Arielle Holland/The Hoya John Edwards slaps out of his tour bus to begin campaigning in South Carolina for the first southern primary.
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Candidates appear to be perfectly manufactured. Their hair is done by stylists, suits and ties are picked out by consultants, speeches are written by professionals and messages are tested by pollsters. They run professionally-made commercials and appear only at scheduled events.
Presidential campaigns appear, from the outside, to be exclusive, polished, highly organized and well-planned.
But, as a group of four Georgetown students that traveled to South Carolina learned this weekend, appearances can be deceiving.
In today’s seven democratic primaries, the candidates will wait for results to come in so they can make appearances on network television and give prepared responses, but the people who work on the campaigns are not nearly as composed.
In South Carolina, the first Southern primary, John Edwards’ campaign staff will spend today taking voters to their polling places, making phone calls and holding up posters at intersections to increase visibility.
They will be running on no sleep and pacing across the office until every vote is counted. And once the final results are in the volunteers will take a deep breath and get ready for the next state.
South Carolina is, for the Edwards campaign, the most important state of the primary season. Edwards has said that he must win South Carolina to remain a viable candidate because he must prove he can carry the South.
So while campaigning has gone on across the country, South Carolina has long been the focus of Edwards’ attention.
Considering the importance of South Carolina to the Edwards campaign, one would expect an enormous office with an army of volunteers. The staff and headquarters, however, are personal and intimate.
All the volunteers and interns know each other on a first-name basis and the office looks like it should be the headquarters for a local city council candidate, not one of the front-runners for the democratic presidential nomination.
When the office was opened in June the space was adequate and the amount of supplies was ample, but the campaign has only grown since then, especially since Edwards’ strong showing in Iowa.
At one time the space was organized, but by the weekend before the primary it is in complete disarray. Newspaper articles are tacked up to every wall, flyers are stacked on every flat surface and phone chords and computer wires cover the floor.
Throughout the day, everyday, people stop into headquarters asking for information, buttons, posters, anything with Edwards on it. And by the Saturday before the primary, the office has run out of everything and the staffers are taking the buttons off their own shirts and pulling the posters off the walls to hand out to those who ask.
The way the staffers are willing to give up their own buttons and stickers to potential voters is demonstrative of the entire Edwards campaign.
Since the campaign office opened, the staff has been going door-to-door and making phone calls to every possible primary voter.
“The ideal would be to have John Edwards go to every door,” said Rachel Ryckman (COL ’04), a Georgetown student who went to Columbia to help the Edwards campaign for the weekend, “but since he can’t, we are the personal touch.”
“The volunteers are incredible,” said Mike Lowry, an intern with the Edwards campaign since last summer. “We couldn’t accomplish nearly as much without them.”
Lowry also said that volunteers like Ryckman, who traveled nine hours to help with the campaign, make a very powerful statement because their dedication makes the voters more responsive to their message.
From California lawyers to North Carolina high school students, the people who have given their time to the Edwards campaign appear diverse.
The campaign, especially in South Carolina, is a family affair. Although Edwards split his weekend between South Carolina and New exico, both his parents and his daughter spent their time in the Palmetto State. On Friday, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards, John’s parents, spent the day in Greenville, S.C., canvassing.
“We were knocking on doors and talking about the things [John] wants to do,” Wallace Edwards said.
Later that night, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards returned to Columbia to make phone calls to potential voters.
“I’ve been getting an excellent response,” Edwards’ father said of the calls he has made. “People want to talk, they know John is working for working people.”
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