Posted on 05/11/2008 4:54:10 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Washington - If you ranked all of the TV markets in "blue-state" America according to how much advertising they saw from the 2004 Bush campaign and its allies, the list would begin like this:
Milwaukee.
Green Bay.
Wausau.
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Scranton-Wilkes Barre, Pa.
Madison.
La Crosse-Eau Claire.
That pretty much says it all about Wisconsin's place on the electoral map.
Few blue states are fatter targets for Republicans.
That was true for George W. Bush, who lost the state twice by an average of three-tenths of a percentage point. And it will be true again for John McCain, now busy crafting his battleground plans.
"Wisconsin will be a top target," says McCain's director of strategy, Sarah Simmons, who worked for the Wisconsin GOP during the 2000 campaign. "There is a path to victory there."
Of the 19 states won by the Democrats in 2004, Wisconsin is on a short list of best pick-up opportunities for the GOP. That assessment is based on recent history, current polling data and how insiders in both parties see the map.
In a Wisconsin poll released last week by Rasmussen Reports, McCain edged out both Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, leading each one 47% to 43%. In other state polls recently, McCain has led Clinton but trailed Obama.
The margins aren't statistically significant, and the numbers will bounce around all year. But the polls underscore what many experts believe is a more reliable predictor of competitiveness, the state's recent history of extreme parity.
"It is perhaps the best opportunity for McCain to pick up a state that was blue in 2004. It was so close, and McCain is the kind of Republican who might appeal in a state like Wisconsin," said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which will be polling in Wisconsin this summer and fall in a joint project with The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
Both Brown and pollster Scott Rasmussen, who took the survey cited above, point to the state's large pool of ticket-splitting independents as a potential McCain constituency.
That doesn't mean Wisconsin will end up being the closest state in 2008, as it was in 2004. It doesn't mean McCain will win Wisconsin, or even come as agonizingly close as Bush did.
But it does mean that Wisconsin voters will be among the most courted in the nation by every measure of what a modern campaign does, from TV ads to news media to photo-ops at the local cheese factory or shooting range.
The reasons are simple enough.
Wisconsin is the only state decided by less than half a percentage point in each of the past two elections. It's bigger than most other states that are as fiercely competitive (Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico). And it has been more competitive than battleground states that are bigger (Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan).
"At the end of the day, if you're John McCain and you think it's worth your while to target a blue state, Wisconsin is way up at the top of the list," says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who worked for John Kerry in 2004 and has surveyed extensively in Wisconsin for Gov. Jim Doyle.
Mellman doesn't believe the list of winnable blue states for McCain is a very long one. He thinks Wisconsin is a more plausible GOP target than most other states the Democrats carried last time.
"New Hampshire would be (on the list) too, but Wisconsin's got a lot more electoral votes. Yes, you'd be looking at Michigan, yes, you'd be looking at Pennsylvania, but you'd have to be looking at your prospects in Wisconsin even more positively than those other two states," Mellman said.
Bush 2004 strategist Matt Dowd also sees Wisconsin as more competitive for McCain than the bigger blue prizes of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
"I think he's got the potential to get Wisconsin, the potential to get New Hampshire back, maybe Maine . . . maybe something like Oregon," Dowd said.
Some add Minnesota to the short list; Republicans put the upper Midwest in their crosshairs when they chose the Twin Cities to host their summer convention.
State can offset losses
The party's payoff for picking off a blue state the size of Wisconsin is immense. Bush had a 34-vote Electoral College edge in 2004 general election. For McCain, that means winning Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) would help offset the combined losses of red states Ohio (20 votes) and New Mexico (5 votes). If all three states flip and nothing else changes, Republicans would have 271 electoral votes. Democrats would have 267. (270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.)
That suggests how indispensable Wisconsin is to a Democratic victory in a close election. And it explains much of the Bush campaign's preoccupation with the state in 2004 - its five bus trips, the fact that Wisconsin was one of four states (along with Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio) that accounted for more than half of the ad airings in the final full month of the campaign, according to data gathered by the Wisconsin Advertising Project.
"The McCain campaign is going to have to look at where it can pick up electoral votes, given expected losses" in some red states, says GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, citing two states that flipped from blue to red in '04 - Iowa and New Mexico (a combined 12 electoral votes) - and could easily flip back again.
"The easiest 10 (electoral votes) for the picking will be in Wisconsin," he contends.
A different approach
With the Democrats still competing, McCain is using the time to organize his general election campaign. In states such as Wisconsin, there is no campaign structure in place yet.
