CARACAS, Venezuela - Does it make sense to go negative? Is there time to barnstorm out west? And why did that airport shut down just before the candidate's plane was due to land?
Welcome to the frantic, hypersonic, and - at least according to the Caracas "thinkocracy" - doomed presidential campaign of Henrique Capriles.
He's Venezuela's opposition candidate in a snap election called for April 14, following the death from cancer this month of President Hugo Chavez. Not only is Capriles the underdog in the race against acting President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, but he has just a few weeks to turn things around.
What's more, after losing to Chavez last October, then winning re-election in December to his post as governor of Miranda state, Capriles is running his third campaign in six months. And it's starting to show.
"Capriles is already thin," says Venezuelan TV executive Maria Fernanda Flores. "But he's going to end up transparent."
Though the Capriles team can fall back on the experience and contacts gained during last year's votes, this campaign is especially daunting. For one thing, pro-government candidates won 20 of 23 governor's races in December, leaving Capriles with fewer political allies to lean on as he hits the campaign trail.
There's little time to raise money, write speeches, compose campaign jingles, book buses and hotels and organize field workers. And right in the middle of the whole thing comes this week's Easter Holiday, when nearly all of Venezuela shuts down for and hardly anyone pays attention to politics.
Still, his people press ahead.
"We cannot sit and think ‘Can we do it?' We have to do it ... today," says Andrea Radonski, a volunteer who is Capriles' aunt and godmother. "We wake up very, very early. Some volunteers call people. Some look for money. Some look for food. If we will have the time to make a T-shirt or a hat - I don't know."
Amid the rush, some things fall through the cracks.
During a recent visit to his national campaign headquarters, no one had bothered to put a "Capriles for president" sign on the building. And it wasn't exactly visitor-friendly. Entering required ducking through a 4-foot-high metal door built into a storefront security gate.
Inside, workers were scrambling to paint offices, hang electoral maps and set up phone banks. Last year's slogan, "There's a way forward," has given way to a new one: "Venezuela is for everyone." But banners and posters have yet to be printed so last year's propaganda has prevailed at the early rallies giving the campaign a hand-me-down vibe.
Through it all, Capriles must contend with the government's blatant use of public resources to boost Maduro.
For example, the government often pre-empts nationwide TV and radio programming to broadcast pro-Maduro propaganda, even though such interruptions are supposed to be used only for emergencies or vital public information.
In the war room one afternoon, Capriles workers shook their heads in dismay as the TV news program they were monitoring suddenly cut away to yet another government pronouncement. This time it was a prerecorded message from one of Chavez's daughters who spent the next five minutes lauding her late father and rhetorically ripping Capriles a new one.
