Amid pizza boxes and laptops, Kelliher rallies her troops

By Mike Kaszuba

The DFL headquarters just off Lake Street in Minneapolis, where Margaret Anderson Kelliher was expected shortly, looked more like a college dormitory early Friday afternoon. Pizza boxes were perched on a table, an "I Am A Shameless Agitator" button hung on a wall and a dozen campaign workers, most in their 20s, slouched on a couch or sat on the floor staring into laptop computers.

On a big board, an announcement said Jimmy John's would be served for lunch.

The cheers began when Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, arrived wearing a helmet and pushing his bicycle, grew louder when Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak quickly followed and grew loudest when Kelliher, wearing a pale pink shirt, appeared at the door. "We can leave no voter at home," Kelliher said as the crowd pressed close to hear her, taking pictures and later hugging her.

Within minutes, Kelliher had put on a headset, sat down at a computer and was talking to Phyllis in Brooklyn Center. "Can I count on your vote in the primary?" she asked. "Not yet, huh." Then it was on to Donald in Edina, and Rita in Eden Prairie. She made another call, listened and then clicked a button that said "lean Dayton" as she continued to talk. "Now, you have heard about my senior property tax cap?" she asked. After pausing to hear the answer, Kelliher replied: "Well, this would help you even more, but all right, I hope you'll think about it."

Seconds later it was over, and Kelliher moved on to the next call. "Four out of five isn't bad," she said to a young campaign worker sitting next to her.

Off to the side, Hornstein was downplaying the latest poll, this one showing Mark Dayton with a 43 percent to 27 percent lead over Kelliher. "Those polls have been notoriously inaccurate," he said. His anecdotal stories from days of door knocking, while admittedly less scientific, "shows a close race", he explained.

"I just got hung up on -- it happens," said Rybak, who made phone calls for roughly a half an hour. As he readied to leave Rybak, who narrowly lost the DFL endorsement to Kelliher, said he had helped Kelliher on several occasions. Would he be helping between now and Tuesday? Well, said Rybak, he had to prepare the city's budget and then there was a family vacation he had planned. But before he left, a campaign worker shoved a computer printout into Rybak's hands -- a list of Rybak supporters from his own gubernatorial campaign. "He's going to call those people [and] get them on board with Margaret," explained Sarah Clarke, a party coordinator.

Sabra Corcoran, a 23-year-old University of Minnesota graduate, was already on board with Kelliher, but she admitted it had taken awhile. Corcoran said she had worked on Rybak's gubernatorial campaign, and now sat making phone calls for Kelliher. "It took a couple of months, but I came around," she said.

Long after Kelliher and Rybak had left John Gunyou, Kelliher's lieutenant governor candidate, was still at it. He seemed to be enjoying the challenge and, at one point, sat back in the chair with his hands clasped behind his head as he casually chatted with a caller. "The economy is the issue," Gunyou said, agreeing with the caller. "I've got five kids and two of them are out of work and have jobs that they really don't want to work in. I worry more about my kids and my grand kids than myself, probably at this point."