Willow Glen Resident
News
Local presidential backers
race to get the message out
By Stephen Baxter
With absentee ballots in the mail, the presidential primary race is heating up across San Jose in anticipation of the Feb. 5 election.
Barack Obama's presidential backers fueled the fire by opening a new campaign office in San Jose on Jan. 14 at 410 E. Santa Clara St. At its opening, the campaign office near San Jose State University was pumped with energy from students and residents who chanted and waved Obama signs.
Mari Houssni, a 45-year-old part-time high school teacher, has been working on the Obama campaign since March 2007.
"We have a ton of young people ready to go," she said. "They're fired up."
Like other campaigners, her team combs voter rolls and calls Democrats to remind them to vote and gives a pitch for their candidate. On Jan. 5, Houssni had 13 people at her house on the 800 block of Pescadero Drive. In four hours of phone banking, they called more than 600 people.
Others campaigns are also ramping up, including San Jose Republicans who are working for several candidates.
San Jose Ron Paul supporter David Cameron says he has never worked on a campaign before, but he started organizing South San Jose residents in June 2007. His group has met on several Saturdays at Mountain Mike's Pizza at 1532 Branham Lane to canvass neighborhoods, and members have printed T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers.
"There's a lot of work occurring at a local, grassroots level," he said.
Campaigning in a largely Democratic county has sometimes been challenging, he noted, but his group now numbers 360.
Campaigners for Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney did not return calls for comment, but each campaign has put out delegate slates for California.
In California, primary voters will choose the Republican candidate in a winner-take-all system.
On the Democratic side, primary candidates win delegates based on the proportion of votes they get in California.
Patricia Park, California deputy communications director for the Hillary Clinton campaign, said her group has been operating large campaign offices out of San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as some other offices and supporters' homes.
Closer to home, Clinton's camp has been meeting at volunteers' houses in San Jose and calling dozens of Democrats each night in "Bring your own phone" parties.
The night of the Iowa caucuses--Jan. 3--was rainy in San Jose, but San Jose Councilwoman Nora Campos managed to gather a few dozen Clinton supporters at her house to watch the results and make calls for Clinton.
Political analysts say the Republican and Democratic races are wide open, and extended campaigning means that California will have a bigger role in selecting each party's presidential nominee than in past primaries that took place in June.
