Obama, McCain make last pitch in tossup Florida

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain made last-minute pitches in the largest battleground state Monday hoping to break the statistical deadlock polls show for Florida’s 27 electoral votes.

Democrats had the momentum with early votes cast, and there was more enthusiasm surrounding Obama’s rally in normally conservative Jacksonville than at McCain’s event in Tampa, a key area for swing voters. About 1,000 people showed up for McCain, while Obama addressed a crowed estimated between 7,000 and 9,000.

But polls still showed the race as a tossup, and McCain was counting on the GOP machine built up by Gov. Charlie Crist and former Gov. Jeb Bush to turnout more voters. Florida represents 10 percent of the 270 needed electoral votes to win the presidency, and it will be nearly impossible for McCain to win without the state.

Beyond the presidential election, Democrats have targeted more U.S. House seats here than any other state — and will likely lose the one Rep. Tim Mahoney picked up in the wake of former Republican Rep. Mark Foley’s page scandal two years ago. Mahoney is hurt by a scandal of his own after admitting a month before the election to at least two affairs.

Florida will also vote on whether to amend its constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, an effort pushed by religious conservatives despite that definition already existing in state law.

But it’s the presidential election that has been driving people to vote in record numbers. More than 4.3 million of Florida’s 11.2 million voters have already cast early or absentee ballots. Registered Democrats led Republicans in the number cast by almost 360,000, but it’s unknown who they voted for.

When early voting ended at 5 p.m. Sunday in Miami-Dade County, hundreds of people were still waiting to cast ballots at a precinct in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood, a queue that wrapped around one city block. Supervisors of elections allowed anyone in line before 5 p.m. to vote.

Democrats have also done a better job of registering voters. Since President Bush carried Florida by 381,000 votes in 2004, Democrats have added 461,000 voters to their rolls, compared to 172,000 more Republicans. And the number of black voters has increased by about 250,000.

But Democrats have outnumbered Republicans in Florida for years and the state has still only supported one Democratic presidential candidate since backing Jimmy Carter in 1976. That was Bill Clinton in 1996.

This year, though, Obama has opened offices in conservative regions of the Panhandle and north Florida, which Democratic candidates usually ignore. He also has a stronger grass roots organization than John Kerry did four years ago and Al Gore did in 2000, an election the latter lost by only 537 votes to President Bush.

And the political mood isn’t favoring Republicans. When Wall Street tanked in September, so did McCain’s Florida poll numbers.

Still, McCain maintains strong ties to Crist, who remains popular, and Florida’s large number of military and veteran voters. Matthew Corrigan, a University of North Florida political science professor, said he expects McCain to do better in Florida than he does in the other 49 states as a whole, but that still doesn’t mean he’ll win the state.

“He has some advantages here and it may have been counteracted by this tremendous excitement combined with organization” by the Obama campaign, Corrigan said.

Also influential will be Florida’s nearly 1.4 million Hispanic voters, including the large number of Cuban-Americans who traditionally vote Republican. McCain has vowed to maintain the embargo against Cuba essentially in its current form, something many older Cuban-Americans support. Obama has said he would allow Cuban-Americans to send more money to the communist island and visit relatives there more often, an attempt to siphon off younger Cuban-Americans and more recent immigrants.

The campaigns have also been battling for Florida’s large Jewish vote, with Obama running mate Joe Biden making one of his first campaign stops in Florida to assure Jewish voters that Obama is firmly pro-Israel. McCain’s campaign has questioned Obama’s commitment to the Jewish nation.

In congressional races, Democrats are targeting six Republican incumbents — Reps. Tom Feeney, Ric Keller, Vern Buchanan, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and brothers Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

“There are a few things going on, one is the new voters excited and energized by the change Obama will bring,“ said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The more people learn about the Republican incumbents’ record of support of the Bush economic agenda, the more they’re looking for a change as well.“

Van Hollen’s counterpart at the Republican National Congressional Committee, Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, thinks Buchanan and Ros-Lehtinen are safe, but acknowledges the other four races are tight.

“We’re playing defense,“ he said. “They’re going to be close to the very end.“

He said the most vulnerable is Feeney, who is dogged by ethical questions from a 2003 golf junket with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Mahoney was already in a tight race for re-election in a district that leans Republican when it was learned he paid off a mistress to avoid a sexual harassment suit. A second affair was later reported, and he is being investigated for possible ethics and legal violations. It’s largely expected he’ll lose the seat he gained when Foley resigned in disgrace amid reports he sent lurid messages to boys who previously served as congressional pages.

Asked about Mahoney, Cole wouldn’t pile on to what he called a sad situation for the Democrat.

“That wasn’t murder, it was suicide,“ Cole said.

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Associated Press writer Tamara Lush in Miami contributed to this story.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.