Chicago, Ill. — In Barack Obama’s campaign “boiler room” at the Fairmont Hotel here — where the president is staying until tonight’s big event– his National Finance Committee is hard at work until the polls close.
Wade Randlett, the San Francisco-based founder of Bay Area Democrats, is one of the about 200 activist fundraisers who’s hunkered down there making calls, and he says that the atmosphere is heady.
“They call it a boiler room for a reason,” he told us. “Everybody is making calls to Wisconsin and Ohio…there’s a youth phone bank and a zillion outlets.”
The National Finance Committee members like Randlett have all pushed for donations to Obama, and many have bundled hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks to his campaign. But no matter: at the end, “everybody goes to a swing state to volunteer there. And if you get in here (to Chicago) early enough, you show up” at the boiler room for last minute work.
Among the jobs at hand: “We’re doing a whole bunch of thank you calls. No one should think their work has been forgotten.”
The mood is “very upbeat,” Randlett said. “I’d be lying if I said there aren’t some sweaty palms…there’s so much riding on it that you have to be nervous.”
He likened tonight’s election night return — laughing — to “the birth of one of your children.”
“The odds are high that it will go well,” he said. “But if it doesn’t, it’s really really painful.”
Randlett said Republican former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s unusual move to campaign aren’t worrying anyone there. “It’s all signs that they’re behind..they’re throwing the Doug Flutie 60 yard pass — and hoping someone catches.”
His prediction: Obama with 290 electoral votes.
“If we win one of the four — Virgina, North Carolina, Florida or New Hampshire — I’ll be very confident,” he said. “If we lose all four, I’ll be very nervous for the next hour and a half.”