The initial anxiety is well founded, however. Unions lopsidedly support Democratic candidates with money, troops for the political ground war and votes. Although only 13 percent of America’s workforce are union members, exit polls showed that 24 percent of voters in the last election came from union households. And polls taken for the AFL-CIO, still the umbrella federation of most unions, showed union members to be far more Democratic than comparable voters with a similar profile — even those members who were white males, gun owners and regular churchgoers.

Although unions split all over the map in the Democratic presidential primary last year, variously supporting Howard Dean, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards, they were remarkably unified in support of Kerry in the general election. Such unity magnifies the labor movement’s influence, and AFL-CIO president John Sweeney mourned its loss. “At a time when our corporate and conservative adversaries have created the most powerful anti-worker political machine in the history of our country, a divided movement hurts the hopes of working families for a better life,” he told convention delegates Monday. About an hour later Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern broke away.

The main issues in the fight between Sweeney supporters and the SEIU-led Change to Win Coalition centered on organizational changes that the dissidents argued would increase organizing of new members. But the coalition’s moves were also seen as “nothing but a disguised power grab,” in the words of Steelworkers president Leo Gerard, who supported Sweeney. Both sides insisted that unions need both to organize and to do political work. But the Change to Win unions criticized the Sweeney camp for increasing the AFL-CIO budget to create a year-round political education and mobilization program but not providing the massive dues rebates for organizing that it proposed.

The Change to Win Coalition, now on its way to becoming a rival labor federation, also attacked the AFL-CIO for being too close to the Democratic Party and simply “throwing money at politicians” in hopes of solving labor’s problems, especially its continually declining share of the workforce. “I think workers want an AFL-CIO program that’s not an appendage of any political party,” argued John Wilhelm, the hospitality division president of UNITE HERE, which represents textile, laundry and hotel workers. “We should support Democrats when it makes sense. We should challenge Democrats in the primary.” His colleagues and some of Sweeney’s supporters argue that unions should reach out more to Republicans, despite the rightward and anti-union trend of the Republican Party.

The AFL-CIO’s leaders argue, however, that they’ve always been willing to back moderate Republicans who support some key worker issues, like Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, who addressed the convention by video. There are just fewer of them these days. And labor’s political operation does not give money to politicians, as many individual unions do with their voluntary contributions, but rather educates, registers and mobilizes union family voters.

Unions in general are also clearly frustrated that many Democrats rely on their backing but then neglect their key economic populist issues. Yet despite their internal conflicts, leaders from both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win insist that any Democrat who votes for the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement should not get labor backing.

So the differences in political strategy and policies may not be as great as the rhetoric suggests. AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman argues that “unity in the labor movement is always critical, and anything that serves to undermine that unity hurts the program.” What’s more, there have always been divisions in organization and policy in the labor movement: The biggest union, the National Education Association, is among the unions outside the AFL-CIO. And even within Change to Win there’s a gulf on environmental politics between the SEIU and UNITE HERE, which oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the Teamsters and Laborers, which support drilling.

One of the biggest challenges to unity concerns the state and local federations of unions that are, in the best cases, important political powerhouses. The most aggressive central labor councils have worked hard to pull together local unions in active coalitions. Stern and Hoffa pledge to continue supporting these groups, which in some cases rely heavily on SEIU dues in particular, but official AFL-CIO policy prohibits such participation by unions not in the AFL-CIO. Lamenting that central labor councils are like the children hurt by a divorce between parents they love equally, John Ryan, leader of the Cleveland Federation of Labor, is not alone in hoping to maintain as many ties as possible, even with defectors, while still following the rules.

Like other Change to Win leaders, Stern says, “We intend to cooperate with the AFL-CIO politically. We hope they will cooperate with us.” And Harold Schaitberger, the Fire Fighters union president who is critically loyal to Sweeney, says, “Politics will remain similar, if not identical … It doesn’t bode disaster if these unions choose to disaffiliate.”

In the end, the split has the potential to make union politics only a bit more fractious than usual, with the Change to Win unions simply outside the well-honed political apparatus of the AFL-CIO.

Is there an upside? Although there’s a chance that Republicans will attempt to leverage the divisions within labor, cutting narrow deals for endorsements while maintaining conservative policies, there’s also a chance that a fractured labor movement will force candidates to work harder for endorsements. “I think it’s good for Democrats and good for Republicans, if they’re promoting worker rights,” UNITE HERE’s Wilhelm said. “But if union membership declines, it’s bad for worker [friendly] candidates.”

The main potential benefit is if the competition between the two rival federations and strategies ends up generating union growth — instead of expensive, destructive fights over who represents whom. And the growth of the labor movement would be one of the best possible developments for Democrats, especially in swing states like Ohio and Florida. As Ackerman told delegates at the convention, “If we had just 100,000 more union members in Ohio last fall, this country, this world, would be a different place.” Ultimately, if there is much greater growth, the current disunity may be worth the very real political risks.

“I have neglected my duties as a citizen,” he acknowledged a bit shamefacedly, “but none of the elections before made as big a difference as this year. This year I totally disagree with the person in office.”

New voters like Pratt and his wife may prove decisive in the presidential race in this key state with seven electoral votes. Iowa went for Al Gore in 2000 by 4,144 votes out of 1.3 million cast. (Bill Clinton won by a healthy margin four years earlier.) But the U.S. Senate is split between a conservative Republican and a liberal Democrat; the House delegation includes four Republicans and only one Democrat; and the state government is split between a Democratic governor and a Republican Legislature. The most recent polls show dead heats to small leads for either John Kerry or Bush, and partisans on both sides see the race as a tossup.

As a result, the airwaves are thick with ads. The pro-Kerry ads stress domestic issues like sending jobs offshore or bequeathing budget deficits to coming generations, and the pro-Bush ads attack Kerry “and his liberal allies in Congress” for being soft on defense or portray Bush as a compassionate, strong leader against terrorism, embracing a little girl. Both candidates and their running mates, as well as proxies, have been working Iowa with nearly the personalized intensity of the state’s famous caucuses. After both Bush and Kerry staged major events the week before last (with the Kerry campaign claiming a record turnout for an Iowa political event and reporting empty chairs at Bush’s rally), they again held major rallies last week on the same day, separated by only one hour and one county. John Edwards also spent two days campaigning in Iowa last week. Bush, who had already visited Iowa more than Kerry, was back in Davenport on Monday.

After four years of dramatic events and controversial policies — two wars, terror attacks, four major tax cuts, unusually weak post-recession job growth, rising inequality and disputes over protection of basic rights — many Iowans are approaching Election Day with strong emotions, often fear.

“John Kerry scares the hell out of me. You don’t know what he’s going to do or say,” said Larry Steward, 65, a retired corrections officer and self-described political independent, who has voted Republican since Reagan first ran for president, as he waited in line for tickets to a Bush event at Republican Party headquarters — where the walls are decorated with a Halloween-themed poster asking, “President Kerry? Now That’s Scary.” John Ortega, co-chairman of the local Republican Party, is afraid of what he thinks Kerry will do. “He’s for stem cell research, which I think is wrong,” Ortega said. “He’s for abortion. If he’s in office, I think he’ll repeal the ban on partial-birth abortions. He’s for gay marriage.”

But he says he’s against gay marriage, I observe. “If he’s elected, he’ll be for gay marriage,” Ortega insists. “It scares me, if he’s elected, what will happen.”

