Chants rang through the school courtyard as the students formed a circle for one last practice before heading out to the streets of Harlem Tuesday.
“G-O-T-V! Get out the vote! G-O-T-V! Get out the vote!”
The students at the Harlem Prep Democracy Charter School – not one older than 14 – were ready for action on Election Day. They filed out of the playground single file to head to a nearby subway station to pass out leaflets.
Democrats and Republicans mounted an all-out effort to get voters to the polls across the nation Tuesday in the final push of a billion-dollar campaign that reached all the way into the Harlem schoolyard.
New Voters Hit The Streets
At the Obama campaign office on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Jennifer Moore said this was her third election and the first time she has ever volunteered. She spent the morning signing in other volunteers and sending them out to the neighborhood’s busiest intersections.
“We have people on the streets passing out literature and people at different phone bank locations in Harlem,” said Moore, 27. “I wanted to make sure that I could go to sleep at night knowing that I did everything I could to ensure that Obama won.”
The wave of young volunteers brought more than a rush of energy to the Obama effort — it also brought new ideas that went beyond the traditional phone banks and leafleting. For young voters on Tuesday, blogging, texting and social networks were just as important as a fleet of busses.
“I started getting e-mails and that’s when I got involved,” said Moore, a small-framed woman with short black hair, dressed in an Obama T-shirt.
“I can contribute and it really matters. It’s easy too with Facebook and texting because it’s already part of your daily routine,” she said.
Young Republicans Hold Their Own
First time voters did not play as big a role in the Republican vote in New York this year, but that doesn’t mean young Republicans were sitting on the sidelines. The New York Young Republican Club had an increase from 12 members in 2001 to 250 members this year, including a small group of first-time voters, in particular newly naturalized citizens.
But in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly six-to-one, Republican groups didn’t have as much money to spend. And their get-out-the-vote efforts tended toward the more traditional phone banking and literature blitzes.
“We have our own blog, but mostly we contribute on other people’s blogs,” said Lynn Krogn, 27, the club president. “We’re active, but we’re not as active as we want to be.
“We know that we are dealing with the bluest of the blue states here but we still have at least 100 people today handing out literature on the street,” Krogn said at a hall on West 51st Street where she was getting ready for an election-night party. “It is not just about the national effort though. It is about the local (races) too and we are not just going to hand it over to the Democrats carte-blanche.”
On Staten Island, the borough with the most Republicans, the Richmond County Young Republicans focused on the Assembly campaign of Joe Cammarata and the Senate campaigns of Andy Lanza and Lou Tobacco.
“We (are) doing some door-to-door campaigning, where we will actively knock on people’s doors and talk about our candidates,” said Anthony Reinhart, a member of the club. “We almost always find people receptive to this kind of grassroots campaigning.”
Young Democrats on the Rise
College Dems of New York saw an increase from 700 members last year to 1,000 members this year and registered 11,000 new voters on college campuses in New York, according to club president Dan Levin, 21.
“Obama has so had so much more success in generating the youth vote,” he said. “You don’t hear or see that many students for McCain doing get out the vote efforts in New York or even online.”
– With Sophia Tewa
