TURF WARS

Team concept GOP's strategy for victory (Feoshia Henderson, 8/12/03, Kentucky Post)

Combining modern Internet technology with old-school groundwork, state Republican Party leaders are fanning out across the state and setting up shop in ten key cities (including Florence), in a bid to elect the state's first Republican governor in more than 35 years.

The statewide initiative, which party officials call "Team Kentucky," is a take on a similar strategy used in last year's statehouse and congressional races.

Organizing on a local level, the party will mobilize state, local and federal Republicans to promote its statewide ticket, headed this year by gubernatorial candidate Congressman Ernie Fletcher.

Team Kentucky will start with door-to-door and voter education efforts, culminating with a 72-hour campaign blitzkrieg of phone calls and advertising in the hours before Election Day on Nov. 4.

As far as get out the vote efforts are concerned, Republican's used to just hope that it would rain on election day to depress Democratic turnout . But now they're finally--especially after the embarrassing underperformance in the 1998 mid-term, when labor and civil rights groups handed them their keisters--taking ground campaigns seriously. It's another way George W. Bush and Karl Rove are revolutionizing the Party. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2003 8:00 PM