They’re not the only ones feeling scared. “President Bush is the first president who really scares me,” explained William Olsen, 51, vice president of a union representing workers at the Rock Island Arsenal, as he went door to door in Davenport talking to union members earlier this fall. “This guy is [for] big business all the way through. He’s taken too many rights from working-class people.” Olsen is also sharply critical of Bush’s Iraq policies. “War isn’t always the answer,” he said, reflecting on his own bitter experience as a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Polls show an Iowa divided nearly along the same lines as it was four years ago. In the end the race could come down to new voters and those who do not share the deep emotions of partisans. If so, Kerry could very well have the edge.

Iowa has “been a battleground state in every election,” Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack told Salon in an interview. “We have strong feelings, progressive and conservative, and each election is won by a fairly small margin.” The recent exception is senior Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican, who seems headed toward an easy victory this year with a campaign that is very personal and not closely linked to Bush’s campaign.

But Vilsack is optimistic about Kerry’s chances in his state. “It’s all in the numbers in the early voting and registration war,” he said. Iowa is divided into roughly three equal parts politically, but independents have the edge in registration. In 2000 there were about 25,000 fewer registered Democrats than Republicans in the state, but this year Republicans lead by only 8,000. Part of the reason is changing demographics — Iowa is now less rural and more Latino.

“We’ve become more competitive as Iowa has become more urbanized,” Iowa Democratic Party chairman Gordon Fischer said. “Now the 10 most populous counties — with cities like Des Moines, Sioux City, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Iowa City — have more population than the … 89 [least populous] counties.”

Most of the voters registered by the party and partisan groups such as unions, the Iowa Citizen Action Network (an affiliate of USAction) and America Coming Together (the leading independent “527″ group) are likely to vote for Kerry. But the work of some nonpartisan groups may also indirectly benefit him. The New Voters Project, for example, has registered 36,000 18-to-24-year-olds in Iowa, including 12,000 around Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa and the third largest New Voters Project operation in the country. “We’ve been getting an amazing response from young people,” said organizer Aaron Saeugling. “A lot of people said, ‘I didn’t vote in the last election, but I am this year.’” Although 70 percent registered as independent, a study by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics suggests they will disproportionately vote for Kerry.

The Democratic forces in Iowa have pushed harder than the Republicans for early votes, in both absentee ballots and satellite early polling stations, and the balloting has gone strongly to Kerry. Late last week, Democrats figured that at least 108,000 out of 190,000 early votes went for Kerry, since they came from identified supporters, and 56,000 went for Bush, with the remainder probably split roughly in the same proportion. With a week to go, already 60,000 more absentee ballots have been cast than in 2000.

Republicans assert that Democrats are simply moving up the date of their votes, not adding voters. But Fischer argues, based on the party’s voter identification file, that “about one-third of the absentee ballots are [from] weak-voting or sporadic-voting Democrats.” When the party surveyed nonvoters in 2000, it found that about one-fourth didn’t vote because of some unexpected Election Day crisis. “We think it’s smart to bank these votes early,” he said. “Even if just getting out others who would vote, we can click them off the list and save a tremendous amount of time, effort and money to focus on other voters on Election Day.”

The gains in registration and early voting reflect not only persistent organizational work but also Iowans’ passions about the issues and candidates, with a curious contrast between Kerry and Bush voters. During two days of interviews with voters from both camps in Iowa, I was struck by the degree to which Republicans explained their votes as support for Bush, the man and president. Kerry supporters talked relatively little about the senator’s personal appeal. And despite their generally intense loathing of Bush, they were much more likely to talk about administration policies, not Bush’s personal qualities, such as the long-standing doubts about his intelligence.

Bush is “a man of integrity,” said Walgreens manager Gary Hentzel. “I like his frankness,” said Web designer James Schmedding. “He is not fake. What you see is what you get. He talks straight.” Accountant Erin Ricciuti thinks Bush is “impressive and sincere.” “President Bush is such a better moral person,” said Republican co-chairman Ortega, recently demoted — without complaint — from his supervisor job in a corporate downsizing after nearly 45 loyal years at an insurance company. “Kerry is supposed to be a practicing Catholic, but he’s for abortion and homosexuality, and that’s against his religion.”

Beyond their personal regard for Bush, his supporters most frequently cited their agreement with his policies on the war on terror, Iraq and tax cuts. Even those who benefited only modestly from Bush’s tax cuts embraced the idea that it is good to cut the taxes of the rich the most, with the expectation they will then create new jobs. Despite an occasional mention of fiscal responsibility, Iowa Republicans seem to have abandoned their old hatred of deficits and, like Walgreens’ Hentzel, simply have no answer about who ultimately should pay the costs of government. But there were occasional misgivings about Iraq and grumbles that the Bush administration had spent too much money. “I’m one of his bigger fans,” corrections retiree Steward said, “but I’m not sure he should have gone to Iraq. And he should have had plans for after the war was done.”

Their critique of Kerry often cheerfully embraced the contradictory attack of the Bush campaign. On the one hand, Kerry is consistently a wild-eyed liberal: “Kerry is so off the wall it’s ridiculous,” Ortega said. “He’s far off, off the wall.” On the other hand, they say, nobody knows what he stands for, and he changes positions all the time. “I don’t know what Kerry is for,” Steward said. “I’m not sure he knows.”

Also striking was how many of the Republicans in Davenport based their views on clearly mistaken information. Erin Ricciuti, for example, supports Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq because “I believe weapons of mass destruction are still there.” Indeed, although Bush’s own inspection team reported that it found no WMD or a significant program to create them, 73 percent of Bush supporters, compared with 26 percent of Kerry supporters, believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons or a serious program, according to a recent study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

The perceptions of Bush’s supporters in Iowa are at odds with the facts on other issues. For example, oblivious to the divisions even in his own state, Steward said, “Bush has brought the country together for the first time. It’s solidified.” And Schmedding, despite a rise in unemployment in Iowa that had just been reported, sunnily declared, “I think [Bush] has actually created jobs.”

But nobody requires voters of any party to have command of the facts or exhibit logical consistency. Joy Meyers, a teacher’s aide who was standing in line for tickets to hear Bush, at first sounded like a subversive plant, perhaps a rare Ralph Nader supporter or at least a Kerry backer. Since we have our own WMD, she argued, it’s understandable that other countries would want them as well, so why not get rid of all such weapons? And why not concentrate on finding Osama bin Laden rather than going after Saddam? But she was enthusiastically for Bush. “God has his plan,” she explained, presumably referring to Bush’s reelection. “He already knows what’s going on.”

Social issues — God, guns and gays, plus a heavy emphasis on abortion — both motivate and divide Bush supporters in Iowa. The balancing act is reflected in the party’s local leadership of Scott County, where Davenport is located. Republican co-chairwoman Susan Frazer, who has worked in public relations and whose husband owns an R.V. dealership, represents the traditional small-business base of the party. She was a bit evasive, but seemed moderate on abortion, clearly promoting the “big tent” of diverse views in the party. But co-chairman Ortega, a devout Catholic, views homosexuality as a sin and considers opposition to abortion and gay marriage to be the focal points of Republican politics. He reflects the new religious right in Iowa, with roots in many less affluent middle-class and working-class households.

