44-Miami Real Estate-Campaigns
Presidential Campaigns have a Huge impact on weather Miami Real Estate goes for a tremendous downnfall of a very Peculiar rise.
On the eve of a nationally televised debate, Republican John McCain dispatched the nation’s most famous hockey mom to kneecap their Democratic rival Monday at a jam-packed ice rink in this Southwest Florida Republican stronghold.
Vice presidential contender Sarah Palin’s shots at Barack Obama were designed to slow his momentum in this crucial swing state by portraying him as a left-wing zealot with ties to a violent Vietnam War protester.
”Wait a minute. He didn’t know that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?” Palin asked the amped-up crowd of 8,000. “This is about the truthfulness and judgment needed in our next president.”
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Obama’s camp said she was exaggerating his relationship with William Ayers and hit back with a Web video tying McCain to Charles Keating, the banker at the center of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
”The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain’s Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts — and see for themselves the pattern of poor judgment by John McCain,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, wrote in an e-mail to supporters.
The increasingly personal backbiting served as a warm-up to the second of three presidential debates, though the economy and Wall Street bailout is likely to dominate Tuesday’s town hall at 9 p.m. at Belmont University in Nashville.
A Fox News/Rasmussen poll released Monday showed Obama leading McCain 52 to 45 percent in Florida, an economically battered state McCain can’t afford to let slip. Last week, the same survey found a tied race, while McCain was leading by 5 percentage points the week before.
”It’s going to be a hard-fought battle here in Florida,” Palin told the crowd of cheering, pom-pom waving supporters. “It’s going to come right down to the wire, but with your support, we’re going win, we’re going to win for you.”
While both campaigns say this election is about the future, they’re both mining the ghosts of the past.
GOING ON ATTACK
During rallies at a Clearwater park and the Germain Arena in Estero near Fort Myers, Palin seized on remarks made by Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod. He said Obama was unaware of Ayers’ radical past when Obama attended a gathering at Ayers’ home as a state Senate candidate.
Ayers, a University of Illinois education professor, has also crossed paths with Obama at meetings of an educational nonprofit and a charitable board in Chicago. But they are not close friends, according to published accounts, and Obama has assailed the violence that Ayers helped orchestrate at federal buildings in the 1960s as “detestable.”
For its part, the McCain campaign arranged for McCain’s former lawyer, John Dowd, to tell reporters Monday that the Arizona senator had only a minor role in the Keating scandal and was brought in as a Republican face to balance the Democratic-leaning scandal.
McCain was merely reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for displaying ”poor judgment.” Keating went to jail for fraud and racketeering.
”It’s sort of a classic political smear job,” said Dowd, adding that McCain was set up. “Charlie Keating was an important constituent in Arizona that employed 2,000 people, and that’s a constituent you pay attention to.”
At the hockey arena, Palin argued that McCain would set the economy straight, while Obama would raise taxes. She also accused Obama of trying to cut off funding to the troops in Iraq and demeaning the military mission in Afghanistan, charges that are echoed in a new McCain ad airing on national cable. ”It sure would be nice if just once [Obama] said he wants America to win,” Palin said.
The event was originally scheduled for a smaller venue in Fort Myers, but a strong demand for tickets prompted the campaign to move her appearance to the nearby minor league hockey arena.
”I’m feeling a lot of hockey moms for McCain in this room today,” Palin told the crowd, revved by a country music soundtrack and a high school marching band.
Palin was introduced by Gov. Charlie Crist, who was joined on stage by his fiancée, Carole Rome, and U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez.
Palin’s itinerary suggests her mission is to drive the Republican faithful to the polls. Three of her four public appearances this trip are in Republican strongholds in southwest and northern Florida — Estero on Monday, and Pensacola and Jacksonville on Tuesday.
HEFTY FUNDRAISERS
In between her public appearances, Palin is slated to attend private fundraisers in Naples, Boca Raton and Jacksonville expected to raise as much as $3 million.
One question looming over the race: Whether the more than 170,000 voters the Obama campaign has registered in recent months will turn out on Nov. 4. Leading up to Monday, the registration deadline for the election, the campaign swamped the state with celebrities in a voting push that culminated with free concerts Sunday and Monday by hip-hop superstar Jay-Z in Miami.
Next up: Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, who will campaign Wednesday in Tampa and Fort Myers.
”McCain’s challenge right now is to make up the ground that Obama has built up,” said Miami lobbyist Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. “If he can move the needed two or three points over the next couple weeks, which are crucial, it will come down to a battle over turnout.”
