Two begin final rush through swing states

‘Revenge’ is Obama-Romney clash focus

President Barack Obama bids the crowd farewell Saturday after a campaign event in Milwaukee.
President Barack Obama bids the crowd farewell Saturday after a campaign event in Milwaukee.

— Reaching for the finish line, Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama embarked Saturday on the final 72-hour haul of their long, grinding quest for victory, swatting at each other over what should motivate Americans to vote and which candidate they can trust and offering dueling pictures of what the next four years should bring.

Romney sprinted through a New Hampshire-to-Iowa-to-Colorado day, faulting Obama for telling supporters a day earlier that voting would be their “best revenge.”

“Vote for ‘revenge’?” the GOP candidate asked in New Hampshire, oozing incredulity. “Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country. It is time we lead America to a better place.”

Romney’s comments came in response to Obama’s telling supporters Friday not to boo Romney’s name at a rally in Springfield, Ohio. “No, no, no — don’t boo, vote,” Obama said. “Vote. Voting is the best revenge.”

The Republican nominee sounded the same message in Iowa and released a TV ad carrying the same message.

In the closing hours of the campaign, Obama raced through four states Saturday as he tried to build enthusiasm among Democrats by declaring, “I’ve got a lot of fight left in me.” And Romney sought to tap into disappointment and discontent among voters as he rallied supporters, saying, “I promise change, and I have a record of achieving it.”

Obama entered the final weekend of a bitter campaign on Saturday a battle-scarred incumbent trying to recapture the mantle of “change” and the lofty ideals that propelled his bid for the White House four years ago.

Obama, campaigning in the extreme battleground of Ohio, countered with a reminder that Tuesday’s election is “not just a choice between two candidates or two parties; it’s a choice between two different visions for America.” The president offered himself as the candidate voters can trust, renewing his criticism of Romney for what he said were misleading ads suggesting that automakers were shifting U.S. jobs to China.

“You want to know that your president means what he says and says what he means,” Obama told a crowd of 4,000 in Mentor in northeast Ohio. “And after four years as president, you know me.”

The president urged voters in an overflow room before his main speech to shepherd their friends, neighbors and girlfriends to the polls to vote early, tacking on this very practical caveat: “You should convince them to vote for me before you drag them off to the polls.”

Campaign spokesman Jennifer Psaki said the president’s revenge comment was nothing more than a reminder that if voters think Romney’s policies are “a bad deal for the middle class, then you have power, you can go to the voting booth and cast your ballot.”

Whatever their motivation, 27 million Americans already have cast ballots around the country.

On the last day of early voting in Florida, voters at some sites in Miami-Dade and Broward counties were waiting up to four hours to cast ballots. Sen. Bill Nelson, DFla., asked his state’s Republican governor to extend early voting at least through today, citing “an untold number of voters being turned away or becoming too discouraged to vote.”

Vice President Joe Biden spoke for all sides when he told a crowd in Arvada, Colo., “Man, I’m so ready to win this election.”

Before leaving Washington, Obama tended to presidential business as he led a briefing at the government’s disaster relief agency on the federal response to superstorm Sandy. He said the recovery effort still has a long way to go, but pledged a “120 percent effort” by all those involved.

“There’s nothing more important than us getting this right,” Obama said, keenly aware that a spot-on government response to the storm also was important to his political prospects. Then he began his own three-state campaign day.

Deputy White House press secretary Joshua Earnest said Obama met with disaster officials “to make sure that they’re leaving no stone unturned, make sure that they’re leveraging federal resources and that they’re leveraging federal personnel.” Cabinet secretaries were dispatched during the day to disaster areas in West Virginia, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

After holding mostly small and midsize rallies for much of the campaign, Obama’s team is holding a series of larger events this weekend aimed at drawing big crowds in battleground states. Still, the campaign isn’t expecting to draw the audiences Obama had in the closing days of the 2008 race, when his rallies drew more than 50,000.

As Obama makes what is almost certainly his last campaign trip as a candidate, the core group of advisers who worked for him in 2008 have packed the seats on Air Force One for what is turning into a farewell tour.

“It’s like the band is breaking up,” said David Axelrod, the senior strategist who functions as the group’s shaggy elder.

Among the returning alumni: Robert Gibbs, the former press secretary; Reggie Love, the president’s former personal aide; Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser; Jon Favreau, the chief speechwriter; and Jennifer Psaki, the campaign’s press secretary.

Superstition abounds. Favreau and Rhodes are growing beards that they said they would not shave until after Election Day.