Just north of Davenport along the Mississippi River, Republicans have made inroads in the heavily Roman Catholic, traditionally industrial city of Dubuque by supporting a strong anti-abortion movement. The city is still strongly Democratic, but most local Democratic officeholders are not pro-choice, and many Democratic voters in the area abandon national pro-choice Democrats, cutting into the margins needed there by candidates like Kerry to counterbalance disproportionately Republican western Iowa. Republican exploitation of the political potential of the anti-abortion movement in Dubuque began in the 1980s, according to local union leader and political operative Francis Giunta, when the city had the dubious distinction of landing on the cover of Time magazine for having — at 25 percent — the highest unemployment rate in the country. In a bid for wavering Catholic voters, Kerry recently attended mass in Dubuque with state Rep. Pat Murphy, a Democrat who opposes abortion rights.

I joined former political science student Ben Rogers, a regional organizer for America Coming Together, in a walk around a working-class neighborhood of Davenport, a mix of rundown or abandoned homes and others that were carefully maintained. It looked like a place where complaints about job losses, cost and availability of health insurance or prescription medicine, retirement insecurities and other bedrock Democratic issues would be paramount. While residents often mentioned those issues, their strong opposition to Bush was most often expressed as criticism of the war in Iraq.

“I don’t believe George Bush is doing what he said he would do,” said Rebecca Brodersen, a waitress with two children. “We shouldn’t focus so much on Iraq — being over there rebuilding — and not on our own economy and education.” Leroy Hull, a retired factory worker and avid woodworker, was opposed to the war from the beginning. “Saddam wasn’t causing any trouble,” he said. “Bush had that [invasion] in his head even before he was president.”

Democrats are convinced that Kerry will ultimately win Iowa because voters are upset by a weak economy. In addition, Kerry has campaigned on Iowa-specific issues, such as support for biological fuels and a crackdown on methamphetamine production. In September Iowa still had 22,000 fewer jobs than at the start of the recession in March 2001 — not as large a percentage loss as in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, but worse than in many other neighboring states. Over the past four years 70,000 Iowans became uninsured, and the average family health insurance premium increased by 40 percent. Voters are “being driven by economic issues — plant closings, offshoring, shifts to Mexico,” said Gov. Vilsack. “They realize their economic future is on the line.”

Iowa Federation of Labor president Mark Smith, a harsh critic of both Bush and the war, largely agrees, and the labor movement has mostly limited its references about the war to a critique of Bush administration priorities — money for war, not education — and a defense of Kerry’s military record by union members who served with him. “It’s so hard for me to figure out why anybody with a 75 IQ or above could be for this guy Bush,” Smith says. “Bush four years ago, I could understand, compassionate conservatism and all that bullshit.” This year, he said, “healthcare, jobs, retirement security seem to be the issues people will choose. Like [former Labor Secretary] Robert Reich says, they’re the anxious class: If you’re not laid off, you know somebody down the street or in your union who is, and your children are not even going to have the opportunity for decent jobs.” Gerald Messer, who heads the local labor federation encompassing Davenport, added, “I think the war has taken on more importance than economic issues. However, it will ultimately come down to whether you are better off today than four years ago. We’re sticking with economic issues, Social Security, healthcare. Those are the major issues. But the war is playing a bigger role than I thought it would.”

Aside from the vote-early efforts by Democrats, there’s a last-ditch battle for undecided voters. “Even at this late date,” said Dino Leone, a staff representative for the public workers union (AFSCME) in Illinois, on loan for political work in Iowa, “undecideds are going slowly to our side, and we’ve been able to get some turnarounds. One bricklayer who came here from Chicago had a story about canvassing another bricklayer in Davenport who was for Bush all the way. Then they talked about issues, about how good jobs were leaving the country and what that means to union people as a whole. Then he got into it about health insurance, how Bush had done nothing. He got the guy to commit for Kerry, and even got him to put up a Kerry sign in front of his house.” By the Davenport labor movement’s count of members it has canvassed, about 73 percent support Kerry (compared with 65 percent who said they supported Gore four years ago), and some remain undecided. “My gut feeling is we’re even higher than that,” Messer said.

But the biggest challenge for Kerry may be the widespread sense of despair and futility among low-income voters. As Rogers and I made the rounds of the blue-collar neighborhood, we encountered Chester, a radio DJ from Dominica, who refused all pleas to vote. “I don’t want Bush to win,” he said. “But I’m not into voting. The system is crazy. Bush is going to win.” Down the street, 75-year-old June Knutsen was slightly more receptive. “If I do vote, I’ll vote for Kerry.” She signed up for an absentee ballot, but it may take more visits to make sure that ballot is cast. Likewise for Derrick Hahn, a 19-year-old nonunion construction laborer who succinctly explained his job: “I get paid dirt for hard work.” He hadn’t followed the election or any issues closely and had no interest in voting. “I don’t really like either of these guys,” he said. “I probably ain’t going to vote.” What kind of candidate would he like? “Maybe a guy out to help the lower class more,” he said. Who would help the lower class more, Kerry or Bush? He paused and thought. “Kerry,” he said finally, “more than Bush.” Then he asked for an absentee ballot application.

On both sides, the campaigns and their supporting groups report more volunteers and a sense of optimism. “The race in Iowa is going to be very close, but we’re confident we’ll take it for the president,” said Bush Iowa campaign spokesman Dan Ronayne. “We’re working harder than ever. But Iowans are more in line with Bush’s values. Kerry is out of the mainstream, a liberal tax-and-spend politician from the East Coast. They can’t risk the safety of their families with him. The economy is doing better, and they’d rather keep more of their paycheck.” “We’re doing much the same operation we do every two years to get out the vote,” Republican Party co-chairman Frazer said. “Our GOTV operation has been in place for some time.” They’ll have a bank of 50 phones for Election Day in Davenport, backed up by door-to-door precinct workers.

But the pro-Kerry operation’s final push is likely to be much larger than its predecessor four years ago and larger than the Republicans’ effort. The unions in Davenport alone will have 300 volunteers on the phone or walking door to door.

Meanwhile, ACT is taking a daring gamble. Although it has focused this fall on contacting Democrats in cities who voted once or less in the past three general elections and urging them to vote early, the group is turning its get-out-the-vote efforts “upside down,” according to Jeff Link, ACT’s state director and former Iowa campaign manager for Gore and Sen. Tom Harkin. Instead of concentrating on door-to-door contacts in the cities, it has recruited 700 volunteers to go to 195 small towns and reach out to rural voters, including many elderly residents, whom Democrats often neglect. “We’ve never done anything like this,” Link said. “The way we’ll make a marginal difference is to go where people have never gone before and where people have never knocked on doors.”

The stakes are high in Iowa for the two candidates, but many Iowans feel that their own lives and the future of the country are on the line as well. Outside the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center in Waterloo, a venue named for five brothers killed in the same Pacific naval battle in World War II, Bryon Sells had parked his rusty, light-blue pickup truck in full view of everyone coming to hear Kerry speak on national security issues. On the back and sides were large, carefully painted signs bearing Sells’ message. The words “The Son of a Bush keeps getting our kids murdered in Iraq — no rich kids — and in your heart you know it’s wrong” are part of a long attack on the war and corporate profiteering. There’s a tribute to Kerry (a “true American hero”) and an attack on Dick Cheney (the “biggest crook in the world”). One recent addition: “The Son of a Bush and His Swiftboat Gutter Rat Cronies Must Eat out of a Toilet For All the Bull—- They Put Out.”

