By Daniel Victor

I’ve got a crazy-sounding theory, and it very well may be crazy, but I challenge you to talk me out of it.

In the long run, I think the lowly Washington Nationals will prove to be as valuable to TBD as the much-more-popular Washington Redskins. For real.

This is despite the rabid fan base for the Redskins compared to a barely-there fan base for the Nationals. This slaps the face of quite a bit of common sense.

But I have my reasons. And when it happens, it’ll be a living example of why leading is always better than playing catch-up.

My first task as a community host at TBD — a yet-to-be-launched website that’ll cover local news and sports in DC in a very new way — has been to reach out to sports bloggers in an effort to create a mutually beneficial network. I’ve slogged through blogrolls, opened hundreds of tabs, and built what I believe is the definitive list of currently active blogs that cover the Nationals and Redskins. (Capitals, Wizards, high school and college teams will follow later.)

Conventional wisdom — and possibly correct wisdom — says the Redskins are the online goldmine. The fan base is huge, the fan base is rabid, and there’s a massive hunger to grapple with the minutiae of the season.

So it seemed counterintuitive that my list of active bloggers included 18 blogs and sites exclusively covering the Redskins, and 28 exclusively covering the Nationals. Most of those Redskins blogs were established blogging powerhouses, while the Nats blogs mostly had smaller followings. Though I haven’t seen their metrics, I have little doubt the Redskins blogs attract far more traffic.

I asked Twitter why there are so many more Nats bloggers, and three Nats fans responded in lock-step.

doubleuefwhy: Would not surprise me. #Redskins never lacked 4 coverage

johnmtaylor: @bydanielvictor I think you’ll find there are fewer NFL blogs out there than MLB, NHL, NBA. Less need for them b/c of coverage saturation

doubleuefwhy: Sports talk radio has been basically Redskins all the time around here too since its inception @bydanielvictor @johnmtaylor

loudoun: @bydanielvictor Nats blogs are fewer…cuz they’re new, they lose, too many looking for answers, too many with bad ones…skins r settled in

So the blogging scene may be livelier for the Nationals because there’s less mainstream attention, which is also the reason those blogs don’t have many readers.

You can either see that as evidence that the Nationals aren’t worth the effort — or you can choose to see the Nationals as a growth area.

There isn’t as much room for growth in the Redskins tubesphere — the bloggers are well-established, and if anything their fans might say there’s an over-saturation of coverage. Getting a seat at that table requires strong elbows and a creative playbook. We plan to utilize both, but we’re long behind in that race.

Contrast that with the Nationals, whose fans want to see the team grow and could use all the help they can get. In creating a network of Nationals bloggers and providing them exposure (and revenue) they haven’t seen elsewhere, TBD can position itself at the center of the Nationals online universe.

This is almost certainly our only chance to do that.

Since the Nationals came to DC in 2005, they’ve been a lousy team with few fans. But I wouldn’t bet on it staying that way forever. I don’t think they’ll ever develop a Redskins-like fandom, but there will be a lot of website visits to be had when they finally put together a pennant run one of these years.

If we take them lightly now based on current site stats, all those future Nationals fans will instead go to whatever site took the opportunity that we slept on. Or, we can establish ourselves now before it’s needed, and enjoy our long-standing reputation when it really matters someday.

After tweeting about this crazy theory, I got these responses:

ryansholin I like it. Let’s put it this way: I recently moved to the area and know *nothing* about the Nats. Where do I start?

doubleuefwhy @bydanielvictor You could potentially be a leader if you give #Nats fans something they can’t already get and the team gets really good.

Well, we’ll work on our part.

TBD

It was almost 6 p.m. when we discovered in the newsroom that Andrew Stack, the pilot who attacked the IRS building in Austin, was a graduate of the Milton Hershey School, right in our backyard.

For my first 2.5 years at The Patriot-News I covered the residential school for underprivileged children, so I offered to help find classmates who knew him in the 30 minutes I had before I needed to leave for another commitment. I first checked the two main online forums where alumni gather — the Milton Hershey Alumni Forums and TheMilt.com — but no one was discussing it yet.

