Green Bay Is Ground Zero
George W. Bush hammered away at economic policy in campaign stops in Wisconsin and Michigan on Thursday.
CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports the Dairy State is considered ground zero in the war to win over swing voters.
"There's some people here who want tax relief," said Bush, the Texas governor and GOP presidential nominee, in Green Bay, Wis.
Bush came to the city of 100,000, best known for its football, to slam Democratic rival Al Gore as the godfather of big government.
"Down his path," Bush said of the vice president, "many of us will feel the expansion of government in our lives."
While a strong economy has been a plus for Gore, Bush tried to deflate that advantage by questioning how the vice president would use the nation's surplus.
He said Gore was proposing more than 200 new or expanded federal programs that would result in an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 new federal employees. He said there would be 412 new Medicare regulations and Gore would hire new IRS agents, meaning more audits of taxpayers.
"All this could amount to over $2 trillion in bigger government in 10 years - costing about $20,000 on average for every household in America," Bush said.
And so, the city that's home to the Packers is ground zero in the race for the White House; the fiercest battle in the battleground states with both candidates engaged in hand-to-hand combat on TV.
"Green Bay right now is the number one media market in the country in the number of ads run since June first. Milwaukee is fourth in the country," said Dave Canon, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
What's Bush's secret weapon? The Republican governors in most of the battleground states sweeping from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, like popular Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin.
"We had many meetings with George Bush and the Republican governors and said, 'Let the governors run their states, we know what goes on in our states, we know what works, we know how to win here.'" said Thompson.
But so far, the secret weapon is misfiring. Bush, neck and neck with Gore in national polls, is down in Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania - all states with strong GOP governors. Gov. Thompson also helped Bush's father in 1988, but Wisconsin went for Democrat Michael Dukakis that year and then twice for Bill Clinton.
Thompson acknowledged that even with his backing, his region is a tough fight.
"It's going to be very close and it's this region that is going to swing the pendulum - either goes for Bush or Al Gore," he said.
And in this tight race, even playing with such a formidable team as popular GOP governors is no guarantee of victory in November.
After his stop in Green Bay, Bush headed to a fund-raiser in Pontiac, Mich. On Friday, he's to make an energy policy speech in Saginaw, Mich., calling for increased domestic production, more energy assistance for low-income householdand a tougher foreign policy toward oil producing allies. It's Bush's final outing before he hunkers down for an intense weekend of study and rehearsals before his first debate with Gore on Tuesday in Boston.
Less than six weeks before the election, a variety of polls say Bush has reclaimed some momentum in the race, attracting women and senior citizens, focusing on his best issues and benefiting from concerns about Gore's truthfulness.
A new Los Angeles Times poll, which gave Bush a 48-to-42 percent lead, suggested senior citizens supported Bush slightly more than Gore - 47 percent to 41 percent. This despite findings that the elderly prefer Gore's approach to Medicare and health care generally. Gore was up by almost 20 points among this group in a poll in early September.
Bush and Gore are currently about even in other national polls. Both Republicans and Democrats said they believe the race may be the closest since 1960.