Laura Spielman has never gotten too deeply involved in politics. She read the newspaper. She voted. She complained to her friends. But she didn't exactly immerse herself in campaigning.

Then came Barack Obama.

"He's inspiring," the 31-year-old Radford University math professor who lives in Christiansburg said. "I'm inspired when I hear him."

Like a lot of people outside Illinois, Spielman first heard Obama, a senator from Illinois, at the 2004 Democratic convention. When he spoke against the war in Iraq, he won her over.

"I really respected that Barack opposed the Iraq war before it started," she said Monday.

She was also attracted by his commitment to government ethics reform.

So now Spielman, like others across the New River Valley, is involved in politics.

Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee may have won the primary in Iowa. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain celebrated victories Tuesday night in New Hampshire. But the 2008 presidential race is far from decided as campaigns gear up for Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 when 22 states will hold caucuses or primary elections. Virginia's primary elections will be held Feb. 12.

That has many people -- from party devotees to regular folk -- helping their chosen candidates and causes.

Spielman is Blue Ridge regional coordinator for the Blue Ridge Virginians for Obama. That means she's among the volunteer leaders drumming up support for the Democratic candidate in Virginia's 6th and 9th Congressional Districts.

Spielman said she's working so hard because Obama tries so hard to work across party lines.

"That," she said, "is something very rare in politics."

Fighting for a third party

Terry Vogler of Blacksburg knew about Ron Paul long before the 2008 presidential campaign began.

"I identify myself as a Libertarian," Vogler said.

Paul is a Libertarian, too. Two decades ago, he was the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate. He came in third in that race, but he was a Republican congressman from Texas in the 1970s and the 1980s. And he's been a Republican congressman from Texas since 1997.

Vogler is a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy who served five years as a lieutenant. His wife, a reservist with the Coast Guard, is a lieutenant on active duty now. Vogler, 35, is a Ph.D. candidate in Virginia Tech's electrical engineering program.

As a 17-year-old, Vogler did some office work for an Ohio senator. But that was hardly like a real campaign, he said, because the incumbent senator had no opposition. Later, Vogler helped get Libertarians on the ballot in Northern Virginia. This campaign season, he helped get Paul on the Virginia ballot, collecting about 60 of the 20,000 signatures that were Paul's ticket into the commonwealth's Republican primary.

Though Vogler got involved in politics fairly early, it wasn't because of stirring political discussions at home.

"My dad is kind of an old-school Cold Warrior type," Vogler said. "My brother is liberal. I'm Libertarian."

So Vogler's mom squelches any talk about politics around the house.

Warding off cynicism

John Tedesco, a Virginia Tech professor of communication studies, is one of three national coordinators for University Voter Outreach Through Education, or UVote. The organization, founded by Tedesco and three other professors in 1996, has groups working at 30 universities across the country, educating, studying and encouraging young voters.

The organization set out to study and reduce cynicism among young voters in 1996. While people between the ages of 18 and 29 remain the most cynical group of voters, their participation has increased in recent elections, and Tedesco expects that trend to continue this year.

The cynicism young voters feel toward candidates is nearly equaled by their cynicism toward mainstream media, Tedesco said. Because of that, social networking sites, such as Facebook, are playing a large role in educating voters.

"Interpersonal networks are considered the most credible source of information," Tedesco said. "Young people are more effective at informing and persuading their peers to vote."

And that's why UVote, a nonpartisan organization, works with groups such as the Young Democrats and Young Republicans to get the word out and get students registered.

Tedesco said young voters will be good for Obama and probably benefit Huckabee and Mitt Romney while hurting McCain.

"McCain's age -- they look at him as the age of their grandparents," Tedesco said of the 71-year-old senator.

But McCain's resurgence and his ability to appeal to both conservative and moderate groups should win him the Republican nomination, Tedesco said.

"And on the left, I think it's hard to beat that Clinton machine," he said.

Craig Brians, a political science professor at Tech, doesn't do predictions. Most of the time people get them wrong, he said. And when they get them right, they usually don't have a good explanation as to why they were right.

But Brians did see something in Huckabee before the former Arkansas governor rose to become one of the leading candidates for the Republican nomination.

"I thought if he'd get money, he'd be appealing because he plays so well on Comedy Central," Brians said, referring to appearances Huckabee made on "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" early in 2007.

Huckabee's ability to talk about the issues without appearing angry helps insulate him from knee-jerk negative reactions, an important quality, Brians said, because voters often start the decision making process by ruling out candidates

"When was the last time you ever got in a really excited conversation with somebody about everything being really normal?" he said.

Educating young voters

Roanoke native Sabina Thaler has gone from watching MTV's reality show "The Hills" on campus at Virginia Tech to broadcasting political stories on the network and its online affiliates.

Thaler, 22, graduated from Tech in the spring, and MTV chose her this fall to represent Virginia as part of the network's Choose or Lose Street Team.

The team takes 51 young people -- some college students, others young professionals -- and asks them to report on national and local hot topics in hopes of snagging a segment of young voters' attention.

"I'm looking at this as not only as a way to help young people understand various social issues, but so I can understand the other side better, too," Thaler said from New York this week.

She flew Monday morning to New York for a week of training for what amounts to a part-time job attempting to educate a generation that has "less and less people communicating with us," she said.

She will file weekly video and text reports from a youth perspective.

Thaler said young students are often too busy to read the paper or even watch the evening news. Rather, they'll always watch a music channel, she said.

The reports she'll file will be posted to The Associated Press' online video site, but Thaler said she wants to use her job to educate people about local topics, too.

"Young people don't have money to be able to buy their politics, and because of that we don't get as much of a say," she said. "I get to be part of the political process and that's huge."