McCain's choice alters campaign

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 31, 2008 by Adamna Gourney, Jim Rutenberg

Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama began recalibrating their strategies for the presidential campaign -- and reconsidering some of their basic assumptions about which states and voters were in play -- in a contest recast by McCain's unexpected selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate.

In the days after McCain announced his decision, catching almost everyone but his inner circle by surprise, both sides were trying to gauge the risks and opportunities of having a young, relatively inexperienced, socially conservative woman on the Republican ticket.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic Party had prepared advertisements and lines of attacks directed at the two men who had been most prominently mentioned as vice-presidential possibilities for McCain -- Mitt Romney and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota -- but had not considered Palin a likely enough choice to do the same for her. A new advertisement linking President Bush to McCain was quickly put together, but it contained only a fleeting mention of Palin.

That tentativeness reflected what Obama's advisers said was their struggle to figure out how to challenge the credentials and the ideology of a woman whose candidacy could be embraced by many women as a historic milestone. Once formally nominated at the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul this week, Palin, who was elected governor two years ago, will be the second woman chosen by a major party as a vice-presidential candidate.

Obama's campaign does not plan to go directly after Palin in the days ahead. Instead, it is planning to increase its attacks on McCain for his opposition to pay equity legislation and abortion rights -- two issues of paramount concern to many women -- as it tries to head off his effort to use Palin to draw Democratic and independent women who had supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

McCain's advisers said that rallying wavering women would be one of Palin's main jobs in the weeks ahead. They said her campaign schedule would take her to areas in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where there were pockets of women who had supported Clinton in the primaries.

At the same time, they suggested, Palin would also be given the task of appealing to evangelical voters, who have long been unenthusiastic about McCain. In many ways, the choice of Palin may prove to have been as much an effort to drive up turnout among the Republican base as it was a move to compete for women.

"We had a solid Republican and evangelical base," said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to McCain. "But now it's going to be very intense."

James C. Dobson, the influential conservative Christian leader who said in the primaries that he could never vote for McCain, said the selection of Palin had won him over. If he went into the voting booth today, Dobson told the talk radio host Dennis Prager on Friday, "I would pull that lever."

If Palin motivates evangelicals to rally behind the Republican ticket as they did for Bush in 2004, it could prove significant in states like Iowa and Ohio, where Republicans won by slim margins in 2004. It could also have an effect in North Carolina, a solidly Republican state that Obama is trying to win by appealing to black voters and new residents.

Republican leaders in North Carolina, who had been increasingly anxious over Obama's intensive efforts there, said they were heartened by the selection of Palin.

"Our people are excited," said Linda Daves, the chairwoman of the North Carolina Republican Party. "The social conservatives are one area where she is going to resonate."

McCain's choice of a running mate comes at a pivotal time in the campaign. It follows what even Republicans said was a successful convention in Denver by Obama. And it comes on the eve of McCain's convention, with Republicans nervously watching Hurricane Gustav as it heads into the Gulf of Mexico, an unwelcome reminder of how the Bush White House's halting response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 hurt the president and his party politically.

Still, most of the 100-plus members Utah's Republican delegation are still scheduled to arrive in Minnesota today. Those who have asked if the hurricane will impact the convention have been told there have been no schedule changes at this point.

With both presidential candidates having filled out their tickets -- Obama campaigned on Saturday with his running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware -- their campaigns have now shifted into high gear.

Obama's aides said that they were confident of holding on to all of the states Sen. John Kerry won against Bush in 2004, and that they were already well-positioned to pick up Iowa and New Mexico, both of which narrowly went to Bush. The Obama campaign is investing heavily to compete on more challenging terrain for Democrats, including Virginia and Florida.

But McCain is focusing heavily on taking two big states away from the Democrats: Michigan and Pennsylvania. Both have blocs of white, working-class voters who are anxious about the economy, a group that has given Obama difficulty and could be receptive to Palin's support for gun rights and the portrayal of her as a churchgoing mother of five who shares their values.