“I think this year you’ll have not only people who say they will vote for him, but you will get a higher percentage of people who will actually be willing to do something for him. “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel this year,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic consultant who supervised the field operation for Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign in several battleground states. Now, campaign officials and other top Democrats said this was their best chance yet to convert enthusiasm among gay men and lesbians for Mr. Obama’s top gay donors had questioned his commitment to their issues. Before the marriage announcement, even many of Mr. Obama declared his support for the right of gay couples to marry, which strengthened his political potency among gay people. While gay men and lesbians have been one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs, supporting Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of about three to one in recent elections, the Obama campaign is capitalizing on what its strategists say is a perfect election-year opportunity. for Obama” placards, referring to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. In Chicago on Sunday, 300 of his campaign staff members and volunteers marched down Halsted Street through the heart of the gay district to chants of “Four more years! Four more years!” Along Fifth Avenue in New York, a group of about 200 Obama supporters who walked the parade route were cheered by crowds waving powder-blue “L.G.B.T. But most important, get commitments to volunteer.Īt times, the parades could have been confused for Obama campaign rallies. Levine was one of hundreds of Obama field staff members and volunteers who fanned out at a dozen gay pride celebrations across the country over the weekend with a meticulous set of marching orders from the Chicago campaign headquarters: Get names, cellphone numbers, and e-mail and home addresses. The long line outside the Duplex, a nightclub with views of the parade route: “They have nothing else to do now but sign up. A group of twenty-somethings huddled in the shade under a Starbucks awning trying to stay cool: “They’re perfect,” he said. To most passers-by, the tens of thousands of people who jammed the sidewalks of Greenwich Village on Sunday were just the typical tank-top-clad revelers of a gay pride weekend.īut to Aaron Levine, a 19-year-old, clipboard-toting volunteer sent there by the Obama campaign, everyone was a potential get.