Bradley in DC
01-28-2008, 08:18 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/27/ST2008012702458.html?hpid=topnews
Hard Choices on the Path to Feb. 5
By Juliet Eilperin and Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 28, 2008; A12
FORT MYERS, Fla., Jan. 27 -- Almost as soon as the Republican primary ends here Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) will ditch his trademark town hall meetings and begin an aerial trek from one media market to the next, touching down long enough to hold tarmac rallies before moving on.
It is exactly the kind of campaigning that McCain dislikes and has largely been able to avoid. But a campaign of comfort zones will quickly give way to one of time zones after Tuesday, with just a week to go before what could be a decisive day of contests on Feb. 5. That is when Republicans in 21 states, including New York and California, will go to the polls.
"It's basically a de facto national primary," said Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser. "So we'll spend time making national news."
None of the four remaining major candidates for the Republican nomination has the time to compete in every state that will vote on Super Tuesday. Instead, they will be immersed in the process of picking and choosing, employing divergent strategies aimed at winning the most states and delegates.
McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- if he survives past Florida -- will spend much of their time in the Northeast and in California, where they hope big victories in the largest states will deliver the most delegates. Both will also aim for a few Southern or Midwestern states, such as Illinois and Georgia, where a lot of delegates are at stake.
Desperate for momentum going into the coast-to-coast primaries, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spent the early part of his day in Florida blasting McCain's economic stances. A loss in Tuesday's primary could be crippling; a win would give Romney a boost heading into the next round.
Romney has not decided which states to target on Feb. 5, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said. He said the candidate expects to perform well in Massachusetts, where he was governor, and to win in Utah -- Romney is a Mormon, and Mormonism is the dominant religion in the state. His personal wealth could also allow him to compete in more places than his rivals, though the campaign has so far focused its television advertising in Florida rather than in Super Tuesday states.
A top Romney adviser said the campaign is taking a "cost per delegate" approach, looking to win delegates with the least amount of money spent on ads and time spent stumping by the candidate. The adviser said one target may be Colorado, where the campaign can stop after California and where a caucus will be held instead of a primary, something that may favor the well-organized Romney camp.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who has not won since finishing first in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, has little money to work with and is concentrating on a few Southern states, where his campaign thinks that a strong showing will keep his candidacy alive. Huckabee left Florida on Saturday to stop at a Baptist college in Alabama and will appear Monday in Nashville, showing off his skills on bass guitar at a recording studio in the Music City while campaigning in another Feb. 5 state.
"On Super Tuesday, they're not going to be everywhere, and I cannot imagine they're going to be in these states," said Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins, referring to the South. "Romney's not going to spend $500 million; my sense is he will pick and choose, McCain will pick and choose, and we'll go where we think we can win."
Advisers to McCain and Romney said they will not entirely concede the South to Huckabee. Black said McCain will probably target Georgia -- which has 72 delegates, the most in the South -- and Tennessee. Fehrnstrom said Romney will also compete in Georgia.
Despite their varied approaches, the candidates will almost certainly cross paths, and they will all debate Wednesday in California.
Given the bevy of battlegrounds, generating news coverage will also become a key strategy of the campaigns, because it would cost each of them about $35 million to run a week of ads in all 21 states.
McCain's schedule reflects this approach. After Wednesday's debate, he will remain in California for another day before moving on to Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. His tour also includes a handful of fundraisers. The senator has raised at least $7 million since Jan. 1, and he regularly makes time to meet with donors.
After California, Giuliani's public schedule shows him giving a speech a couple of days later in Illinois, where aides think he is strong. Giuliani's advisers also say he may stop in Missouri, where he can count on the political organization of Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a longtime supporter.
But the former New York mayor will spend most of his time in the week leading up to the Feb. 5 primaries in the Northeast corridor, where he expects to do especially well, aides said.