So I turned to Facebook. I searched for “Milton Hershey School,” but there was no discussion on the school’s main fan page, nor in several other general groups. I searched for “Milton Hershey School alumni,” but no luck there either.

Then I tried “Milton Hershey School Class of,” hoping to find his specific graduating class. Wouldn’t you know it…the very first match was a 33-member group for the Milton Hershey School Class of 1974, which was Stack’s year. As Maeby Funke would say: “That was a freebie.”

Less than an hour earlier, one classmate had written on the group’s wall:

I’m in disbelief…it’s apparently our Andy Stack that crashed his plane into the building in Austin Texas today…I read his “manifesto” online, and he even mentions living in Harrisburg after graduation…I can’t belief it…

I sent him a message, respectfully explaining that I was a reporter who was looking to speak to classmates who had a recollection of him. I sent the same message to four others who had posted recently on the group’s wall.

At this point, as is always the case with using social networks for reporting, you simply cross your fingers and hope that someone is motivated to respond. I find my success rate is usually about one response for every five or six messages I send out. I personally had to get going — my dodgeball team was counting on me! — but I had given the classmates our city desk number, so I was free to leave.

I was literally standing up from my desk to leave when an editor said someone was on the phone for me. It was one of the classmates, and it had been less than five minutes since I had messaged him. I can miss the beginning of the dodgeball game for this, I thought, so I took the call and got a great interview. From my story:

Several years ago, trying to find lost graduates of the Milton Hershey School class of 1974, Mike Macchioni tracked down a man in Texas whom he hadn’t seen in 35 years.

“He was polite, but very abrupt,” Macchioni recalled. “He said he didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone from the Milton Hershey School or the Milton Hershey School itself. He didn’t give the reasons why, but he said, ‘You know, it’s nothing against you personally. That’s just the way it is.’ ”

Macchioni then asked if he could update the man’s contact information in the school’s directory.

“He said he didn’t care one way or another,” said Macchioni, a Hershey native. “He was always very short-tempered. He always struck me as very odd, but brilliant. Smart as hell.”

I filed that and a little bit of the locally relevant material from his “manifesto,” assuming it’d be an addition to an AP story or a break-out, then got up from my desk to leave.

Once again, my phone rings.

It’s another of the classmates I had messaged. This one considered himself friends with Stack. Stack was the bassist in his band — he even remembered the band name, The Mythical Maze — and offered some insight into Stack that no one else would be finding:

“Even though we were practicing all the time and really trying to do well as a group, Andy was still distant,” he said. “He was a part of the group, but he wasn’t the party kind of guy. He wasn’t the type that wanted to get together with his buddies. He was off on his own.”

At this point, I know I’m not playing in any dodgeball game tonight.

I quickly type up the two interviews I’ve got, and all of a sudden I’ve got a 15-inch story that came out of nowhere and took less than an hour to assemble. Just when I hit the send button, I get a message from a third classmate on Facebook:

“Andy was always a little off and unsteady,” Mottin, of Sewell, N.J., wrote to The Patriot-News. “He also had a hair-trigger temper. Plus he had a brilliant mind. Combined, they were a highly volatile cocktail just waiting to explode.”

A few things to remember out of this (the final story is here):

1) I would not have been able to find these sources if I weren’t already familiar with the school and the advanced searching abilities of Facebook. What if the aforementioned online forums, not Facebook, were the home of all the discussion, and I didn’t know those forums existed or how to find them? It highlights why, as a beat reporter, you need to know where every ounce of online discussion in your area is happening.

2) This all came together in less than an hour, after hours, but any reporter familiar with using Facebook for reporting knows there’s nothing extraordinary about what I did. If you’re in a hurry, you have to know how to use these tools before they’re quickly needed.

3) If you’re a reporter who happens to be well-sourced with every graduating class of the last 40 years in every school district in your area, more power to you, but most of us aren’t. For the rest of us, the value of a network like Facebook really shows up in stories like this.

Journalism, Social Media

When you’re the only reporter in the newsroom on a Sunday night, you have to be ready to write any kind of story — even if you have no prior sourcing on it whatsoever. I know how to reach the police chief, but what happens when you need to do a political story, you can’t reach the reporter who usually covers it and you don’t have any important numbers on file?

