Word: algona
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...recent graduates, blissfully color-blind, who spent patient months as organizers out in the most rural counties. Obama would pay tribute to these organizers at each of his events, calling them to the stage, giving them props - and it was surprising how often the local residents in places like Algona and Mt. Pleasant would mention to me how extraordinary these kids were. They reminded me, in classic, solipsistic boomer fashion, of my own generation? of the remarkable political activists who went down to Mississippi to register black voters and marched against another war, and came to politics in the Robert...
...intention is to try to get us to back down," said Kevin Hollinger, the pastor of Algona's First Baptist Church and a letter recipient. Like dozens of other evangelical leaders in Iowa, Hollinger has personally endorsed Huckabee, a fellow Baptist pastor, while encouraging his church membership to participate in the caucuses. In Iowa, polls show that Huckabee has a significant advantage among evangelical voters over his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, a Mormon who has courted the support of evangelical leaders across the country with more mixed success...
...Algona, a town of about 5,500, Mike Rusch has taken that message to heart. A Huckabee supporter and church elder, he has been talking to his neighbors about the importance of attending the caucus, even though he is a registered independent who has never before participated in the event. "We will be making sure that our friends and neighbors have a ride so they can get there," Rusch said...
...said he is more interested in getting people to the caucus than in bending their ears about supporting Huckabee. "Rural Iowa, or rural Minnesota, in some ways, it's sort of timeless," he said of politicking in Algona. "It's still a lot of small-town elbow rubbing. It's not organized. It takes place over a piece...
...talk about the importance of the "ground game" in Iowa, which is shorthand for an organization's ability to schlep voters to the polls on caucus night. Journalists make scholarly pronouncements about which candidates have the best ground game, but here's a secret: journalists have no idea. In Algona, I spoke to Bill Farnham, a stockbroker, who praised the local Obama organizer, a young man named Nate Hundt, for really ingratiating himself with the community. But Clinton may have the dynamite organizer in Pella; Edwards, in Greenfield. Ground games are unknowable...