Josh Mackey trekked from Atlanta to New Hampshire late Thursday night – just in time for a snowstorm that shuttered businesses and canceled campaign events, even in this winter-hardened state. Mackey spent most of his first day inside a hotel as the snow fell, itching to get outside.
That’s why he was grinning ear-to-ear when he finally arrived at a middle school at dusk on Friday, just in time for a rally for Republican presidential hopeful Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“It’s absolutely worth it,” Mackey said. “I’ve never been as interested in a presidential candidate as I am now. And I want to play my part.”
Over the next few days, he and a knot of friends who also traveled from Georgia could be dispatched to knock on doors in small New Hampshire towns. They could be assigned to dial up voters from a strip mall south of the capitol. Or they could be tasked with sending postcards reminding supporters elsewhere an election is near.
“We don’t care what it is. We just want to help,” said Seth Millican, another Rubio supporter from Georgia.
They're among a swath of locals — Republicans and Democrats — who aren't waiting until the Peach State gets a chance to vote on March 1 to make their mark in this downright unpredictable election cycle. Georgia volunteers and elected officials alike have fanned out across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in recent weeks to stump for their candidates and do whatever it takes to make a difference in the fight for the White House.
That painstaking behind-the-scenes work is such a vital part of American democracy that Mercer University political scientist Chris Grant decided his students needed to see it for themselves.
“From an educational perspective, I think it’s hard to describe what really goes on in these early events unless you can witness it and see it,” Grant said. “So much of the momentum that comes out of these events determines who gets the nomination.”
The professor and more than a dozen nascent political scientists arrived in New Hampshire in the wee hours Friday with a full slate of candidates to observe. The trip follows a visit to Iowa last week.
The Mercer contingent braved the snow and made a morning stop for Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. They plan to swing by rallies for the winners of the Iowa caucuses — Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Democrat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — later in the weekend. Grant also made sure GOP firebrand Donald Trump is on the schedule.
The students must ultimately choose a candidate to campaign for ahead of Tuesday’s primary in order to experience the grind of politicking.
“I think we underestimate this sort of mobilization of volunteers and the groundwork that really goes into these early events,” Grant said. “These candidates are winning based on a massive organizational effort and a lot of people who really believe in their cause and are there because they want to help.”
He points to Cruz, the brash conservative Texan who secured Iowa with a network of about 12,000 volunteers. The ground game, Grant said, “really does make a difference.”
For Andrew Bryant, a 20-year-old Mercer sophomore, that difference came in the form of switching political teams. Bryant traveled to Iowa in recent weeks to campaign for Clinton, but found himself volunteering for the Bernie Sanders campaign at a friend’s request.
They canvassed community colleges. They knocked on doors. They asked people to come to caucus, and they worked the phone bank.
And then — to his surprise — he began “feeling the Bern,” he said.
“I enjoyed the grass-roots feeling of the campaign office that we were at and I enjoyed the people I met with his campaign,” Bryant said.
He’s now planning to volunteer for Sanders in Georgia and in South Carolina in the coming weeks.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat who has recently traveled to Iowa and South Carolina for Clinton, sees his role as not just encouraging voters, but the volunteers themselves.
“At the end of really hard campaigns, everybody is exhausted and you never know what push, what message, what word encourages the volunteers to keep going,” he said.
Volunteers such as Kathy Hildebrand, one of three co-chairs of the Gwinnett County Cruz campaign, probably don’t need a push.
Hildebrand paid her own way to Iowa ahead of the caucus, taking with her five dozen iced sugar cookies — which she purchased at $2 a pop — in the design of the Cruz logo. Within hours of arriving, Hildebrand and a group of fellow Georgia volunteers made their way to Cruz’s headquarters, where they chatted with Cruz’s wife and father, thanks to her sugary calling card.
“My cookies got me access everywhere,” Hildebrand gushed this week.
She’s skipping New Hampshire but plans to return to the Cruz camp in South Carolina ahead of the Feb. 20 GOP primary, she said. There, she’ll likely employ the lessons she learned while working the phone bank back in Iowa: patience and persistence.
Some volunteers end a phone call if the recipient isn’t a Cruz supporter, she said. Hildebrand likes to engage and ask: Who is your second choice?
“I got about 200 calls in each day. You could call me a slacker, but I talked to some people for 25 minutes,” she said. “I don’t have a Trump ego, but I know I made a difference.”
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