For me, the answer was Twitter. And it saved my story.

The situation: We were behind several newspapers and Web sites that were reporting Sen. Dave Argall, a relatively big-name politician in Pennsylvania, was going to announce his candidacy for a Congressional seat Monday morning. My job was to catch up, and as anyone who has ever worked a weekend shift knows, that’s no easy task mon a Sunday night.

I didn’t immediately know who to call. Once I came up with some ideas, I was only able to uncover work numbers and e-mail addresses. Sometimes on a Sunday night you have to just cross your fingers and send a few e-mails, make a few hail-mary calls to people who may possibly know people and then accept the reality: chances are good that none of it will work and your story won’t be all that great. It’s not a good feeling but sometimes it happens.

Instead, I turned to Twitter. I knew the county’s Republican committee was on Twitter, but it wasn’t following me so I couldn’t direct message the account. Shortly before 8 p.m. I tweeted:

I realize it’s a longshot, but anyone out there have contacts with @DauphinGOP? One that’d be available for comment on a Sunday night?

Then I intended to go back to work on more old-school methods, trying to think of other ways to get people on the phone. But it took just two minutes before the responses started coming in.

The first person, who works for a political campaign, had the GOP chairman’s home phone number, which was unavailable in the phone book. There was no answer when I called, but I left a message.

The second person had an ex-boyfriend who works as a political consultant for Republicans. She had already e-mailed him, asking if he could help me out.

The third person describes herself as a GOP activist and simply asked: “What do you need from the Dauphin GOP? May be able to get you in touch with them.” I told her about my story, and she went to work for me.

The fourth person was a Republican committeeman himself, and though I knew he was a local politician I was unaware that he was on the committee. After determining that he wouldn’t be the best interview himself, he gave me the chairman’s cell phone number. No answer there either, so I left a message.

The fifth person was also well-connected, but at this point I told her I was feeling optimistic about my chances from the other four. I might come back to her, I said.

Even though I left two messages earlier, I tried the chairman again. This time he picked up, and though he was minutes away from putting his kids to bed he was happy to answer a few questions. The interview was exactly what I needed, and turned what would have been a fairly lousy story into one that accomplished exactly what it needed to do.

A few take-aways for journalists:

1. If I were sitting in my cubicle thinking, “Who could help me with this story?”, none of the five people would have immediately popped into my mind, and I certainly wouldn’t have met them outside of Twitter since this story wasn’t on my beat. This is the power of Twitter for reporting: You can find help in unexpected places, from people you wouldn’t normally have access to.
2. But it only paid off because I’ve taken the time to build a useful local network. I’ve counted 415 Twitter users I follow in the Harrisburg area, though I suspect I follow more who I’ve neglected to add to the list. Every one of them could prove valuable in a pinch — we just never know when it’ll be.
3. You’ll notice Twitter didn’t replace fundamental reporting, it just facilitated it. I still needed to persist and call the chairman three separate times before I got the source on the phone.

Reporters who use Twitter know that this is a pretty pedestrian example of its effectiveness. This kind of situation has become routine as I incorporate Twitter (and sometimes Facebook) into my everyday reporting. And it should also be noted that you shouldn’t see the people who follow you as potential minions…there’s just as much value in listening as there is in sourcing.

Journalism, Social Media, Twitter evangelism

When I had an internship at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, my life was turned upside down: Jeopardy was on at 6:00 p.m., and Wheel of Fortune was on at 6:30 p.m. Back home in Pennsylvania it was the other way around: Wheel of Fortune was on first, then Jeopardy.

They were the same two episodes countrywide, just presented in a different order. This presented a rare opportunity for my friend back home: I could tell her the answers before they aired in her time zone, and she’d look much smarter to her roommates.

I know you want to call it cheating, but I’m going to go ahead and call it resourcefulness.

AND NOW, THE AWFUL ANALOGY

I picture a similar scene when I look at what’s happening to journalism in cities bigger than mine.

I see people – they were formerly called an audience – who are so fractured that their thousands of niches will almost certainly never again be assembled into one. I see mobile news as the lifeline in commuter cultures. I see tech-savvy crowds feeling empowered by tools like Ning, Wordpress and their own start-up sites.

