Connally didn’t give up easily, asking her about what issues motivated her choice, talking about where Obama stood.

“Poor guy, I drilled him on his issues,” she said.

First was abortion. She’s adamantly opposed to abortion.

Connally talked about Obama’s position that political battles over banning abortion were doing nothing to prevent the root causes, that preventing the number of unwanted pregnancies was more important.

“We started having a dialogue, and I could see the enthusiasm in this person,” said Barr, a St. Peter resident who’s pursuing a master’s degree in public administration at MSU. “... It was contagious.”

The July encounter was enough to get Barr investigating the candidate’s positions. She already was concerned about the growing inequality in wealth in America and other social justice issues. She was impressed with Obama’s background, his performance at Harvard Law School and his decision to do community organizing rather than take a high-paying job after graduating at the top of his class.

So Barr agreed to volunteer at the Obama office, enjoyed the contact with voters and has provided hundreds of hours of work since then. Her parents, Jack and Carol Penning, were impressed by her enthusiasm for Obama and agreed to let her lay out the issues and make her case.

They’ve both decided to vote for Obama.

“I convinced the unconvinceable,” she said of her father, “just by being so passionate about what America can be and what Obama can do to get us there.”

First-timer can’t sit this one out
Melissa Riedy, by contrast, stopped by the Obama office for the first time one night a couple of weeks ago. She came on her own, hearing they needed volunteers for some door-knocking.

“This is my first time ever,” said Riedy, an MSU student and former member of the South Dakota National Guard.

Riedy was eligible to vote in the presidential election for the first time in 2004. She was torn then, somewhat persuaded it’s not good to change leaders in a time of war but eventually settled on John Kerry.

Last time, Riedy tried hard to care about the election out of a sense that it was her duty as an American. Now the mother of a 11⁄2-year-old daughter, she said the election feels more personal.

Most of her driving issues involve the sort of world her daughter will inherit, worries about the skyrocketing national debt, a desire for a more sustainable economy, a conviction that America needs a leader “with good judgment and even temper.”

Although Riedy admitted to being a bit nervous about door-knocking, she was motivated by the memory of 2004 — that her candidate came up short despite all of the young people that came out to vote. The Milbank, S.D., native decided this time she needed to go beyond voting.