[U]RBANDALE, Iowa – In just 28 hours, the Iowa caucuses would begin. It was Sunday afternoon and Neal Sales-Griffin stood on 50th St. in this city of 40,000 just outside of Des Moines, canvassing for Bernie Sanders. He knew the clock was ticking.
The Chicago native said he had knocked on 125 doors so far this weekend. Mid-afternoon, the weather mild, he planned to hit another 50 by sunset.
“It’s game time,” he said. “This is game time, right now.”
Sales-Griffin grew up on the south side of Chicago, a tough neighborhood made famous by Jim Croce and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Still today, it is plagued by drug use, underfunded schools and gang activity. But Sales-Griffin got out. He attended college in an affluent suburb a few miles away, at Northwestern University. Now 28, Sales-Griffin runs a high-end experimental school in Chicago that offers classes exclusively in technology, called the Starter League.
A few months ago, he started Feeling the Bern. So he decided he’d rent a car, drive to Des Moines, snag a hotel room and spend the weekend working for the Vermont senator.
“I’ve never been more energized by a candidate in my entire life,” he said. “I’m all about the issues — the issues — actions. I was actually more for [Ralph] Nader than I was for Obama back in 2008 because of what he stood for.”
Sales-Griffin is charming and funny and positive. That helps when knocking on strangers’ doors.
In two hours with Sales-Griffin, the energetic Sanders volunteer cordially took them all on, talking politics with Sanders and Clinton supporters, and even some Republicans.
When someone wasn’t home, he left a caucus card on their door. When dogs barked, he ignored them. When homeowners told him they were planning to caucus for Sanders, he smiled. Once when that happened, he even jumped up on his tippy toes.
He was always cordial. Yet he always pushed to change their minds.
“I got a Ben Carson supporter to flip the other day,” he said, proudly.
The most crucial work for Sanders canvassers is to sway potential Clinton supporters. When Sales-Griffin knocked on the door of a woman leaning towards the former secretary of state, Sales-Griffin delivered an eloquent, concise counterargument that just may have done the trick:
Some homeowners in middle-class neighborhoods put up signs begging political canvassers to stay away. And a number of Iowans told Sales-Griffin and his team that they were sick of all the phone calls and text messages from Team Sanders.
“I don’t know if I’m going to keep supporting Sanders if you keep calling and texting me,” one woman said, half-joking.
Iowa State Director Pete D’Allesandro is the man behind the phone calls and the text messages (he runs the general get-out-the-caucus strategy.) He usually wears a black Sanders hoodie. He says he doesn’t own a tie.
The intense voter outreach, which can seem incessant to Iowans, is the juice that keeps D’Allesandro fired up. His political mantra is: “Democracy is a verb.”
“Our job is, between now and Tuesday, getting to their doors as many times to remind ‘em: Monday night’s the caucus, you’ve gotta be there by 7, try to get there by 6:30, so you don’t get shut out.”
While Sales-Griffin was canvassing in Urbandale, D’Allesandro was working out of the main Sanders headquarters in Des Moines. The bustling office is tucked between a grocery store and an H & R Block at a suburban strip mall.
Volunteers were phone-banking. Staffers worked in a big spacious room, empty Red Bull energy drinks and Starbucks coffee cups littering the tables, some with that last drop or two still in the bottom.
Homemade signs on the wall read “Bern the Banks” and “Hipsters for Bernie.”
The last Des Moines Register poll before caucus day — released Saturday — put Clinton a hair ahead of Sanders in the Hawkeye state, 45 percent – 42 percent, within the margin of error.
D’Allesandro acknowledges how close the race is, but thinks Sanders and the campaign have sunk enough time and resources into Iowa for caucus results to be promising.
Sanders attended 113 events over 19 trips to the Hawkeye State. There are now 26 major offices here, and another 62 temporary staging areas have been temporarily opened to facilitate organizing and canvassing for the caucus.
Transportation on caucus day is crucial. D’Allesandro is confident.
“I think we’ve probably rented every van in a four-state area, just in case,” he said, smiling.
With the race so close, Team Sanders has ramped up outreach to high school students and the Latino community.
Iowa caucus rules allow 17-year-old students who will be 18 by the general election to participate, and Sanders is hoping to take advantage of this rule. Politico first reported the strategy, which includes sending text messages and YouTube ads directly to young Iowans.
Sanders has also been meeting regularly with high school students during private meetings before rallies. He also talked to civics classes throughout the state, advisers said.
“It kind of happened organically,” D’Allesandro said. “High school kids were walking into our offices all summer asking for T-shirts, asking for buttons, saying ‘Hey I already started a Bernie group at my high school, can I get some swag to bring back?’”
Another key, yet small, demographic in Iowa that Sanders is targeting are Latinos.
A few miles away from the Des Moines headquarters is El Malecon, an event center and bar near the Des Moines airport. The walls are decorated with Corona beer signs and a chalk board advertising South of the Border drink specials.
Tacos and burritos wait on the bar as members of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa hold a training session about how the caucuses work. It’s an organizing event aimed at giving Latino Iowans a louder voice in national politics.
Near the bar is Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., the most high-profile Latino to endorse Sanders.
Grijalva, along with Chicago commissioner Chuy Garcia, spent Sunday morning stumping on behalf of Sanders to a crowd of mostly Latino workers at a meatpacking plant in Marshalltown.
Congressman Grijalva said it’s important for Latinos to be politically active, and with the race so close, he hopes to get Latinos out in force Monday to caucus for Sanders.
“The Latino community in Iowa understands that while they might be five or six percent of it, in a race this close — and as contested as this one — they could play a pivotal role,” Grijalva said.
While Sanders has been critical of recent deportation raids by the Obama administration, Grijalva said Latinos connect to many other parts of Sanders’ platform.
One of the 50 or so Latinos at the caucus training session is Hector Salamanca Arroyo, a 22-year-old undocumented immigrant living in Des Moines. While he can’t caucus because of his undocumented status, he can still serve as a precinct captain.
Arroyo said he supports Sanders’ proposals on the environment and education, as well as immigration reform.
“I want to see someone who runs a progressive agenda but also encompasses a lot of progressive ideals, and I think Bernie Sanders does that,” Arroyo said.
While the campaign is vigorously courting various voting blocs, Sanders himself acknowledges the difficulties getting them out to caucus on a cold winter night.
“My prediction is that if tomorrow night there is a large voter turnout we win,” Sanders said near the end of a packed bus tour in Marshalltown. “On the other hand, if there is a low voter turnout, we’ll probably lose.”
But Sanders made the case for high turnout, telling voters “if you are not fighting for your rights, who’s going to fight for you?”
The powerful “don’t want you to participate,” Sanders said.
