The Dems' Mr. Results

By KAREN TUMULTY

One of the tips Steve Rosenthal gives his new foot soldiers is this: When you come to a house with a fence, rattle the gate before opening it. Why? "Big dogs," he says, laughing. These are the things you learn when you have been at the get-out-the-vote game for more than two decades. The son of a shoe salesman, Rosenthal, 51, grew up on Long Island, N.Y., and got his start in politics organizing unions in New Jersey. Few in Democratic politics have shown the kind of results that Rosenthal did as head of the AFL-CIO's political operation from 1996 to 2002. In the 2000 election, union members accounted for only about 16% of the voting-age population but produced 26% of the votes; two of three union votes went to the Dems.

Now the rumpled Rosenthal is trying to work the same magic for the Democratic Party as a whole. He has $125 million at his disposal--including $10 million from billionaire George Soros--which is about seven times what the national Democratic Party spent getting out the vote in 2000. Rosenthal's America Coming Together is the largest of the new political-advocacy organizations known as 527s for the section of the tax code that created them. On Election Day, Rosenthal expects to have 45,000 paid workers on the streets rounding up every Democrat they can find to vote. The secret, he insists, is staying in touch with those he has signed up. "You talk to people about issues they care about. You talk to them a lot," he says. "You get as close as you can to them."

But you stay away from their dogs--and imposing white turkeys like the one recently encountered in West Virginia guarding a house with menace in its eye. Rosenthal laid down a challenge to his canvasser: Get past the turkey. It took a few tries, but it was worth the risk. Says Rosenthal: "It turns out there were four Democrats in that house." --By Karen Tumulty