Campaigners move into high gear toward end of election

It is almost election time in Bloomington. Two men greet Brad Wisler, 2nd district City Council Republican incumbent, at the Village Deli on a busy Thursday morning. \n“I’ve seen your signs; you’re definitely winning the sign race,” one tells him. “I’ll vote for you.”\nA few blocks over at the Monroe County Democratic Party headquarters on East Third Street, Susan Dabkowski, Mayor Mark Kruzan’s campaign manager, instructs IU student AnnElyse Gibbons, the campaign’s student volunteer manager and student outreach coordinator, to address thank you notes to more than 200 of the campaign’s recent contributors. The election is less than a week away.\nMailings, phone calls, yard signs, door-to-door visits and public appearances illustrate the political campaigning that has taken place in Bloomington this fall. Volunteers and candidates have invested vast amounts of their time and money to political campaigning activities. In the weeks before election day, campaigning efforts have increased as volunteers attempt to sway voters before they visit the polls. \nStrategies vary among Monroe County’s candidates. \n“Meeting face to face is the most effective way to campaign at the local level; you might as well walk up to their door and say hi,” Wisler said. \nWisler is running for city council and believes that using mass media, such as television and radio, would be unnecessary for his political campaign. The vast majority of money spent on his campaign goes to sending out literature.\n“It would be overkill really,” Wisler said. \nOn the other hand, mayoral candidate David Sabbagh and incumbent Mayor Mark Kruzan have aired four debates this fall on Bloomington’s television and radio stations to get their message out.\n“There’s not a one size fits all,” Dabkowski said.\nCandidates’ approaches to campaigning also differ among incumbents and those running for a position for the first time.\nThere are advantages to running as an incumbent, Wisler said. He has met a lot of people who have worked on his campaign that he did not know before his term on city council. \nAlso, as an incumbent, the candidate has already established name recognition, he said. \nDabkowski agreed that name recognition was important to a political campaign.\n“The first thing you have to do is raise awareness,” Dabkowski said. “Get the name out there.”\nYard signs also help raise awareness about a candidate. A detailed map of Bloomington stretches from floor to ceiling on a wall at the Democratic headquarters. More than 500 blue pins cover the city, representing the circulation of yard signs for Kruzan. \nBloomington resident and volunteer Damian Dittmer organized the yard sign database and distribution. \n“I’m a Democrat and, by God, I want everyone to know I’m a Democrat,” Dittmer said. \nDabkowski and other volunteers at the Democratic headquarters focus more on targeting the swing voters and the occasional voters in the weeks prior to the election. The swing voters need persuasion, and the occasional voters need motivation, Dabkowski said. \nTechnology has enabled those working on political campaigns to create databases of voting records that locate these voters, Dittmer said. It has allowed many candidates and volunteers to target specific voters in Bloomington this election season. \nThe Web site is critical, Wisler said. E-mail, automated lists of volunteers, press releases, pledge donations and volunteer opportunities are all made available through technology.\nVolunteers like Dittmer dedicate about four to five hours a day, five days a week to political campaigning. Dittmer said Kruzan wrote a letter to an appeals court judge for him in an unemployment suit. He considers his work on Kruzan’s campaign to be returning a favor.