Meet Antonio Esquibel, the One-Man Campaign

By Reid Cherlin

Antonio Esquibel had just returned from walking six miles through his neighborhood, placing Obama door-hangers on the knobs belonging to people he knows haven't voted yet. He would've walked more, he explained, but the staff had called him back to the office to do an interview with 9 News. "¿Habla español?" he asked me, agreeing to answer some of my questions, too. It was more of a preface than a question: Esquibel, a 70-year-old retired college professor born in Colorado, speaks perfect English. But if you want to hit the astronomical voter-contact numbers that he regularly puts up here in heavily Latino West Denver, you'd better speak the language.

"I've probably registered about 700 people personally," he told me, not bragging but certainly proud. "About 500 of those are Mexicanos who have become citizens and now are able to vote. So they're excited. I mean, those people are turned on."

He told me about making a house call to register an 86-year-old blind woman from the neighborhood a few months ago. "Afterwards I asked her, 'Señora, why is it that you've been a citizen for 40 years, you never registered to vote, and you never voted?'...

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