Romney officials believe that the poor economy will be the key to remaking North Carolina red.
“Voters down here are very tired of the broken promises that President Obama delivered the first time,” said Rob Reid, Romney’s North Carolina spokesman. “As people start to pay closer attention, they’re going to start to understand that this election is about very big issues. The very biggest issue is the economy.”
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The economy may be the biggest issue, but Obama is taking every opportunity to contrast his positions on immigration with Romney’s. Obama advisers are quick to point out the president’s support for the Dream Act and his recent order for a stop to certain deportations of young people with no criminal histories who came to the U.S. illegally as children.
They also take every opportunity to note that Romney
opposes the Dream Act and has declared that a tough law cracking down on illegal immigration in Arizona should serve as a “model” for the country.
“He’s the most extreme presidential nominee on immigration in modern history,” Gabriela Domenzain, part of the Obama campaign’s Hispanic outreach team, said in an interview.
While the Latino population here is booming, only about one-fourth of Latinos are eligible to vote, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. And only about one-fourth of those actually do. “The Hispanic population has grown, but it’s got a lot of young people, people under 18, and it’s also got a lot of newcomers who may not be U.S. citizens,” said Mark Lopez of the Pew Hispanic Center.
Other factors are working against the president in North Carolina. The state struggles under the weight of 9.4 percent unemployment, and the president’s approval rating dipped below 50 percent, according to a Civitas poll published July 20.
“His real problem is that the young people that were such a big part of this in ’08 are not as motivated and are not as excited,” said Dallas Woodhouse, state director of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group founded by magnates Charles and David Koch.
Woodhouse also believes Obama will fare poorly in some of the Republican-leaning suburbs that he won four years ago. “White women in the suburbs, they are dealing with the higher cost of fuel, food, higher unemployment,” Woodhouse said.
That hasn’t stopped AFP and the Romney campaign from investing heavily in North Carolina.
Through mid-July, Romney and his allies, including AFP and Crossroads GPS, an independent group co-founded by Karl Rove, had spent more than $20 million in broadcast television advertising in North Carolina, according to data from Kantar Media/CMAG. Obama and other Democratic groups spent $7.3 million. The Romney campaign itself has spent $5.2 million, compared with Obama’s $6.5 million.
Staff writer T.W. Farnam and polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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*Poll results from Post-ABC polls among registered voters unless otherwise noted. Complete results available in the Post poll archive.
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