J. R. Jones and Harold McCarville are two veterans of World War II. They both served their country in the Pacific theater. They both settled back in Des Moines, Iowa after the war. And they’ll both be voting to reelect President Barack Obama in 2012.

J. R. Jones

A retired dentist, J.R. volunteers at a local hospital for veterans. He says he votes not so much for individual candidates but for the Democratic Party. “I feel they do more for the welfare of the general public.”

Still, he says Obama has done “a pretty good job,” citing his handling of foreign affairs. He thinks the decision to invade Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11 was rash and reactive and he was glad to see Obama proceed cautiously when faced with his own tests in the Middle East.

J.R. worked as a 19-year-old electrician on board the USS Higbee, a Navy destroyer that served at the tail end of World War II in the Pacific fleet. He manned the electrical board in the ship’s engine room.

USS Higbee

The Higbee acted as a radar picket for larger ships in the U.S. fleet. J.R. remembers rescuing pilots and crew of U.S. aircraft that were too badly damaged to land safely back on their aircraft carriers.

After the war ended, the Higbee spent seven months based in Japan. “I celebrated a birthday in Tokyo Bay,” J.R. says.

Harold McCarville

After the war, Harold left the Air Force as a corporal and went on to the University of Iowa using funding from the G.I. Bill. He briefly taught high school and then spent 38 years as an executive at a manufacturing operation, all in Iowa.

In his Air Force days, Harold worked as a cryptologist encoding messages from Guam back to the U.S. His unit dropped the atomic bombs that ended World War II.

After the Pacific war was over, the Air Force exploded the remaining stock of atom bombs in the Pacific to gather data on the power of nuclear weapons. Harold recalls encrypting secret messages that relayed the classified results of those tests to the U.S. government.

“My family was Democratic,” he says. “I’m a lifelong Democrat.”

The 2012 presidential election is underway in Iowa. About 200 Obama supporters gathered at the Polk County Auditor’s office Thursday morning to cast some of the first votes with nary a Romney voter in sight.

Mark Cooper, a union official and Vietnam vet, arrived at 7:15 a.m. and was first in line. “Might as well be here early,” he said. He planned to vote for a strictly Democratic ticket.

“We never quit fighting for our country. We fight until we go to the grave,” said Edward Shaffner, another Vietnam veteran waiting in line.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register reported the Polk County tally for the first day of voting as of 4 p.m. Registered Democrats cast 401 votes, Republicans cast 90, and 57 votes came from people with no party affiliation. The county auditor could only reveal the affiliations of voters, not who they actually voted for.

Buchie Ukabiala

Buchie Ukabiala cast his first vote as an American citizen to reelect President Obama. “He represents everything I find admirable in a person and a leader,” the immigrant from Nigeria said. Buchie has been in the U.S. for 26 years but became a citizen recently at a ceremony held at Iowa Cubs Principal Park, a minor league baseball stadium in downtown Des Moines. A pediatric surgeon due in the operating room in 45 minutes, he wanted to vote at his first opportunity.

From right: Cheryl Long, Greg Long, Caroline Allen, and Doug Allen wait to vote for Obama

The Obama supporters gathered at 7 a.m. at Java Joe’s Coffeehouse, where owner Amy Brehan donated space and free coffee, before walking around the corner to the polling place.

Java Joe’s hosts the Obama camp

Campaign volunteers handed out the coffee and held signs directing voters making the short walk to the polls.

Volunteers from the Beaverdale area of Des Moines

Through old fashioned snail mail and at county auditors and courthouses across the state, Iowans today cast their first votes of the 2012 presidential election. Democrats have again wagered heavily that early voting will be decisive in the battle for Iowa.

In the 2008 contest for Iowa, President Obama narrowly lost the vote on Election Day itself. But Democrats had spent months banking votes in advance. That margin was enough to score a comfortable victory for Obama in Iowa – a fact Obama staffers repeat incessantly when trying to cajole wavering voters into requesting an absentee ballot.

This year, Democrats again hold a commanding lead in requests for early ballots, with 114,585 requests for early ballots from registered Democrats against 22,364 requests from Republican voters. Another 38,959 independent ballots have been requested, according to the latest tallies from the Iowa Secretary of State. (Those totals don’t reflect actual votes, just ballots mailed out to prospective voters.)

Called VBMs (for Vote By Mail) in campaign slang, absentee ballots are available to any Iowa resident for any reason at all – many states require an excuse to vote by mail. The Obama campaign has made VBMs the centerpiece of a grassroots effort to turn out friendly voters in droves. Teams of volunteers fan out into neighborhoods trying to make good voter contacts and convince people to vote for the Democratic ticket.

The huge lead in absentee votes doesn’t come cheap, though. Banking votes early requires resources: ground staff, facilities, effort and patience. The backbone of this effort is a position called Field Organizer – typically an early twentysomething trying to build a team of volunteers to knock on doors, make phone calls and convince Democrats to vote early. Organizers will happily drive out to collect ballot requests even from individual voters.

