NYT- With Arizona Changing, McCain Focuses on Home

[ErinBerin84]

haha, the article and Republican spokesperson try to play this off as a possible "trap" set for Obama to raise money for McCain (moving Arizona to a battleground state). Maybe they haven't seen some recent poll numbers from there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/politics/24arizona.html_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1216893763-DpTf712nYgIYFVSPM2LVdQ


With Arizona Changing, McCain Focuses on Home

As a general rule, Senator John McCain does not alert the news media when he eats breakfast in Arizona.
But on a Monday morning this month, Mr. McCain campaigned in a local diner, after a Sunday stop at his campaign office here, where he urged volunteers to “make sure we get our voters registered, to make sure we are organized.”


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Last month, the McCain campaign startlingly added Arizona to its list of 24 “battleground states,” a fact that state Democrats have clung to like sprinkles on a soft-serve ice cream cone.

“John McCain has striking vulnerabilities here,” said Emily DeRose, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party. “We are going to take him to the mat. We are not giving him a pass in Arizona.”

What is more, the state’s Republican Party is more or less in disarray, split between its moderate and staunchly conservative factions. Its chairman, who cheerfully attended a Ron Paul campaign event here just two months ago, has been a thorn in Mr. McCain’s political side for years. On Super Tuesday, Mr. McCain captured 47 percent of his party’s voters, hardly the resounding victory that a candidate who has represented his state for over 25 years might expect.


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Mr. McCain’s more relevant concern in this state may be the independents, who have been registering at a breakneck speed since the last presidential election and who, along with crossover Republicans, clearly helped elect Democrats in 2006.

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My research shows that in Arizona, the new independent is a different type of person from seven years ago,” said Mr. Merrill, the polling expert. “That voter was more libertarian, more get-government-out-of-my-life. The new independents, which went heavily Democratic in the last election, are much younger, better educated and overwhelmingly antiwar.”

While Democrats welcomed the McCain campaign’s description of Arizona as a battleground state, the pronouncement could also have been a strategic move, done to raise money or motivate volunteers at home, or to mess with the minds of the opposition.

“I didn’t take that too seriously,” said Mr. Pullen, the Republican chairman. “I probably should have called them to ask why. It could have been a trap for Obama.”

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