Illinois Democrats Woo Voters Before Obama Rally

CHICAGO -- Democrats were out early Saturday trying to fire up voters before President Barack Obama's Chicago rally, where he was expected to make another push to fend off Republicans who want to claim his former U.S. Senate seat and the Illinois governor's mansion.

Gov. Pat Quinn and Senate hopeful Alexi Giannoulias, both Democratic candidates on the top of the Illinois ballot, implored people to vote at the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition. That gathering that was televised and broadcast on the radio.

"Please don't waste our votes," Quinn told about 200 people at the PUSH headquarters on Chicago's South Side. "We're running against the right wing that wants to tear down President Obama. They want him to lose the office of governor in his own home state of Illinois."

Quinn and Giannoulias, who's in a tight race for Obama's seat against Republican Congressman Mark Kirk, were gearing up for an Obama get-out-the-vote rally later Saturday evening. It's the president's latest effort to bolster his party ahead of Tuesday's election.

Like the Democrats, Republicans were busy as well on this final weekend before Election Day. Kirk and GOP candidate for governor Bill Brady were making stops around the state before wrapping up with a rally of their own in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook.

More of the same was planned for Sunday, with a GOP rally in Chicago with Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who claimed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat in a special election.

Illinois Republican Party chairman Pat Brady said Republicans in the state have mounted an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort over the past year and have made about 4.4 million outreach calls.

"I think this year we've beaten them at the get-out-the-vote effort," Brady said.

Obama's Chicago visit shows the Democrats are still trying to rally their base with just a few days to go before the election, which Brady said is "not good."

If Kirk wins Obama's old Senate seat it would be an embarrassing loss for Democrats and another big win for Republicans who are trying to shift control of Congress in Tuesday's election.

Giannoulias said he wants to help advance Obama's agenda to move the country forward and blasted Republicans for saying they want to take back America. He said Obama has been unfairly blamed for the country's problems, which Giannoulias said started under Republicans.

"How far back do you want to go? We saw what happened when they were in charge," he said.

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Democrats Claim Momentum as Polls Tighten in Key Races

With nine days to go until the midterm election and the polls tightening in several key races, top Democratic Party leaders claimed Sunday that momentum is on their side and that the so-called "enthusiasm gap" is closing. 

Democrats said voters are beginning to wake up to the alleged damage Republicans would do to the country by wielding the controls of Congress -- a warning President Obama has sounded at campaign rallies across the country on behalf of Democratic candidates. 

"From this point forward, it's all about turnout and ground game, and we're seeing good early voting trends," Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine said Sunday on ABC's "This Week," predicting his party would hold the House. "The polling is moving. We really haven't seen since Labor Day polls moving against us. Almost all the polls have been moving for us. Now, we still have some work to do, but what Democrats tend to specialize in is the ground game, the turnout." 

The polling offers a more nuanced picture, and Republicans are expressing just as much confidence. In Washington state, Republican Dino Rossi has whittled away Democratic Sen. Patty Murray's lead in recent polls. In California, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer watched her lead over Carly Fiorina shrink to 2 points in the latest survey out of Rasmussen. 

But Republicans have likewise watched their leads diminish in Senate races critical to their strategy for a congressional takeover. The shifting numbers underscore the unpredictability of a campaign season marked by the rise of outsider candidates, a groundswell in citizen activism and challenges to the establishment on both sides of the political aisle. 

In Pennsylvania, Republican Pat Toomey has traded the lead in recent polls with Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, despite holding a strong advantage for weeks over his opponent. In Wisconsin, Republican businessman Ron Johnson's lead fell to the 2 points in his race against Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, according to a St. Norbert College/Wisconsin Public Radio poll released last week. Polls show the Colorado Senate race between Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet and Tea Party-supported Ken Buck a dead heat. And polling in the West Virginia Senate race between Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin and Republican opponent John Raese has been all over the map. 

"It's a very competitive race," said Manchin, who has spent the campaign battling charges that he is too close to President Obama and Washington Democrats. He suggested on "Fox News Sunday" that voters are starting to trend toward him. 

"Now this last week, people are starting to look at who's performed in West Virginia," he said. 

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that he's confident Democrats will retain a majority in Congress. 

"These big interests are fighting hard to get back in power and I think the American people are waking up to that fact and that's why I think you're seeing a closing of the political energy gap," he said. 

But while Obama and his top surrogates are touring the nations in support of Democrats, Republicans are driving up enthusiasm with rallies and cross-country tours of their own. They say the scattered races where Democrats are gaining steam are nothing to worry about and that a nationwide sentiment that resents the expansion of the federal government is on their side. 

