Jim Cutler stood curbside, shuffling voter information on a clipboard. He was giving up his Sunday for Barack Obama, preparing to canvass an especially Republican subdivision in the especially Republican Richmond suburb of Chesterfield County.
A sprinkler blast on already soaked ground told him and his small entourage to keep moving. The first two homes yielded no response. At the third, a resident peeked through the glass and said only “sorry.” Next door, a man walked into his garage and closed it, pretending not to be home when Cutler knocked.
For any Democratic campaign volunteer, even one as articulate and energetic as Cutler, the neighborhood of The Grove represented an especially arduous round of canvassing. Those who did answer the door, all seniors, had a common response: No thank you, I’m a Republican.
Many responded favorably when asked whether they would vote for Democrat Mark Warner, a popular former governor running for Senate, but that enthusiasm didn’t extend to the rest of the ticket.
Democrats don’t have realistic hopes of winning Chesterfield for Obama. The county went almost 2 to 1 for George W. Bush over John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, and handed Bush a victory in 2000 over Al Gore by nearly the same margin.
Instead, the Obama campaign is looking to manage losses in the strongest GOP fortresses enough to allow more populous, metropolitan areas to carry the commonwealth. That means venturing into neighborhoods — like The Grove — where Democratic canvassers are an unfamiliar sight.
In earlier national elections “everybody was taking everybody else’s neighborhoods for granted,” said Cutler, a geologist who lives in the nearby Smoketree community. That apathy is long gone. Now, the county has seen a flurry of local interest — more yard signs and neighborhood activism on both sides.
“People aren’t used to having the attention paid and seeing all the activity,” Cutler said.