But the McCain campaign recently set up a joint account with the national and state parties to channel money into turn-out efforts in Wisconsin and three other small to midsize battlegrounds: Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico. The states were chosen because they are top '08 targets that don't generate much fund raising on their own and are logical places to steer party money raised elsewhere.
McCain starts the general election campaign with a list of 24 targeted states, but that number will shrink as the campaign unfolds.
He will target most of the same states as Bush did in '04, but his approach to those states will be different in key ways. While the Bush campaign was thoroughly top-down in its planning and decision-making, McCain aides say they will run a more decentralized campaign and that regional political directors, working with local supporters, will exercise more autonomy.
Organizationally, Wisconsin is part of a three-state Great Lakes cluster that includes another blue-state battleground, Michigan, and a safe red state, Indiana. The director for those states just joined the campaign in the past two weeks.
Strategically, the McCain campaign also will follow a different swing-state recipe than Bush. The signature of the 2004 Bush campaign was its extraordinary focus on the party base - on maximizing turnout of conservative and Republican voters. It believed that politics was so polarized there were fewer undecided voters to go after.
McCain's approach will be different.
With their candidate enjoying a reputation for crossing party lines and running in a poor climate for Republicans, "we will be gearing a lot of our presentations to independent voters and conservative Democrats," says Charlie Black, senior adviser to McCain. "If we could get 20% of blue-collar Democrats, we win," he says.
McCain aides say they will have to play hard outside the GOP voting belt that stretches from the Milwaukee suburbs north through the Fox Valley and make inroads in western and northern Wisconsin.
"I think John McCain has a special appeal (in the state) with his history of reaching across the aisle," says McCain aide Simmons, who notes that one of the best-known cases is his collaboration with Senate Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin on the McCain-Feingold campaign law of 2002.
Wisconsin Democrats, who have seen their party carry the state five elections in a row, are of different minds about the McCain threat. Many believe an Obama nomination, now likely, would make it harder for McCain to win the state because Obama has run stronger than Clinton in most state polls and trounced her in the February primary.
Doyle, a big Obama backer, is skeptical that his party's Wisconsin winning streak would end in such a poor political climate for the GOP.
"It's pretty hard to believe this is the one year...Wisconsin would vote for a Republican," Doyle said in an interview.
But Feingold, McCain's Senate colleague, has repeatedly warned that beating McCain in the state will be a serious challenge.
While Doyle doubts that McCain will be able to separate himself from his president and his party, Feingold isn't so sure.
In an interview earlier this year, he said McCain is "a candidate who seems to be extremely conservative (but) will be very hard to characterize," and added that, in Wisconsin, "it's going to be tougher than winning it against Bush, and Bush barely lost it twice."
Conservatives and Reagan Democrats in this state are sick to death of the hard Left. I'm betting McCain wins Wisconsin. If not, it'll be even closer...which is a step in the Right direction. ;)
McCain will win Wisconsin. There are only two areas that will vote of Osama, Milwaukee and Madison. Madison may be totally Osama but Milwaukee won’t. Southside will be McCain and so will the rest of the state. It won’t be close.
Gotta keep in mind the counties that border MN. Lots of “crossover voting” in those counties, as in libs from MN “crossing over” the river to vote more than once. Grrrrrr!
It’s very BLUE up in NW Wisconsin, and it’s totally Joe Six Pack factory and construction-type jobs up there, so that’s always perplexed me.
That is where I grew up. They may be blue but they won’t vote black.
Wasn’t there a ton of voter fraud in WI in ‘04? Seems like they had some goofy same-day registration policy in force on election day that resulted in some HUGE numbers of Kerry votes in Milwaukee.
McCain should carry Michigan and PA as well.
I think PA and NJ are great targets too. Even MI could be in play. I think Obama’s best hope is in Ohio.
Are you saying people in Wisconsin won’t vote for a F.I.B.?
When the GOP is through with Barack Hussein Obama, he will be lucky to win two states plus the District of Columbia.
He has alienated far too many key demo groups - future POTUS Juan’s got himself a landslide coming.
I used to live in River Falls and Barron, and I still miss the trees.
Push the Second Amendment HARD! They close the schools for deer season up there, and close to a million hunters take to the woods. They and their families will vote against Obama if they feel that their liberties are threatened.
Except for Democrat vote fraud in Milwaukee President Bush would have won WI both times.
Except at the rate he is going left, there will be 20% or more of the Conservatives that will not vote for him.
I'm not as sure as you that McCain can win in DC.
