Supporters of candidates Mitt Romney (R) and Shannon P. O’Brien (D) march last night outside the final gubernatorial debate before next Tuesday’s election. .

Jessica L. Diaz ’05 spent four months working for Robert B. Reich’s gubernatorial campaign this year.

A veteran of the election trail, Diaz found the spirit of the Reich campaign refreshing. She was working alongside young people—many of them volunteering for a politician for the first time in their lives—and older volunteers working for a candidate for the first time since their youth.

“It was a lot more grass-roots oriented,” she says. “That’s the type of action I haven’t really seen in other campaigns.”

During that time, Diaz worked to help her candidate defeat Shannon P. O’Brien. But for the last month, she’s been volunteering two days a week in O’Brien’s campaign headquarters.

When Reich faltered in the primary, Diaz made what she said was a difficult decision to close party ranks and work for the Democrats’ winning candidate.

Diaz joins a score of fellow Harvard students battling on the front lines of the Massachusetts gubernatorial race. In fact, seven of O’Brien’s roughly 25 Boston-based interns come from the College and Harvard’s graduate schools.

They write letters, call voters, transcribe speeches and hold signs at rallies, known in the trade as “visibilities,” putting themselves in the thick of one of the tightest gubernatorial races in the country.

Fallen Leader, Wayward Followers

Reich was the most visibly supported candidate at Harvard during the early stages of the Democratic race, but after he finished second in the September primary, Reich supporters on campus were left to find another candidate.

Diaz decided to work for O’Brien but the switch has meant making some major adjustments.

For one thing, O’Brien’s headquarters in South Boston is a significantly longer hike from Diaz’s Lowell House room. The Reich campaign had been based just down Mount Auburn St.

And used to wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes when she worked for Reich, she felt awkward when she arrived for her first day at the O’Brien campaign.

“I was kind of surprised when I walked into the office and 80 percent of the people were wearing suits,” she says. “That was something I wasn’t used to.”

Dorie Clark, Reich’s former press secretary, says the campaign had prepared to transfer the support of people like Diaz if Reich lost the primary.

“Throughout the course of the campaign, he exhorted his supporters to get behind whomever the eventual democratic nominee was,” she said.