A retired factory worker, now wealthy with the proceeds from the sale of his father’s farm, Sells is a soft-spoken man with short gray hair who wears a Fillet and Release Club sweat shirt with a picture of a fish skeleton. “I tell you, the last four years the working class of people have been going down the drain,” he said. “I’m retired. I’ve got a ton of money. But I feel for the working class.” His son works at the factory where he worked, even though most of the jobs have been shipped to China. (Some are now coming back because of quality problems with the imports.) “I’m worried for the kids,” Sells continued. “I’ve had a good life, but I’m worried to death about these young people coming up. Bush is strictly for the rich. It’s a split country. Everyone can see it.”

But didn’t he want to benefit from Bush’s cuts in estate and income taxes? “Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m not that way. Neither are my brothers. We’re all here to help. That’s what we’re here for. Not to rob each other. This is just a big money-power grab. If Bush gets away with, I don’t know what we’ll do. I’ve never been worried about a president before. But he tells so many lies.”

Sells’ voice then choked up as he fought back tears. After a pause, he said quietly, with a weak smile, “I think we’ll make it.” Across the street, a group of United Auto Workers members held up a banner: “Help Is on the Way.”

On streets of comfortable but modest bungalows and ranch houses decorated with ambitious displays of Halloween ghosts, jack-o’-lanterns and witches, ubiquitous yard signs for Kerry-Edwards are typically juxtaposed with signs for Bush-Cheney. But the steady stream of people knocking on doors these days are not trick-or-treaters. They are canvassers on behalf of the presidential candidates, assiduously pursuing “lazy Republicans” or “swing Democrats” before a final blitz to get every voter to the polls — or better yet, to vote absentee in advance.

The broadcast “air war” in Wisconsin is intense. The state is one of the top five in overall television and radio advertising by or for the presidential candidates, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project. The Center for Public Integrity reports that since last June Wisconsin has been the top state for advertising for both sides by the independent “527″ groups, named after the tax code provision that permits their existence — such as the Swift Boat Veterans and Progress for America Voter Fund (the top spender) for Bush and the Media Fund and MoveOn.org Voter Fund for John Kerry.

Both sides agree that the race in Wisconsin could very well be as close as it was in 2000. Then Gore won by 5,708 votes out of nearly 2.5 million (with 94,070 going to Ralph Nader, who once again is on the ballot). The state has a Democratic governor, two Democratic senators (including incumbent Russell Feingold, favored strongly for reelection), an even split among the eight members of the U.S. House, and both houses of the state Legislature under the control of conservative Republicans. It has produced politicians ranging from red-baiting Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy to Earth Day founder Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson. Hardcore Democratic strongholds in Milwaukee, Madison and the far north balance the Republican strongholds in other rural areas and the suburbs. Going into the first presidential debate, Bush led in the polls, which ranged from three statistical ties to three other polls showing Bush leading by eight to 14 points (numbers that even Bush partisans dismissed as far-fetched).

Both sides also agree that with a tight contest, the electoral war is likely to be determined by the boots on the ground — the armies of paid and volunteer workers who have spent many months trying to register new voters, identify supporters, persuade the undecided, and eventually get every possible friendly voter to the polling places. On that front, Kerry seems to have the advantage, even though Republicans have been trying since 2002 to gear up an effort to combat the old-fashioned politicking that the labor movement has revived with great success since 1996. Groups supporting Kerry — or doing work that indirectly helps Kerry — have a larger and more diverse effort on the ground, which nearly every knowledgeable participant describes as unprecedented in size, scope and sophistication.

In the days after the first presidential debate, it appeared that Kerry had done well enough among the remaining sliver of persuadable or undecided voters to tighten the race in Wisconsin and make the ground war even more critical. Equally important, his performance energized the foot soldiers, those who have to endure hours of knocking on doors of empty homes, snarling dogs and hostile rejections by partisans of their opponent.

The morning after the first debate, Ken Morton, 32, a food-service manager for the Milwaukee Public Schools, and Reyna Rundberg, 56, a nursing-home worker from Chicago, gathered at the headquarters of the Milwaukee County Labor Council to start yet another day of intensive political work, modeled on a union organizing drive. They would drive through West Allis and try to track down undecided union members and persuade them to vote for Kerry. Both are among the 2,038 “Heroes” the Service Employees International Union has recruited, reimbursing their salaries, for months of work in 11 battleground states.

As Rundberg drove her aging Nissan sedan in search of the first person on their list, she and Morton excitedly reviewed Kerry’s best jabs in the debate. Rundberg liked how Kerry contrasted his awkward explanation of his vote on $87 billion for Iraq with Bush’s bigger mistake of rushing to war. Morton thought Kerry scored when he chided Bush for not listening “to what his own father said about Iraq” becoming an occupation nightmare. Both had become much more passionate about politics after the Florida voting debacle in 2000 and were excited to be able to take off from work to campaign. But Morton admitted that until recently he’d felt “leery” about Kerry, worrying that he hadn’t spelled out his plans clearly enough. No longer. “I’m fired up,” he said. The debate “was exciting. I didn’t think it would be so clear.”

Despite the fruitless search for many of the people on their list (and one curt rebuff from a Bush supporter), their quest may have helped nudge a few votes to Kerry. Retired electrician James Preston remained undecided, but reports of the debate (which he had inadvertently slept through) impressed him. “We are at war,” he said. “No matter what the economy is, this country’s at war. But I actually think Bush got us into it, and I don’t approve of how he did it. He should have consulted with other nations.” Ninety-two-year-old Evelyn Kluever, on the other hand, was enthusiastically for Kerry, even though she thought he should fight back harder against Bush. And she was hopeful that Arthur — her more taciturn live-in partner, a retired union member leaning toward Bush — had been swayed toward Kerry.

Kevin Mahnke, a foundry worker and union member, aptly characterized the conflicting pulls from each campaign. “Before the debate, I kind of had my mind made up [for Bush], but afterwards I wasn’t so sure,” he said, standing in front of his apartment door, decorated with a “Support Our Troops” poster. Mahnke, 46, has tended to vote more Republican in recent elections (though he supported Ross Perot in 1992), reversing his youthful preference for Democrats. While he strongly disapproves of abortion, opposes gun control, distrusts the United Nations and didn’t like President Clinton, he is deeply angry about the jobs being shipped overseas, wants an alternative energy plan to cut our dependence on oil, and has turned against Bush’s tax cuts. “It seems to me the greedier are getting greedier,” he said. “These tax cuts sounded good, but it didn’t trickle down. It trickled up.”

He is torn about the war in Iraq. In the debate, he was irritated by Bush’s smirking, stuttering, “cowboy” manner and was impressed that Kerry seemed to have a plan for Iraq. “We’re there, and things are starting to look bad,” Mahnke said. “You’ve got to have an exit plan. I don’t think George is thinking properly.” But he still leans ever so slightly to Bush, he said, as Morton handed him a detailed comparison of the two candidates on the issues and promised to stay in touch.

The next morning, Republican Brandon Rosner, a 24-year-old engineer who ran an energetic but ultimately losing campaign for the Milwaukee City Council last spring, was out in the same neighborhoods, pursuing people thought to lean Republican but with “spotty voting records.” He had prepared scripts, tailored to what the campaign thought were each voter’s concerns. The first, reinforced by a leaflet handed to everyone, focused on social issues — abortion, gay marriage, judicial conservatism; the second, on taxes; and the third, on an upbeat but generic account of the president’s actions on healthcare and the economy. The first two voters Rosner encountered — a building maintenance engineer and a Teamster truck driver — said they were solidly pro-Bush, mainly because they supported Bush’s military action in Iraq.

