WASHINGTON — With his Democratic foe now certain, Republican John McCain is deploying dozens of staffers into battleground states, boasting of improved fundraising and expanding his advertising into some of the most competitive terrain of the general election.
“I’m running for president to keep the country I love safe,” the Arizona senator says in a commercial unveiled Friday.
The ad was the start of what the campaign said would be a sustained effort to spread McCain’s message in Electoral College targets between now and the fall.
As Barack Obama sewed up the Democratic nomination last week, McCain’s team plunged into the general election. The Republican made his opening argument for the next phase of the presidential campaign in a speech Tuesday in which he tried to distance himself from the unpopular President Bush while arguing that Obama offers change that would imperil the country.
At the same time, the campaign has made several moves as it gears up to face Obama and enthusiastic Democrats in a treacherous political environment for Republicans.
Organizationally, McCain’s 10 regional campaign managers were in place across the country — and building up their staffs — as of June 1, and the Republican National Committee named nine field directors a day later. By the end of the month, the McCain-RNC political operation plans to be running in 17 states, with 76 “Victory Centers,” 94 regional and state campaign staffers and 145 RNC staffers.
Overall, campaign advisers say, the joint political team will number about 500 people. They are dismissing the grumbling of some Republicans that perhaps the campaign has been too slow to increase its organization and, perhaps, squandered its three-month head start while the Democratic primary continued. McCain wrapped up the GOP nomination in March.
Financially, McCain and the RNC reported significant fundraising.
McCain has held dozens of fundraisers over the past three months, including three in Florida last week.
At the end of May, McCain and the RNC had raised a combined $45 million and had a total of $85 million cash on hand. Obama has been a prolific fundraiser and had $46.5 million in hand at the end of April (he has not announced his May fundraising). But the DNC has not done as well fundraising, collecting nearly $5 million in May and ending the month with $4 million in the bank.
On advertising, McCain has been on the air intermittently in eight battleground states for two months as he tested potential themes at a $3.7 million cost. But the latest effort is much more expansive, with ads running in 54 markets in 10 states.
As of late Friday, the campaign had spent at least $4 million to run ads in the 10 states over two weeks, a moderate buy.
Six are states Bush narrowly won in 2000 — Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada — and that McCain must defend. Four are states Democrat John Kerry won by slim margins four years ago — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — and that McCain is looking to win.