If McCain wins in NJ it is going to be an early evening.
With McCain really being a closet Democrat, what’s the problem with McCain not possibly winning some blue states unless he becomes too wimpy, too “beat up” by the MSM, and/or has too many “old age” moments that truly affect the total vote for McCain on November 4?
Not great. Obama will swamp McCain in the very big bucks department.
That is the biggest problem for McCain.
- and the lower tier candidates that this organizational structure - the 1st of it's kind - is going to drain off all of the cash that the RNC would typically allocate to congressional candidates Nationwide.
Maybe he can overcome that. We shall see.
Watch the money number.
McCain would be smart to pursue PA as well - lots of EV’s and he already polls very well there against Obama.
Are you sure they'll vote for a black guy though? Let's be honest - lots of blue-collar, Joe Six-Pack Union Dem types are...let's put it...not fond of the bruthas if you get my drift. I've met some of them.
What’s an FIB?
I’m not writing off Hillary yet, never write off the Clintons.
If Obama is the dem candidate I think McCain can take the state although I’m not as confidant as some. Milwaukee and Madison will probably turnout bigtime for Obama and they own the rest of us in WI.
Doesn’t Wisconsin have same day registration? How much do you want to bet that there will be busloads of welfare recipients and vagrants bussed in from Chicago to register and vote in November?
This would seem to be a case for Tommy Thompson as McCain’s running mate, except that Thompson indicated he isn’t interested.
If McCain does pick up Wisconsin, that puts Democrats in a bad spot.
Haven’t read the replies but the thing about WI is that if Bush had won the state, all of the OH whining by the dems would have been moot. WI was much closer than OH in 2004 yet the dems to this day still carry on about OH being stolen. Damn them all!
I was surprised Rasmussen just a few days ago showed McCain beating either Dem in WI. If that happens, then he probably would win nationwide, but we shall see. Several polls leading up to the ‘04 vote had Bush ahead there too.
Thompson might be a good running mate but I think he is only a few years younger than McCain. Plus he did not do too well in debate performances when he ran for president.
He is not Hillary and he is not Obama. That is good enough for me.
Looks like the shadows of Chicago-type election counting going on here; ripe for the game of waiting till the wee hours of the morning to find a few tenth's of a percentage worth of votes that were not counted. yet.
I think Wisconsin is very winnable for Republicans. So is Michigan, if the message is right...Pennsylvania possibly, IF the fraud in Philadelphia can be thwarted.
The Conventional Wisdom that this is a ‘rat’s year isn’t necessarily true. I know there are PLENTY of Democrats who aren’t enamored with Hussein’s Messiah complex.
He’ll get my Cheese Head vote.
We have to find a way to stop the union bus loads coming over the boarder on election day from IL. They are voting in the border counties and you can bet it isn’t for a Republican!
Winning Michigan will be easier for McCain if he chooses Mitt Romney as his running mate. The Romney name still has a lot of appeal there.
That statement says volumes about you.
If Rendell is obama’s VP, PA’s gone. But that’ll alienate the south and and midwest somewhat.
Really? It says a lot more about the voters that the OP is referring to.
I agree Wisconsin would go to McCain with TT on the ticket, the problem is that McCain will get baggage in the rest of the country on the age issue. Their combined age is something like 137 and the Dems will attack the GOP ticket as being out of touch with modern era and being old and tired to run this country in the time of war. TT would be an excellent choice for a "elder statemen" running mate if McCain were in his 40s, but he's in his 70s.
It's possible that Minnesota Governor Pawlenty could put Wisconsin down to the wire though, in much the same way the Crook County machine managed to tie with Hillary in Indiana. Remember, Bush only lost Wiscosnin by something like 0.5%. Any prominent midwestern politician from a nearby state that won in 2006 could convince some people to vote GOP that might not do so otherwise. If Pawlenty can carry Minnesota in 2006, he should be an effect stump speaker for the ticket in Wisconsin.
...especially not a FISHTAB.
If he wins Wisconsin, he’ll do it without my vote.
McCain will have to win the rural liberals to win Wisconsin. Madison is solidly left, as is the City of Milwaukee. The Milwaukee County suburbs, along with Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee Counties are the conservative areas of the state.
The Fox Valley is generally more conservative, but northern and western Wisconsin are the areas that the dems have gotten in the past few years.
No, that statement says volumes about the fact that the "liberal" Democratic Party harbors much more bigotry than it would ever admit.
Come November, he might be awfully surprised. No 'Rat candidate in the past has had a pastor like Rev. Wright.