The next pursuit was Rich Gillard, a steelworker forced into early retirement when his employer shifted production that had once employed more than 2,000 workers to Brazil and China. A Rush Limbaugh ditto-head and avid follower of Fox News, Gillard abandoned the Democrats for Ronald Reagan, then switched to Perot, and now denounces illegal immigrants, taxes, mosques in the United States, abortion and the liberalism of his college-educated kids. He loves the PATRIOT Act and is willing to let anyone search his house and even look for the guns he keeps. He’s largely resigned to the closing of factories as inevitable, though he owes his early pension to the work of his union, which sees Bush as a deadly threat to organized labor. But he does not see Kerry as an alternative. “What good have the Democrats done?” he asked. “Who was the guy who instigated NAFTA? Clinton.”

The “lazy Republican” list included a few clinkers. Germaine Jahn, 77, a retired accountant, voted for Bush last time but will not now. “I don’t like the man,” she said. “I don’t like what he’s done to the economy. He hasn’t done anything good. This time I’m going back to the Democrats.” And who knows how Donald Lyons, 64, ended up on Rosner’s list. The machinist had to scramble for seven years to get a job that paid close to the one he lost in 1990 when his employer moved out of the country. “The man has no foreign policy,” Lyons said of Bush. “The economy is worthless. There’s nothing for the middle class. He’s killing us, all for tax breaks for people making over $500,000.”

Ever the optimist, Rosner figures his visit will at least help clean up the list for the next election by removing the Lyons household. Over the course of the morning, he had handed out two absentee ballot applications. “There might be two more votes for the president,” he said. “That makes my day.”

Two years ago, Republicans launched a final 72-hour get-out-the-vote effort in Wisconsin and other states after seeing that Democrats often outperformed them in the preelection polls on Election Day. “Now the polls have us up quite a bit,” said one Bush campaign strategist in Wisconsin, “but I think it’s a lot closer. I think it will be the ground game — who can motivate their base and turn them out — that will decide it. What we’ve been doing the whole time is talking with undecideds: Are you pro-life? Do you hunt? Are you concerned about national security?”

Most of the Republican ground game is being organized by the party and the Bush campaign, which claims 41,000 volunteers so far in the state. (The number includes people working in offices, disseminating signs and attending parades as well as canvassers and phone bank operators.) There are some complementary efforts by sympathetic groups but little on the ground. The National Rifle Association has run long infomercials and is mailing material to its supporters.

Although there is a strong and influential antiabortion movement, it seems disconnected from the presidential race. Christian Coalition national president Roberta Combs says, “We are very focused on Wisconsin. We plan to do voter guides. We’re putting together a pretty massive grass-roots organization precinct by precinct.” But other conservatives and some Republicans are skeptical. “The Christian Coalition is kind of anemic” here, says Matt Sande, spokesman for Pro-Life Wisconsin, which criticizes Bush for supporting any exceptions to abortion. “It’s not existent in Wisconsin.”

Kerry supporters working on the ground, however, are legion, though they often involve a bewildering array of groups that are related but distinct because they were established under the tax code as 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 527 or other types of organizations, limiting both any coordination with the Kerry campaign and to what extent — if any — they can advocate for a candidate.

There’s also the traditional coordinated effort of the Kerry campaign itself and the Democratic Party, which claims 100 staff, 23 offices and 1,600 trained war leaders around the state, many of them working on phone banks, canvassing and providing support for the frequent trips of the candidates and surrogates to Wisconsin. But the efforts beyond the campaign are even more substantial.

The labor movement — representing 18 percent of the state’s workforce, nearly half again above the national average — has played the largest and longest role in direct mobilization. In 2000, polling indicated that 32 percent of Wisconsin voters came from union households. And union members vote more Democratic than people just like them who are not in unions.

“What we’ve been doing this year is just so far beyond anything we’ve ever done or attempted before that there’s just no comparison,” says state AFL-CIO president David Newby. “That includes the amount of communication taking place, the number of staff that unions have released to work the plan, the degree to which contact with union members is direct rather than indirect through mail.” And labor leaders, including international union presidents, are doing much more than previously to keep track of who’s doing what and spur laggards on, state federation executive vice president Sarah Rogers says.

The unions’ grass-roots campaign started much earlier, too. “Activity hasn’t really stopped since four years ago,” says Seth Johnson, political director for Wisconsin AFSCME (public employees). “We’ve been campaigning for four years.” Unions are sending members lots of literature, emphasizing the Bush records on jobs, healthcare and issues such as the right to organize unions and the elimination of overtime protection for millions of workers, but with only oblique criticism of the war in Iraq, which the Wisconsin AFL-CIO recently condemned. The Service Employees International Union, which nationally is spending $65 million on its political work, has also run television ads about healthcare.

But the heart of the effort is having union representatives talk to members at work and union members go door-to-door to talk to fellow unionists. By September more than 2,000 labor volunteers had reached at least 65,000 out of roughly 300,000 members at their homes, including a canvass that took place the evening of Bush’s convention acceptance speech.

The other major ground effort is a newcomer, America Coming Together, a 527 group that has benefited from the largess of financier George Soros and other big Democratic donors. ACT’s operation is larger than even labor’s, but it also benefits from union support, like the SEIU Heroes assigned to its canvassing. “We have scores of canvassers, knocking on doors, dropping literature, taking the pulse of voters,” says ACT spokesman Phil Walzack. “This allows us to come back and show how the Bush administration has failed on jobs, healthcare and education. We’ve aggressively pushed information about how Bush shortchanges homeland security, like cutting funding for air marshals.” By late September, according to one account, ACT representatives had knocked on 900,000 doors in Wisconsin.

There are many smaller initiatives, but nearly all of the advocacy groups outside the campaign come together under the umbrella of America Votes, which is also linked to the Media Fund, a 527 group that runs TV advertising. “What I try to do is make sure they’re talking to each other, sharing information and resources and not duplicating in ways that don’t make sense,” says America Votes state director Peter Shakow. “You don’t want the League of Conservation Voters knocking on a door and 10 minutes later the Sierra Club knocking on the same door.”

Besides environmental groups, America Votes coordinates with ACT, pro-choice organizations (Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America), MoveOn.org, organized labor, Citizen Action (a 76,000-member consumer and citizens’ rights group) and other groups focused on minority voters, youth and students, and gays. Even groups with similar agendas divide up the electorate. For example, the League of Conservation Voters is targeting more than 150,000 households with a broad message on jobs, healthcare, energy independence and the environment. The smaller Sierra Club Voter Education Project is targeting undecided voters with a comparison of the two presidential candidates on national environmental issues in areas where there are strong local concerns about the environment, such as working-class south Milwaukee, situated near a sewage-treatment plant, a neglected Superfund site and four coal-fired power plants.

Even though Wisconsin voters can register on Election Day, there has been an extensive effort to pre-register young voters (especially on campuses), minority communities and union members, often by officially nonpartisan groups that simply register and turn out voters. But when these efforts target heavily Democratic constituencies, like African-Americans, Democratic candidates disproportionately benefit. Citizen Action Fund, for example, works independently of its parent organization and has registered 28,000 new black and Latino voters. It will contact them and an additional 100,000 infrequent-voter households as many as nine times with literature and calls about the issues at stake — “schools over jails, stopping racial profiling, ending unfair immigration laws, choosing healthcare over drug company profits, or creating an economy that creates good jobs,” according to fund director Larry Marx. (“Peace over war” was too partisan, lawyers advised.) In one imaginative twist, the fund has created a service-learning project in 70 schools involving a curriculum on voting rights. As part of the curriculum, 2,000 schoolchildren in wards with low voter turnout have been spreading a message to adults throughout the ward: “Vote for me. I can’t.”

