Inside the Democrats' Plan to Save Arkansas—and the Senate

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/inside-the-democrats-plan-to-save-arkansasand-the-senate/379028/

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A street in Pine Bluff, Arkansas ( Paul Sableman/Flickr

PINE BLUFF, Arkansas—No sign announces the purpose of this little storefront, squeezed between a Bestway Rent to Own and a Rent-a-Center in a dilapidated shopping center. But the words hand-lettered in black and red marker on three pieces of paper taped to the window—"Register to Vote Here"—and a cluster of placards for candidates give it away: It is a Democratic Party field office.

Democrats aren't advertising this office and 39 others like it that are scattered around Arkansas—in fact, their locations are a closely guarded secret. When I visited last week, having tracked it down through creative public-records sleuthing, I took Chita Collins, the field organizer on duty there, by surprise. But I wanted to see the evidence of what Democrats have been claiming they're building in states like this one, and what could be crucial to their uphill quest to keep the Senate: an Obama-style community-organizing effort of unprecedented scale for a non-presidential election.

The office in Pine Bluff is a cavernous, mostly empty space. Six full-time, paid staff work out of the unit, which is open seven days a week. Long tables line the right side of the room; three staff offices—messy and largely uninhabited thanks to some recent water damage—line the back. A long list of rules scribbled on a paper tacked to the wall begins with these two bullet points: "Goals are mandatory. Meetings are mandatory." Another handwritten sheet bears a quotation from Barack Obama: "Yes we can."

Every weekday morning and evening, this space fills up with volunteers. Some stay in to make phone calls; others are sent out with a list of addresses to knock on doors, looking for voters. (On weekends, the effort intensifies.) Weeks like this, when it's 95 degrees out with 50 percent humidity, it is punishing work, but they have been at it for months, and they will not stop until November. "Oh yeah," says Collins, a friendly Pine Bluff native in her 40s, when I tell her I'm trying to confirm this field organization really exists. "We real."