told staffers and volunteers during a March visit to the Democrats’ new state campaign headquarters in Milwaukee. “No, it really is.”

That might seem an antiquated approach in the age of social media, like something straight out of Biden’s first Senate race in 1972. But his campaign is trying to blend modern online tactics with time-tested, on-the-ground strategies to find and motivate people who have yet to tune in to a 2020 re-run election.

“We are in an environment where the voters who will truly decide this election are not yet engaged. They’re not paying attention to political media. They’re not watching cable,” said Dan Kanninen, who directs the Biden campaign’s battleground states effort. “They need to be found, and you’ve got to work hard to get in front of them and to have a conversation with them.”

Democrats largely ceded the ground game to Republicans in 2020, limiting door-to-door canvassing and in-person organizing events because of the pandemic, said Nathan Gonzales, editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan publication that covers presidential and congressional campaigns. The focus on campaign offices shows they’re determined not to do that again.

“A modern campaign should be trying to leverage outreach to voters in any way possible,” Gonzales said, noting the Biden campaign has enough money — $84 million at the end of April — to open and staff offices without limiting advertising and other priorities. “In close states, everything matters.”

Biden narrowly trails Trump in polling averages in the major battlegrounds, including by 1 percentage point in Wisconsin, according to analytics website FiveThirtyEight.

The Biden campaign said it has 700 total staff in those eight states ― Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona — and four other second-tier ones: Maine, Minnesota, Virginia, and Florida. The costs for the coordinated efforts, which it did not detail, are shared among the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the state party where the offices and staff are located.

“We’re going to compete for voters wherever they are, and cutting margins in red counties is exactly what Donald Trump did to Democrats in 2016 in reverse,” Kanninen said, referring to Trump’s narrow victories that year in the so-called blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. “The lack of presence in some of those areas, I think, really hurt Democrats. Something we have done much, much better as a party, and this campaign has embraced fully, is the need to be everywhere.”

Officials from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, which also are running a coordinated effort, said they have an “aggressive and experienced operation” to turn out votes, but would not provide specifics.

“We have paid staffers and volunteer-powered field programs in every battleground state, and they are expanding daily,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Still, the Biden team is confident it has an advantage with its early investment in battleground state infrastructure. While Trump and his allies might catch up on fund-raising, Kanninen said, “they will not be able to buy back the time.”

“We will have the months of developing relationships that they will not have, and I believe firmly that comes home to roost in the fall when it really counts,” he said.

Democrats began spreading more seeds in that effort on June 1 in Eau Claire, a city of about 70,000 that is a Democratic stronghold in mostly Republican northwest Wisconsin. About 20 volunteers gathered at the party’s headquarters on a drizzly morning, downing fresh-brewed coffee under the gaze of a life-sized Ruth Bader Ginsburg cardboard cutout before heading out to knock on doors in the campaign’s first canvassing ahead of the November election.

“I have never seen our office so filled in June on kind of a rainy day with people willing to go out,” local Democratic state Representative Jodi Emerson said after giving the volunteers a pep talk. “I mean, that’s like August excitement, September excitement that we had in there.”

The Eau Claire County Democrats office has been in the same location — a clapboard-clad former corner grocery store in a residential neighborhood — since about 2016. In addition to dozens of new field offices in battleground states, it’s among many existing ones that the coordinated campaign also is using as a base to boost Biden and other Democratic candidates, such as Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin.

The coordinated campaign has three field organizers in the region. One of them is Camden Hargrove, 34, of Menomonie, who is responsible for Dunn, St. Croix, and Pierce counties. Trump won each by at least 13 percentage points in 2020, although Biden narrowly won the state by about 21,000 votes. Each county has a Democratic office — two are new this year — that help the party connect with voters while providing a place for volunteer training sessions, candidate forums, and storage for campaign signs.

“We’ll just be in the office and people will come in and just say, ‘Hi,’ check it out. … They’ll get signs. They’ll ask questions,” Hargrove said. “Some people walk in and tell us Republican things that are happening to keep on our watch screen.”

A big reason for the party’s presence in Republican counties is simply to let Democrats know they’re not alone, Hargrove said. Proudly declaring their blue allegiance was part of Huff’s pitch on June 1 at the Dunn County Democrats’ fund-raiser: a lunch, bake sale, and silent auction in a park pavilion on the shore of Lake Menomin. The tree-lined path to the event was bracketed by Biden campaign yard signs.

“We have to do everything we possibly can to get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris reelected,” Huff told the crowd of about 75 people as they dug into their stir-fry lunch, with root beer floats available to wash it down. He urged them to take free yard signs so they could plant their own small Democratic flag in the Republican county — even if it might subject them to harassment from their Trump-supporting neighbors.

“I was talking to somebody earlier today who said she feels a little bit uncomfortable putting up a Biden sign,” he continued. “That’s the kind of discomfort we all have to go through for the next few months, because if you don’t feel any discomfort, you can’t get people elected in western Wisconsin.”