Political front line, at front door

The last time Sam Gerace volunteered for a political campaign was in 1964, and the politician was Barry Goldwater. But on Friday the retired lawyer and two friends piled into his blue Volvo in Pittsburgh and drove halfway across the country, to campaign door to door for Howard Dean.

Alexi Bonifield showed up in Iowa with a similar sense of resolve, but by a different route: She sold off all her belongings, including her car, gave up her rented apartment in Nevada City, Calif., and boarded a "peace train," traveling with 35 other volunteers for Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

And Gary Erwin, an aluminum smelter from Howsville, Ky., is using five vacation days to canvass Des Moines homes for Rep. Dick Gephardt. "This election is so important to me," he says, proudly showing where Gephardt signed his "Backbone of Steel" union sign at a Sunday rally. "At least I can say I did something."

Call it the making of a president, Iowa style. While many Americans quietly stew over Iowa's and New Hampshire's ballyhooed roles in choosing presidents, the Iowa caucuses aren't, in fact, just about Iowa. Old-fashioned get-out-the-vote efforts have always been important here. But this year, candidates are drawing unprecedented numbers of volunteers from all over the country willing to skip work, brave 20-hour road trips, or sleep in a crowded bunkhouse that's 100 snowy yards from the toilets and showers.

Armed with leaflets, buttons, and cellphones, they're the front lines in a battle that will come down to a simple question of bodies - which candidate can get more Iowans out of the house Monday night, and into one of gymnasiums, libraries, even living rooms and kitchens, that serve as gathering points for Iowa's 1,993 precincts.

The Dean camp alone boasts an influx of 3,500 out-of-staters over three weeks. Thousands more are coming for Mr. Gephardt, Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards, and Mr. Kucinich. They are students and teachers, bankers and union workers, retirees and those too young to vote. For many, perhaps most, it's their first campaign. If they can't vote in one of the country's most important - and bizarre - political battles, they say, at least they can influence those who do.

"I've decided to do this instead of being angry all the time," says William Margolin, a retired mechanical engineer in his 80s, who drove out alone from Southfield, Mich., through a winter storm last week. Like many of the Dean volunteers, he's staying in a winterized camp 20 miles south of town, and just being on his feet all day, knocking on voters' doors, has been exhausting. But he's also exhilarated.

"They say Dean is a youth thing," he says, "but there are older guys here too."

The volunteers' work is far from glamorous. "There's no one home!" exclaims Cheryl Beseler after leaving a "Dean Times" newspaper at perhaps the 10th unanswered door in a row, late Sunday morning. Finally, at a house with a hog-shaped bell by the door and a plastic Virgin Mary in the front yard, a man answers her knock.

"You're talking to a hardened Republican," he tells her. "I wouldn't vote for Dean to save my life."

Ms. Beseler plugs away gamely, bringing up taxes and the deficit. Finally she sighs and admits defeat. "That's the first time I've had an Independent who was really a Republican," she says later. "But at least he has an opinion."

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