Likewise, virtually Romney’s entire senior team left the campaign’s Boston headquarters to travel with Romney for the contest’s final three days. Their presence for the campaign’s waning hours is an admission that the strategy and planning is largely complete. His schedule has been set, the ads have been placed, and Romney’s message has been decided.

The tight inner circle that has worked with him for several years in most cases plans to enjoy the final moments on the campaign trail at Romney’s side.

“It’s been a long road,” Ann Romney told reporters aboard the campaign plane, offering breakfast pastries to Secret Service agents and reporters alike.

After campaigning on her own for the past month, she joined her husband for the final swing.

“Three more days,” she said, echoing what has become a refrain on the campaign trail, as voters chant the number of days until, they hope, Romney becomes the president-elect.

After his Saturday morning rally on the New Hampshire seacoast, Romney targeted Iowa and then Colorado. He shifted an original plan to campaign in Nevada today in favor of a schedule likely to take him back to Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Romney also made an explicit appeal to undecided voters in New Hampshire, urging his supporters to “spend some time in the next three days to see neighbors and maybe ones with an Obama sign in front of their home and just go by and say, ‘Look, let’s talk this through a bit.”’

Obama’s Saturday itinerary had him heading from Ohio to Milwaukee and Dubuque, Iowa, and ending the day in Bristow, Va. Today, he was taking his campaign to New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado and Ohio.

GOP running mate Paul Ryan was in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where he, too, took issue with Obama’s “revenge” comment.

“We don’t believe in revenge. We believe in change and hope,” he said in Ohio. “We actually do.”

Biden, in Colorado, worked in a new dig at Romney tied to this weekend’s shift back to standard time: “It’s Mitt Romney’s favorite time of year, because he gets to turn the clock back. He wants to turn that clock back so desperately. This time he can really do it.”

Polling shows the race remains a tossup heading into the final days. But Romney still has the tougher path; he must win more of the nine most contested states to reach 270 electoral votes: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Romney has added Pennsylvania to the mix, hoping to end a streak of five presidential contests where the Democratic candidate prevailed in the state. Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 10 percentage points in 2008; the latest polls in the state give him a 4- to 5-point margin.

After months of attack ads, Obama and Romney are closing out their campaigns with some upbeat new messages while their allied independent groups continued on a largely negative note.

Obama’s campaign was airing a one-minute ad, “Determination,” in all the major battleground states. Obama ticks through his plans to boost manufacturing, invest in education and job training, and bring down the deficit in part by asking wealthy people to “pay a little bit more.”

Romney’s campaign was running an ad across the battleground states titled “Clear Path,” which pulled clips from the third presidential debate where Romney laid out how his presidency would differ from Obama’s.

The White House, the Senate, the Tea Party revolution in the House and 11 governorships are on the line Tuesday in a fantastically costly, relentlessly negative election played out in unsettled economic times.

Apart from the candidates, divided government is on the ballot after a two-year stretch that produced gridlock on many issues and record-low congressional approval ratings.

A victory by Democrat Obama would ensure the survival of the health-care law that Republicans oppose so strongly, even if they win contested control of the Senate and, as expected, hold the House.

A triumph by Republican challenger Romney would slam the door on tax increases on higher earners, even if Democrats demand them as the price for a deficit deal that includes curtailing the costs of programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

As well, the winner could wind up appointing one or more new justices to the Supreme Court, where four justices are older than 70. The potential exists to alter the balance of a tribunal that recently has issued 5-4 rulings on abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance and religion in public life.

Republicans must gain three Senate seats for a majority if Romney wins the White House, otherwise four. There are 33 seats on the ballot, 23 currently in Democratic hands and 10 in Republican, a lopsided split that for months made the GOP favored to capture control.

However, not even Democrats claim they will pick up the 25 seats they need to win House control, a virtual concession that the Tea Partyinfused majority that swept to power two years ago will remain. All 435 seats are on the ballot although only about 60 are seriously contested.

Information for this article was contributed by Jim Kuhnhenn, Nancy Benac, David Espo, Beth Fouhy, Stephen Ohlemacher, Kasie Hunt, Steve Peoples, Philip Elliott, Julie Pace, Matthew Daly and Suzette Laboy of The Associated Press; by Lisa Lerer, Juliana Goldman, Mark Niquette, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Jonathan D. Salant, Mike Dorning, Margaret Talev and Hans Nichols, John McCormick and Jeff Green of Bloomberg News; and by Ashley Parker, Jeff Zeleny, Jim Rutenberg and Mark Landler of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/04/2012

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