But the biggest boost for mobilizing African-American voters in Milwaukee — and thus a bonus for Kerry — may be the primary victory of state Sen. Gwen Moore, who will become the state’s first black representative in Congress if she wins. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to suppress the black vote, Walzack charges, for example, by backing a previously unknown group called People of Color United, financed by a white Republican millionaire insurance magnate who promotes health savings accounts and school vouchers, which has taken out ads in the black community denouncing both tickets as composed of “superwealthy white men” with no interest in blacks.

In rural areas of the state, both the Kerry campaign and independent groups are working to mobilize Native Americans, who traditionally have not participated strongly but lean Democratic, and rural voters, who are often abandoned to the Republicans. “We’re putting organizations on the ground in north-central and southwest Wisconsin, finding media in town newspapers and seeing if we can get voters interested in self-interest economic issues instead of the social issues of guns, God and gays,” says League of Rural Voters director Niel Ritchie. Still, the Kerry campaign plays up his interest in hunting in an attempt to neutralize the fears of gun owners. (The NRA and Republicans have scoffed at Kerry for trying to bolster his credentials by participating in a skeet shoot in Wisconsin.)

There are limits to even the best grass-roots efforts, however. The character of the candidates and the campaigns, and external developments with the war, the economy and even terrorism, are all potential limiting factors. Although Wisconsin’s economy has rebounded more than that of other Midwestern battleground states, there has been no net job growth; 75,000 manufacturing jobs were lost from March 2001 to January 2004, while median family income has been falling and inequality rising, according to the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

The pro-Kerry troops think they will prevail if Kerry can present a credible alternative to Bush on both the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism while giving more of a populist jolt to his message about jobs and healthcare. “Our war is for those Republicans in our membership who otherwise agree with us on health and jobs issues,” says Citizen Action’s co-director Bob Hudek. “The war is probably what’s keeping them with Bush. We’ve seen some data that the war is helping the president a little bit more in Wisconsin than in some of the other swing states.” But if the war news continues to worsen, the post-debate response suggests there are anxious voters ready to turn away from Bush.

“The ultimate question is that we have to be close enough for the field operations to win it, within three or four points in the polls,” says SEIU state political director Robert Kraig. “If Kerry gets slaughtered on issues, it’s hard to win with a ground operation. But I don’t think the fundamentals of the race have changed. It’s a closely divided state that should go Democratic. We’ve done everything to lay the basis for a ground operation — better than we’ve ever had. It will be close, but it’s there for the taking.”

Though Kerry and Sen. John Edwards will fight it out in a dozen states in this week’s Super Tuesday presidential primaries, there’s little drama in the vote. Polls show Kerry leading his main challenger by 20 points or more in Ohio, California and New York. Far from being complacent, though, many here are already locked on to the fall campaign, certain that Ohio will be one of a handful of battleground states that could, in the end, determine the outcome of the race.

It’s a state that Democratic and Republican presidential winners, with few exceptions, have long needed for victory. Bush defeated Gore here four years ago by only 3.5 percentage points, but many state political strategists blame that loss on Gore’s decision to pull the plug on his campaign in Ohio for the last three weeks of the campaign. This year, many of them are more hopeful, partly because of Bush’s vulnerabilities, especially on jobs and the economy, but also because of a combination of organization and passion among core Democratic voters. “Ohio is the Florida of 2004,” said Gerald Austin, who has run many Ohio campaigns and Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential bid. “This state is up for grabs.”

Taking a break from his phone dialing, Laborers International Union political coordinator Jim Goggin, a white-haired man with a strong Irish accent, shared Austin’s enthusiasm. “Everyone thinks Ohio is winnable,” he said. “We have major economic problems.” Ohio has lost 265,000 jobs since 2001, including nearly 67,000 last year. Roughly 160,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost, with at least one-sixth lost because of foreign trade and job shifts out of the country, according to a report by Policy Matters Ohio, a local think tank.

But people like Goggin are as important as those grim statistics in the political calculation. As Goggin returned to his computer, veteran Cleveland politician Tim Hagan, running this year for county commissioner, dropped by the modest office. He had just addressed a new pilot project launched by the AFL-CIO, called Working America, to sign up people from nonunion households who agree with core union principles and want to receive information about issues and candidates. The trial project, underway in both Cleveland and Cincinnati, could greatly expand the audience for the labor movement’s political message.

Hagan, who uses his campaign rallies mainly to attack Bush rather than his opponent in the primary, was optimistic about the Democratic presidential prospects. Why? “You’re in the middle of it,” he said. “It’s the labor movement. It’s more galvanized than ever, long before the summer months. That’s why this primary process is kind of a run-through for the presidential race.”

It’s not just labor, though unions are stronger and more politically active in Ohio than in much of the country. Hagan reports that he’s never seen as much commitment and participation from hardcore party loyalists so early in a presidential race. That’s partly because “people in the Democratic Party despise Bush more than Nixon or Reagan,” he said. “You can feel it in this state.” But like many other Ohio political observers, he thinks that the primary has strengthened front-runner Kerry as a candidate, solidified the party by remaining relatively civil, and partly thanks to Howard Dean, it has defined the Democratic Party better. “There’s a sense that we know again who we are,” Hagan said. “Besides being opposed to Bush, we are a party with principles.”

Hopes for a Democratic victory also reflect a variety of ambitious efforts underway to register and educate voters by local community groups and by national organizations, such as the Ohio operation of America Coming Together, one of the new “527″ groups emerging after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. Some are traditional nonpartisan voter drives in minority and poor white neighborhoods (involving 50 different participating groups in Cleveland alone); others are more partisan, or simply more opposed to Bush. But all are likely to help the Democratic nominee mobilize the Democratic base in cities like Cleveland, which have to generate big majorities to compensate for the Republican strongholds in the southern and rural parts of the state. “What will determine this election is whether people in the cities turn out,” Austin said, “and I think they will. One of the messages the Democrats have to carry is that Bush, like [former President Gerald] Ford, has told the cities to drop dead.”

As executive secretary of the Cleveland AFL-CIO, John Ryan has made his union federation’s political operation, based on mobilizing hundreds of volunteers, into a local powerhouse and a model for the country. The national AFL-CIO only endorsed Kerry on Feb. 19; the Cleveland AFL-CIO almost immediately began calling and sending mailings to members on behalf of Kerry. On the weekend before the primary election, hundreds of union volunteers took part in two different neighborhood walks — one a nonpartisan effort to encourage people to vote, the other a door-to-door effort on behalf of Kerry, Hagan and key national and local issues, including an arts- and environment-oriented economic development bond issue.

“The timing’s tough,” Ryan said. “If we had more time, we could deliver a bigger vote. But about equally important to pulling the lever is to get people to listen to and understand Kerry’s record. This helps educate even those who don’t vote in the Democratic primary, independents and even some Republicans.”

But the Cleveland AFL-CIO and member unions were hard at work long before any endorsement, developing a system of communicating with members about issues through monthly mailings, phone calls, household visits, union meetings, training sessions for leaders and volunteers and work-site conversations with union members. The effort has “a focus and volume I haven’t seen in my 22 years as a union official,” says Ryan. But there’s also a new urgency. Union officials are told to distribute political messages as promptly and widely as they would if they were going on strike the next day, said AFL-CIO state political coordinator Kyle McDermott.

