US:Barack Obama's crossover appeal is clear from the grassroots Republicans campaigning for him to the high-profile figures endorsing him
Chatter bounces off the bare walls and lino floor as Josh Pedaline and other Barack Obama backers burn through their call sheets.
A map of Delaware County splays across a table. Another is laden with biscuits and other snacks. Volunteers seated elbow to elbow peck at mobile phones and try to sell the Illinois Democratic senator in advance of Ohio's March 4th primary.
The scene is a typical campaign boiler room, except that four of the 13 dialling away are lifelong Republicans, including Pedaline, who reveres Ronald Reagan and twice voted for President Bush.
"I am so sick and tired of the partisanship," Pedaline says, before starting his shift at Obama's outpost in this affluent suburb north of Columbus. "I don't want to be cheesy and say, 'He'll bring us all together'. But he seems like someone willing to listen to a good idea, even if it comes from a Republican."
Pedaline and other Republican renegades are part of a striking phenomenon this campaign: they are "Obamacans", as the senator calls them, and they are surfacing in surprising numbers.
"I'm a conservative, but I have gay friends," Pedaline (28) says. "I have friends who don't believe in abortion, but I don't condemn them for it. I don't feel like Obama is condemning me for being a Republican."
Pedaline has some high-profile company. Susan Eisenhower, a Republican business consultant and granddaughter of former President Eisenhower, has endorsed him. Colin Powell, who served in both Bush administrations, has hinted he may do so too.
Former senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who quit the Republican Party after losing his 2006 re-election bid, endorsed Obama even though he campaigned for Chafee's opponent. Mark McKinnon, a strategist for Republican John McCain, says he will continue to back the Arizona senator, but will step aside rather than work against Obama if the two meet in the autumn election.
McCain also enjoys crossover support, Democrats attracted by his blunt talk and willingness to break with Republicans on campaign finance and global warming.
"We know the old Reagan Democrats," McCain said. "We'll try to get those on our side as well, Democrats who think that I'm more capable, particularly on national security issues." But so far, Obama has shown more success pulling members of the Republican Party to his side.
Republicans made up 6 per cent of those who voted in Missouri's Democratic primary, 7 per cent in Virginia and 9 per cent in Wisconsin. (Most states make it harder to vote in the other party's contest.) The majority cast their ballots for Obama, according to exit polls.
Johanna Schneider was one of his Virginia supporters. She went door-to-door for Obama with her 14-year-old son, Chase, convinced that fellow Republicans have lost their way. "I just feel this is a tremendous opportunity to open politics up to a new generation," said Schneider, a former Republican staffer on Capitol Hill.
The support has not come unbidden. Throughout his campaign, Obama has been appealing to Republicans even as he battles Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Obama's first TV ad in Iowa featured an Illinois Republican touting Obama's ability to work with his party's supporters.
"Very rarely do you hear me talking about my opponents without giving them some credit for having good intentions and being decent people," Obama recently told US News & World Report. "There's nothing uniquely Democratic about a respect for civil liberties. There's nothing uniquely Democratic about believing in a foreign policy of restraint ... A lot of the virtues I talk about are virtues that are deeply embedded in the Republican Party."
Winning support from Republicans and independents as well as Democrats "shows he's the candidate best situated to take on McCain in the fall," Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, said. "That is an important distinction in this race."
"We're going to build a working majority," Obama said the night he swept primaries in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. "Not by turning people off, but by bringing them in." Those words resonate with Lennie Rhoades (57), who cast his first presidential ballot in 1968 for Richard Nixon and has voted Republican ever since.
"It seems like Washington has come to a standstill the last eight years," said Rhoades. "I think Obama can get beyond that."
Many are sceptical that Republicans will stick with Obama until November. They point out that many of his proposals - including a timetable for ending the war in Iraq, repealing Bush's tax cuts for wealthy people, expanding the government's role in health and supporting gay rights and gun control - cut too much against GOP orthodoxy.
But for Pedaline, who spent months researching candidates before embracing Obama, there is no going back. His support "is not a policy decision - it's a personality decision".
Seated nearby is Royal Morse (56), a another lifelong Republican. The two dial, chat, dial, chat, until Morse gets some grief from the other end of the line. "Another one of those stuffy Republicans," he says. The two smile and keep dialling.