Battleground: Dropping Michigan
Posted: Friday, October 03, 2008 9:19 AM by Domenico Montanaro
The Politico broke yesterday’s big news that McCain campaign’s was retreating from Michigan.
The Associated Press calls the McCain pullback "a major concession," and notes that local Republicans were blindsided by the call.
The Free Press offers this nugget. "McCain campaign manager Rick Davis called former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to tell him of the decision to pull out of Michigan just before Romney -- who grew up in Oakland County -- got on a conference call with reporters Thursday. Romney was holding the call with McCain strategist Doug Holtz-Eakin to raise claims that Obama's policies are no good for Michigan's struggling economy."
One of McCain's co-chairs in the state is disappointed with the decision to withdraw. "Chuck Yob, a co-chairman of McCain's Michigan effort, said the campaign's own polling showed other states as better chances than Michigan. 'I don't think it's a very good decision,' he said of Thursday's pullout. 'I think it's wrong. But they've got to pool their resources in the states where they think they can win.'"
FLORIDA: From the St. Pete Times blog: "The talk of McCain's grassroots problem in Florida is belied by the huge numbers of folks trying to get tickets to see Sarah Palin. In Pinellas, we hear more than 4,000 tickets have already been given and that's likely to double by tomorrow. In Fort Myers, all the drivers trying to get Palin tickets supposedly caused a traffic jam."
McCain political director Mike DuHaime on Florida on yesterday's state-of-the-race conference call: "It was not a state that anyone would have considered safe throughout the election. It was one that an aggressive campaign must be waged in," DuHaime said in response to a question about new polls showing Barack Obama up by as much as 8 points. Sen. Obama has spent an incredible amount of money in Florida over time, and throughout the summer we were not on the air. We've just been aggressively on the air for three to four weeks at this point." More: By mid-September, Obama had invested about $8-million in the state. By the same time in 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign had spent $13-million on Florida TV."
MAINE: "The Democratic strategists may have to work especially hard to keep the Second Congressional District blue. Yesterday, Republican John McCain's campaign announced that it had begun withdrawing from Michigan, but would start committing resources to Maine, where strategists say he has been buoyed by the addition of Sarah Palin to his ticket. This is one of only two states that award electoral votes in a manner other than winner-take-all: A losing candidate statewide can still claim one of the state's four electoral college votes by winning one of the two congressional districts."
NEVADA: Is Nevada the new Michigan? "Unemployment in Nevada will jump to an average monthly rate of 8.6 percent next year and remain at that rate in 2010, state economists told the Employment Security Council on Thursday."
NEW HAMPSHIRE: A new poll by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College has Obama up 12 points over McCain, 49%-37%.
NEW YORK: A Siena poll had showed Obama only up five points in New York a month ago. It now has him up 58%-36%.
OHIO: The Columbus Dispatch looks at central Ohio's college vote, where political passions are married with a tendency for the unpredictable.
"The Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the secretary of state to accept tens of thousands of absentee ballot applications she has rejected because of a missing check mark." Score it as a victory for Team McCain, which sent out the applications last month.
VIRGINIA: A new Mason-Dixon survey shows McCain leading in the Old Dominion, 48%-45%.
An update on Virginia registration numbers as the deadline nears. "Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the State Board of Elections, said 306,215 Virginians have registered, representing a 7 percent increase since the beginning of the year. A total of 4,892,034 are now registered, she said. About 273,000 new voters were registered four years ago, when President Bush carried Virginia over Democrat John Kerry by 262,000 votes. The largest percentage increase was in heavily Democratic Richmond."
WISCONSIN: A Strategic Vision (R) poll shows Obama up 49-40 in the Badger State.
