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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: 240 is Back on July 30, 2008, 09:02:07 PM
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If Obama wins Georgia, he wins the election...
ATLANTA — In nearly every presidential cycle, candidates throw a little money at a state to try to turn it into a fresh battleground. It almost never works.
But Barack Obama believes his historic nomination gives him more of an opening to press such a strategy.
And what sets him apart from his predecessors is that he may actually have the money to attack his rival’s base on a broader scale and in a more sustained way than any candidate before him.
The process has already begun. The Illinois senator last month began airing ads and opening offices in Virginia, North Dakota, Colorado and a handful of other states that have voted Republican in recent cycles.
Obama is supplementing those high-profile moves with a potentially higher-impact investment in ground troops who can recruit volunteers, knock on doors, register voters and create a buzz around the campaign with bumper stickers and yard signs.
To appreciate the aggressiveness of Obama’s operation it’s worth taking a closer look at the jockeying in Georgia.
Democrats haven’t won this state since Bill Clinton captured it in 1992 — with a critical assist from independent candidate Ross Perot.
It’s a state where the political world today is dominated by a Republican governor, two Republican U.S. senators, and a Republican state legislature.
But the state is also home to a large African-American constituency, an influential white urban voting bloc and Bob Barr, a popular former Republican congressman who is running at the top of the Libertarian Party ticket.
Obama won the Feb. 5 Democratic primary here in a walk, capturing 66 percent of the vote to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 31 percent.
Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain lost the Peach State primary to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and barely held off former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to take second place.
Within that complex political mosaic, Obama spies opportunity.
He sent his first field workers to Georgia in May 2007, according to his financial disclosure forms. They remained here, albeit in smaller numbers, even after the primary.
Last month, more than 20 paid Obama staffers were toiling away in the back conference room of a partially renovated law office in downtown Atlanta.
And now their numbers are growing as they prepare to launch a voter registration drive that could see hundreds of thousands of African-American and young voters added to the voting rolls by November.
Their job is made easier by the enthusiasm gap, which is creating impassioned pockets of Obama supporters even in GOP strongholds who can be mobilized at minimum cost. The effort could pay off in tightening polls, an even bigger donor pool and votes.
A Politico analysis of the candidates’ spending in Georgia — not including advertising — since January 2007 found that overall, McCain has spent $441,895 to Obama’s $335,671.
But half of McCain’s cash, $220,613, has gone to three people, all of whom are fundraising consultants.
In the most recent financial disclosure reports released last week, McCain lists 13 Georgia-related expenses for June, which total $46,723.
Almost all of the payments were related to a Savannah campaign stop in May. McCain hasn’t hired any full-time field staff in Georgia and he’s not running any commercials on television there.
Obama listed 22 Georgia payments in his June financial disclosure form totaling $11,503. Of them, 13 were staff payroll costs. Since June 20, he’s aired $1.6 million in positive, biographical advertisements on Georgia stations, according to Evan Tracey, founder of the Campaign Media Analysis Group.
“They are treating the money they spent in the primaries as organizational investments and relying on them to form the foundation for the general election,” said Anthony Corrado, a nonpartisan campaign finance expert.
“Rather than retooling or starting over, they are just building out from the organizational structure they began months ago in some of these states,” he added.
The McCain campaign is dismissive of their opponent’s effort to turn so many red states to blue.