West San Jose Resident

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Obama sets up shop near San Jose State University

By Stephen Baxter

With absentee ballots in the mail, the presidential primary race is heating up across San Jose in anticipation of the Feb. 5 election.

Barack Obama's presidential backers fueled the fire by opening a new campaign office in San Jose on Jan. 14 at 410 E. Santa Clara St. At its opening, the campaign office near San Jose State University was pumped with energy from students and residents who chanted and waved Obama signs.

Mari Houssni, a 45-year-old part-time high school teacher, has been working on the Obama campaign since March 2007. Obama supporters considered opening a campaign office in the Almaden Valley, but after Obama clinched the Iowa caucuses, a supporter offered to halve a monthly rent to $1,000 to use an office near State Jose State University.

"We have a ton of young people ready to go," she said. "They're fired up."

Like other campaigners, her team combs voter rolls and calls Democrats to remind them to vote and gives a pitch for their candidate. On Jan. 5, Houssni had 13 people at her house. In four hours of phone banking, they called more than 600 people.

Supporters also take the phone lists home, and her group's goal is to make 1,000 calls a day.

"People are doing calls in their pajamas," Houssni said.

Others campaigns are also ramping up, including San Jose Republicans who are working for several candidates.

Signs supporting presidential candidate Ron Paul have showed up on several highway overpasses and fences, and backers have been knocking on doors on his behalf.

San Jose Ron Paul supporter David Cameron says he has never worked on a campaign before, but he started organizing South San Jose residents in June 2007. His group has met on several Saturdays to canvass neighborhoods, and members have printed T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers.

"There's a lot of work occurring at a local, grassroots level," he said.

Cameron added that he was drawn to Paul, a former Libertarian, through his writings. Paul's views on the war in Iraq, civil liberties and the economy struck a chord with him, Cameron said.

Campaigning in a largely Democratic county has sometimes been challenging, he noted, but his group now numbers 360 and many connections have been made online at sites such as www.Meetup.org.

Campaigners for Republican candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney did not return calls for comment, but each campaign has put out delegate slates for California.

In California, primary voters will choose the Republican candidate in a winner-take-all system. The candidate who gets the most votes wins all the delegates in the state. Those delegates vote for that candidate at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn. in September.

On the Democratic side, primary candidates win delegates based on the proportion of votes they get in California. Those delegates will choose their presidential nominee at their convention in Denver in September.

Patricia Park, California deputy communications director for the Hillary Clinton campaign, said her group has been operating large campaign offices out of San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as some other offices and supporters' homes.

Closer to home, Clinton's camp has been meeting at volunteers' houses in San Jose and calling dozens of Democrats each night in "Bring your own phone" parties.

The night of the Iowa caucuses--Jan. 3--was rainy in San Jose, but San Jose Councilwoman Nora Campos managed to gather a few dozen Clinton supporters at her house to watch the results and make calls for Clinton.

"I'm always excited to have Democrats in my home," Campos told supporters who were packed into her living room and kitchen watching CNN. At the party, Clinton campaign leaders from San Francisco distributed lists of phone numbers for registered Democrats and instructed supporters on how to make calls.

Campos said she met the New York senator for a few minutes earlier in the campaign and was confident in her leadership.

Campos said, "We talked about what she's going to do when she becomes the first woman president. She's going to do a phenomenal job."

Political analysts say the Republican and Democratic races are wide open, and extended campaigning means that California will have a bigger role in selecting each party's presidential nominee than in past primaries that took place in June.