Giuliani's plans are perhaps the most up in the air and will change according to the outcome of the Florida primary, aides said. A surprise victory might open the door to visits in other states, they said. A defeat probably would force him to pull back and concentrate on his home state, though recent polls show him struggling in New York as well as in California. His advisers have long suggested that both states are must-wins if he wants to secure the nomination.
A loss in Florida could also end Giuliani's campaign. Advisers say he will consider the downside to fighting on to Feb. 5, including the potential for an embarrassing loss in his home state, the likelihood that he could finish at the bottom in more than a dozen states and a lack of money to continue.
Huckabee is fighting the same perception problem that Giuliani faces, with donors wondering whether he remains viable. The former governor was hoping to raise $10 million by Feb. 5 on the strength of his win in Iowa. He has taken in less than $3 million, and though he once led in Florida, polls again show him in fourth.
So his campaign is beginning a last-ditch effort to make him the candidate of the South in the hopes of surviving beyond Feb. 5. With former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) now out of the race, Huckabee will cast himself as the candidate who best represents Southern and Midwestern values.
Huckabee's aides said they will rely in part on his base of evangelical Christians. He will stick to his populist economic message, which includes a proposal to replace the tax code with a national sales tax, and will emphasize his support for constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and abortion.
He will have to do it with a smaller organization. After a debilitating defeat in South Carolina, where his campaign had invested heavily in both time and money, it laid off close to a dozen staffers last week, asked others to start working without pay and decided not to run ads on broadcast channels in Florida.
Even with a poor showing in Florida, if Huckabee sweeps the South and the Midwest, and if Giuliani, Romney and McCain split victories in California, New York and other Feb. 5 states, he could collect enough delegates to remain competitive. But such a strategy supposes that the Florida victor will not have enough momentum to win nationwide and that Southern voters will not perceive the cash-strapped Huckabee as a candidate with little chance of winning.
"Huckabee would be a more familiar figure in many of these Southern states than other candidates, but his big problem is he's out of money, and increasingly he looks like a candidate who cannot win the nomination," said Merle Black, a politics and government professor at Emory University in Atlanta.
Hard Choices on the Path to Feb. 5
By Juliet Eilperin and Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 28, 2008; A12
FORT MYERS, Fla., Jan. 27 -- Almost as soon as the Republican primary ends here Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) will ditch his trademark town hall meetings and begin an aerial trek from one media market to the next, touching down long enough to hold tarmac rallies before moving on.
It is exactly the kind of campaigning that McCain dislikes and has largely been able to avoid. But a campaign of comfort zones will quickly give way to one of time zones after Tuesday, with just a week to go before what could be a decisive day of contests on Feb. 5. That is when Republicans in 21 states, including New York and California, will go to the polls.
"It's basically a de facto national primary," said Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser. "So we'll spend time making national news."
None of the four remaining major candidates for the Republican nomination has the time to compete in every state that will vote on Super Tuesday. Instead, they will be immersed in the process of picking and choosing, employing divergent strategies aimed at winning the most states and delegates.
McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- if he survives past Florida -- will spend much of their time in the Northeast and in California, where they hope big victories in the largest states will deliver the most delegates. Both will also aim for a few Southern or Midwestern states, such as Illinois and Georgia, where a lot of delegates are at stake.
Desperate for momentum going into the coast-to-coast primaries, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spent the early part of his day in Florida blasting McCain's economic stances. A loss in Tuesday's primary could be crippling; a win would give Romney a boost heading into the next round.
Romney has not decided which states to target on Feb. 5, spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said. He said the candidate expects to perform well in Massachusetts, where he was governor, and to win in Utah -- Romney is a Mormon, and Mormonism is the dominant religion in the state. His personal wealth could also allow him to compete in more places than his rivals, though the campaign has so far focused its television advertising in Florida rather than in Super Tuesday states.
