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].”