Obama gains on McCain in state

Obama has 200 paid staff members working in 32 offices in Florida. The Obama campaign has poured more than $6 million into four television ads.

By contrast, McCain has about 30 paid staffers in about 30 offices in the state, and most of those offices double as county Republican Party campaign headquarters.

McCain has bought no television time specifically in Florida, though national ads do run in Florida.

Polls, which in April and May showed McCain running 10 to 15 points ahead in Florida, have closed sharply, with McCain now holding a 3- to 6-point edge.

Florida and its 27 electoral votes are considered a must-win for McCain. But Obama is also drawing battle lines here, putting more money into TV advertising in Florida than he has in any other state.

Both candidates will be campaigning in Florida this week, with McCain speaking at the national Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting in Orlando on Monday morning and Obama addressing the group Tuesday.

"Looking at where we were three months ago and where we are today, I feel like we're really well positioned for November," said David Plouffe, Obama's national campaign manager. "We believe in our prospects in Florida. The operation is getting put together down here and we have great grassroots support."

But McCain's campaign contends that Obama is wasting his money in Florida.

"The amount of money spent in the state is not a measure of how serious you take it to be," said Buzz Jacobs, McCain's regional campaign manager. "We feel we have the forces in place needed to win. We feel very comfortable where we are. We will make the phone calls, we will knock on the doors, we will have the campaign rallies needed to win this election."

Brian Ballard, McCain's head of fund-raising for Florida and a lawyer in Tallahassee, said that McCain does not need advertising to introduce himself to the voters. One measure where McCain is ahead is days campaigning in Florida. McCain has made 18 trips here this year, while Obama has made 10.

"Just because we're not spending money in the heat of summer on TV -- which doesn't make a lot of sense -- doesn't mean he's taking anything for granted," Ballard said. "I'm glad Obama is spending $6.5 million or whatever it is since his nomination. I hope he keeps spending money in Florida until he blows it all out. I believe in spending money on TV in late September, early October."

Political experts remain doubtful that Obama can overcome McCain's advantages with veterans and older voters in Florida.

Rather, they speculate that Obama is trying to make the race so competitive that McCain will be forced to spend his more limited campaign resources here.

"They want to entice McCain to spend as much time and money as they can in Florida instead of in the true tossup states," said Larry Sabato, director for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Those real toss-up states, Sabato said, are Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Obama's campaign acknowledges its increased activity is in part intended to make up for lost time. During the primary season, Obama and the other Democratic candidates boycotted Florida because the state set its primary date earlier than national party officials approved.

"There is a little bit of catch-up we have to do," said Frank Sanchez, Obama's national chairman for Latino finance and a Tampa resident. "Barack has to get known here. When people get familiar with him and what he stands for, they're going to like his message."

But even as Obama gets better known, Ballard said McCain still has a distinct edge in Florida.

"He's lived in Florida, worked hard, a Republican that plays well in South Florida to Cuban-Americans, plays well to Jewish Americans on the east coast, and in the Panhandle he's liked as a military guy," Ballard said. "He's got a unique appeal in Florida. I don't think we need to try to compete with Obama on spending money. That's not going to matter."

McCain lived in Pensacola for more than two years while training as a Navy aviator. After his release from a POW camp in Vietnam in 1973, McCain returned to Florida, where he was stationed in Jacksonville.

Sabato said the biggest reasons he considers McCain the favorite in Florida is because of the combination of military veterans and senior citizens. Those groups carried McCain to victory in Florida's tight primary in January.

But Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said new voter registration data continues to speak to a changing environment in Florida. More new voters have registered as Democrats than Republicans in Florida since the beginning of the year.

More than 250,000 new Democrats registered since January, compared with 98,000 Republicans.

Plouffe said the narrowing of the race in Florida should not come as a surprise to anyone. He said Florida is still the same battleground that decided the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. If either Al Gore or John Kerry had won Florida, George W. Bush would have lost.

"I think we are headed to another close contest in Florida," Plouffe said.