Race to Finish Grows Intense

In its last days, the longest and costliest presidential campaign in history has come down to fewer than a dozen states that remain up for grabs.

As President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry flitted Saturday from one campaign rally to the next -- shadowed by the video specter of Osama bin Laden -- partisans began mustering their ground troops for Tuesday’s big push, promising the greatest voter mobilization in U.S. history.

In battleground states, the TV airwaves crackled with a barrage of commercials -- so many that television stations had no time left to sell. One Democratic operative said half-jokingly that he might charter an airplane to tug pro-Kerry banners across the skies over Ohio and Florida.

The candidates, their wives and other surrogates spent Saturday hopscotching around the handful of states expected to decide the race, with a particular focus on the Midwest and on Florida, the state where a controversial recount decided the 2000 contest.

Neither Bush nor Kerry mentioned the taped comments by Bin Laden that had surfaced Friday. Rather, each reprised arguments they had made throughout the campaign, questioning one another’s leadership capacity.

“The outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against terror,” Bush told supporters at his first stop of the day, in chilly Grand Rapids, Mich. “Sen. Kerry has chosen the path of weakness and inaction.”

Kerry said he shared Bush’s determination to hunt down Bin Laden, but renewed his assertion that the president erred by failing to send U.S. troops after the terrorist leader in late 2001.

“As I have said for two years now: When Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords,” Kerry told a small morning rally in Appleton, Wis.

Despite the vast investment of time and an estimated more than $1 billion in spending, the presidential race has budged little since Kerry emerged as the Democratic nominee last winter, launching an eight-month general election campaign. The contest has been essentially even, save for an occasional blip in the polls, ever since.

As the latest opinion surveys continued to show a race too close to call, uncertainty was one of the few things those on both sides of the race could agree upon Saturday.

“Anyone who tells you they know where this thing’s going is a liar,” said Brian McCabe, president of the Progress for America Voter Fund, an independent pro-Bush group. “That’s one question I don’t have an answer for.”

McCabe added: “I don’t even know if I’ll have one Wednesday,” referring to the prospect of another disputed outcome.

The bottom line -- capturing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House -- had campaign strategists sweating over an increasingly shrinking map.

Both sides believed that three states totaling 57 electoral votes -- Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin -- were virtually tied and could end up deciding the election.

Several other states remained in play, with one candidate or another enjoying an edge, but not enough to rest comfortably.

Along with Ohio and Florida, both of which he carried four years ago, Bush was fighting to hold onto New Hampshire and, to a lesser degree, Nevada. Both camps agreed that Bush’s best chance of stealing a “blue” state from Democrats was in Iowa, which kicked off the campaign in January.

Wisconsin was one of the states Kerry was defending that Vice President Al Gore carried four years ago. Strategists for the Massachusetts senator expressed confidence that he would hold onto the others -- Minnesota, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Of those, the Bush team thought it had the best chance of stealing Pennsylvania, a state he has visited more than any other as president.

Some Republicans liked Bush’s chances in another state that went for Gore -- Michigan. But most observers thought that state would stay in the Democratic column.

Both sides held out the possibility of an election night surprise -- Democrats talking up Colorado, or perhaps Arkansas. Republicans were eyeing the prospect of winning away Democratic Hawaii.

But neither side was counting on those longshots in constructing their winning scenarios.

In many ways, the election seems an extension of the knotted 2000 race, with many of the same states the most competitive.

“We were split down the middle before, and nothing much has happened to move us off that,” said Peverill Squire, a University of Iowa political scientist. Gore carried that state four years ago by just over 4,000 votes out of nearly 1.3 million cast.

Peter S. Hart, a Democratic pollster, said voter perceptions of the two candidates also were about the same as they were in the Bush-Gore matchup. “John Kerry has always had the advantage in terms of intelligence,” Hart said, “while George Bush has the edge in terms of being easygoing and likable.”

At bottom, many analysts agreed, the tightness of the race reflects the nation’s fundamental divide.

“When you start with that proposition, you would expect a close election, unless Democrats nominated a George McGovern or Republicans nominated a Barry Goldwater,” said Terry Madonna, a Pennsylvania pollster, referring to two of the parties’ most ideological standard-bearers.

Another reason for the deadlock, observers said, was the unusual crosscurrents of this election. The tepid economy, soaring cost of healthcare and other kitchen-table concerns should work to Kerry’s advantage, they said. But fears of terrorism -- highlighted by Bin Laden’s resurfacing -- have played to Bush’s strength as commander in chief.

“You don’t have a single dominant issue that’s pushing voters in one direction or another,” said Madonna, who runs the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

While the two candidates zoomed Saturday from one stop to the next, making what amounted to their closing arguments, the fight on the television TV airwaves hit unprecedented intensity.

Bush ads slammed Kerry as being weak on defense and a panderer. “Apparently, there really is nothing John Kerry won’t say,” charged one spot blaring in Miami. Another Bush spot, airing nationally on cable TV, showed an emotional president expressing solidarity with the families of fallen U.S. troops and pledging to do “whatever it takes” to defend America.

In his final TV pitch, Kerry sought to capitalize on his overall edge in the newspaper endorsement derby. His latest Florida ad noted that the Orlando Sentinel had backed him -- a switch from 2000, when the paper endorsed Bush.

In Harrisburg, Pa., Kerry went on air with a commercial in which he faced the camera directly and accused the president of overextending the U.S. military and failing to secure 380 tons of explosives in Iraq.

“His Iraq misjudgments put our soldiers at risk and make our country less secure,” Kerry charged in the ad. “All he offers is more of the same.”

To buttress the candidates’ efforts, the Republican and Democratic parties as well as independent groups were scrambling to cover states that remained wild cards.

Democrats spent $250,000 in a last-ditch defense of Hawaii, and launched fresh TV ads in Flint, Mich., to secure one of Kerry’s must-wins. They also advertised in Colorado, West Virginia and Arkansas, maintaining slight hopes they would snatch those states from Bush.

The GOP, meanwhile was spending money to protect West Virginia and Colorado, along with heavy sums to defend Nevada.

In all, candidates, parties and outside groups were burning through at least $9 million a day on television in the final week of the campaign, plus uncounted millions on radio and other media, throwing everything they had into the race.

“Nobody’s got any margin for error anymore,” said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising for The Times. “They’re not taking anything for granted.”

The TV advertising was so furious and thick -- a blur of images often bleeding one into the next -- that media buyers from both sides gave up several days ago trying to buy local TV time in key markets in Iowa, Florida and Ohio. Radio stations were saturated, too, and newspaper ad space was also at a premium.

Even states bordering the battlegrounds were pelted. Stations in Omaha were beaming ads into Iowa; Mobile, Ala., was a staging point to reach the Florida Panhandle; and New Hampshire voters were being bombarded with spots broadcast from Burlington, Vt., and Boston.

In Michigan, independent pollster Ed Sarpolus said he had never seen anything like it in his many years in politics.

“It’s almost like a boulevard with a fork in the road,” he said of the election. “You don’t know where you’re going until the very end.”