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Candidates can't relax just yet Mail-in election changes campaign so pace builds to three-week peak By DANI DODGE On Saturday, state representative candidate Larry Frank took a break from campaigning. He mounted his riding lawn mower and took a spin around his neglected yard. "I'm mowing what I should be haying," said Frank, a candidate for the Republican nomination in state House District 51. "I'm serious. It's bad." Like all the other candidates running in Tuesday's election, Frank has been neglecting work, home and family. He is vying for one of two contested Republican state positions in Jackson County. In District 51, Frank, a real estate agent from Applegate, is duking it out with Cherryl Walker, a retired administrative law hearings officer who lives in Murphy. The winner of the race will face Democrat Lon Holston in November. The District 51 seat was vacated by Rep. Jason Atkinson, R-Jacksonville. The business consultant is running for the state Senate District 25 seat against Pat Fahey, a Grants Pass man who co-owns a garbage company. No Democrat has registered to run against the winner in November. The candidates have put advertisements in newspapers and on television. They've walked door-to-door. They've shown up wherever invited. Unlike campaigns of old, which worked up to frenzy on election day and then were over, today's mail-in elections stretch out. Candidates work up to a peak on or near the day the ballots are mailed, and then try to sustain that level for the nearly three weeks until the ballot deadline. "We're just doing more of the same," said Atkinson, who has lost 15 pounds pounding the pavement this election. "I had a prayer breakfast this morning, a growers market this afternoon. We have events scheduled until election night as if it was the old way of campaigning." He said campaigning in a vote-by-mail election is like watching the movie "Groundhog Day," where Bill Murray is forced to relive a single day over and over until he finally gets it right. "You keep doing the same thing, and it's still the same day, day after day," Atkinson said. "And it's strange because you are chasing a diminishing amount of people not voting." Atkinson's opponent, Fahey, said he is spending his final days of the campaign on the phone. "The approach we've taken is a major get-out-the-vote effort," Fahey said. "We've called on behalf of my campaign and the (Josephine) County levy and the Three Rivers School District." Josephine County voters are deciding on a $39.5 million bond issue to modernize or replace 17 schools in the rural Three Rivers School District, as well as a three-year $5.6 million county levy to replace lost timber revenues. Fahey said he isn't targeting his get-out-the-vote efforts at his supporters. He's calling anyone who hasn't cast a ballot, although he and his volunteers are concentrating the calls in Josephine County, where his support is the greatest. He's even buying get-out-the-vote radio ads. He admits he might be encouraging Atkinson supporters as well as his own. "But it's worth the effort anyway because the other issues are equally important," Fahey said. "We are making sure we call everybody." Walker, running against Frank for a slot in the state House, is tying up loose ends this weekend -- finishing financial statements, making calls to supporters who haven't cast ballots and checking in with those who have contacted her through her Web site. "I don't taper off until after election day itself," she said. Frank, the only one of the four to put his phone number in the Voters' Pamphlet, said he's surprised at the number of people who have called the past few weeks. Callers ask about his stands on guns and abortion. He expects to spend the waning days of the campaign going door to door and answering the phone. "I've gotten the calls as late as 9:45 at night and as early as 8 in the morning," Frank said. "I get the sense that people are sitting there with the Voters' Pamphlet on their lap, and because I put that in they called. "I think it was kind of neat." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA