Since McKay Coppins reported about the Romney campaign’s efforts to energize the South Carolina primaries with volunteers from out of state Mormon colleges, which has been linked by Profxm, I thought that a quick note to put the event into context might be in order.
Every campaign is trying to swell its volunteer force by bringing in people from out of state. When I was the co-director of the Obama campaign in Prince George’s Coutny, MD, for example, we depoyed over 3,000 volunteers to Virginia for the general election campaign in 2008 after helping out in various states during the primaries.
BYU and Bob Jones University are notorious for supplying volunteers to Republican campaigns across the nation. In part, their prominence may reflect Democratic paranoia but the real reason is obvious:
There aren’t that many places with a high concentration of conservative young people with disposable time to volunteer.
In this case, it’s an easy story to tell because the Mormon Mitt Romney receives help from Mormon college students. In reality, however, BYU volunteers routinely come in support of conservative gentile candidates in states like Virginia and California. Likewise, you can be sure that somewhere in Florida, there will be busloads of student volunteers from Bob Jones University supporting this or that candidate.
Since they won’t be Mormons campaigning for a Mormon, the media will be less sensitive to their appearance.
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