Democrats Flood States With Ads as Tuesday Nears

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: February 3, 2008

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have unleashed advertisements in nearly all the 22 states that have Democratic presidential nominating contests on Tuesday, a combined $19 million expenditure that is the most ambitious and geographically expansive television effort in a presidential primary.
On the Republican side, Senator John McCain and Mitt Romney have a far more restrained advertising effort that started just this weekend and is focusing on a handful of states and national cable television.
Faced with the challenge of getting their messages out to nearly half the country for a single day of voting, the candidates are taking to the airwaves in a concentrated burst of advertising that includes individual advertisements tailored to specific concerns of different parts of the country. The sweep of advertising has put their strategies out in the open and has highlighted the diverging financial fortunes of the two parties.
The complexity of the delegate allocation rules has prompted the campaigns to make decisions about advertising that are unlike what would be made in a general election. And the sheer number of contests has ruled out the retail politicking the candidates practiced in Iowa and New Hampshire. That has forced the candidates to choose between paying for advertising or relying on the kindness of free news coverage, as Mr. McCain has done.
The advertisements are striking in that they are devoid of any overt attacks on opponents. (Though Mr. Romney has reprised an advertisement in which he attacks Mrs. Clinton.) After weeks in which the race in both parties has featured flashes of intense personal animosity, the candidates all seem to have decided that they need to introduce and define themselves for a broad swath of the country in positive terms, especially since the compressed calendar gives them no time for a second chance.
Mr. Obama, of Illinois, has run advertisements in 21 of the 22 states that will hold Democratic primaries or caucuses. Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has run advertisements in 16 of those states. His campaign has aimed advertisements on different issues at particular cities in an effort to tailor his message to the concerns of voters.
Voters in Hartford and Fargo, for example, are watching advertisements for Mr. Obama decrying Wall Street abuses and talking about tax cuts. The advertisements seek to address the economic anxiety that polls suggest is rife in those parts of the country. (“Stock markets in turmoil, jobs in jeopardy, fear of recession,” the announcer says.)
In Minneapolis and Albuquerque, audiences are seeing advertisements that include battle scenes from the Iraq war, reflecting Mr. Obama’s effort to emphasize his early opposition to the war in a part of the country where antiwar sentiment appears high. “We can end a war,” reads the message on the screen, over a backdrop of Mr. Obama talking and rousing rock music playing. “We can save a planet.”
Most of Mrs. Clinton’s advertisements are keyed to economic anxiety, a subject she has increasingly addressed. Voters across the country are seeing what has become her signature advertisement on the economy: a man dropped from a plane and hurtling toward the ground — an image intended to capture an economy in free fall — until his parachute engages, presumably suggesting what a second Clinton presidency might do for the economy.
But she, too, has aimed specific advertisements at specific states or groups. In California, for example, she has run advertisements about the environment and energy. “We have to get serious about ending our dependence on foreign oil,” she says in that spot. And on Saturday, an advertisement featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is supporting her, will begin running in Massachusetts and New York — seeking to counter Obama advertisements that feature Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, who have endorsed Mr. Obama and campaigned for him.
The advertising strategies reflect strategic calculations by the candidates as they navigate the different Republican and Democratic delegate rules.
In many states for Republicans, the candidate who wins the popular vote captures all the delegates. But for Democrats, delegates are awarded proportionally by Congressional district, so it makes sense for a candidate to advertise in selective areas in hopes of winning a share of the delegates — which is what Mr. Obama is doing.
“We are in a world in which delegates matter,” said Ken Goldstein, a political science professor and the director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which just completed a study of campaign expenditures to date. “Obama’s got money, and there’s a different definition of competitiveness. General election competitiveness is, Can you win? Primary competitiveness is, Can you come close and win delegates?”
Mr. Obama has spent $10.9 million on advertisements in the states voting on Tuesday; his first expenditure was Jan. 12, according to officials from both campaigns. Mrs. Clinton has spent about $8 million, starting on Jan. 17 in California. Between them, they have spent at least $1.3 million a day for the last week on television advertising in the states voting on Tuesday, said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.
Most of this money has been expended in just two weeks. By comparison, all the presidential candidates spent a total of $43 million in Iowa and $32 million in New Hampshire, according to a report from the Wisconsin Advertising Project. In those states, advertising ran for months before the votes.
Illinois, Mr. Obama’s home state, is the one place where neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Obama is advertising. Of the five other states where Mrs. Clinton is not advertising, four — Alaska, Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota — have caucuses, the kind of competition that aides to both candidates believe gives an edge to Mr. Obama. In the fifth state, Georgia, Mr. Obama is looking to do well, in part because of the state’s large black population.
Mr. Romney and Mr. McCain began their television effort on Friday; there were no specific figures available on their spending, though it appeared to be about $2 million for Mr. Romney and about $1 million for Mr. McCain. Mr. Romney, again reaching into his own pockets, bought television advertisements across California and on national cable television, a venue rarely used in a primary campaign.
That is a significant drop-off in spending by Mr. Romney over earlier in the primary season, a decision his advisers said reflected the paucity of Mr. McCain’s efforts and the different demands of competing across the country.
Mr. Romney reprised an old advertisement asserting that his background as governor of Massachusetts and chief executive of the 2002 Winter Olympics gave him the experience to be president. Mr. McCain’s advertisement suggested that he was more intent on addressing concerns about him among conservatives than the challenge of Mr. Romney. Speaking to the camera, he invokes Ronald Reagan and describes himself as “a proud social conservative who will never waver.”
The advertisements by Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton offered insights into their strategic decisions and challenges. Mrs. Clinton has shown a decided edge among women over Mr. Obama this year; Mr. Obama’s advertisements are filled with images of women, including several that feature elected officials who have endorsed him, including Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona.
Mr. Obama uses these endorsers to offer an implicit criticism of Mrs. Clinton, something he is not doing himself. For example, Ms. Napolitano says, “Barack Obama doesn’t just tell people what they want to hear.”
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are running Spanish-language advertisements, mostly in California, testimony to the importance of Hispanic voters in so many states. In one, Mr. Obama is introduced in Spanish and speaks in English in a clear effort to deal with the reluctance of some Hispanic voters to rally behind a black candidate.
“Hope is what led me here today,” he says, his words translated into Spanish subtitles. “With a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas and a story that can only happen in the United States of America.”
Both campaigns use their candidates as the main star. Mrs. Clinton is shown talking to the camera or to small groups of voters, which has been a strength for her. Mr. Obama is repeatedly shown talking to big, energized — and young — crowds that often roar their approval.
Aides to both campaigns said that the decisions had been complicated given the varying rules. Mr. Obama has put more of his resources into states with caucuses, which tend to draw the party’s most committed voters. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama started advertising early in California not just because of its size, but because the state allows people to begin casting votes early.
“There’s a little bit of a chess game with the ads,” said Mr. Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. “When all is said and done, there will be a lot of re-examining of all these decisions. This one will get plowed over pretty hard.”

