Hugh Hefner had a sign on the door of the old Playboy mansion: If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring. When it comes to presidential politics Illinois doesn’t swing, so the candidates aren’t ringing. No presidential motorcades are screaming up the Eisenhower. No attack ads with Hitchcock music, sneering narrators, and grainy mug shots of John Kerry with a five o’clock shadow are airing.
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“We’re nine points ahead with Kerry in Illinois,” said King, who has been “obsessed” with beating Bush for the last four years. “Obama is 51 points ahead here. Put the troops where the troops are needed.”
Ninety miles up I-94 the bus stopped at an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers hall in Milwaukee, where the field-tripping partisans were treated to rubbery pizza and a video of a speech by James Carville. After a briefing by a young political operative in a Badgers sweatshirt they each picked up their assignment folders and were paired with a Milwaukeean. Regina Rodriguez, an unemployed Chicana pop singer from Rogers Park, was given a precinct in Tippecanoe, a blue-collar neighborhood on the southeast side of the city. Her job: tell residents that absentee ballots are the surest way to get their votes counted, because they leave a paper record.
“I just hope there’s enough people smart enough to vote him out,” one man told her as he signed up for an absentee ballot. “He may be the worst president of our lifetime. The guy’s scary.”
“I think this is a one-time election,” said Bonnie Wilson, chair of the Democratic Party of Evanston and a 34-year veteran of township politics. “What I’m seeing this year is people coming out that I never even recognize. We have a Thursday night meet-up for Kerry at the Firehouse Grill, and there are all kinds of faces I’ve never seen before.”
“We don’t want another Florida,” said Rodriguez.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
