From Royal Oak, Michigan -
The final days of the Republican Primary campaign in Michigan have taken on a different kind of air, as Mitt Romney and his wife have repeatedly emphasized their Michigan roots, hoping that will spark Romney's campaign to victory on Tuesday night.
"We're Michiganders through and through," said Mitt's wife Ann, who used her time before voters to remind them again and again of their past.
"Al Kaline is still my favorite baseball player," Ann Romney said of the Detroit Tiger great.
"As you know, Mitt and I grew up here," she told hundreds gathered at a final rally in Royal Oak, in the western suburbs of Detroit.
After watching Romney campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida, hearing them in Michigan was an interesting twist, as Ann Romney came up with a number of ways to identify with the crowd, like her love of Vernors Ginger Ale - a Michigan staple.
"We bleed Vernors," she said at a morning rally north of Grand Rapids, where she also reminded the crowd that she spent her summers in nearby Manistee and always looked for Petoskey Stones.
Unless you've spent time in Michigan, none of that might mean much to you. But as someone who did live in this state for a few years, I sure understood that message.
After she was done with her Michigan Memories, her husband worked the word "Michigan" in any way he could as well.
"I'm going to win in Michigan, and I'm going to win across the country," Romney said to cheers.
First though - as even he admitted - Romney needs to lock up his party's nomination, which might be easier said than done.
Romney tried to spur a little more buzz about his state roots by bringing in Kid Rock - a Michigan native - to sing what's become the theme song of the Romney campaign, "Born Free."
At the same theater that my father visited as a kid living in nearby Berkley, Kid Rock thrilled the crowd with his live appearance, but in a metaphor for the Romney campaign, it fell short of expectations when the singer did his one song and then departed.
After the Romney rally was over, I went on a little Michigan Memory Tour of my own, driving just a few minutes down the road to the house that my grandfather built, where my dad spent much of his childhood until the family moved to Florida in the late 1940s.
As I drove down his street - there was his house as I always remember it, a small place, proudly sitting on the corner.
Just in the last few months I learned one story about my dad, that he had lived in a tent - during a harsh Depression winter - while his father finished this same house.
It was the house that caught on fire - with my dad down the block doing his duty as a school safety patrol - but as the local newspaper detailed, he stayed at his post even as the firemen arrived.
30 years later in another Detroit suburb, I was the kid in the safety patrol just like my dad. I was the kid who delivered the Detroit Free Press every morning just like my dad.
My dad had stars at Tiger Stadium like Dick Wakefield and Hank Greenberg. I followed Ron LeFlore and Mark Fidrych.
And as I drove down 11 Mile Road last night with memories of my time in Detroit rumbling in my head, I couldn't help thinking of how few memories I had heard from Mitt Romney about the state where he grew up.
It was Ann Romney talking about listening to the Tiger games on a transistor radio, not Mitt. It was his wife talking about who her favorite Tiger player was, not Mitt. It was Mrs. Romney talking about how she liked to swim in Lake Michigan, not Mitt.
Maybe it explained some of the difficulty Mitt Romney has had in connecting with the voters in his home state.
If you ask my father - Romney will squeeze out a victory by getting extra support in heavily Catholic areas around Detroit, to offset an extra turnout of evangelical voters for Santorum in western and northern Michigan.
We'll see who wins tonight.
