Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

Democrats seek out 2008 first-time voters

With the political wind behind Republicans for the moment, mostly because of a weak economy, Old City resident Christiane Geisler handed out Democratic fliers and chatted up Saturday shoppers at the Reading Terminal Market, hoping to hold back a GOP tide in this fall's midterm elections.

With the political wind behind Republicans for the moment, mostly because of a weak economy, Old City resident Christiane Geisler handed out Democratic fliers and chatted up Saturday shoppers at the Reading Terminal Market, hoping to hold back a GOP tide in this fall's midterm elections.

"I am not complaining. I love to sweat outside," said Geisler, 57, a registered nurse who works in HIV research and an Obama supporter. "We voted in 2008 for change, and we don't want to go backward. We don't have Barack Obama, but we have two candidates who are good," she said, referring to Rep. Joe Sestak running for U.S. senator and gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato.

Their respective GOP opponents are former Rep. Pat Toomey and Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett.

Geisler was part of a nationwide campaign by Obama's Organizing for America on Saturday to reconnect early with first-time voters from 2008 and convert them into second-time voters in November.

The Obama people say they believe that if they can persuade even small numbers of those first-time voters to vote Democratic again, they could swing tight elections developing in many states and threatening Obama's agenda in Washington. The Democratic Party has financed Organizing for America with $50 million.

According to Obama statistics, there were 729,000 first-time voters in Pennsylvania in 2008. Organizing for America held 30 events in Pennsylvania on Saturday, including the one outside the Reading Terminal Market in the morning and a second at Penn's Landing in the afternoon. The Organizing for America website said that other grassroots voter drives were held Saturday in the region in South Philadelphia, West Philadelphia, Lansdowne and Upper Darby in Pennsylvania, and Cherry Hill and Pennsauken in South Jersey.

Mike Barley, the spokesman for the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, said Saturday that the Republicans also were working their grassroots-level organization. "We feel comfortable going into the fall we have the best ground game that will put our candidates on top," he said.

The Obama organizers, indeed, have their work cut out for them.

Based on past midterm elections, the Democrats could lose 28 seats in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate, according to Organizing for America literature.

And this is even before the current economic slump is factored into the political calculus. Despite Obama legislative victories in health care and an overhaul of banking regulations, the nation's unemployment rate - a singularly important economic statistic for most Americans - remains stubbornly high at 9.5 percent.

The trends seem to be moving in the wrong direction. The most recent CBS News Poll this month indicates that 25 percent of Americans believe the economy is improving, compared with 41 percent who thought so in April.

Thirteen percent of Americans say Obama's economic programs, including the massive stimulus, helped them personally, while 23 percent say the policies hurt them, according to the CBS poll.

Seemingly on cue, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.5 percent Friday on glum news about consumer confidence - yes, it is sinking like a rock.

But those economic reports have not dimmed Geisler's enthusiasm.

She stood beside a card table at 12th and Filbert Streets drinking bottled water and handing out leaflets. She organized the event, and about 10 volunteers showed up at 10:30 a.m. to walk the block. They had voter registration cards and separate "commitment" cards for voters to sign and pledge to vote in November. The cards would be mailed back to them before the election as reminders, said Kerri Axelrod, a local spokeswoman for Organizing for America.

Joyce Woods of Germantown volunteered for duty, too. "A lot of people don't care about small elections," Woods said, pointing her finger for emphasis, "but we are going to change that."