Then I look back at Harrisburg, my own city. We have comparatively lower broadband penetration and a smaller population, so print still unites us all. Few people use public transportation, a big reason why mobile news isn’t in high demand. We have a spattering of bloggers and phpBB message boards, but you can’t find many active communities built around them.

The temptation is to look at those facts and decide our market has different demands than the bigger cities. But I think they’re just showing Jeopardy a half-hour earlier in the bigger cities – and it’s about to come on here.

We’d be foolish if we didn’t listen to the answers ahead of time.

OUR LUCKY PREVIEW

Outside of the bigger cities, we’ve been handed an opportunity they never had.

We’re seeing exactly what’s coming our way. We’re getting a step-by-step guide to what will happen should we choose a path of inaction. First, your audience will fragment. Second, they will expand their demands for news delivery. Third, they will take it upon themselves to meet those demands. This is already happening, but not to the extent we’ve seen elsewhere.

It need not be that way. And though the purely grassroots model has its virtues, I’m a believer that the community is best off if an organization of talented professionals is at the center of the local news ecosystem, and I say that not just as the employee of one of those organizations. The expanding and necessary role of bloggers and independent organizations can continue, but they’d prefer to work in tandem with a resource-heavy news organization that excels at its investigative role. Few readers or non-readers actually wish for our destruction; everyone applauds when we do our job right, and everyone in the community is better served when that happens.

I don’t think it’s too late for a nimble news organization in a small- to mid-sized city to place itself at the center of that ecosystem. Don’t let the audience fragment itself away from you – become the platform where their niche exists. As rail, buses and carpooling find more riders – and there’s a lot of evidence that says it will – have a scannable, feature-rich mobile site already running.

When readers realize their news demand is changing, they shouldn’t have reason to create the solution themselves. We can have it ready for them.

SHOWING DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

Digital leadership is about getting ahead of future demand, and it’s not something news organizations have been known for. That can change now.

My favorite compliment as a journalist came when Josh Karns, a local blogger, traced to me the initial tipping point in local Twitter use. He argued it was my use of it, and my blogging that followed, that gained the attention of others in the area and prompted a wave of sign-ups.

So if a single journalist with a sparsely-read blog can launch a small-scale movement, what could a large news organization with tens of thousands of readers accomplish? I think it could change the news consumption habits of an entire region. I think it could shape those habits in a way that encourages productive participation, involves every reader in the news process and ensures that those readers still value the professional product.

But that’s only if they get out ahead, using the lessons of the bigger cities. If they lag, the same story will play out over and over again.

Journalism

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

As Barack Obama emerged in front of an estimated crowd of 22,000 in front of Old Main on the Penn State University campus, Ashley Sims shouted the kind of welcome usually reserved for pop stars.

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I love you, Barack! Look at me! Hi!”

This from a 24-year-old graduate student who customized her cell phone’s ring tone as the Obama Girl tune, “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama.”

When speaking about Obama, she has a dreamy look in her eyes, clasps her hands to her chest, and pauses in the middle of sentences as if she just can’t find the words.

“I didn’t know that he was possible,” she said.

Yep, this was comfortable territory for Obama.

The Democratic presidential candidate usually plays well to young voters, and students at Penn State were fired up. A line to enter the rally spanned almost a mile, snaking around campus sidewalks.

At 11:45 a.m., Hershey High School alumni Cayla Rasi and Andrew Mackay arrived at the back of the line. Two hours later, they got in just in time to see the beginning of Obama ’s speech, but there were people behind them who never made it in.

“It’s really amazing everyone got up after a Saturday night at Penn State,” Rasi said.

Sean Perugini, a junior from Harleysville, Montgomery County, partied late Saturday, but Obama was worth waking up early for, he said. That’s quite an honor in his book.

He even bought an Obama T-shirt after the speech. That’s something he would not have done four years ago, he said.

At a time when he doesn’t feel like his government is listening to him, Obama has affirmed his faith in democracy, Perugini said.

“This is what we need, someone to uplift us, someone to get the young people involved,” Perugini said.

Obama also won favor from the crowd by discussing a plan for a $4,000 tuition credit, which he said would be given to students only after they’ve performed community service.