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Em destaque: Nas progandas políticas do democrata Barack Obama, em Minneapolis e Albuquerque, o uso de imagens da Guerra do Iraque para enfatizar a posição contrária do candidato a esta empreitada americana.

Fonte: The New York Times ( caderno National - Politics)
Publicação: 3 de fevereiro 2008
Autor: Adam Nagourney
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03ads.html?ref=us&pagewanted=all

Candidates Go to Final Round in Battle for Super Tuesday

By BRIAN KNOWLTON
Published: February 3, 2008

With two days to go before Super Tuesday’s multistate nominating contests, candidates for both parties campaigned furiously on Sunday, trying to seize voters’ support in the hours before the country’s attention shifted to the Super Bowl.
A variety of weekend polls showed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York was locked in a tight race with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for the Democratic nomination. A CBS News poll released Sunday evening showed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama each had the support of 41 percent of the 491 Democratic primary voters it surveyed.
In contrast, Senator John McCain appeared to be heading into Tuesday’s Republican contests with a clear lead over his chief rival, former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. The CBS News poll showed Mr. McCain gaining the support of 46 percent of the 325 Republican primary voters it surveyed, compared with 23 percent for Mr. Romney.
The polls also showed that significant numbers of voters have simply not yet decided who they are going to vote for, or if they have decided, are not fully committed to their decisions. About four in 10 Democratic voters and more than half of the Republican said they still could change their minds before Tuesday’s contests, the CBS News poll said. Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney both came out swinging on Sunday. At a campaign stop in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Obama criticized both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain and tried to link his opponents to the policies of the Bush administration, particularly the war in Iraq, which Mrs. Clinton initially supported.
“I can offer and clean break from the failed policies of George W. Bush,” Mr. Obama said. “I won’t have to explain my votes in the past.”
At a campaign rally outside Chicago, Mr. Romney, who has repeatedly claimed that Mr. McCain is out of step with conservative Republicans, also tried to link the Arizona Republican with Mrs. Clinton.
“There’s a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Mr. Romney said. “Which way are we going to go? Are we going to take a sharp left turn in our party, get as close as we can to Hillary Clinton, without being Hillary Clinton?”
Still, Mr. McCain appears to be picking up significant support from Republicans after relied on independents to carry him to victory in some early primaries. An ABC News/Washington Post survey showed that his support among self-identified Republicans was up nearly fourfold since December.
Part of this increased support appeared to come from Republicans rallying around the candidate now deemed most electable. And part of it, said Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and second-tier Republican candidate, was a sense among some Republicans that Mr. Romney is a conservative of convenience, not of conviction.
“When we were out there supporting Ronald Reagan, he was running away from him,” Mr. Huckabee said on CNN. “That’s what rankles many of us. He’s a recent convert and now he shouts ‘hallelujah’ louder than the rest of us.”
The many winner-take-all Republican contests give Mr. McCain a chance to come within a few hundred delegates of victory on Tuesday, by some estimates.
Looking to Tuesday, Mr. Romney has concentrated his efforts in states that award delegates by caucuses and conventions, where his organization efforts can help offset the pull of Mr. McCain’s higher name recognition. He was also fighting hard to win in California, the day’s biggest prize.
Still, Mr. McCain’s emergence has political analysts speculating more pointedly about possible matchups. The ABC/Washington Post poll showed Mr. Obama narrowly defeating Mr. McCain in a head-to-head contest but Mr. McCain defeating Mrs. Clinton by an identical three-point margin.
At a campaign appearance on Sunday at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., Mr. McCain took a rare shot at Mrs. Clinton, including her in a denunciation of pork barrel spending.
