HYATTSVILLE -- When Tom Bacote and his five volunteers walked into Ebony Barbers to talk with the clientele yesterday, their message was simple: Be sure to vote on Tuesday.
That all the customers and 12 of the 13 barbers - all African-Americans - were supporters of Barack Obama was beside the point.
Bacote's get-out-the-vote effort in Prince George's County, underwritten by a San Francisco-based advocacy group called PowerPAC, is part of an eight-state campaign to increase voter turnout in African-American communities for the presidential primaries. Its cost could exceed $2 million, organizers say. If successful, it would likely benefit Obama more than any other candidate.
"It is sort of hard to untangle the two things," said Kirk Clay, the group's field director in Maryland, of his mission and support for Obama. "But we don't care who they vote for; we just want to increase the turnout in African-American communities."
Still, the prospect of large numbers of black men showing up at the polls is such a potential boon to the Illinois Democrat's presidential hopes that Obama has been forced to issue a clear and somewhat curious response to efforts like Bacote's. He wants them shut down.
Worrying that PowerPAC support runs afoul of his pledge not to accept money or support from political action committees, Obama and his campaign officials sent a letter to the group Dec. 28 asking it to stop the effort "without further delay."
The work of a political advocacy group, whose financing is not subject to the same contribution limits and reporting requirements as an individual candidate, the letter said, is "simply not consistent with the senator's clearly stated commitment to complete accountability and transparency in the financing of campaigns for public office."
Organizers in Maryland say they started building their operation a few days before the letter was sent and haven't backed off since. There's no denying that getting African-Americans to the polls benefits Obama, they say, but it benefits black communities even more.
"In the end," Clay said, "what we most believe in is democracy, that the more people get involved, the more they get inspired, the better of America is going to be."
Bacote and his crew were true to that promise yesterday as they walked the grounds of a Hyattsville shopping mall pressing literature into people's hands, urging them to vote - for anyone - and even promising a ride to the polls.
"You can't complain if you don't vote - that's what I tell people," said Cassandra Metu, a 21-year-old Howard University student and volunteer.
In California, where PowerPAC's efforts began, the group sponsored television advertising for Obama and announced outright support for the candidate. That message has been tempered, but the group's goals in Maryland are still ambitious.
Clay says he has identified more than 61,000 people in Maryland who voted only sparingly the past four years, and he is conducting a campaign to reach each one of them with a telephone call or knock on their door. Since December, the group has enlisted as many as 250 volunteers or paid employees to canvass neighborhoods, primarily in Baltimore City and Prince George's County, and to work the group's calling centers.
Most people that volunteers encountered yesterday said they either were not registered to vote or already planned to vote - for Obama.
"This is a historic election, and this is exactly what this community needs right now, for people to vote," said Mohamed Kamara, a 34-year-old municipal employee who was reading a newspaper in the barbershop. An Obama supporter, he said he plans to drive three first-time voters to the polls on Tuesday.
Hillary Clinton, who has not pledged to reject PAC money or support from outside advocacy groups, has benefited in recent races from organized canvassing by union groups and other supporters. Such efforts are commonly conducted by political parties during a general election, but in a primary campaign the candidates are left to assemble their own organizations.
The potential benefit to Obama of an increase in black male voters at the polls - a group with historically low turnout, but which has supported Obama overwhelmingly in earlier primaries - is so big that many doubt the candidate's efforts to squelch it are truly genuine.
"It's probably not whole-hearted," said Matthew A. Crenson, a professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins University and an Obama supporter.
"He needs to make the gesture, show that he's against accepting PAC money and is being transparent with his financing," he said. "But if they can increase turnout among African-American men, it's very likely it will help Obama considerably."
Tomorrow the group plans a rally at Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, and Bacote said he and a team of about 50 volunteers will canvass the neighborhood nearby. Clay said a similar effort is planned for neighborhoods in Baltimore - part of a focus on 36 predominantly black precincts in Maryland.
The eight states targeted by PowerPAC are home to more than half the nation's black voters, organizers said.
"Think about it: There are people alive today who remember not being able to vote in this country," said James Foreman, a Georgetown University law professor who plans to speak at the rally today. "That's my message - someone paid for this right and we can't waste it. There's got to be someone you can vote for."
robert.little@baltsun.com