"There is a vibration out here that is unlike anything I've ever seen before," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think you're going to see a wave, an unprecedented wave on Election Day." 

Republicans need 39 seats to win a majority in the House of Representatives and 10 seats to win a majority in the U.S. Senate. Steele predicted Republicans would achieve both, though he described the Senate as a tougher climb. 

Toomey, in an interview with "Fox News Sunday," dismissed the tightening polls in his Pennsylvania Senate race. Toomey rocked the political scene in the Keystone State when his popularity in the Republican primary forced Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties in order to run as a Democrat. Specter later lost to Sestak. 

Despite the sudden hiccup in Toomey's lead, the GOP nominee said he's confident he'll give Republicans a boost in their quest for 51 seats in the Senate. 

"I never expected this to be anything but a close and competitive race," Toomey said. "It's close now, but I feel great about where we are. ... I think the energy and the momentum's on our side." 

Click here for more Fox News "Days to Decide" coverage. 

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Obama Campaigns for Reid as Democrats Try to Minimize GOP Gains in Senate

LAS VEGAS -- President Obama threw his star power behind the Democrats' embattled Senate leader, who finds himself in a tossup campaign against an ultraconservative tea party favorite in America's most-watched Senate race.

Republicans have made Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid their top target in the Nov. 2 election. The minority party needs to gain 10 seats to wrest control of the Senate from the Democrats, and unseating the most powerful Senate Democrat would deal a major blow to Obama, who reminded supporters of Republican opposition to his agenda.

Reid is tied in the polls with relative unknown Republican Sharron Angle in a race that has attracted millions of dollars from across the nation.

"I know sometimes over the last two years as we've been grinding out change, doing battle ... dealing with obstruction, dealing with the 'no-you-can't' crowd, I know sometimes you might have gotten discouraged," Obama said at the nighttime rally for Reid on the third day of a four-day campaign swing. The rally's Democratic organizers estimated the crowd at 9,000.

"The work of bringing about actual change is so hard," Obama said. "I'm here to tell you Nevada don't let anybody tell you that what you've done didn't matter."

Obama was trying mightily to reknit the coalition that sent him to the White House with big outdoor rallies in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and fundraisers for Senate candidates. The president was reaching out to Latino voters, college students, women and other Democratic-leaning groups as he sought to boost the candidacies of key congressional allies whose success or failure on in the Nov. 2 election will help determine the fate of his own agenda.

Everywhere he went the president asked voters to keep on believing in the promise of change, even though he acknowledged that it's been slow to come and that the euphoria supporters felt when he won the presidency in 2008 has dissipated.

Obama's campaign stops were timed to energize the Democratic base in both California and Nevada where early voting is already under way.

His visit to the U.S. gambling capital was meant to give a boost to Reid, who hope to avoid the fate of former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle who lost by a narrow margin in South Dakota in 2004.

Like incumbent Democrats everywhere -- and more than most -- it's not only a Republican rival that Reid is combatting. It's the troubled economy, in the state with the nation's highest rates of unemployment (14.4 percent) and home foreclosures, where the recession has taken a big bite out of Nevada's main tourism industry.

Republican candidate Angle, campaigning Thursday in Las Vegas with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, urged Reid to "man up" and accept his share of blame for the state's economic woes.

Reid has responded to such attacks by saying Angle like other tea party-backed candidates is too extreme for Nevada voters. He has called her an ally of the special interests and advocate for jettisoning government agencies and privatizing programs for the elderly and veterans that millions of Nevadans rely on.

The Nevada Senate race is now a test of strength for the fledgling tea party movement, which advocates smaller government and lower taxes.

The 61-year-old Angle, a former state lawmaker -- like tea party-backed candidates in other states -- defeated a favorite of the state's Republican establishment in the primary election.

Her ultraconservative policies have hurt her in the general election campaign with some moderate Republicans and leaders of the state's gambling industry backing Reid. She has countered by casting Reid as a career politician who lives in a fashionable condominium in Washington and is out of touch with the state he has represented in Congress for decades.

Polls show that the 70-year-old Reid, who is seeking a fifth Senate term, remains very unpopular among Nevada voters, but the Senate race is among the tightest in the U.S. with both candidates polling just under 50 percent.

Reid has fiercely courted the Hispanic vote in the contest against Angle, who has run TV ads with images of dark-skinned men and a map of Mexico to highlight her support of strict immigration policies. Hispanics are a growing voting bloc in Nevada, where they make up roughly 25 percent of the population. More than 80 percent of the Silver State's Hispanics hail from Mexico.

