...to help get out the vote next month.

by Jess McCuan . photo by Matt Rose

Carmen Ramos-Kennedy really did intend to start a jewelry business. Really. But Asheville’s Democratic political community had other plans for her. “I think I have the word ‘yes’ tattooed somewhere secretly on my forehead,” she says.

Always politically-minded, Ramos-Kennedy and her husband Bruce moved to Asheville to escape the hustle and bustle of New York and L.A. Ramos-Kennedy had worked in marketing for music companies and as a Saks Fifth Avenue buyer. In 2005, they sold their L.A. house and toured the country for two years in a motorhome. They landed in a house in Asheville’s East End neighborhood, where Bruce does freelance web design and Ramos-Kennedy intended to start designing jewelry.

But sometime in January 2008, she found herself at Obama’s Asheville campaign headquarters making phone calls. “Before I knew it, I was knee deep in it all,” she says. In May 2009, she helped Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy get re-elected and then tackled all sorts of progressive political projects, from running phone banks for N.C. House candidate Patsy Keever to volunteering for Read To Succeed.

In the run-up to next month’s mid-term elections, what scares Ramos-Kennedy is low voter turnout levels. Many North Carolinians, including huge crowds of young people and African-Americans, voted for the first time in the 2008 presidential election. Now, she and other strategists know that Democrats and Republicans alike are frustrated with Obama, which may translate into low Democratic turnout. Though she doesn’t think local Tea Party candidates stand much of a chance, she does believe the far-right wing of the GOP is newly energized and capable of getting out the vote.

A few months ago, she helped organize the East End Neighborhood Association, and she’s been making rounds to black churches in the area to make sure people get to the polls. In some neighborhoods, you can forget Facebook and Twitter. She’s been knocking on doors and sticking flyers on people’s cars. “In the mid-terms, if we don’t get the right people in, it’s critical,” she says.