A top Romney adviser said the campaign is taking a "cost per delegate" approach, looking to win delegates with the least amount of money spent on ads and time spent stumping by the candidate. The adviser said one target may be Colorado, where the campaign can stop after California and where a caucus will be held instead of a primary, something that may favor the well-organized Romney camp.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who has not won since finishing first in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, has little money to work with and is concentrating on a few Southern states, where his campaign thinks that a strong showing will keep his candidacy alive. Huckabee left Florida on Saturday to stop at a Baptist college in Alabama and will appear Monday in Nashville, showing off his skills on bass guitar at a recording studio in the Music City while campaigning in another Feb. 5 state.
"On Super Tuesday, they're not going to be everywhere, and I cannot imagine they're going to be in these states," said Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins, referring to the South. "Romney's not going to spend $500 million; my sense is he will pick and choose, McCain will pick and choose, and we'll go where we think we can win."
Advisers to McCain and Romney said they will not entirely concede the South to Huckabee. Black said McCain will probably target Georgia -- which has 72 delegates, the most in the South -- and Tennessee. Fehrnstrom said Romney will also compete in Georgia.
Despite their varied approaches, the candidates will almost certainly cross paths, and they will all debate Wednesday in California.
Given the bevy of battlegrounds, generating news coverage will also become a key strategy of the campaigns, because it would cost each of them about $35 million to run a week of ads in all 21 states.
McCain's schedule reflects this approach. After Wednesday's debate, he will remain in California for another day before moving on to Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. His tour also includes a handful of fundraisers. The senator has raised at least $7 million since Jan. 1, and he regularly makes time to meet with donors.
After California, Giuliani's public schedule shows him giving a speech a couple of days later in Illinois, where aides think he is strong. Giuliani's advisers also say he may stop in Missouri, where he can count on the political organization of Sen. Christopher S. Bond, a longtime supporter.
But the former New York mayor will spend most of his time in the week leading up to the Feb. 5 primaries in the Northeast corridor, where he expects to do especially well, aides said.
Giuliani's plans are perhaps the most up in the air and will change according to the outcome of the Florida primary, aides said. A surprise victory might open the door to visits in other states, they said. A defeat probably would force him to pull back and concentrate on his home state, though recent polls show him struggling in New York as well as in California. His advisers have long suggested that both states are must-wins if he wants to secure the nomination.
A loss in Florida could also end Giuliani's campaign. Advisers say he will consider the downside to fighting on to Feb. 5, including the potential for an embarrassing loss in his home state, the likelihood that he could finish at the bottom in more than a dozen states and a lack of money to continue.
Huckabee is fighting the same perception problem that Giuliani faces, with donors wondering whether he remains viable. The former governor was hoping to raise $10 million by Feb. 5 on the strength of his win in Iowa. He has taken in less than $3 million, and though he once led in Florida, polls again show him in fourth.
So his campaign is beginning a last-ditch effort to make him the candidate of the South in the hopes of surviving beyond Feb. 5. With former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) now out of the race, Huckabee will cast himself as the candidate who best represents Southern and Midwestern values.
Huckabee's aides said they will rely in part on his base of evangelical Christians. He will stick to his populist economic message, which includes a proposal to replace the tax code with a national sales tax, and will emphasize his support for constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and abortion.
He will have to do it with a smaller organization. After a debilitating defeat in South Carolina, where his campaign had invested heavily in both time and money, it laid off close to a dozen staffers last week, asked others to start working without pay and decided not to run ads on broadcast channels in Florida.
Even with a poor showing in Florida, if Huckabee sweeps the South and the Midwest, and if Giuliani, Romney and McCain split victories in California, New York and other Feb. 5 states, he could collect enough delegates to remain competitive. But such a strategy supposes that the Florida victor will not have enough momentum to win nationwide and that Southern voters will not perceive the cash-strapped Huckabee as a candidate with little chance of winning.
"Huckabee would be a more familiar figure in many of these Southern states than other candidates, but his big problem is he's out of money, and increasingly he looks like a candidate who cannot win the nomination," said Merle Black, a politics and government professor at Emory University in Atlanta.