The Communications Workers of America endorsed Kerry earlier than the AFL-CIO, but its members, too, are as focused on November as they are on Super Tuesday. “We’ve done a mailing to members and participated in rallies all across the state,” says Seth Rosen, assistant to the regional vice-president of CWA. “More importantly, we’ve spent six months doing various kinds of member and leadership education focused on Ohio and other battleground states. If you look at what we’re doing, most is about November, not the primary.”

There’s also a special union push among both young and old voters. Rosen said that the CWA had conducted focus groups among union members under 30 who had never voted. “They were all very concerned about the economy, about jobs, about healthcare, and they were very clear that Bush was not going to do anything about that,” he said. “But they’re not all convinced, many not, that a Democrat is the person who can address these issues.” They were little swayed by the Republican wedge social issues, but were cynical about politics in general, a sentiment the union hopes to address.

While there are 128,000 union members in Cuyahoga County, including Cleveland and suburbs, there are about 40,000 retirees as well whom unions can reach. The retirees council has already proved its clout: It spearheaded a successful campaign to win lower prescription drug prices in the state and its early opposition to the war in Iraq pushed the Cleveland AFL-CIO to become one of the first labor councils to oppose the war. Now the council is gearing up to register retirees and drive home a message that Bush’s Medicare prescription drug plan is a recipe for destruction of Medicare. But the retirees have a deeper concern that motivates them as well. “We are dismayed at what is happening to our Republic,” said council president and retired ironworker C. Richard Henderson. “They’re tearing the Republic apart. They’re taking the pride out of being an American, for God’s sake.”

These labor efforts link up with campaigns underway among other key constituencies with an overlapping, reinforcing message. For example, America Coming Together has been canvassing in key cities — Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, Cincinnati, Youngstown. ACT’s 200 canvassers, a group that includes not only the usual young recruits but many middle-aged factory workers who are still out of work, register voters. Depending on the interests of people they contact, they also hand out carefully documented issue leaflets that sharply criticize the Bush administration on job creation, dropping steel tariff protection and nearly 30 other issues.

African-American communities are also primed. “The black community, working-class people, will really come out for their candidate,” said Roosevelt Coats, Cleveland City Council member and former Steelworkers official. “It’s just undecided who their candidate is now.” Although Coats, like many Cleveland politicians and labor leaders, saw the hometown candidate, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, as his ideological favorite, Coats was also impressed with Edwards. Cincinnati-based political consultant Brewster Rhoads thinks Edwards has made a conscious and effective bid for black support in Ohio. But the real energy comes from dislike of Bush, which has pushed the level of intensity of interest in the primary among blacks in the Columbus area well above that of likely white Democratic voters, according to polling Rhoads commissioned.

Whatever the group, the anxieties are similar. “I think the economy is going to be the defining issue,” said Cleveland City Councilman Jay Westbrook. “Within the last year, most people thought Bush could cloak himself in national security, but through continued economic erosion and a vigorous Democratic presidential primary contest, the country and state are shifting to a point of view that Bush is selling us out.”

Last fall, a long-established factory in Westbrook’s west-side ward, Midland Products, closed and moved its truck frame production to Mexico, throwing 300 people out of work. “There’s an identifiable one-to-one connection between that shutdown and the start-up and expansion in Mexico,” he said, making not only jobs but trade a hot issue. Globalization is also a hot topic for telephone workers of CWA. “Offshoring is a huge issue with our telephone members,” Rosen said. “Manufacturing work to Mexico is old news. The hot news is call center work going to India. Companies like SBC and ATT are outsourcing call center, customer support and technical support.”

But there is also a host of other reasons that Ohioans can be mobilized to oppose Bush, argued Austin, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, Halliburton, body bags coming back from Iraq and the fact that Osama bin Laden is still at large. “There’s a reason, pick one,” he said. “The biggest advantage for John Kerry is that he’s not George Bush.” While Ohioans normally are split about 40 percent Democratic, 40 percent Republican and 20 percent independent, Austin argued, the split is now more likely 45-45-10, making mobilizing the hard core even more important.

That might seem to give the Republicans some advantage in Ohio. All of the statewide officials, majorities of both legislative houses, and both U.S. senators are Republicans. The state is culturally conservative, especially in the south. Cincinnati, for example, is regarded as the birthplace of the antiabortion movement; it is the only city with a provision written into its charter prohibiting giving any special status to gays (including equal rights on the job or in housing); and its Indian Hills suburban area is one of the top ZIP codes for Republican fundraising in the country, with such topflight contributors as Cintas Corp.’s Richard Farmer and Carl Lindner of Chiquita Brands. According to veteran pollster Bob Dykes, CEO of Triad Research, Gore lost Ohio in 2000 largely because he was killed in rural and small-town Ohio, especially in the south, over the issue of gun control.

But Democrats hold most of the central city mayoralities in the state, including even Cincinnati, and Republican Gov. Bob Taft has sunk to less than 45 percent approval, thus leaving Bush without reliable local coattails. Austin believes that Bush’s questionable service in the National Guard will hurt him in highly patriotic Ohio. Growing concerns about loss of life and expenditures of money in Iraq may also tarnish the image of the “war president.”

Bush’s effort to inject gay marriage as a wedge issue has left state Republican officials divided over the wisdom of a constitutional amendment, even though the governor recently signed legislation banning gay marriages. Dykes thinks that Democrats can minimize backlash on the issue if they adopt a centrist position that shows respect for people’s religious convictions but argues for policies that promote “fairness and encouraging gay citizens to live stable, productive lives.” The same-sex marriage issue is “obviously going to give the right wing something to get excited about, but the question is, Is he overplaying his hand and turning off suburban moderate Republicans?” asked Rhoads. “They may feel, ‘This is too much. You’re really going after these people. I know gay people at work and church. This seems mean-spirited.’”

Although Republicans will be fighting to hold on to their strongholds in suburbs of some cities (not Cleveland, where many suburbs are also Democratic bastions), Rhoads thinks that Democrats can “peel away” some moderate Republicans. “A lot of them are getting sick and tired of GOP mandates on their public schools without money to help them,” Rhoads argued.

Could Democrats ride their issues and organization to victory in Ohio this fall? “Unequivocally, yes,” said Dykes. It will depend on whether Democrats can make the economy, healthcare and retirement security issues central while successfully focusing on Bush’s failures, rather than letting Republicans make the race revolve around Kerry’s record. And even then, the battle will probably be pitched right up until the polls close on Election Day.

The issue was clear for Michael Davis, a 39-year-old construction laborer with seven children who was leaving the union hall, where he had paid his dues to maintain membership and a chance for work on a union project. He has been out of work for more than a year and no longer receives unemployment compensation, since Bush opposed renewing the federal extension of benefits. He believes strongly in being politically active, but he had not yet focused on the primary. When asked how he might vote, he stumbled as he tried to remember Kerry’s name. But he had no confusion about what he wanted to accomplish: “I just don’t want Bush in there.”

Yet as Kerry’s solid victories in the caucuses in both Michigan and Washington consolidated his front-runner position, some political analysts worried that Kerry’s support might prove to be a bubble that could be pricked, much like Howard Dean’s early support, and that the damage might come after the primary season. Most voters are not very familiar with Kerry or his record, and the accelerated primary schedule and absence of a stiff challenge from a single leading opponent have let Kerry through without the kind of tough review that could test whether he really is the strongest candidate.

