Pat Dollard

Tweet

When the country’s strongest bastion of conservatism and gun freedom has come to be the home of a population that is evenly split between McCain and Senator Tarzan, then just what does that say, big picture?

Fox:

With a huge money advantage, Barack Obama has forced John McCain to defend Republican turf in states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Missouri. But now Obama is seeking a knockout blow by buying ads in his home state of Arizona.

Polls show the race tightening there, and Democrats believe Obama can pull off the upset.

“I think that it is certainly possible,” said Emily DeRosa, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party. “It’s something that we all would love to see.”

DeRosa said an Obama victory in Arizona would be “monumental.”

“More than that, I think it is an incredible indicator of Obama’s strength that he’s performed well here without making an ad buys here up until this moment,” she said.

The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment. On a conference call Friday, McCain campaign officials called the Obama television ad a waste of money.

“We encourage them to spend their campaign cash as much as they can,” McCain political director Mike DuHaime said.

McCain holds a 4.4 percentage point lead, a virtual toss-up, according to average of polling in the state by Real Clear Politics. Some polls put McCain’s lead at only a 1 percentage point.

The last presidential candidate to lose his home state was Al Gore in 2000. The only electoral votes Walter Mondale won in his landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in 1984 were from his home state of Minnesota.

The Obama campaign has set up three offices in Arizona and has had staffers there since August. But the campaign didn’t buy ads there until Friday, signaling its belief that the state was in play.

“We’re trying to win everywhere,” Obama campaign spokesman Nick Shapiro told FOXNews.com

“People in Arizona, Illinois, all over this country want change, as they just can’t afford another four years of the failed Bush-McCain policies,” he said. “Americans have a clear choice on Tuesday, and in Obama, they see a leader who can lift up the middle class and bring this country together.”

The ad features endorsements from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Warren Buffet, the nation’s best known investor.