His critics like to poke at his talk about hope, but it’s a welcome message, freshman Nicole Lee Ritschel of Sunbury said.

“He says he needs people behind him the whole way, not just to the voting booth,” Ritschel said.

And, she said, she believes him.

Obama stayed at the Nittany Lion Inn on Saturday night and shot hoops with Sen. Bob Casey at the Bryce Jordan Center on Sunday morning.

Obama filled the “insert-local-reference-here” portion of the speech by accepting a football jersey from Penn State cornerback Lydell Sargeant and telling the crowd that he had a talk with football coach Joe Paterno.

“We decided after we get this whole thing settled, I’m going to have to come back and watch a football game,” Obama said.

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

Nearly four years ago, Sen. John Kerry stood outside the Capitol in Harrisburg, telling an estimated 20,000 supporters why they should make him their president.

Sunday’s return visit to the midstate, which included two stops in Carlisle and one in West Hanover Twp., was a bit different.

Stumping for Sen. Barack Obama , his appearance at the Local 520 union hall in West Hanover attracted about 50 people, most of them union members and Obama volunteers. Earlier in the day, Kerry, D.-Mass., had stopped at Obama ’s Carlisle field office and mingled with supporters at a luncheon at Cumberland County’s Democratic headquarters.

“We try to do these smaller events on purpose so people really have the opportunity to talk with them,” said Debbie Mesloh, an Obama spokeswoman.

Now a surrogate for Obama ’s presidential campaign instead of the Democratic nominee for president, Kerry is making his pitch without the spotlight that followed him in 2004.

Entering the plumbers’ and pipefitters’ union hall unceremoniously from the back of the room, Kerry greeted the crowd with a relaxed, “Hi, everybody.”

He spoke without a microphone, as his voice traveled easily enough to the back of the five rows of chairs, several of which were empty.

ABC-27 and WGAL-TV Channel 8 were the only television stations to show up for the day’s final appearance.

“With your help, I won the primary here in Pennsylvania,” Kerry said of his 2004 victory. “With your help, I won the general election here in Pennsylvania.

“And with your help, we’re not going to break this winning streak now.”

While Kerry spent much of his hour listing reasons that voters should support Obama , he praised Obama ’s Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She has every right to continue fighting, he said.

“As long as we all agree that no matter what happens in this, we’re going to come together at the end of it,” he said. “And we are going to guarantee that as Democrats, we’re going to vote a Democrat into the White House.”

He wasn’t so kind, however, to Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

In response to a question about torture from a Vietnam War veteran, Kerry accused McCain of being inconsistent on torture of enemy combatants, climate change and tax cuts.

“There are two John McCains,” he said. “One was Senator McCain up until 2004. Now you have Nomination John.”

Kerry said he chose to endorse Obama because he believes Obama can better unite the country.

Gary Zohn, 57, a federal worker from Enola, said he heard lots of similar promises in 2006, when his vote helped a Democratic takeover of Congress. He said he hasn’t gotten what he wanted.

He became agitated during a back-and-forth with Kerry during the question-and-answer session. Despite efforts by campaign and union officials to move to the next questioner, Kerry kept his cool and continued to engage Zohn.

“I’m happy to have this conversation with Gary,” Kerry said.

“You still don’t understand what’s happening with this country,” Zohn said.

“Yes, I do,” Kerry countered.

Kerry said he, too, is frustrated by the issues Zohn brought up — earmarks, the Iraq war and the culture of politics.

“That’s why I’m here, man,” Kerry said. “I’m here to elect Barack Obama so we can make that change.”

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

Where, in a state such as Pennsylvania, could the Barack Obama
campaign place 65 offices?

How about Mansfield, a town 45 miles north of Scranton that in 2007 had a population of 3,223?

Or Montrose, about 50 miles north of Williamsport and home to 1,547 people?

Both small towns now have a full-time paid organizer, sent by the Obama campaign, to give direction to the volunteers on the ground. This week the campaign launched 35 offices, including ones in Lebanon and Carlisle. There are already offices in Harrisburg, York and Lancaster.