The crowd in Las Vegas was a fraction of the audience that had flooded a sunny quad at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles to hear Obama. USC officials estimated that 32,500 people were there and that 5,000 other people watched on television from an overflow area.

Obama campaigned in Los Angeles for Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who is in a tight race with former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, and Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate for governor. The USC rally brought a dash of Hollywood celebrity as Jamie Foxx warmed up the crowd and Stevie Wonder performed for supporters at Boxer's earlier fundraiser with Obama.

As Obama campaigned on the West Coast, Democratic and Republican party leaders back in Washington privately scrutinized the latest polling data to determine where to spend their limited resources on TV ads and get-out-the-vote efforts in the final 10 days of the campaign.

Democrats were increasingly focusing on the most competitive states and congressional districts in the hope that a superior turnout operation will help them win enough races to hang onto control of Congress, even if only by a slim margin.

Republicans were zeroing in on states where they've seen their leads shrink in recent days -- like the Pennsylvania Senate contest -- as voters started paying increasing attention ahead of Election Day.

Attention was focused heavily on the most competitive Senate races -- California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Washington, Colorado and West Virginia along with Nevada -- and roughly two dozen House races in a battlefield that's rapidly expanded to 75 or more seats in play

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Democrats Scramble for Winning Strategy in Final Three Weeks of Election Season

Three weeks from Tuesday, voters will go to the polls to determine whether the political complexion of Congress changes – an outcome widely expected in the House, possibly in the Senate -- ratcheting up pressure on campaigns to avoid any last-minute stumbles or to deliver a Hail Mary.

But election analysts say three weeks probably isn't enough time to alter the course of this campaign season.

"I would not expect anything to happen between now and the election to shift the outlook," said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University and expert on congressional elections.

"The economy is not going to suddenly get better in the next three weeks," he said. "That's the main thing people are upset about."

Michael Franc, the vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation and a scholar on midterm races, said the election will be a "referendum on the most ambitious experiment in government activities we've seen in over half a century."

"And it will answer a lot of questions about where Americans reside on what role they would like government to play in their lives," he said. "It looks like there's a decided thumbs-down coming from the heartland about what this administration and president have done over the last two years."

That hasn't stopped Democrats from swinging for the fences. Right now, it’s the money game – candidates burning through cash to stay competitive or pull ahead. Democrats are expected to flood the airwaves with any dirt they've found on their opponents in campaign ads released at the 11th hour to avoid thorough scrutiny, analysts say.

It’s also time for the parties’ campaign committees to leverage their resources and cut bait on some losing candidates to focus on races that are still within reach. Democrats canceled all of their ad reservations in at least six districts where their chances of prevailing seem to be fading, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee canceled all of its remaining reservations for districts held by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania and Steve Driehaus of Ohio, along with open seats in Indiana's 8th district, Tennessee's 8th district and Kansas's 3rd district, sources told the newspaper.

The DCCC has also retreated from districts where it is confident of victory – Rep. Joseph Cao's seat in Louisiana and an open at-large seat in Delaware, the newspaper reported.

Republicans need to capture 40 seats to retake the House.

Franc said he'll be closely watching moderate House Democrats like Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama who have consistently voted against Obama's marquee initiatives to see if they can survive the anti-incumbent wave.

Abramowitz said if Republicans are picking up a lot of seats in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio early on Election Day, "that would be a good indication that they're going to make big gains by the time the night is over."

On the Senate side, where Republicans need to win 10 seats to gain control, both analysts said they'll be closely watching how Tea Party candidates do in Nevada, Kentucky, Alaska, Colorado, Florida and Delaware, races in which some say Republican establishment candidates would have performed better.

"Tea Party candidates may give Democrats a chance where they otherwise might not have chances," Abramowitz said.

Franc said the new breed of conservative candidates, including Joe Miller in Alaska, Ken Buck in Colorado, Marco Rubio in Florida and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, boast some "very strong intellectual power."

"These are not a bunch of guys who fell off the turnip truck," he said, adding that if elected, "they're going to raise the average IQ in the Senate by a lot."

Franc said he hopes the intensity and energy among voters that he says he's never seen like this before has a ripple effect on incumbents, compelling those who return to Congress to be more humble and motivated.

"There's something going on that we haven't seen before," he said. "And it's not just about a single issue. It's about the future of the country."

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Tax-slashing proposals scare GOP, Democrats

DENVER –  Businessmen gather at an empty Denver Broncos stadium, with an ominous warning: The more than 70,000 vacant seats around them represent the number of state jobs that would be lost if three tax-slashing and debt-cutting measures are approved in next month's election.

