TV ads boost Obama’s Ga. push

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will hit Georgia’s airwaves for the next four days in an attempt to capture what his campaign says is an up-for-grabs state.

The campaign would not reveal the size of the advertising buy or whether it will run statewide or in select markets. The ad that will run here is called “Rearview Mirror” and ties Republican nominee John McCain to President Bush’s economic policies.

Documents filed with Atlanta television stations show Obama spending more than $100,000 for ads in the Atlanta market, which covers nearly 60 percent of the state. The ads will mostly run around the stations’ news programs, including NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning and “Today” on Monday morning.

David Plouffe, Obama’s national campaign manager, said Friday the campaign sees a “pathway” to winning the state’s 15 electoral votes on Tuesday.

“As we look at Georgia, if we win it, we’ll win it narrowly,” Plouffe said Friday. “The organizing there has never stopped, and the turnout among African-American voters has been quite high.”

Plouffe said the final push could also help carry U.S. Senate candidate Jim Martin to victory in his race to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

“We do think in a state like Georgia, we think the turnout model we’ve built will help with those Senate candidates,” Plouffe said, “but that is our secondary focus.”

McCain’s campaign was more than happy to hear of Obama’s focus on Georgia.

“We encourage them to please pick other states that we intend to win to spend their final campaign cash and spread it out as much as they can,” said Rick Davis, McCain’s national campaign manager.

Alec Poitevint, McCain’s Georgia campaign chairman, said later Friday that he’s seen nothing but great energy around the state for the GOP.

“If Obama is going to stop McCain, he has to take some sort of efforts, but the reality is John McCain is in step with average Georgians,” Poitevint said.

U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Marietta Republican, encouraged Obama to invest in the local economy but said it’s not going to help.

“I can assure you he’s wasting his time,” Gingrey said. “He’s got tons of money, and he’s throwing it at everything to see it if it will stick, but it won’t work in Georgia.”

Obama’s campaign ran more than $2 million worth of advertising in Georgia in late summer but stopped around Labor Day.

Black voters have made up about 35 percent of those casting early and advance ballots in the state through Friday, according to data from the secretary of state’s office. Early voting ended Friday in most counties.

In the 2004 general election, where Bush easily won the Georgia vote, blacks made up 25 percent of the turnout. A spike of 10 percentage points in African-American turnout would probably turn Georgia from red to blue. Most political observers, however, expect the black turnout here to even out at about 30 percent of total votes.

The early turnout and the campaign’s own ground operation led to the decision to spend the money on advertising here, Plouffe said.

“We’re out of the land of theory in a lot of these states,” he said. “We’re starting to see how the election will unfold.”

The Obama campaign also announced it will advertise in North Dakota and McCain’s home state of Arizona, two other states where campaign officials see an opening, Plouffe said.

None of this, Plouffe said, will take away from the campaign’s effort in “the core battleground states” of Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

There are no plans, Plouffe said, for the candidate or top surrogates to travel to Georgia before Tuesday’s election. But he said the campaign sees an opportunity here.

It’s a state, he said, “where we think we have far superior ground operations and where we’re playing alone.”

Obama’s campaign has more than 30 field offices in Georgia, more than 50 paid staff and 4,800 trained volunteers. McCain has not run any television ads in Georgia, his nearest campaign office is in Tallahassee and he has no paid staff in the state. His campaign says he has “tens of thousands” of volunteers in Georgia.

Recent polls have shown the race to be anywhere from a dead heat to McCain holding a 5-point lead. The state has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1992.

Staff writer Ben Smith contributed to this article.