“It’s unprecedented in Pennsylvania, especially in the central part of the state, because we Democrats have tended to focus on Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, the northeast, where we have reliable voter blocks,” said Andrea Mead, Obama spokeswoman. “That’s absolutely not the case this time. We’ve made a point to go into communities that Democrats have not bothered with before.”

By comparison, Republican nominee John McCain has 17 state offices, including ones in Harrisburg, York and Lancaster. The rest are in the more traditional, high-population areas.

Both campaigns are considering Pennsylvania one of the nation’s most important battleground states, and the money spent here bears that out.

Spending differences

While Obama is spending money on offices, McCain can focus on other areas, most likely television advertisements, said Chris Borick, a political analyst at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

Democrats are “hell-bent on not being outperformed in the ground game this year,” Borick said. That’s because Democrats have historically lagged behind Republicans at getting out the vote, he said.

Usually the campaigns would have 10 or so offices in Pennsylvania’s big and midsized cities, Borick said. But Obama appears to be applying his 50-state strategy to the individual states, trying to have a full presence in the state.

“The Democrats want to really try to outperform Republicans, or at least equally perform,” he said. “And that means having a structure in place that can yield voters from every corner of the state.”

Among the new sites is the Lebanon office, which has a full-time campaign coordinator and a level of organization that has county Democrats raving.

Leading the operation is Andrew Claster, who moved to Lebanon from Washington, D.C., for the job. He previously worked for a political polling and consulting firm.

Claster organized record-setting voter registration drives in the county; volunteers registered 250 voters during Labor Day weekend, and a one-day record of 110 people have been registered since then.

“We’re doing something pretty remarkable in Pennsylvania and Lebanon, and that’s thanks to the work you’re doing,” he told volunteers gathered at the office’s official opening Tuesday.

The campaign for John Kerry and John Edwards wasn’t nearly as organized as this campaign, said Jackie Grumbacher, who ran the county’s Democratic effort in 2004.

“We were making things up as we went along, because we didn’t have the strong infrastructure this campaign has.”

Lebanon County has long been a Republican stronghold. After Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was introduced as McCain’s running mate, local Republicans have had their own spike in enthusiasm, said Faith Bender, chairwoman of the Republican committee in Lebanon County.

The county doesn’t have its own McCain campaign office, but Republicans are doing the same kind of grass-roots work out of their party’s office, Bender said.

Offices are great, but it’s a matter of what work comes out of them, said Mike Barley, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

“I’m not sure what kind of inroads they’re going to make in Lebanon or any of these other red counties,” Barley said. “When it comes down to it, these voters align themselves a lot more with what John McCain and Sarah Palin believe, and there’s not much that’s going to change that.”

Craig Schirmer, the state director for Obama , said there are 569 neighborhood teams working for Obama .

The state’s volunteers have expanded the voter registration edge by 100,000 voters since the April 22 primary, he said.

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

To analysts and pollsters watching the presidential campaign, it’s a no-brainer: Pennsylvania’s deeply blue.

Some said Republican presidential candidate John McCain should heed polls that give his Democratic rival, Barack Obama , solid double-digit leads in the state, abandon ship and divert spending to more competitive states such as Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Colorado.

But neither campaign sees it that way.

Republicans said the state is still for grabs and Democrats said it’s no time to ease up. McCain and Michelle Obama spent Thursday in Pennsylvania, while McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, will visit Lancaster on Saturday.

More visits from both sides are sure to follow.

“We have our own polls, and we have much closer numbers,” Pennsylvania GOP spokesman Mike Barley said. “I’m obviously not making that up. Otherwise you wouldn’t see John McCain and Sarah Palin in the state so much.”

Nor has the Obama campaign begun a victory lap.

“We’re not paying attention to the polls, just like we weren’t paying attention to the polls when they were saying it was neck and neck,” said Andrea Mead, an Obama spokeswoman.

A Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll released Wednesday had Obama ahead 52 percent to 38 percent in Pennsylvania. A Real Clear Politics average of polls has Obama with a 13.6 percentage point lead here.

Though recent presidential elections have been close, the state hasn’t voted for a Republican candidate since George Bush in 1988.

Yet the campaigns are continuing to battle here.

From Sept. 28 to Oct. 4, McCain spent $1.6 million on advertising in Pennsylvania, his second-highest total in a state. Obama spent $2.2 million, his third-highest total. The figures are the most recent available from the Wisconsin Advertising Project.

