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| President Barack Obama shakes hands with supporters during a campaign stop at Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wis.,Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. |
DOSWELL, Va. (AP) -- Five days before the election, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama vied forcefully for the mantle of change Thursday in a country thirsting for it after a painful recession and uneven recovery, pressing intense closing arguments in their unpredictably close race for the White House. Early voting topped 20 million ballots.
A three-day lull that
followed Superstorm Sandy ended abruptly, the president campaigning
briskly across three battleground states and Romney piling up three
stops in a fourth. The Republican also attacked with a tough new
Spanish-language television ad in Florida showing Venezuela's leftist
leader, Hugo Chavez, and Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela, saying they
would vote for Obama.
The storm intruded once
again into the race, as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed the
president in a statement that said Sandy, which devastated his city,
could be evidence of climate change.
Of the
two White House rivals, Bloomberg wrote, "One sees climate change as an
urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our
president to place scientific evidence and risk management above
electoral politics."
The ever-present polls
charted a close race for the popular vote, and a series of tight
battleground surveys suggested neither man could be confident of success
in the competition for the 270 electoral votes that will decide the
winner.
The presidential race aside, the two
parties battled for control of the Senate in a series of 10 or more
competitive campaigns. The possibility of a 50-50 tie loomed, or even a
more unsettled outcome if former Gov. Angus King of Maine, an
independent, wins a three-way race and becomes majority-maker.
Obama's
aides left North Carolina off the president's itinerary in the
campaign's final days, a decision that Republicans trumpeted as a
virtual concession of the state.
Yet Romney's
team omitted Ohio and Wisconsin from a list of battlegrounds where they
claimed narrow advantage. The challenger and running mate Paul Ryan
slated separate weekend stops in Pennsylvania, a state long viewed as
safe for the president. Republicans said the decision to campaign there
reflected late momentum, while Democrats said it was mere desperation.
Romney
and his allies also made late investments in Minnesota and Michigan,
states that went comfortably for Obama in 2008 but poll much closer four
years later.
In a possible boost for Obama,
government and private sources churned out a spate of encouraging
snapshots on the economy, long the dominant issue in the race. Reports
on home prices, worker productivity, auto sales, construction spending,
manufacturing and retail sales suggested the recovery was picking up its
pace, and a measurement of consumer confidence rose to its highest
level since February of 2008, nearly five years ago.
Still,
none of the day's measurements packed the political significance of the
campaign's final report on unemployment, due out Friday. Joblessness
was measured at 7.8 percent in September, falling below 8 percent for
the first time since Obama took office.
Unemployment
alone explained the competition to be the candidate of change, the
slogan Obama memorably made his own in 2008 and struggles to hold now.
"Real
Change On Day One," read a huge banner at Romney's first appearance of
the day, in Roanoke, Va., and the same on a sign on the podium where he
spoke in Doswell.
"This is a time for
greatness. This is a time for big change, for real change," said the
former Massachusetts governor, a successful businessman who says his
background gives him the know-how to enact policies that will help
create jobs. "I'm going to make real changes. I'm going to get this
economy going, from day one we're making changes."
He
and his running mate also poked at Obama's proposal to create a
Department of Business by merging several existing agencies, including
the Commerce Department, and the Republican campaign released a
television ad on the subject.
"I don't think adding a new chair in his Cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," jabbed Romney.
To
dramatize his economy-based appeal, the Republican challenger also
stopped by Bill's Barbecue, a decades-old restaurant in Richmond that
closed its doors during the long recession. Walking inside past the
"Do
Not Enter" signs, he asked owner Rhoda Elliott what had happened.
"Usually
when we have a small hiccup in the economy, they go from the white
cloth, which is Morton's and those, and then they - we're the next step,
and so we usually fare pretty good. But this one lasted so long they
went down the next step, and that's where it is right now," said
Elliott.
"Yeah. Yeah. Taco Bell," Romney interjected, offering an example of a more down-market option.
Obama
seemed intent on making up for lost campaign time after a three-day
turn as hands-on commander of the federal response to Sandy, although
aides stressed he remained in touch with the administration's point man,
FEMA Director Craig Fugate, and local officials.
One
day after touring storm-battered New Jersey with Republican Gov. Chris
Christie, he walked off Air Force One in Green Bay, Wis., wearing a
leather bomber jacket bearing the presidential seal and promptly lit
into Romney.
In the campaign's final weeks,
his rival "has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up"
policies that led to the nation's economic woes. "And he is offering
them up as change," Obama said.
"What the
governor is offering sure ain't change. Giving more power back to the
biggest banks isn't change. Leaving millions without health insurance
isn't change. Another $5 trillion tax cut that favors the wealthy isn't
change. Turning Medicare into a voucher is change, but we don't want
that change," he said.
The president's
campaign went up with a new ad featuring Collin Powell endorsing the
president. "I think we ought to keep on the track we're on," says the
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was secretary of state
under President George W. Bush.
Officials said
the ad would run in 10 states, including Minnesota, one of the states
where Romney and his GOP allies launched late advertising.
A
separate Obama commercial had a more limited exposure - and a harsher
message. Aimed at voters in Michigan and Ohio, it cites independent
fact-checkers and top executives from Chrysler and General Motors to
rebut Romney's recent ads that suggest auto jobs are moving to China
from the United States.
Both campaigns
invested heavily in early voting, and more than 2.7 million had already
been cast in Florida alone. None will be counted until Election Day.