An organizer’s salary over the course of four months (a typical tenure) amounts to about $11,000. Every dollar spent on salary is money that could be going to advertising, fundraising, media outreach or any of a half-dozen other campaign needs. Iowa Democrats are also spending more money on office space, all in support of the boosting absentee turnout. A Cook Political Report informal count had 65 Obama field offices to Romney’s 14 in Iowa.

A recent fundraising email, purportedly from Barack Obama himself, stated accurately but somewhat misleadingly that the Romney campaign was outspending his own on the Iowa airwaves by a 2-1 margin. The statement was more a reflection of differing campaign tactics than any real deficit in resources – Democrats are spending on the ground game.

Candidates for the 18th district of Iowa’s State Senate don’t get a Secret Service detail.

There are no thousand-dollar suits and there are no autograph seekers. There are no teleprompters, no cavalcades of black SUVs, no gaggle of smartly-dressed young aides to shoo away the media.

Instead, candidates get Tuesday nights at the Northwest Community Center of Des Moines, as Republican Vicki Stogdill and Democrat Janet Petersen vied for the right to represent Beaverdale in the Iowa Senate. About 35 voters watched as Stogdill cited her experience as part owner of Stogdill’s TV & Appliance while Petersen touted her accomplishments over 12 years in the Iowa House of Representatives.

On the undercard: Republican Jeff Ibbotson, clad from head to toe in bright orange, against Democrat Marti Anderson, both running for the right to take Peterson’s vacated seat in Iowa’s House.

Left to right: Vicki Stogdill, Janet Petersen, Marti Anderson, Jeff Ibbotson

Ibbotson has a blunt explanation for his eye-catching get-up: “If you can’t remember someone all in orange, maybe you shouldn’t vote. I’m running to get people involved, get people excited.”

The candidates’ unanimous support for wind power came as no surprise, as federally subsidized wind power is fast becoming sacrosanct in Iowa. “It’s clean, it’s efficient, I would support it,” Ibbotson said and Anderson agreed. “I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “The windmills are beautiful.”

Each answered the questions asked, instead of using the questions as topical suggestions, as is common in debates at higher levels. Ibbotson in particular was determined to stick to the questions as asked. In response to a question about what government services he’d cut if elected, he said “I’d be lying if I told you.” Anderson was stumped and brave enough to admit it, too. “I don’t have an answer for you right now,” she said.

But though homespun, the debate was at times testy.

“I think the question was on business regulation, not property tax, but I can speak to both,” Petersen said after Stogdill answered a question on cutting regulatory burdens with a proposal to cut the commercial property tax.”I’ve heard from people who’ve contacted Janet and haven’t received a reply…I would never blow anyone off,” Stogdill later said.

Stogdill argued that traffic enforcement cameras were unconstitutional. “You can’t face your accuser,” she said. She said traffic cameras are a means of raising revenue, not keeping the public safe and argued that longer yellow lights could better protect Iowans constitutionally.

Cameras, Petersen countered, are an example of “reasonable regulation” – the line was delivered with a pause and a glance at Stogdill – and they save lives.

Petersen and Stogdill staked out vastly different positions on property taxes, health care, and the Iowa judiciary’s controversial decision to overturn a law prohibiting same-sex marriage, a 2009 action that reverberates in Iowa state politics to this day.

Elaine Brostrom, a Beaverdale local, came to the forum knowing only Petersen, her representative. She cares mostly about food labeling issues and animal rights, but her questions weren’t selected by the forum’s moderators. By the end of the night, she still leaned towards Petersen, citing email exchanges she had had with Petersen while the candidate was in the Iowa House. For the record, she recalled no instances when Petersen had ignored her correspondence.

Kathy Stangl was told she had six months left to live after a diagnosis of an incurable lung disease.

That was back in 2006.  The mother of three remembers eying scans of her lungs warily even before her doctor gave his prognosis. “That doesn’t look right,” she thought.

Kathy suffers from lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare disease that results in tumor-like muscle growth throughout the lungs and only affects women. “I’ve got six months,” she recalls saying in the wake of her diagnosis. “I’m not even going to be able to spell what’s going to kill me.”

She gets around these days with the help of a cane. “I’ll be sixty-one in October,” she says, “and I look ancient.”

One of her favorite photographs is a shot of her speaking with then-candidate Barack Obama from 2007, taken just before the Iowa caucuses propelled him to the forefront of the race for the Democratic nomination.

Both look so much younger in the photo that it’s hard to believe only five years have passed. Obama’s face is smooth and unlined, and the gray hairs that crept in during his term are nowhere to be seen yet.

