Parties bouncing off the satellites
Alicia Robinson
Like sudden snowstorms in colder climates, a flurry of campaign
offices has swept into Orange County in anticipation of the upcoming
election, and they’ll just as quickly melt away after Nov. 2.
In an effort to get out the vote in November, the Orange County
Republican Party will open a satellite office in Newport Beach in
early September, and Orange County Democrats opened a second office
in Santa Ana over the weekend.
For both parties, the additional offices hold campaign literature
and signs for voters, serve as meeting places and voter-registration
centers, and they house phone banks, where volunteers call people to
remind them to vote.
“They’re rallying points,” Orange County Democratic Party Chairman
Frank Barbaro said. “We have a major operation here in downtown Santa
Ana, but we’re fighting that our offices are too small to really
handle that amount of volunteers and the activity that is being
generated.”
The county GOP headquarters is in Costa Mesa, and its satellite
offices will be in Newport Beach, Anaheim and Yorba Linda, said Lee
Frodsham, who will head the Newport office.
“Our basic purpose is to cover all the precincts in Newport Beach
and Costa Mesa,” she said.
The Democrats’ goal is the same, to increase the party’s reach by
spreading out and to register more people to vote, Barbaro said.
Democrats have offices in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Huntington Beach and
South Orange County. They sidestepped Newport-Mesa because they
already have precincts in the area well-organized and didn’t see the
need to double up on the Huntington Beach office, Barbaro said.
It’s hard to pin down how much of voter turnout will be
attributable to political parties’ additional offices and lobbying of
voters, but analysts are reporting voters are already very engaged in
the upcoming election.
A survey released today by the Public Policy Institute of
California showed 64% of the state’s likely voters say they’re more
interested in politics now than during the 2000 election, and only 6%
say they haven’t chosen a presidential candidate.
Although many voters already know who they’ll pick as president,
and some elected offices have seemed decided since the March primary,
local political activists still think their satellite office
operations are worthwhile.
“I think it’s highly effective,” said Judy Franco, who organizes
precinct chairpersons for the Orange County GOP. “This particular
office in the past has had the highest voter turnout in the county,
but it is also a high Republican registration in [Newport Beach and
Costa Mesa].”
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