“This was an electability question,” said Stephen Reck, political coordinator for a public employee local of the Service Employees Union, which endorsed Dean. “People are looking at Kerry, from a military standpoint especially, and thinking he can go toe-to-toe with the president on these issues. Given the fact that Kerry saved that one guy’s life, the timing of that coming out, that picture was burned in voters’ minds when they saw him pulling that guy out of the water. But I think he’s going to be facing what Dean had, the barrage of questions, [questions about] campaign contributions, the record of 20 years of service [in the Senate], particularly when you have sound bites driving the whole thing. It’s usually not congressmen but governors who get elected. They don’t have those voting records over years that people can distort and take out of context and run with. That’s what I’m concerned about, that Kerry will come under scrutiny for all his votes.”

Kerry’s victory was decisive in Michigan, as it was in Washington. Kerry won 52 percent of the votes in Michigan, with Dean winning 17 percent and Edwards 13 percent.

But the numbers could be misleading: Kerry could still have problems in Michigan because of his past record of voting for NAFTA and similar global trade and investment deals. A voter backlash against those votes could be deeply damaging to Kerry, not only in Michigan, but in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania that are also expected to be crucial to Democratic hopes in November. Such problems could be compounded in Michigan because of Kerry’s support for higher Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards for automobiles and trucks.

The difficulty of such issues for the front-runner was evident in Washington, too. Kerry won 49 percent of the vote there, with Dean winning 30 percent and Rep. Dennis Kucinich scoring his best result to date with 8 percent. There, Kerry’s environmentalism — and an early endorsement by the League of Conservation Voters — undoubtedly helped. But if he backs off on fuel standards as he apparently promised Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who endorsed him, he could alienate the environmentalists.

There’s likely little time left for Democrats to give Kerry a closer look. While Dean’s second-place finishes were among his best showings, only a month ago he had been the front-runner in both states. Even after his losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign thought he might be able to beat Kerry in either state. But Dean stopped campaigning earlier in the week in Michigan; he’s moved on to Wisconsin for the Feb. 17 primary, but has indicated he could withdraw from the presidential race if he doesn’t win there.

Even before the results came in on Saturday, Dean lost the endorsement of the 1.4 million-member public employees union, AFSCME, whose backing had given him one of his biggest boosts last fall. With U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt, the favorite of a group of more than 20 unions, now endorsing Kerry, it is likely that many unions that had supported Gephardt or had remained neutral may join Kerry’s bandwagon. (The small but feisty apparel and textile union, UNITE, endorsed Edwards late last week.)

Kerry won in every part of Michigan, including largely African-American Detroit, where Rev. Al Sharpton drew roughly one-third of the votes. Despite his record supporting free-trade deals, Kerry also won nearly half the votes in the area around Greenville, where there was deep distress over the recent announcement that an Electrolux refrigerator factory will move to Mexico in 2005, a devastating blow that could cost the area thousands of jobs.

But in a reflection of local anger about the impact of global trade and investment agreements like NAFTA, Kucinich won 11 percent of the vote, nearly four times his statewide average. On Friday before the caucus, Kucinich appeared at a rally at the local United Auto Workers union hall, even though the UAW international union, which is neutral in the race, tried to discourage his use of the hall. Some of the union’s local leaders supported Kucinich, but the sentiment at the rally was unequivocal on two points underscored by bumper stickers distributed in the parking lot: “Nothing Sucks Like Electrolux” and “Let’s Get Rid of the Son-of-a-Bush.”

Both Washington and Michigan are considered potentially tough battlegrounds in the fall election, even though Michigan has gone Democratic in the past three presidential elections and Washington has voted for the Democratic candidate in the past four. Kerry’s strong showing in Michigan, however, doesn’t mean he has a lock on the state. Although national polls reported in Newsweek show Kerry narrowly ahead of Bush at this point, “All the polls in Michigan up until a month ago when Dean collapsed and Kerry came on strong showed Bush way ahead of Dean, Kerry, anybody,” cautioned Bill Ballenger, editor of the Inside Michigan Politics newsletter.

“It’s way too early [to predict the outcome]. The idea that Michigan is some Democratic state is misguided. Memories are very short. In five straight elections from 1972 to 1988, Republicans won. Four years ago, most people thought Michigan would be very close, but Gore ended up winning [51 percent to 46 percent over Bush]. The power of incumbency is worth a lot. Who is the nominee? What is his record? How does he play in Michigan?”

Although Kerry voted for NAFTA, many workers, union leaders and Democratic politicians from Michigan — such as former Rep. David Bonior — have been ardent critics of those deals. Gov. Jennifer Granholm reportedly said that Kerry promised to “fix” NAFTA if elected, and he has joined with the mainstream of the Democratic candidates in arguing that future agreements must also protect workers’ rights and the environment. NAFTA critics certainly won’t be attracted to Bush, but they might feel less than enthusiastic if they don’t believe Kerry really will change course.

Kerry faces a similar dilemma on some environmental issues. “Major [Michigan] Democratic politicians, no matter how liberal — [U.S. Sen.] Carl Levin, [U.S. Sen.] Debbie Stabenow, [Rep.] John Dingell — they all fight those CAFE standards,” Ballenger said. “Every politician and member of the elite will be on the same note: Don’t make it tough for us on CAFE standards. Union members may not feel that way and think they should be tough. But in Michigan you just don’t go around preaching, well, we’ve got to buck up those CAFE standards. Kerry is already backpedaling, seriously.”

Kerry’s record on automobile fuel efficiency may not play as badly with voters as with politicians. A public opinion survey conducted for the Sierra Club in Michigan four years ago indicated that 74 percent of union members favored higher fuel-efficiency standards. Republicans are sure to beat up on Kerry on this issue in Michigan if he’s the nominee. But too much defensive backpedaling on the issue could hurt Kerry with important environmentalists.

“The idea that Kerry is a great candidate or nominee from Michigan ain’t necessarily so,” warned Ballenger. “It may prove to be that way if Kerry gets in here and connects with voters.” But neither Kerry, who held a series of rallies on the eve of the Michigan caucus, nor any other candidate campaigned much in Michigan after polls showed Kerry surging ahead. Without much of a fight, turnout was much lower than party officials had hoped, especially after they introduced the option of Internet voting for the caucus. The party predicted that as many as 400,000 members would participate, doubling the record in 1988, when Rev. Jesse Jackson upset Gov. Michael Dukakis and won the caucus vote. But only about 163,000 Democrats did take part, the majority by traditional balloting, in the second-best turnout since Michigan Democrats switched from a primary to a caucus.

Without a vigorous campaign and television advertising, Kerry may not have been able to use the caucus to establish his identity early with Michigan voters. “It’s by default,” Ballenger said. “Kerry is walking into it without campaigning, spending money or defending himself on tough issues. He’s gotten away with murder.” Although the party leaders and voters seem to be coalescing around Kerry quickly, he will need to work hard even after any decisive victory to generate enthusiasm among core Democrats before Republicans can put him on the defensive with his political base.

Without such work, Kerry’s early and lopsided victories might prove hollow. There may be strong anti-Bush sentiment, but Kerry has a long way to go to win the hearts and minds of core Democrats and to prove to swing voters, too, that he is indeed the candidate who can defeat Bush.