Campaigning in the Southwest shows changes in electoral map

With just 10 days left to campaign and the number of toss-up states seeming to diminish, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama spent yesterday crisscrossing the Rocky Mountain West in pursuit of undecided voters.

For McCain, the task is more urgent, as he acknowledged in an appearance before a small crowd of fewer than 1,000 people yesterday morning at the New Mexico state fairgrounds here.

"Ten days to go, we're a few points down, and the pundits, of course, as they have, four or five times, have written us off," McCain said. "Sen. Obama is measuring the drapes and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid to raise taxes, increase spending and concede defeat in Iraq."

The candidates' focus on New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada -- the three southwestern states that border McCain's home base, Arizona -- underscores the changing electoral map in this presidential race, with Obama scheduled to campaign today in Colorado. Taken together, the 19 electoral votes in the region could offset a loss for Obama in one of such larger battleground states as Florida or Ohio.

In the case of McCain, a come-from-behind win in one or more of the Mountain states could help make up for a loss in such places as Virginia, where his advisers say he could fall short.

Obama's position appears to be solidifying elsewhere, and he has the luxury of devoting more time to the Southwest, which polls also show starting to tilt his way.

Obama and McCain have visited New Mexico six times during the campaign, and Obama was to hold a rally here last night after spending the day in Reno and Las Vegas, the same cities where the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, stumped earlier in the week.

Underscoring the stakes in New Mexico, where voting began Oct. 18 and Democrats are outvoting Republicans 56 to 33 percent, McCain and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton held dueling rallies later in the day in the southeast corner of the state. McCain spoke at a historical site near Las Cruces, and Clinton was in Sunland Park, a poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic suburb of El Paso, urging people to vote early.

Yesterday, Obama returned to the campaign trail, flying overnight to Nevada after making a one-day trip to Hawaii to see his grandmother, who is gravely ill.

At a morning stop in Reno, he told the crowd to avoid any sense of complacency in the closing stretch of the campaign, and his appearances in Nevada and New Mexico were intended to urge supporters to cast their ballots early so they can volunteer on Election Day and get first-time voters to the polls.

"We're going to have to work, and struggle and fight for every single one of those 10 days to move our country in a new direction," Obama said, speaking at a baseball stadium. "We cannot let up, and we won't."

He thanked people for sending their thoughts, prayers and flowers to his grandmother, the woman who played a large role in rearing him. "It meant the world to me," he said. "It meant the world to her."

As the poll numbers continue to swing against McCain, he has broadened his line of attack against Obama to emphasize what might be called a "checks and balances" argument. He and his surrogates are increasingly pitching a McCain presidency as a brake on what they portray as a runaway Congress dominated by "tax-and-spend" Democrats unwilling to defend America abroad.

"He's going to be Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's worst nightmare," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said -- referring to the House speaker and Senate majority leader -- in introducing McCain at a rally in Durango, Colo., on Friday night. Minutes later, McCain picked up the theme when he said, "We can't have Obama, Pelosi and Reid running Washington."

In Sioux City, Iowa, yesterday, Palin also warned against letting Democrats control the House, Senate and the White House and accused Obama of wanting to put into effect policies that would amount to socialism.

"What you would find is more and more reliance on government to take care of us," she said at a rally, "to make our decisions for us, as they spread our income and our assets around."

Across the country, in Virginia, Sen. Joseph Biden, Obama's running mate, struck a different tone in his effort to extend the Democratic electoral map. Biden said he and Obama were driven by the "overarching belief that for the good of the country we have to end these politics of division."

"I am so tired of seeing a map that is all blue on the edges and red in the middle," Biden, of Delaware, said in Suffolk, in the southern part of a state that rarely votes Democratic but that polls show is solidly behind Obama. "This country is too divided."

From New Mexico, McCain will head to Iowa, where Palin spent much of yesterday and where most polls show Obama is ahead. McCain fared poorly in Iowa in the Republican caucuses, in part because of his opposition to subsidies for corn ethanol, and even some of his supporters have questioned why he and Palin are still trying to compete there.

"I am puzzled by the decision, because it seems to me the most precious resource presidential and vice-presidential candidates have is their time," Joe Gaylord, a former executive director of the Iowa Republican Party, told The Des Moines Register. "And their appearances in Iowa, while perhaps inspirational to the base, might be better spent in other states now."