Does this pompous 'Rat think that once a state goes for them in one presidential race, they own the state in perpetuity?
think you mis-read... the statement was that Obama would win only two states and DC. DC’s a given for any Dem, much less an African American dem.
Tommy Thompson is as exciting as yesterday’s fish. He needs to put a young and more invigorating candidate like Mark Sanford on the ticket. Thompson will also be a bit too old to succeed McCain (if McCain serves two terms, Thompson would turn 75 2 weeks after the 2016 election). We saw the danger with not having a natural successor to Bush (since Cheney took himself out of the equation early on) and we don’t need to have that happen again...
Besides, why hasn’t Thompson stepped up to take out one of the two embarrassment Senators ? He’s had ample opportunity. All these former Governors that decide not to do what’s best for the country... We could claim a dozen or more Senate seats just using them alone (AR, FL, IL, IA, LA, MI, MN, MT, NE, NV, NM, ND & WI). Guess it’s too much trouble to ask them to do the right thing. :-\
No, I was making a weak attempt at a joke. The DC voters are going to be conflicted as to which Democrat to vote for in November, the one with the D or the one with the R by the name.
Isn’t MN’s Arne Carlson a RINO?
Yup, but he’d be preferable to Klobuchar. Ditto even Jim Edgar over Obama (of course, I’ll bet Edgar voted for Obama over Keyes).
I can not see how anyone who loves the USA could vote for Hussein. He has to be the worst,most dangerous and inept presidential candidate in our history.
We could have certainly kept RATs from winning those rural western states like ND, SD, and MT if the most popular Republican governors from those states ran, and Jeb Bush almost certainly should have run in FL to save the state GOP from Katherine Harris's kamakasi bid. It's tough to dislodge the RATs in yellow dog Arkansas and Lousiana no matter who runs (Huckabee would have probably lost to Pryor simply due to the latter's last name being "Pryor"). I also wish conservative icons Gordon Humphrey (NH) and Pete DuPont (DE) would do something about the toxic enviroment of the Republican Party in their states, though fieldmarshaldj disagrees. Too bad, those states are going to one-party RAT rule for the foreseeable future.
As for the RINOs, I did suggest a while back that RINO Jim Edgar challenge Dickhead Durbin in 2002. Edgar is one of the few very RINOs who actually DID governor as a "fiscal conservative", and didn't go out of his way to trash conservatives. If Edgar had taken out Durbin at that time, we would have had one conservative GOP from IL with a 90% conservative record, and one moderate GOP Senator from IL with a 40-60% conservative record, something I could happily live with (compare to the current sitution, two ultra-communists from Illinois). Many Illinois conservatives disagree with me, for some odd reason they hate Edgar more than ultra-RINO George Ryan. Having Durbin and Edgar serve together would be less desireable, as the net effect would a leftist Senate delegation from Illinois. Former Governor JIM Thompson would have also likely beat Durbin and Obama, though you'd have a hard time convincing me to vote for him. Jim Thompson has become the chief George Ryan apologist in Illinois, and today seems to have morphed into the very thing he defeated back in the 70s -- the corrupt-loving slimey party hack from Chicago. Jim Thompson has now abandoned the FEW good principles held had as Governor, like oppositon to Mayor Daley's O'Hare airport expansion scheme. TOMMY Thompson gave a great speech at the Ames straw poll last year when he noted how Jim Thompson used to refer to him as "the other Thompson, the crazy one up north" due to TT's staunch conservativism, but Tommy had the last laugh when people from Illinois flocked to Wisconsin in the 80s.
Tommy Thompson most likely bypassed a Senate race because he realized no prominent statewide GOP candidate with a consistantly conservative track record was willing to run for President at the time (Fred Thompson sitting on his butt til it was too late) so he offered himself up to fill the gap. Unfortunately for Tommy, in this era of television he never stood a chance without a telegenic personality.
I heard RINO Arne Carlson won office when the more conservative candidate who defeated him in the primary was caught in a sex scandal and the state GOP turned to Carlson to bale them out. I don't think Carlson would have beat Klobscher in 2006 given the political climate at the time. I'm still trying to figure out how the Rainman-like Dayton defeated an incumbant in 2002. Dayton should have been easy to beat. In either case, it's hard to get two good GOP Senators in midwestern states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan.
But in hindsight, we'd be running the Senate today if these states had Senators Coleman, Tommy Thompson, Edgar, and Engler all serving.
That statement says volumes about you.
Tell me what that says about me.
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