Press Herald (Portland, ME)

A party where it's OK to talk politics

By JOSHUA L. WEINSTEIN, Portland Press Herald Writer

NORTH YARMOUTH — In many ways, Ron and Darla Hamlin's party was like any other. There was the obligatory vegetable platter, there was beer and bottled water on ice, there was pleasant small talk. But beyond the hors d'oeuvres was serious business: To help get George W. Bush re-elected.

The night the Hamlins opened their home to about 50 people, 171 other Mainers - and more than 6,750 people across the country - held similar events. After the small talk downstairs, guests at the Hamlin house were invited to a media room upstairs to watch a video about the president. They also were linked with all the other parties for a conference call with the president's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, and with first lady Laura Bush.

Until this year, such an event was pretty much unheard of in American politics. Candidates for local and state office often attend house parties to build support, but having so many across the country, at the same time, is a new approach.

Republicans and Democrats alike are holding such events, taking advantage of a phenomenon pioneered by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean during the Democratic presidential primaries.

The July 15 parties for Bush were even more noteworthy for something they did not feature: requests for money.

Dollars weren't the point. With more than $64 million on hand, the president's re-election committee has plenty. What it needs is voters.

And while national television ads and speeches are the more glamorous ingredients of a campaign, candidates win and lose over grass-roots efforts.

The well-coordinated "Parties for the President" are just part of Bush's grass-roots campaign.

Alan Abromowitz, an Emory University political scientist, said that "this sounds to me like it's another effort to fire up the base. . . . It isn't even so much fund raising, it's more a matter of getting people enthusiastic and motivated so they'll go out and work for the ticket, they'll go out and campaign."

Although nobody asked for money at the Hamlins' party, everybody - the first lady, the campaign manager, the president - asked for help.

"If you haven't signed up to volunteer already, please do so," Mehlman asked.

"I'm so grateful to all of you for getting involved tonight," Laura Bush said. "All of you together can help his campaign. . . . With your hard work, I'm confident."

At the end of the call, the president came on the line.

He, like the first lady and Mehlman, thanked everyone. He said he was "fired up."

The Bush campaign estimates more than 100,000 people heard the message that night, and will again during the next "Parties for the President" on Sept. 4, when Bush is scheduled to officially accept the Republican Party's nomination as candidate for the Oval Office.

While national-scale, same-time events are new to the 2004 campaign, they are not uniquely Republican.

When Sen. John Kerry officially accepts the Democratic nomination for president Thursday during the Democratic National Convention, thousands of party members across the nation will watch from Kerry-sanctioned parties.

The idea of national same-time coordinated events took off during Dean's campaign. Other Democrats in the primaries quickly followed.

The idea actually began with a Web site called www.meetup.com.

The point of meetup is to bring together people of common interests. In this case, it's politics.

Myles Weissleder, meetup's vice president for communications, said the site didn't intend to be a political tool.

"We built it to help knitters find each other, and witches and Elvis fans," he said. "We knew it could have some kind of role with regard to help mobilizing people to some cause, but we thought 'save the whales.' We didn't think presidential candidates when we built it."

But the Dean campaign saw potential in the fledgling Web site. Weissleder said that at Dean's pinnacle, he had just shy of 200,000 people registered for his meetups.

"His last real big meetup day had about 1,000 cities across the nation," he said. "That's pretty huge for us. Helped put us on the map. Same time, we helped put Howard Dean on the map."

The Kerry campaign held meetups during the primaries as well.

"It's a phenomenon of this past year," said Jesse Derris, a Kerry spokesman in Maine. "It's a great phenomenon. It gives people across the country more connection to campaigns, and I think the Internet has a lot to do with it."

Derris said Kerry has had 7,500 house parties since April 1, including Asian Pacific Islander American, Women for Kerry and Enviros parties, among others, and has raised more than $3 million.

The meetup idea was not lost on the Bush campaign.

In fact, during a Politics Online conference at George Washington University in April, Mehlman mentioned "Parties for the President," saying, "It's a simple way, not unlike meetup," for Bush supporters to get together.

A difference is, meetups are at public places such as coffee shops, while "Parties for the President" are generally at private homes. And they are coordinated and closely monitored by the president's campaign.

"It's built around the same concept," said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for the Bush campaign. "But I think we perfected it and we've taken it to a whole other level where it's not only a grass-roots organizing tool, but it's also a recruiting tool."

It's also a way for the extremely disciplined Bush re-election effort to have a measure of how it's doing.

The campaign knows how many such parties each state has, how many volunteers each party brings in.

Peter Cianchette, chairman of the president's re-election effort in Maine, said that "we reported back the exact number of parties that were held, what communities they were held in, the geographic dispersion of them, the attendance at each one of them."

That way, the campaign can gauge how well Cianchette and the local campaign are doing.

"There's a high level of accountability in every aspect of the campaign," Cianchette said.

The Hamlin party can report success.

Afterward, Ron Hamlin received several e-mails from people who said they had fun. At least one person has since decided to sponsor a house party of his own, and quite a few volunteered to work on the Bush re-election effort.

Wendy and John Furey both attended the party and both signed up to volunteer.

"It raised our awareness of the people in our area who are working on the campaign and the need for us to contribute," Wendy Furey said.

She said the two will volunteer for call centers, will encourage people who are not registered to vote to register, and to do something more subtle.

"Talking to our neighbors, talking to our co-workers - which is sometimes difficult. Just talking about the issue," she said.

Staff Writer Joshua L. Weinstein can be contacted at 791-6368 or at: jweinstein@pressherald.com

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