Clinton's Iowa Director Talks Shop

Iowa state director Teresa Vilmain says that the Clinton campaign has been talking to other campaigns to line up support if those other candidacies fail.

"We have had conversations with the campaigns since the beginning," she said just now on the campaign bus. "Everybody is talking to everybody."

She described the campaign’s catch-up efforts in building a get-out-the-vote operation. "We were not here for four or five plus years like John Edwards," she said.

Vilmain thinks things are going well at the moment. She said that "a slew of undecideds" are showing up at Clinton events and that she can judge what Clinton mailings are getting out and penetrating the electorate by seeing what people are bringing to the rope lines.

She said that Iowans are receiving more than 15 calls a night from different campaigns. "If you are undecided you might as well just put your phone on mute," she said.

She said that there are 4,900 drivers (John Kerry, she said, had had somewhere between 200 and 500 drivers in 2004) and another 5,000 people willing to offer rides. There are more than 600 shuttles. And each Clinton field office has salt to melt the ice.