(Hallowell, Maine) Tuesday. In a narrow, windowless office with dark walls in the basement of a building on the banks of Maine’s Kennebec River, about a dozen men and women –both chipper and observant— listen as Trina Olson reviews the morning lesson: “Don’t try to respond to everything…smile…tell your story…it’s your credentialing.”

In just a few short days, the goal for this office, the Central Maine office of the “No on 1” campaign, will be to dial up 4,390 people and knock on 17,211 doors. They are specific numbers that somebody has calculated are necessary to get out the “No” vote in this area on November 3.

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force organizer Trina Olson heads up the "No on 1" campaign office in central Maine. Photo by Lisa Keen © 2009 Keen News Service

That’s when Maine will vote on Question 1: Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?

After the review session is over and everyone disburses to other parts of the headquarters, a woman in her sixties comes to the door of one of the smaller offices –one with a window, but it’s a gray day.

She says she someone at the office called to recruit her as a volunteer. “I told him, ‘I don’t think I’m on your side,’” she tells the several volunteers gathered there. There’s a subtle but distinct drop to silence in the room.

Jacob McClain, a 28-year-old waiter from Cleveland, Ohio, looks up at her earnestly. He was due to go back to Ohio last weekend, but decided to stay to the end.

This is his first time working on a campaign but watching the loss of Proposition 8 hit him really hard. He doesn’t want to wake up November 4 this year and think “what else could I have done.”

“I’m doing all I can,” he says.

He’s been put in charge of making sure that the Central office has at least 900 volunteer shifts filled with real people during the course of the campaign. He stares at the woman in the doorway and puts his hand to his forehead. Then, he reaches in her direction.

“But then you realized you were on our side,” he said, apparently remembering her story from having been told it by the volunteer who initially recruited her. “That’s right,” she says, as chatter in the room resumes.

The ballot choice in Maine is confusing, as it often has been on this issue in other states: Vote YES if you’re against gay marriage; vote NO if you are for it. This woman is for it. She wants to keep the law that the legislature just passed this year, allowing same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses the same as straight couples.

She and her husband, who live in a nearby conservative town, have  relatives who are gay and believe people have a right to have their relationships respected and to have their privacy.

Another volunteer, Mary McKeen, a native of Maine of similar age, also married to a man and also from a small conservative town nearby, escorts her to a desk to give her a task. Mary is voting “No on 1,” too.

Her husband had written a letter to the editor of a paper, noting that the same arguments used against gay marriage now were arguments he heard in the 1960s when a friend of his, who was black, married to a white woman.

History, of course, is often prologue. And there’s some history to look to on gay-related ballot measures in Maine to underscore what the polls have been saying: Next Tuesday’s vote will be excruciatingly close.

On the past four gay-related ballot measures in Maine, the pro-gay side has won twice, and lost twice. Of the state’s 16 counties, five have consistently voted against gay equal rights and five have consistently voted for it. The remaining six counties have mixed records.

Those six counties with mixed records are next week’s wild cards, and they are likely to cast about 30 percent of the votes, either way.

Next Page: The swing counties