It is not merely the lore of Frank Lloyd Wright or the architectural wonders of his prized Taliesin estate that has lured Sen. John Kerry and his Democratic team to Spring Green, Wis., for four days of intense schooling before the first presidential debate this week.
The Massachusetts senator could, of course, have chosen from the list of his family’s own worthy properties along the sea in Nantucket, in the rolling hills near Pittsburgh or tucked in the mountains of Idaho. Surely all would have made suitable settings for debate camp.
But selecting a spot in Wisconsin, which is a short distance from two other battleground states, offers a telling lesson in the year’s political geography.
As President Bush and his challenger hopscotch across the country, Wisconsin has become among the most preferred destinations of the campaign season. Iowa, Minnesota, Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are on the top 10 list, too, along with Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico and New Hampshire.
Since the contest began in earnest nearly six months ago, barely a week has gone by when most of those states haven’t received at least one visit from a candidate, one of their ticket mates or wives. On a recent day in Iowa, First Lady Laura Bush’s plane landed only an hour or so after Vice President Dick Cheney had flown away aboard Air Force Two.
“We love visiting the heartland of America,” the first lady told an audience in Des Moines. “And, don’t worry, we’ll be back a lot between now and Nov. 2.”
A few hours later, when she stopped in Indianapolis for a Republican fundraiser, a local political reporter noted that it was the first time all season he had laid eyes on someone who lives in the White House. His counterparts in next-door Ohio, however, barely have room on their calendars to pencil in all the times that a Bush or a Cheney has paid a visit.
Indeed, elsewhere in America, if voters try to catch an up-close glimpse of the race, they’re almost certainly out of luck. In a number of states, Illinois included, campaigns have barely stocked their offices with yard signs if the Republican or Democratic balance historically has tipped far enough in one direction.
But with five weeks remaining before Election Day, the political map is shifting anew as campaigns begin weeding down wish lists into a realistic set of battleground states where an investment in television ads and ground troops is more likely to pay off.
A state is politically blessed to be a battleground, after all, based on the results of the last presidential race. The combined margins of New Mexico, Iowa and Wisconsin added up only to 10,000 ballots in Al Gore’s favor, which means that Bush needs only to win a handful more votes per precinct to improve his fortunes.
This year, that trio of states will remain high on the targeted list until the final breath of the campaign. Others, however, have started to peel off as strategists have calculated that they have little chance of winning and choose to divert their limited resources elsewhere.
For now, the Kerry campaign has aborted its plan to air commercials in Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana, all states that Bush won in 2000, but places where Democrats believed they could make inroads this year. A summer’s worth of advertising, $5 million of it in Missouri alone, has failed to pay the expected dividends.
So the final chapter of the race is set to unfold in a smaller collection of states than Kerry once had imagined, all but dashing hopes of expanding the battleground to the optimistic goal of 20 states. Instead, his targets have narrowed, and he is left defending states that have traditionally gone Democratic (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa) even as he tries to make headway in Ohio and Florida.
Those two states, which hold a combined 47 electoral votes, offer the most assuring path to victory for Kerry. Then, his alternatives trickle down to other states that Bush carried four years ago: New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado and West Virginia.
At the same time, Bush is targeting states that went Democratic four years ago. He has increased his advertising spending in Minnesota, Oregon and Maine, hoping to snatch a state that Kerry assumed he had in his corner.
And since the 2000 presidential election, population shifts in America’s suburbs favor Republicans. Even if Kerry were able to win each state that Gore carried, he would accumulate only 260 electoral votes. That is 10 short of winning the White House, so he has to expand his boundaries at least marginally in Bush territory.
The latest Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll shows Bush leading in eight of 11 battleground states, while Kerry enjoys advantages in two states and is tied in another. On paper, the picture looks good in the eyes of the Bush campaign, but the president’s lead is within the poll’s margin of error in six of the states.
The outcome of the election, strategists in both parties believe, remains highly vulnerable to external events, ranging from unexpected calamities such as another devastating Florida hurricane to a terrorist attack to a monumental upswing in violence in Iraq.
“It’s very difficult to adjust this race in a press conference, in a speech, in a television spot, in a tactic,” said Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign. “President races are adjusted over lengthy periods of time and over big events.”
As battlegrounds shift in the campaign’s final stretch, the concerns of voters also can deviate as people pay closer attention to the race.
Last week, even as Kerry amplified his criticism of the Iraq war and hardened his skepticism of Bush’s judgment, there were signs some voters are not completely consumed by national security or terrorism. The latest Ohio Poll, released Friday by the University of Cincinnati, showed that nearly one-third of voters say their chief concern in the election is the economy, mentioning jobs more than any other issue.
Not so long ago, Democrats thought that Kerry’s road to the White House would take him through Ohio, which has 170,000 fewer manufacturing jobs since Bush took office. Even if a slice of the electorate deems the race a referendum on jobs and the economy, Democrats believe Bush could be at a disadvantage in places like Ohio.
At the same time, the economy is one of the bright spots in the outlooks of Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. And when Bush arrived in Wisconsin for yet another bus tour on Friday, he was greeted by a collection of poll numbers that show he enjoys an advantage of about 10 points, though strategists believe the race remains fluid.
And that, perhaps better than anything else, explains why Kerry is spending four days in Wisconsin this week.
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Jeff Zeleny is the Tribune’s national political correspondent.
