BOCA RATON, FLA. (By Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, LATimes) November 6, 2006 — Jewish voters received a pamphlet about Israel's fight with Hezbollah. Spanish speakers heard radio ads about Fidel Castro. Seniors got recorded telephone calls from crooner Pat Boone, now 72, about Social Security.

As Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. (R-Fla.) fights to keep his seat in Congress, he is drawing heavily from the Republican playbook of dividing voters by their backgrounds and interests and appealing to them with tailored pitches. His success — along with his party's hopes for hanging onto its congressional majorities — relies in part on databases and search tools used to identify sympathetic voters and move them to the polls.

 

Shaw's Democratic challenger has a far different strategy. Instead of specialized appeals, state legislator Ron Klein repeats a simple message to nearly every audience: Iraq is a mess, and it is time for a change.

That contrast underscores a central question to be answered Tuesday in this South Florida House district and other competitive races across the country: Which political force will prove stronger — the niche-marketing effort, led by GOP strategist Karl Rove and powered by computerized outreach methods, or the classic "throw the bums out" mood of an electorate uneasy with the Iraq war and unhappy with one-party rule?

"We'll find out soon," said Klein as he walked through one of the many affluent neighborhoods in this seaside district, trying to persuade voters to oust an incumbent who has served in Congress for a quarter-century.

As the two campaigns make their final appeals, the differences suggest that many of the advantages that have boosted Republicans to victory in the past — more money, redrawn congressional districts and the superior voter targeting demonstrated by Shaw's courtship of Jews, Latinos and seniors — may be less potent this time.

The moderate 22nd District is one of three in Florida alone considered vulnerable for the GOP. Nationwide, about three dozen House races are competitive. To control the House, Democrats need to gain 15 seats; for the Senate, they must pick up six.

Shaw began the campaign with an arsenal typical of GOP incumbents, including a head start on fund-raising. But voter anger and a sense among donors that Democrats could control Congress have put Klein close to financial parity.

Now, the race is considered winnable for the Democrats, and Shaw's best hope comes from the GOP strategy of narrow-casting and voter identification.

On Friday, as in GOP campaigns across the country, the Shaw team's "72-hour plan" got underway — its final effort to reach people who, according to their profile in the party's national database, are likely to favor Republican candidates.

At a field office in Boca Raton, dozens of volunteers turned up to knock on doors and talk to voters. A staffer distributed clipboards with printed pages of names, addresses and detailed maps.

The printouts came from the "Voter Vault," the GOP's national database, which tagged voters with labels showing why they were worth contacting: Some were dubbed "socos" (social conservatives) or "fiscos" (fiscal conservatives) or "soft Dems" (crossover voters). Each had already been identified as ready to favor Shaw. The goal was to persuade each one, using hints from the database, to make the effort to go to the polls.

Party leaders have built a 72-hour plan for every significant GOP race in the nation. The effort was developed by Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman after the 2000 election, in which Democrats outpaced the GOP in grass-roots activism and nearly won the presidency.

The "Voter Vault" is a central element of the plan, and the party invested more than $15 million to update the system this year. So far this election cycle, it has guided 24 million phone or in-person contacts to conservative voters.

Following the plan, over the campaign's final three days, GOP field offices in Shaw's district must file updated spreadsheets every three hours to the state GOP in Tallahassee, showing how many voters have been personally contacted. State party officials report that data to national headquarters, where staff members make sure that individual campaigns are meeting their goals.

By contrast, Klein believes that his broad appeal on Iraq and the need for change in Washington hold the keys to victory. Still, he too has scrambled to reach targeted groups.

Klein acknowledges that the GOP has an advantage in voter turnout, but said his campaign has spent a year building a field organization and a competing database. However, his database received only limited help from the national Democratic Party, and it has less detail than the GOP's.

Despite fewer resources, Klein's field director developed a program to reach seasonal residents, or "snowbirds," at their homes outside Florida. Klein's campaign has tried to identify residents of gated communities that are off-limits to candidates and canvassers, and to recruit volunteers within the walls. It also used a visit by former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, disabled in Vietnam, to reach out to veterans.

Klein says he has employed enough canvassers to contact 60,000 backers in the final three days; on Friday alone, the campaign says, it reached 7,000 people by phone or in person.

And Democrats are counting on additional help from an ambitious voter-contact program by labor unions, though it is not coordinated with Klein's campaign.

Yet Klein's campaign appears to be behind Shaw's, whose workers say they reached 15,000 people Friday and have a goal of contacting at least 100,000 in the campaign's closing days.

But for all of the sophistication of the GOP plan, there are signs it could fall short.

As one of Shaw's teams made its rounds Friday, carrying GOP door-hangers and dressed in T-shirts advertising the Republican candidate for governor, a voter identified as a Shaw supporter said she had no intention of supporting the Republican Party this year.

"I just don't know about the war," said Karen Rossen, 48, a dental office manager from Delray Beach. "I think the Democrats would be easier to deal with." A mountain of mail has arrived promoting Shaw and other Republicans, Rossen said, but she throws it all away, calling it "a waste of money."

Several voters targeted on one three-hour walk agreed to back the GOP ticket. But of 99 households assigned to this particular team of home-schooled teenagers, only 15 people were contacted directly. Many on the list had moved, or lived in buildings that banned solicitors. Two reacted angrily when asked whom they were voting for.

Nori Lapes, a longtime GOP volunteer, said she sensed a change in attitude this year as she canvassed. Some voters complained about the war and the House page scandal involving former GOP Rep. Mark Foley, who represented an adjacent district.

"Some people are more subdued," said Lapes, a clothing designer from Boca Raton.

But strategists say the power of the 72-hour plan is its ability to reach voters who might be hesitating. Lapes said she would spend 10 minutes or more standing in doorways, urging people to stick with the GOP.

"One man was so confused, he wasn't going to vote," she said. "But by the time I left, he had a smile on his face. I think he was convinced."

In addition to talking to individual voters, Shaw has used targeted messages to reach specific groups. He sent Jewish voters a pamphlet featuring pictures of him with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and wounded soldiers. He produced two radio spots in Spanish, even though the district has a minuscule Latino population.

Klein did not reach out to either group with specialized mailings, illustrating how the GOP remains more meticulous in searching for every possible vote. It also reflects the party's experience in 2000, when Shaw won by fewer than 600 votes.

After 2000, Shaw's district was redrawn by Florida's GOP-led legislature to include more Republicans. But this year, even some Democrats have heard from Shaw about his opposition to President Bush's stance on stem-cell research.

By Tuesday night, voters here and across the country will show whether such precision tactics can withstand the broader wave of anger that Klein hopes will send him to Washington. A poll in Sunday's Miami Herald showed Klein with a 10-point lead, suggesting that Democrats may soon be celebrating.

But there's another election in just two years, when Iraq and GOP scandals may not dominate the debate. So what would Democratic incumbents, forced to combat all of the Republican advantages, do then?

"Maybe we can learn from them in the future," Klein said of the Republicans' tactics.

If not, even Democratic strategists concede, their party could soon find itself relegated again to the back bench.