That day, after promising to investigate additional research funding if he became president, Obama leaned towards her and said, “Tell me again what the short name of your disease is and I’ll pray for you and your family. I know what it’s like to lose a mom.” Obama’s mother died at 52 of ovarian cancer.

Though she was originally a Joe Biden supporter – Biden’s niece Caroline would frequently drive her and her family to political events – Kathy became a volunteer and supported Obama’s 2008 campaign.

“I haven’t been able to be as active this time,” she says, though she worries about the 2012 election’s outcome on health care. She had to leave a rally in Des Moines in an ambulance a few weeks ago. But at that same rally, a junior Obama staffer spied David Axelrod, Obama’s political director, circulating through the crowd shaking hands and snapping photos. The staffer pressed a business-sized manila envelope into Axelrod’s hands, told him Kathy’s story and exacted a promise to get Obama to sign it.

A few days later, that same manila envelope showed up at the local Obama field office affixed with a presidential signature and a short note to Kathy.  “It means a great deal to have it,” Kathy says. “It’s something to leave to my daughters when I’m gone.”

When she was first diagnosed, Kathy teamed up with the LAM Foundation to fight a planned reduction in federal spending on research that could help detect LAM earlier. She organized petitions and enlisted Iowa Senator Tom Harkin to her cause. “I just kept sending emails,” she says.

Kathy and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin

Their lobbying restored federal research dollars. “I learned what one word at the right time can do,” Kathy says. The lesson was what drove her to be involved in the presidential race of 2008, pushing all the candidates to support more research on LAM.

Kathy is fighting, lobbying and raising awareness, hoping a test can be developed to identify women who could be susceptible to LAM later in life. Even an incurable disease is more readily managed when women can plan around their risks, she says.  “My father used to say, ‘We were put here to be the hands of God on earth. You’d best use your time well.'”

The silver-blue touring bike is parked in the corner of an Obama field office, saddlebags impossibly stuffed with gear and plastered with campaign buttons, flags and bumper stickers.

When Ellery Althaus set out from Brattleboro, Vermont,  in March, the plan was simple enough: Ride his bike across the entire continental U.S. and back for eight months and 9,0000 miles, campaigning to re-elect Barack Obama in all 48 continuous states.

But he didn’t count on a surprise appendectomy on the West Coast. Suffering from intense stomach pains in August, the 29-year-old hitchhiked the 70 miles from Chemult, Oregon, to Bend, where he had the procedure performed.

After a three week recovery period, Ellery faced a tough choice. He could continue on his planned course doing a token bit of campaigning in each state, or focus his efforts on the critical swing states that could tip the election in the weeks before the November vote.

The decision caused him to turn for Iowa earlier than planned, but would ultimately culminate with a chance to meet the President at a rally in Ames, about an hour’s drive north of Des Moines.

“I have been riding my bicycle for five and a half months. I’ve visited 31 states and ridden over 5,000 miles for you,” he told the President on the rope line, where supporters can shake hands or exchange a few words with the candidate. Obama gave him a big hug when he heard the story.

The Des Moines Register happened to photograph the exact moment and run it with their coverage of the Ames rally. The shot would later become Ellery’s Facebook profile picture.

But of the actual instant, Ellery recalls very little. “I had a complete Presidential blackout,” he says. “It was the most amazing day of my life.”

Ellery is a relentless promoter of his trip. He blogs, he tweets, he passes out business cards. When his phone rings – his ringtone is the now-famous clip of Obama singing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”  – Ellery launches into a practiced but still passionate description of his ride.

He packed a tent but has hardly used it, Ellery says. Mostly he sleeps in spare rooms and on couches of supporters. There have been a handful “sketchy moments” – angry slurs and even a bottle thrown his way, but he’s been “blessed and overwhelmed”  by the way supporters have helped him on his journey.

With 32 states visited so far, Ellery still hopes to reach a handful more before Election Day. He hopes his trip will show voters that politics isn’t “any easier than a bicycle trip, there would be storms, sick days and flat tires.” His journey will likely end with a month of intense campaigning in Ohio, where he’ll circle the state right up until Election Day.

“Every trip I’ve ever taken people feel the need to warn me about,” Ellery writes on his blog, “which I guess is how I know that I am going to the right places.”

I’m spending the final six weeks of the 2012 election volunteering for Barack Obama.

I quit my desk job in New York City and traveled 1023 miles west to Des Moines, Iowa, where I’m working hard to help President Obama capture the six electoral votes up for grabs here.

I join my Ruth, who’s been living in Des Moines since June doing grassroots organizing for the campaign. I asked her to marry me on my first visit to Des Moines. I may be an idealistic fool, but I do think what she is working for matters very much and I want to participate and give it my all, too.

I’ll be documenting life on the campaign trail from this blog. A recovering member of the Eastern Media Elite, I have written for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. 

Although I’m an ardent supporter and a volunteer, I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with the campaign. The views expressed here are my own.