It's true, 39 states will have voted before Ohioans get a chance to weigh in on the presidential nominee contest. But that doesn't deter Michelle Dolgos. The Ohio State University graduate student helped found Buckeyes for Obama, http://my.barackobama.com. The college-based group has grown to 300 strong. They have hosted voter registration drives, papered campuses with Obama literature and raised money. Dolgos says they are pumped!
Bite: "Most of the people I've worked with haven't even worked on campaigns before. He's getting a lot of new people back into the process."
And there are some more experienced supporters taking to the campaign trail. Workers for two local unions sent volunteers to Iowa and New Hampshire working for Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, respectively.
What is exciting for newbies and veterans alike is that they see this election as a chance to make history, to shatter the glass ceiling for women, cross the racial divide or break with the past in some other big way.
Grassroots groups for several candidates say they can muster hundreds of workers in the Cleveland area, with nary an official organizer on the ground. Huckabee too has his admirers. Linda Harrington, warmed to him merely from seeing him on television.
"I got up immediately from the chair. I went to his web site http://hucksarmy.com/ . And that's where it began and it hasn't stopped since."
The stay-at-home mom, from East Liverpool, who home-schools two adopted daughters, describes herself as a "conservative" and says she finds Huckabee genuine. Harrington formed three regional online groups for Huckabee supporters in Ohio.
Members in the regional groups pass around DVDs of the Huckabee interview that so inspired Harrington. They also paint their car windows with the candidate's name. Her group also picked up the tab for pizza and pop for Huckabee's caucus volunteers in New Hampshire. She says Huckabees third-place finish there --far from depressing supporters -- energized them.
Harrington: "That's not bad for a guy who two months ago had no money and had no organization. He has a better organization than some of the big guys. You've just got whole families and groups of people who are going from state to state to help."
Ron Paul hasn't finished better than fifth in New Hampshire or Iowa but supporters remain enthused. Northeast Ohio supporters will get together tomorrow ( night in Cleveland. Jeff McNeely, a railroad conductor, says he expects a full house and that they will plan for a local push before the March 4th Ohio primary, http://ronpaul.meetup.com/178/?gj=sj2 . They plan to go door to door to win voters and will launch a local advertising campaign for Paul -- all at the expense of the local troops. McNeely says drastic measures are needed when your guy is closed out of debates and otherwise ignored by the mainline news media
McNeely: "we're like an army almost. We're resulute in our support of Ron Paul, it's just very disappointing to see the kind of coverage he gets."
Summit County Republican Party Consultant Angela McMillien says most official party organizations are willing to leave the Ohio primary campaigning to enthusiastic amateurs -- at least for now.
However, McMillien says, that doesn't mean there's no official campaign structure here.
"There are boots on the ground, but it's a skeleton crew of boots. Each of the campaigns has a campaign finance chairman in Ohio."
Former U.S. Senator Mike Dewine is John McCain's Ohio finance chief. Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giulilani also made fundraising appearances among big-money donors in Cleveland and Akron.
Cleveland attorney Tom Warren spent the holidays in New Hampshire working for Obama rather than with his family in Boston. He says this is his chance to participate in history.
"It's fascinating isn't it that the two leading candidates for the democratic nominee are the two that aren't the white guy. This is a seminal moment in history no matter what happens in the general election."
Conventional wisdom is that the Ohio primary will come too late to make a difference in determining the difference in picking party nominees. But if this years vote proves anything, it proves convention wisdom is often wrong.
Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3