While many states are wrestling with billion-dollar budget deficits, Colorado voters are being asked to adopt ballot initiatives that would ban borrowing for public works, cut the income tax and slash local property taxes.

The net effect, once fully implemented, would cost the state $2.1 billion in revenue annually and still require an additional $1.6 billion in spending on public education, according to an analysis by the independent Colorado Legislative Council.

Advantages to taxpayers: $1,360 in annual savings for someone who earns $55,000 and has a $295,000 home.

Opponents say the math doesn't work, that the proposals could cripple government and devastate the state economy.

Even a tea party candidate isn't supporting all the initiatives, and a coalition of business leaders and politicians has raised $6 million to defeat the initiatives, even as polls show support faltering.

"It will plunge Colorado into another recession," said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. "And what will make it so unique in the history of our state is that it will be a voter-approved recession."

Proponents don't buy the doom and gloom. They said lower taxes and smaller government is the way to a better economic future.

"We're really in a recession right now," said Natalie Menten, campaign coordinator for the three measures. "Families, businesses, we are all trying to find efficiencies, cut down on wasteful spending. But we don't believe the government is following the same line."

The proposals would force the state to devote 92 percent of its budget on constitutionally required K-12 education funding, leaving little for higher education, human services and prisons and everything else, according to the report.

This year, the state faced and closed a $1.5 billion deficit in its $18.2 billion budget. It projects a $1.1 billion shortfall next year.

Menten said the Legislative Council's analysis doesn't take into account potential government growth if the tax cuts stimulate the economy.

The initiatives have echoes of California's landmark property tax revolt from three decades ago — as well as the potential repercussions, said Peter Hanson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Denver who has studied and taught about the California measure.

Proposition 13, approved by California voters in 1978, amended the state constitution to roll back property tax assessments and cap their growth at no more than 2 percent a year. Homeowners and business owners like the certainty about how much they will pay each year in property assessments.

Cities and counties rely primarily on property and sales taxes to fund their operations, and a major cut in property taxes effectively transferred funding responsibility for schools, law enforcement and other functions to the state.

That wasn't a problem during the housing boom, when rising prices brought in more and more revenue.

But when the state runs a deficit, as it has for several years, local services see deep cuts. California has cut tens of thousands of teaching and local law enforcement jobs over the past two years, leading to crowded classrooms and fewer officers on the street.

Property taxes aside, Hanson noted, Colorado's amendments arose under similar circumstances: Frustration with rising government spending, a conservative political ascendancy and the failure of government to act.

"California's Legislature had an opportunity to act and it failed to take property tax reform seriously," he said. "The effects have been Draconian. It shifted responsibility for funding public education from local communities to the state and put public education on a much less solid foundation."

In Colorado, Amendment 60 would drastically cut school district property taxes between 2011 and 2020 and force the state to make up the difference.

Amendment 61 would prohibit the state from borrowing money for public works projects, including school construction — and local governments could borrow only with voter approval and if the debt is repaid within 10 years.

Finally, Proposition 101 would cut the state income tax rate from 4.63 percent to 3.5 percent over a period of years. It would cut annual auto registration to $10 per vehicle and exempt the first $10,000 of a vehicle's sales price from sales tax. And it would reduce telecommunication fees.

Without the ability to borrow, the state would be unable to bond any new construction, improvements or maintenance, the analysts said.

All of it's got many lawmakers and candidates opposing the measures.

Even GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes — a favorite of the tea party movement that has railed against taxes and government spending for the past year — has said he could only support one of the three proposals, the one to cut property taxes.

His Democratic opponent, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, opposes all three.

Supporters of the initiatives say the state has found ways to circumvent Colorado's current constitutional spending limits, citing a spike in auto registration fees, as a recent example.

Proponents have so far raised only about $14,000, but disenchanted voters like Sue Ellen Gilbert may be their biggest campaign asset.

"I'm gonna vote for them because government has all this money and they're not disbursing it wisely," said the retired school teacher from Cortez, in southwest Colorado. "Believe you me, if they need money, they'll find it."

Floyd Ciruli, an independent pollster, said support for the tax proposals may be waning, with almost no high-profile endorsements or campaign.

But opponents are not taking any chances.

"You get concerned about having to fight upstream against that because people have this predisposition, this idea that this is about us against the government and it's not," said construction company executive John Beeble. "I mean, we need government, even at it's most basic level."

___ Associated Press writer Tom Verdin in Sacramento, Calif. contributed to this report.

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