James Fullmer of the University of California, Berkeley, distributes literature after an Alameda County GOP meeting in San Leandro. He may run for state Assembly in 2008, in an area where his party usually garners 10 percent of the vote.

Garden City ? Jacqueline Bujanda proudly plays the outcast in this table-flat farming community surrounded by grain silos and anti-abortion billboards.

At 24, she endures stares, insults and slammed doors as she performs the political version of peddling Coke in a Pepsi town: She sells the Democratic Party in dark-red western Kansas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic U.S. senator since Prohibition – the longest streak in the nation.

About 1,100 miles away in politically blue Berkeley, Calif., James Fullmer is also a political dreamer. In a college town that is among the most liberal in the nation, the Fullerton, Calif., native is a member of the Berkeley College Republicans and is active on the local GOP central committee.

Only 21, he’s eyeing a run for the state Assembly in 2008 in an area where Republicans usually garner 10 percent of the vote: “I relish being the token conservative. I just don’t like being yelled at.”

Behind enemy lines

Both party neophytes are rare creatures in American politics, organizers operating deep behind enemy lines. Dismissed and often reviled, they aim to defy long odds as they scour for votes in areas most agree they have little chance of winning.

Yet there’s purpose in both places.

“It may seem like a fool’s errands, but there are often upsides in creating a presence in seemingly unwinnable places,” said Scott Reed, a GOP political consultant who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.

For one, hitting foes where they least expect it makes for good politics.

“It makes the other side defend their own turf, which means the less opportunity they have to go after yours,” said Dan Schnur, a University of California, Berkeley, political science professor who was a spokesman under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson of California. “It can also be motivating for your supporters in other places.”

Confounding the opposition

Both Bujanda and Fullmer see signs of a better future. Several leading Kansas Republicans, including the former chairman of the state GOP, have switched political affiliation to become Democrats since 2004, signaling a possible sea change in state politics. And with Democratic groups splintering, the Berkeley College Republicans have established themselves as the largest political club on a campus long known for its razor-edged radical liberalism.

Still, for both party foot soldiers, the campaign is lonely work.

Rural Kansas businesses are boycotted for Democratic sympathies. At one county clerk’s office, workers stared dumbfounded when Bujanda introduced herself as the new Democratic regional field coordinator. “There was total silence,” she recalled, “as if what I was doing was just an unheard-of thing.”

In Berkeley, vehicles with GOP bumper stickers risk being damaged.

While Fullmer manned a Republican recruitment table on campus, a chaperon for a group of visiting schoolchildren began throwing stones at him.

“I told him he wasn’t setting a very good example for the kids,” Fullmer recalled. “He got right in my face and said, ‘Yeah, what are you going to do about it?’

“That’s the level of political discourse people sometimes stoop to around here.”

‘Democrat is a dirty word’

In March, Jackie Bujanda arrived back in Garden City, where she spent six years as a teen.

She was born in El Paso, Texas, and became a starter on her high school basketball team. In Garden City, she rode the bench. She believes the move was class-driven. Her mother worked in a local meat-packing plant: “The daughters of wealthy white parents played ahead of me because I was the girl with the single Latina mother.”

In college, Bujanda became convinced that Democrats were more inclusive for minorities like herself. And Garden City (pop. 27,000) was now more than 40 percent Hispanic, a demographic shift driven by the arrival of Mexican and Central American immigrants to work in the county’s meat-packing plants.

When she first began her field-coordinating, she pursued mostly Republicans, challenging a Midwestern tradition of conservative voting handed down over generations.

One day, Bennie Creeden scowled at Bujanda’s pitch. “I’m not voting for any Democrat,” he said, shutting his door. Nearby, retiree George Purnell had the same response: “Democrat is a dirty word in this community.”

Bujanda now thinks her best chances lie not in the area’s old guard, but with the Hispanic newcomers. Here, she reasoned, was an untapped voter base. Bujanda wants to enlist 1,500 new Hispanic voters.

She knocks on doors, patiently explaining to some immigrants what a Democrat is.

As the morning shift left a local Tyson plant, she collected signatures from Asians, Indians, blacks and Hispanics who hurried to their cars. One woman slipped her a phone number, promising to help her rally more support.

Bujanda smiled, finally tasting victory. More than just showing her political flag, here was a chance to make a real difference – if not for this election, then perhaps for those to come.

“I see my mother in these people,” she said. “They all deserve a vote to change the system.”

‘I’m a Republican’

James Fullmer sat wide-eyed at a meeting of his county’s Republican Central Committee as Ron Nehring, chairman of the state GOP, gave a pep talk to frontline troops.

“I know that in Alameda County, we’re sometimes considered in enemy-occupied territory,” said Nehring, framed by posters of Presidents Nixon and Lincoln.

Fullmer knows. It’s one reason he chose to attend UC, Berkeley: He liked the idea of thriving as a conservative in this hypercharged liberal atmosphere.

As a freshman, he hung a “Bush-Cheney” poster in his dorm room. “Is that a joke?” students would ask. “Nope,” Fullmer responded. “I’m a Republican. Glad to meet you.”

Fullmer’s strategy concentrates on similarities between the two parties. He starts many talks saying: “I know you think my party is bad for you, and runs counter to everything you believe, but just listen to me and then decide.”

He joined the College Republicans and handed out political fliers. Some students threw the pamphlets in his face. They swore and spit at him.

In class, when he supported Bush’s foreign policy, he said a graduate student instructor mocked him as “an evil genius.”

“I wouldn’t want to be at a place where everyone thinks like I do,” Fullmer said. “As a conservative on this campus, we’re outnumbered, but in terms of ideas we’re not outgunned.”

Next year, he plans to run for the Assembly. “I don’t think I’ll win, but my plan is to build a bigger base for the party here.”

For now, he endures being the political odd man out. He told the story of a friend whose GOP bumper sticker was defaced with the word “fascist.”

Said Fullmer: “They misspelled it.”