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Savannah attorney and Democratic activist Joe Steffen has been meandering around his hometown of Galax, Va.Galax sits high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The area has been known for bluegrass music and, until recent years, for furniture, textiles and lumber.But the furniture business, Steffen says, has gone to China, and the textiles emigrated to Central America and the Philippines, so unemployment is up. A new state prison soon might be the largest local employer.”It was absolutely gorgeous weather, in the low 70s, with the trees just turning, and it … was great reconnecting with a lot of old friends,” Steffen wrote me recently.But this isn’t about Steffen’s vacation. He’s been stumping in Virginia for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.Virginia is one of the traditionally Republican states where Obama is threatening to beat Republican John McCain.The presidential race in Georgia has tightened up since Steffen took off for Virginia, but at the time, the Peach State seemed safely Republican.Steffen is hardly the only Savannahian who has campaigned in other states.During the Democrats’ primary election season, when Georgia was a shoo-in for Obama, Rasheim Wright worked for him in Texas. Wright is now based at Obama’s Savannah headquarters.And GOP activist Clint Murphy is working in Florida, where he is deputy director of McCain’s campaign for the Southeast.The phenomenon is neither new nor limited to Savannah.As you read this, Massachusetts volunteers are pushing into New Hampshire or traveling southwest to Ohio and Pennsylvania.Meanwhile, New Yorkers are invading Ohio, and Vermonters are infiltrating New Hampshire. At least a few Californians are slipping into Nevada; they’ll probably meet some folks from Arizona and Texas there.All the invaders will have some things in common: They want to make a difference in the presidential election - enough to spend their vacations, work long hours and travel on their own dime.But they can’t make a difference in their own states, because, as some of you will recall, we elect the president state by state, not by popular majority.Each state gets a number of votes - called electoral votes - equal to the sum of its two U.S. senators and its U.S. representatives. With just two exceptions, it’s winner-take-all.So the volunteers have something else in common: They’re leaving states where the outcome no longer seems in doubt to work in states where doubt lingers.The volunteers are following the examples of their candidates’ paid campaign staffs.After all, if you have lots of bodies in a state where you’re well ahead, it just makes good sense to shift some to a state that’s up for grabs.For example, Obama staffer Caroline Adelman, who’s from Atlanta, has been back in Georgia awhile. But she says she’s worked in about a dozen states, “wherever they thought they needed me the most.”Anyway, it seems to have gone well in Virginia for Steffen, who used to be on the City Council in Galax.”I canvassed all day Saturday and after church on Sunday, hiking up hilly city streets in Galax and onto some dirt roads just south of the county seat,” he wrote.”I didn’t get chased by any dogs nor run off out of anyone’s yard. … One old farmer thanked me for visiting and gave me a lucky buckeye.”So far, Steffen’s luck apparently is holding up.Polls indicate Obama has edged ahead in Virginia.