In that time, Harrisburg was McCain’s seventh-most-frequent target market in the country, ahead of even Philadelphia.

Barley said that was to ensure high voter turnout in the base and to harness the enthusiasm that was ignited when Palin joined the ticket.

Palin has visited the state several times, including an appearance at a Philadelphia Flyers game to drop a ceremonial first puck.

“The more we see John McCain and Sarah Palin here, the better off our numbers are,” Barley said.

Meanwhile, Obama has been in Pennsylvania seven days since June, and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has made four visits.

Analysts have questioned the wisdom of both campaigns using money and time in what appears to be a signed, sealed and delivered state. McCain recently pulled his resources out of Michigan after the chances of winning appeared slim.

“I do not think Pennsylvania is up for grabs,” said Shirley Anne Warshaw, a Gettysburg College political expert. “I think Pennsylvania is absolutely a solid blue state.”

Warshaw cited the Democrats’ 1.1 million lead in registered voters. That resulted from aggressive registration during the primary, leaving the party with an excited electorate likely to show up on Election Day, she said.

“Pennsylvania is the last place the Republicans should be putting their money,” Warshaw said.

Christopher Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College, said McCain must gain ground soon or it’ll be time to shift resources away from Pennsylvania and into states such as Ohio and Florida.

“He’s down 10 points at least. He’s low on money,” Borick said. “How long do you keep putting money into Pennsylvania when it’s such an expensive place to play?”

G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin & Marshall College’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs, said it’s unlikely that McCain will win Pennsylvania. Madonna said he’s never seen a candidate overcome a 13-point lead this late in a campaign.

Even so, pulling out of the state would carry too much symbolism and would demoralize McCain’s nationwide supporters, he said. He can’t give up on what has historically been a very competitive state.

“Just to pick up and call it a day here would send an extremely negative message to Republicans all over the country,” Madonna said. “It would be a psychological blow that I don’t think the campaign is willing to accept.”

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

When a presidential candidate visits a town just two weeks before an election, that suggests it’s a pretty significant area.

To visit the same region again just a week before Election Day, well, we must really be important.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, will hold a rally at the Giant Center in Hershey on Tuesday. McCain spoke at The Forum in Harrisburg this week, after Palin visited Lancaster Saturday.

For McCain, that’s two of the final 14 days spent making midstate appearances. The campaign is hoping a strong central Pennsylvania turnout can offset what’s expected to be a big lead in Philadelphia for Barack Obama , the Democratic presidential nominee.

“You’re seeing a historic level of commitment from the candidate to Pennsylvania,” said Peter Feldman, a McCain campaign spokesman.

Strategists could draw up scenarios that put McCain in the White House without Pennsylvania, but winning here could be necessary given McCain’s struggles holding on to several states President Bush won in 2004.

Meanwhile, despite Gov. Ed Rendell’s public pleas, the Obama campaign has not announced any plans for Obama or his running mate, Joe Biden, to visit the state.

To maintain what most pollsters said is a double-digit percentage lead, the Obama campaign has relied on an active grass-roots network, visits from surrogates and a money edge to air more TV ads.

“We hope to have Senator Obama and Senator Biden back,” said Andrea Mead, an Obama spokeswoman in Pennsylvania. “But there are a lot of states in play in this election, and he’s running a 50-state, unprecedented campaign here.”

Both campaigns have said they’re ignoring the polls, most of which suggest Pennsylvania is safely Obama country. The Big Ten Battleground Poll, released Thursday, has Obama leading 52 percent to 41 percent.

A Real Clear Politics average of several polls has Obama up by 10.7 percentage points.

For McCain to make up that kind of gap this close to the election would be historic, analysts said. Some called for McCain to divert time and resources to more competitive states, such as Ohio, Florida or Nevada.

If McCain loses some of the states Bush won — he now trails in Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia — he could negate some of that damage by taking Pennsylvania.

“He needs to roll the dice in some big places,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College. “And one of the big jackpots out there that you can still somehow pull off would be a place like Pennsylvania.”

It’s a risky strategy, since such an investment in Pennsylvania pulls him away from other battlegrounds, Borick said.

