I feel as though I’ve trespassed on a political documentary.

The office anachronism standing on the street corner before me looks transplanted from the early 1990s, drab cream walls accented by equally drab, rye-toast-colored furniture. A twentysomething with a haircut that should have gone out of style three decades ago dials a telephone with a long cord that I’m careful not to trip over and disconnect, serenading mid-morning answering machines with a canned campaign message. The sole proof of the 21st century is a lonely laptop or three perched atop desks.

Aaron Pickus stepped into this office two weeks before the August primary, impressed with the Seattle mayoral candidate’s* résumé and wondering how he could help him win the race.

“That first day, [the candidate] was in there just working on some things,” recalled Pickus, who graduated from the UW this June with a double major in political science and linguistics. “He was very approachable; I talked to him about a few things. Every day, I spent more and more time on the campaign, and now, it’s all the time.”

Pickus, an amiable redhead with matching red stubble, strokes an enormous too-friendly black lab while four other full-time volunteers bicker over whether they’ve secured the Vietnamese vote. He leads me into a room where the candidate’s old rugby jersey slouches from a tack on the wall. The dog follows.

The volunteers are young, most of them unemployed, recent college graduates biding time until the job market recuperates. But that doesn’t distill the passion they hold for the campaign to which they have dedicated themselves.

As the media contact volunteer, Pickus helps schedule interviews and works with local papers, making sure everyone who wants to speak with the candidate has the chance to do so. Two weeks before the election, he’s naturally swamped.

Mornings at the Aurora office begin with a staff meeting to frame the day’s events. Sometimes, the volunteers scurry to the print shop to retrieve yard signs, publish maps for literature drops, or concentrate on voter targeting. Other days, they’ll update Web site content or put out press releases.

Every night concludes with a phone bank from 6 to 9 p.m., when volunteers call Seattle voters and, in 20 to 25 seconds, sway them to blacken a particular bubble on Nov. 3. On a moderate evening, they estimate reaching 700 people; once last week, they managed to speak to 1,700.

“Although you get some people hanging up on you, Seattleites are typically a very polite group of people,” said Derek Farmer, a 2001 UW graduate with a double degree in European studies and economics. “Of the people with whom we have conversations, they’re overwhelmingly positive.”

Farmer, the campaign’s field director, served in the military for several years following his graduation. After returning to Seattle in March, he expected to enroll in law school and decided to look for a job in the six months he had left. He shopped the various candidates and found one with a platform that fit most with his own views.

Farmer e-mailed the candidate his résumé and was surprised when the candidate fired back a response mere hours later, inviting Farmer to his house that very night.

“So, I went. I had no campaign experience and was really apprehensive,” Farmer said. “I was expecting middle-aged guys in suits talking about polling data; that’s not what it was at all. It was a bunch of people my age really passionate about making the city a better place.”

After deferring his law-school admission, Farmer joined the campaign. But, as he lazes comfortably in an uncomfortable chair, he remembers his frustration when the media wouldn’t take the campaign seriously in its nascent stages.

“It’s really hard to overcome that,” he said. “We did it by getting a committed group of volunteers to just drive through the prevailing media meme and talk directly to voters.”

Now, more than 550 names swell the campaign roster. Without the benefits of a paycheck every other week, they’re united by a common purpose.

“Volunteering on the campaign is an excellent opportunity to gain real working knowledge of how a political campaign works, to work with great people, and to really get to know why Seattle is such an interesting and diverse city,” Pickus said.

The fact remains, though, that local elections fail to attract as many voters as national races, even though the outcomes are felt more directly.

“If students choose to engage at a local level, they can really see the results of their work in a way that might not be possible in a presidential election or even congressional election,” one candidate told me in a phone interview over the summer. “There are lot of decisions made at a local level that can have a dramatic impact on the future.”

As I leave the office, the volunteers reassemble, and the receptionist offers me a muted but genuine grin. They don’t try to mask their enthusiasm for the candidate’s message, and they don’t leave any moment wasted. That’s what powers them through the early mornings, long hours and perpetual dialing, dialing, dialing of the telephones.

“We trust each other, and we all trust [the candidate], and we all are very excited to be working on the campaign,” Pickus said. “We’ve got a lot of momentum, and we’re really looking forward to November.”

*Editor’s note: Name of candidate has been withheld to maintain neutrality.

Reach Lifestyles Editor Rachel Solomon at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.