“In her short time in the United States Senate, the senator from New York, Senator Clinton, has gotten $500 million worth of pork barrel projects,” Mr. McCain said. “My friends, that kind of thing is going to stop when I’m president of the United States of America.”
The race for the Democratic nomination is likely to go beyond Tuesday, partly because it is so competitive and partly because the Democrats’ proportional system allows a candidate to win delegates even while losing a state.
Together, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton are advertising in nearly all the 22 states with Democratic contests on Tuesday, spending millions of dollars. On Sunday night, Mr. Obama has even purchased 30 seconds of commercial time on the Super Bowl in more than 20 states where he is competing.
Mr. Obama has been gaining more ground in the polls than Mrs. Clinton, who has stemmed the erosion that began after the Iowa caucuses but not added much to her base. A poll by the Pew Research Center shows that since mid-January, Mr. Obama increased his support significantly among independents, white voters in general and white men in particular, voters aged 50 to 64, moderates, and voters with some college or more. The poll also found increased support from him among the middle class, voters whose yearly household income is between $40,000 and $75,000.
On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama also received the endorsement of Maria Shriver, who joined Caroline Kennedy and their uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachasetts, in endorsing the Illinois senator. Ms. Shriver’s husband, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, endorsed Mr. McCain last week.
Mrs. Clinton continued Sunday to play down the frictions that she and her husband, Bill, have had with the Obama camp, saying of herself and her rival: “We have lived the progress that has been made in America, each of us has broken barriers. Whoever wins the nomination will change American history.”
But Mrs. Clinton also suggested that she would prove tougher in a general election than Mr. Obama would be, once negative charges began to fly.
“I have been through these Republican attacks over and over and over again and I believe that I’ve demonstrated that, much to the dismay of the Republicans, I not only can survive, but thrive,” Mrs. Clinton said on the ABC News program “This Week.”
Mr. Obama, on the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” predicted that he would draw votes “that Senator Clinton cannot get.”
“That broadens the political map,” Mr. Obama said. “I think it bodes well for the election.”
He quickly sidestepped a question about a possible Democratic “dream ticket,” as the interviewer called it, uniting Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. “Democrats are eager to unify against the Republicans,” he said. He then pivoted to talk about his differences with Mr. McCain.
Mr. McCain, and Mr. Romney too, he said, had “essentially embraced” what Mr. Obama said was President Bush’s failed economic approach, and “both have suggested that we continue the war in Iraq.”
Mrs. Clinton, too, has begun drawing contrasts with Mr. McCain. On the Iraq war, she said, the differences “could not be stronger.” Mrs. Clinton has said she would start withdrawing American troops from Iraq within 60 days of taking office, while Mr. McCain has said American troops could be there up to 100 years.
“I personally believe there is no American military solution,” Mrs. Clinton said, “and it is imperative that we focus our attention on the political and diplomatic side of this equation.”
The contests on both sides have been so fierce that political analysts on Sunday were even analyzing intelligence on where the candidates planned to watch the Super Bowl.
Mr. McCain planned to watch from Massachusetts. Was that a pitch for votes from New England, whose Patriots are undefeated this year? Or a finger in the eye of Mr. Romney, the former governor?
And what did it mean that Bill Clinton would be watching from New Mexico, with Gov. Bill Richardson? Was this tantamount to an endorsement by the governor, or a bid for Hispanic support?
“I suspect,” Mr. Obama said, when asked about this on ABC, “that they’re just going to be watching the game.”

Reporting was contributed by Jeff Zeleny from Wilmington, Del., MichaelLuo from Chicago, Michael Cooper from Fairfield, Conn., and John Sullivan and Janet Elder from New York.

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Matéria que menciona levemente as posições dos candidatos quanto à Guerra do Iraque (parte em destaque)

Fonte: The New York Times ( caderno National - Politics)
Publicação: 3 de fevereiro 2008
Autor: Brian Knowlton
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03cnd-campaign.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp