Parties crank it up to get out the vote.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

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Democrats and Republicans may find themselves enraged or inspired by the candidates' TV ads and stump-speech zingers, or the pundits' predictions of one party's resurgence or another's demise.

But for the party members in Oregon battling for election victories, none of that means squat unless enough voters actually fill out their ballots, stuff them in their envelopes and get them to their elections offices before 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Most polls show the governor's race between Republican challenger Ron Saxton and Democratic incumbent Ted Kulongoski as too close to call. In that contest and others down the ticket, campaigns have ramped up their get-out-the-vote efforts to ensure that enough of their base supporters actually cast their ballots, and that enough undecideds and independents fall their way, to eke out victories.

"It's all about who can turn out their voters," said Lane County Republican Chairman Bob Avery. "It's neck-and-neck in the governor's race, so it's going to come down to who turns out their voters."

The Democrats did their part Monday with a rally on the University of Oregon campus. Kulongoski, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden and several Lane County legislative candidates threw out anti-Republican red meat and short-hand references to their own Democratic agenda on issues such as the environment, corporate taxes and health care.

And after evoking plenty of boos for the Republicans and cheers for themselves, the Democrats exhorted the 250 rallygoers to harness their anger and optimism in the campaign's final days.

"Sign up to volunteer. Sign up to tell everyone to turn your ballots in," Kulongoski urged the cheering crowd.

The "get-out-the-vote" rally may be an old standby in a world of automated robo-calling and microtargeting voters based on the cars they drive or the restaurants they eat in.

But Sara Bean Duncan, an intern with the Democratic National Committee, said the event still worked wonders in the drive to turn election-season bystanders into volunteers and voters to help Kulongoski.

"Some of my friends have been a little apathetic. But when I told them all he was going to be right here and they could hear him at the amphitheater, a lot of them came out," said the UO sophomore, who signed up 17 rally-goers to volunteer as phone-bank callers and door-to-door canvassers.

Lane County is seeing a lot of both gubernatorial candidates and their advocates this week. Saxton's spouse, Lynne, visited GOP volunteers to encourage their efforts Tuesday. Tonight Saxton and U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith will do the same, following up with an airport rally in Eugene on Thursday. And on Saturday, Kulongoski and other well-known Democratic officials will be in Eugene for another rally.

Val Hoyle, chairwoman of the Lane County Democrats, said the national voter mood - rising disapproval of a Republican president and the war in Iraq, and disgust with the Republican-led Congress - has energized her party's volunteer base in the final days before the election. But it also has caused her to fret.

`My biggest worry is that people think, `Oh, we're safe. It's not critical. We don't have to vote,' ' she said.

Both the Democrats and Republicans have special challenges in making sure they turn out the volunteers and the voters to push their candidates for governor over the top.

For Kulongoski, that is the political chasm that opened up between him and Oregon's public employees whose unions backed him in 2002. The next year, Kulongoski signed legislation curbing pension benefits and he imposed a wage freeze for state workers.

Unions punished the governor either by sitting out the May Democratic primary or backing rival Jim Hill, as the largest, Local 503 of the Service Employees International Union, did.

State child-support caseworker Annette Woodmark of Eugene, ,who attended Monday's UO rally, said she had no doubt that Kulongoski was the best choice for Oregon. And although she was working for his defeat a mere six months ago, she said looking back it was hard to be completely against the governor she helped elect.

"Even then, my heart was always a little bit with Ted," Woodmark said.

For Republicans, the national voter mood that seems to be running against their party may present their toughest challenge in getting out their votes. Saxton indirectly acknowledged this in his most recent TV ad.

"National politics are a mess, and I'm as angry as you are. But this election is about Oregon, and change," he says. "I'm a Republican, but I'll be with my party when it's right, and against it when it's wrong."

The candidate may find it necessary to convince skeptics of the Republican agenda of his independence. But Brad Kern, a Saxton campaign volunteer from Eugene, said he finds the anti-Republican mood invigorating. Listening to radio pundits on the left-leaning Air America network bash the president and party he supported in the 2004 campaign actually proved motivational, he said Monday.

"Three or four minutes of that and I was in the car on my way to make some calls," he said after finishing a shift in which he called or left messages for 50 Republican voters who had yet to turn in their ballots.

Oregon Republican Party Executive Director Amy Langdon said the party's "true believers" such as Kern aren't letting predictions or anti-Bush sentiments keep them away from the volunteer trenches. But she acknowledged that her party has struggled to match the excitement level - and volunteer effort - of two years ago, when Bush was running his re-election campaign.