Californians carry Obama message by phone and in person
Volunteers including Donald Sutherland call voters in battleground states. Others are 'bluebirds,' people from blue states who travel to red states to promote the Democratic candidate.
In a far corner of a cavernous conference room, a white-haired man dialed the state of Virginia.
The caller with the distinctive voice said he was volunteering for Barack Obama and was looking for Rita.
"It's Donald Sutherland calling from California," he said.
The actor was one of 300 people in the basement of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza doing the same thing, phoning voters in the battleground states of Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, hoping to make history happen.
Sutherland was on a mission. He had been placing such calls since 6 a.m. and had been in the same spot the day before. He asked the person on the other end of the phone whether Rita had cast her vote, or needed help getting to the polls.
He got the answer he had hoped for -- she was voting as they spoke. He said thanks and dialed the next prospective voter on his list.
Next to Sutherland, Jane Harvey King, a jazz singer who cast her first vote for president in the 1950s when Adlai Stevenson ran, also worked the phones. One chair over, Zohreh Tamjidi, a Los Angeles real estate agent who arrived here from Iran as a teenager 34 years ago, did the same.
"This is my duty as a citizen," Tamjidi said. "I couldn't sit in my office making money today. I had to come here."
There were so many who volunteered at the Century Plaza that the organizers -- almost all of them volunteers too -- set up tables in the hallway.
They were lawyers, mothers, real estate agents, teachers, retirees, students and, this being L.A., actors. Some arrived early to make calls before work. Others came on their lunch hour. Most used their personal cellphones to make the calls.
"There are a whole host of ways to help," Alejandro Mayorkas, former U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said after spending an hour before work Tuesday morning making calls. "I made the time."
California is a state that was expected to vote heavily for Obama. California donors accounted for perhaps 20% of his record-setting $640 million-plus. In the final days of the election campaign, Californians provided even more for the Democratic nominee: They volunteered.
Even though California was not a swing state, Californians still mattered. Some took leaves from work to knock on doors and traveled to the battleground states of Virginia, Colorado, Ohio and others. They even have a name, "bluebirds," people from blue states who flock to Republican strongholds and swing states to help Obama's campaign.
