Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr must fight a multi-pronged battle over the next five months if he wants any chance of making a splash in the November presidential election.

Barr, the Libertarian Party nominee for president, faces numerous obstacles, but two stand out: persuading voters to choose a third-party candidate and persuading the mainstream press to cover his campaign.

Curtis Compton / AJC (ENLARGE)

Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr discusses privacy issues as he speaks to the Clayton County Rotary Club at the Holiday Inn in Jonesboro, on Wednesday.

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As for the first challenge, Barr and his campaign manager, Russell Verney, said they're developing a plan to raise $30 million before Nov. 4, and a plan to target certain states that Barr said are "top priority in terms of meeting the goals, both the vote goals and the electoral vote goals." And for the second, Barr will get a chance to make his biggest splash yet when he appears on the popular Comedy Central faux news program "The Colbert Report" next week.

Before he can get votes, Barr will need to get on the ballot. The Libertarian Party is currently eligible to be on the ballot in 28 states. Barr and party officials said they are on track to be on another 20. Two, West Virginia and Oklahoma, are proving problematic, he said.

Neither Barr nor Verney would identify the specific states on which they would concentrate their campaign.

"We anticipate and plan to travel the width and breadth of this great land," Barr said.

Verney was more pragmatic.

"There are certain states that are a one-party state," said Verney, a veteran of independent Ross Perot's 1992 campaign, when the Texas billionaire got more than 19 percent of the vote. "Republicans write off certain states, Democrats write off certain states. We will devote more resources to certain states."

Those states would most likely include Barr's home state of Georgia, where one recent poll showed him getting 8 percent, compared to 45 percent for Republican John McCain and 35 percent for likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Beyond that, it's difficult to gauge where Barr might have the most success, said David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a Libertarian-leaning think tank in Washington.

Boaz and his colleagues at Cato have done extensive research into voter attitudes and conclude that between 15 and 20 percent of the national electorate hold views that align best with Libertarians. But when voters are asked whether they identify themselves as conservative, liberal or libertarian, only 9 percent chose libertarian, Boaz found.

Cato hired Zogby International to conduct a poll the week of the 2006 election. Zogby asked 1,012 voters a series of questions designed to gauge political leanings. The questions were not about specific issues, but about attitudes toward concepts, such as whether a voter would describe himself as being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which is a very general way of describing libertarianism.

Beyond that survey, Boaz finds reason for Barr to focus on a handful of states where "broad libertarian perspective of lower taxes, less government and social tolerance" hold sway.

"The best opportunities would be New Hampshire, which is arguably the most Libertarian state in the country and where, in 2006, the Republicans just got wiped out," Boaz said.

From there, Barr should look west.

"Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona," Boaz said, adding Colorado and Alaska.

New Mexico could be a possibility, also, he said.

In Montana, for example, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate received 10,000 votes, while the Democratic challenger beat incumbent Republican Conrad Burns by 3,000 votes.

In Missouri, too, the Libertarian candidate helped unseat an incumbent Republican by taking 47,000 votes, greater than the 41,000-vote margin by which Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill won.

As for media coverage, Barr has work to do. His nomination Sunday earned little coverage by major outlets. The New York Times and Washington Post, two of the most influential papers in the country, carried a few paragraphs of wire copy.

Barr knows he must persuade the media to cover his campaign, which in campaign terms is called "earned media," rather than "paid media," meaning advertising.

"We anticipate reaching all the people," he said Sunday. "We'll get earned media by presenting issues and positions relevant to the American people and help further the public debate."

His campaign is in its infancy in terms of staff and infrastructure. He has events scheduled next month in New York, Washington and Portland, Ore., and one in Las Vegas in July.

On Wednesday Barr spoke about privacy issues to the Clayton County Rotary Club in Jonesboro, an event scheduled before he announced his campaign. Barr blasted the Bush administration, but barely made mention of his bid for Bush's job.

Afterward, Barr said Verney and other staff will move to Atlanta in the next week and the campaign will begin in earnest.

Since winning the nomination, the media attention has begun to increase, with mentions in Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor and on FOX News.

But he will need much more as he works to manipulate the political axiom that says the more media attention you get, the more money you can raise and the more money you can raise, the more attention you get.

According to the running tally on his Web site, Barr has raised about $163,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.