Mayor Bloomberg and Fernando Ferrer are amassing huge get-out-the-vote efforts for Election Day, with the Bloomberg campaign claiming a volunteer army of 50,000 – the largest in recent city history.
As the battle enters its final days, ordinary New Yorkers, passionate about their choice for mayor and eager to get their candidate’s supporters to the polls, are being unleashed on neighbors, friends and family members.
“They need to create excitement in the last week of the campaign, particularly to show a presence and make people understand that there is an actual race,” said veteran political consultant Joe Mercurio.
Their mission: to “leave the impression that it could go one way or the other,” Mercurio said.
After all, the consultant noted, a political pitch from an average Joe – complementing the barrage of ads and appearances – “holds more weight.”
The Ferrer campaign’s nine field offices have been inundated with calls from volunteers willing to help elect the city’s first Latino mayor, officials said.
“Right now, we’re able to say were going to have thousands of real volunteers,” said Patrick Gaspard, Ferrer’s deputy campaign manager. “These are individuals who will not be compensated in any way. They’ll be knocking on doors, giving out bits of literature.”
Gaspard said the estimated 2,000 volunteers are already working and “are not there for the free coffee.
“They’re going into Mitchell-Lama and public housing projects, and they are having real conversations with people, getting real commitments from people, pounding the pavements, going to the supermarkets, hair salons.”
Bloomberg, meanwhile, has enlisted volunteers on a grand scale – even making a pitch on the Internet.
“We’re almost at 50,000 volunteers. I’d say we’re a few thousand short,” Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, told The Post.
The mayor’s message to his volunteers: Don’t let soaring poll numbers numb you.
At an event for Jewish New Yorkers, Bloomberg brought in former Mayors Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani to make the point.
“Polls don’t mean a damn thing. I learned that in every election that I was in, sometimes to great disappointment and sometimes to great glee,” Giuliani told supporters.
“This is a tough election, no matter what anybody says,” Bloomberg told a Chinatown gathering.
“It’s going to depend on getting people out to vote. Having volunteers makes all the difference in the world. What we’ve got to do on Nov. 8th is get people who like the direction the city is going and want to continue it to come to the polls.”
Both campaigns have several unions doing get-out-the-vote operations, with the Local 1199 of the health-care workers union throwing its considerable weight behind the Ferrer campaign.
The powerful janitors and building-service workers union, meanwhile, has committed to providing Bloomberg 2,000 volunteers on Election Day.