“What you can do is motivate those who are already committed to you to actually turn out to vote,” said Tony May of Triad Strategies in Harrisburg.

May, a former press secretary for two Democratic governors, said McCain has more incentive to visit the midstate than Obama because of the strong Republican backing here.

“McCain has to try to wring out every last vote out of York and Lancaster and Cumberland County that he possibly can to offset what is likely going to be a huge advantage for Obama coming out of southeastern Pennsylvania,” May said.

With McCain making several visits to the state, it begs the question: Should Obama visit, too?

“Maybe I’m just thinking as someone who lives here, but I wouldn’t neglect Pennsylvania if I were Obama ,” said Jeremy Plant, a political science professor at Penn State Harrisburg. “He can’t afford to take it for granted yet.”

Obama was in Indiana on Thursday and then flew to Hawaii to visit his ailing grandmother.

Rendell said this week that he has written Obama ’s national campaign, urging the Democratic nominee to return to Pennsylvania.

Chuck Ardo, Rendell’s spokesman, said the governor has not heard back but expects “a positive response.”

Clips

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

No more punditry, no more polls, no more advertisements and no more robocalls.

Today it’s finally out of everyone else’s hands, and into your own.

We’ll know tonight whether Pennsylvania was the state that tipped the election, or whether strategists will second-guess those dozens of visits that candidates paid to our state.

We’ll know tonight whether the frantic push by Sen. John McCain to court the midstate will dilute Sen. Barack Obama ’s edge in Philadelphia and trigger a pundit-defying victory.

We’ll know tonight if we’ll have the first black president or the first female vice president in American history.

Unless, of course, there are lawsuits and recounts. Then we’ll wait longer.

No matter what happens, Pennsylvania stands to be at the center of it all, and analysts say McCain probably can’t win without it.

“This has become ground zero,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin & Marshall College’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs. “It’s become the battle at the OK Corral. This is it. It’s all about winning Pennsylvania, or I don’t think McCain can win the presidency.”

To McCain, the midstate might be the ground zero of ground zero. If he’s going to win the state’s crucial 21 electoral votes, he needs strong turnout from this heavily Republican area.

From Oct. 21 to 28, McCain aired more ads in Harrisburg than anywhere else in the state and in all but six cities around the country, according to the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project.

And while Obama hasn’t visited the Harrisburg/Hershey area since the primary season, McCain has made two visits in the past two weeks. GOP running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also stopped in Dauphin Borough on Friday night to take her daughter trick-or-treating.

All of McCain’s campaigning in the state appears to have tightened the state polls, as a Real Clear Politics average of polls has dropped Obama ’s lead from 11 percentage points on Oct. 21 to 7.6 points on Monday.

“I think that’s impressive, given that they’re going into one heck of a head wind in Pennsylvania,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

That said, Borick said he would be very surprised if McCain wins Pennsylvania.

“Their effort has been incredible, but I see so many things that are going against them in winning Pennsylvania,” Borick said.

That includes a 1.2 million voter registration edge for Democrats.

Obama has spent twice as much as McCain on advertising in Pennsylvania and boasts a stronger grass-roots network. Many homeowners in the Harrisburg area last weekend found door hangers with instructions for first-time voters and personalized information on the location of their polling places.

A day before the election in 2004, Real Clear Politics showed Democratic Sen. John Kerry with a lead of about 1 percentage point in Pennsylvania. Kerry ended up winning 51 percent to 49 percent.

Though a lot of signs point to an Obama victory in Pennsylvania, no one — in the campaigns or among the pollsters — dare pronounce it over until the voters have their say.

“This is such a strange election,” Madonna said, “and we’ve all been flummoxed before on a number of occasions.”

DANIEL VICTOR : 255-8144 or dvictor@patriot-news.com

INFOBOX:

Days spent in Pennsylvania since June: John McCain: 25, Barack Obama : 9

Money spent in Pa. on advertising from Oct. 21 to 28: John McCain: $1,388,000, Barack Obama: $2,742,000

Pa’s registered voters: Republicans: 3,243,391 Democrats: 4,480,691

Sources: The Associated Press, University of Wisconsin Advertising Project

Clips