The New York Times does not think North Carolina is an important swing state, but President Obama and Mitt Romney apparently do.
The Romney super PAC launched one of his biggest TV ad buys in North Carolina last week, and Obama will start airing ads this week in North Carolina and eight other states. The race will turn on how a handful of swing states vote, and both campaigns are starting early in the Tar Heel state.
Restore our Future, the Romney super PAC, is spending $652,000 airing ads this month. It's part of a nine-state push, with North Carolina attracting a bigger ad budget than Ohio, Michigan and every other state but Florida. Politico's Alex Burns says the ads mark a new point in the race, which until now had been funded by outside GOP groups, but not ones explicitly supporting Romney such as Restore our Future.
At the same time, Obama is running a 60-second ad saying the economy is starting to rebound. It's running here and in eight other states, including Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Word didn't get to the New York Times, though, which says in a story this morning that the presidential race hinges on nine swing states -- and North Carolina is not one of them. The nine, according to the Times: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. All nine voted for Obama in 2008, but Republicans have made big gains since then.
Our hunch? November is a lifetime away, but right now it seems Obama will have a hard time winning North Carolina. He won by a tiny 14,000 votes in 2008 in the biggest Democratic tidal wave this state has seen in decades. With the enthusiasm around Obama waning considerably, it's hard to imagine he can pull it off again.
-- Taylor Batten
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