Obama's late afternoon rain-soaked rally is part of a stepped-up effort in the state. | Robert A. Reeder Obama tries to lock up Wisconsin

MILWAUKEE – President Barack Obama came here Saturday to try to block Mitt Romney’s back-up electoral path.

Wisconsin could prove key for the Republican nominee’s hopes in November, especially with the consistent lead Obama is showing in Ohio, Virginia and Florida polls. And given recent trends in the state — including Gov. Scott Walker’s wins in both 2010 and the June recall — Romney seemed in good shape to pick up a state that until recently was solid Democratic territory. And that was before he picked Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, which helped put Romney neck-and-neck in state polls in the weeks after the selection.


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Polls in recent days have shown things moving back toward Obama, but the president’s late afternoon rain-soaked rally here was part of a stepped-up effort in the state. Obama and his super PAC allies have been trying to match Romney on the state’s airwaves and the campaign has been using volunteer reinforcements from next door in Minnesota and Illinois for phone banks, door-to-door canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts. And while this was Obama’s first trip to the state in months, Vice President Joe Biden has been on the ground here twice in recent weeks.

Speaking to a crowd the Obama campaign estimated at 18,000 in a city park overlooking Lake Michigan, the president reminded Wisconsin voters that he’s still their bratwurst-loving neighbor who longed to make the short drive to his home in Chicago. “An hour and a half—maybe a little shorter with the motorcade,” he said.

But Obama kept closely to his standard stump speech, dropping little in the way of a localized pitch beyond joking about the ribbing he’d just taken from two supporters who were joining him on stage — Green Bay Packers stars Jermichael Finley and Desmond Bishop — over their recent wins against his beloved Chicago Bears.

“It just goes to show you, we’re not as divided as some people say,” Obama told the football-partisan crowd. “We are not Bears fans first or Packers fans first. We are Americans first.”

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Republicans acknowledge that Romney needs to do well in the state. But they shrug off the latest numbers that show Wisconsin slipping away, noting that those polls came after the Democratic National Convention and amid a splurge of news coverage detailing violence in the Middle East. This is still the state that was home to the 2010 electoral wave that resulted in Republicans winning the governor’s mansion, a Senate seat, two Democratic-held House districts and both chambers of the state Legislature.

Obama’s Wisconsin visit — including a stop for bratwurst and Italian sausages and a private fundraiser with another famous No. 44, former Milwaukee baseball slugger Hank Aaron — is proof to them that the president’s campaign is spooked by the closeness of their internal polls.

“He’s not here to cheer for the Brewers as they try to make the playoffs,” said Ted Kanavas, a Romney state co-chairman and former Republican state senator. “He’s here because he needs to be here.”

Wisconsin Republicans say their prospects are emboldened by a ground game — built during the 2010 mid-terms and the Walker recall — that they say rivals Obama’s. Romney’s campaign inherited some two dozen field offices and a team of volunteers and motivated local Republicans who defended the governor during the recall.

“People shouldn’t doubt our capabilities in Wisconsin by now,” said Reince Priebus, the current Republican National Committee chairman and former Wisconsin GOP chairman. “If they’re doubting us, they’ve been living under a rock for the last three years.”

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina acknowledged Saturday that the Romney field operations built during the Walker recall puts Wisconsin in a different category this cycle compared with other swing states.

“This is one where … because of the recall election, they test drove their car whereas in other states they haven’t,” Messina said, according to a pool report. “It would make sense they’re strong here, as are we. They are stronger than [John] McCain was in ‘08, no question, on the ground.”

“But we continue to have a strategic advantage,” Messina added, referring to about 50 Obama field offices and other campaign infrastructure that the president has in the Badger State.

The Democratic ticket hasn’t spent nearly as much time on the ground here as the Republicans. Romney attended 16 events this spring en route to winning the primary over Rick Santorum, and he’s been back twice so far for the general election campaign. The last Romney visit came in a mid-August rally in Waukesha to trumpet Ryan as his vice president pick. Ryan has campaigned in his home state three times too since he was nominated.

During a stop Thursday at Marquette University, Ann Romney predicted her husband would win Wisconsin, making him the first Republican since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide to carry the state. Priebus and Tagg Romney also were scheduled to participate Saturday in a fall festival in Ryan’s congressional district.

The Romney campaign welcomed Obama back to Wisconsin Saturday with eight digital billboards put up around Milwaukee noting the national debt’s increase in the 220 days since the president last visited the state.

Charles Franklin, polling director for the Marquette University Law School, said Romney’s campaign needs to keep fighting in Wisconsin. The state’s 10 electoral votes have become a key backstop plan for the Republican.

“It still has to be fought over given that there’s very little else that’s looking very competitive,” Franklin said. “You don’t win it with Wisconsin. We can’t be the absolute top priority, but I don’t see how this can be a state they concede under these circumstances.”

Wisconsin political analysts are especially watching for signs of campaign intensity in the state’s two northernmost congressional districts. Both went red in 2010 and stuck with Walker in the recall election.

And Republicans are counting on Ryan to help deliver Wisconsin. While the seven-term lawmaker has never run statewide, he’s gained recognition as a House GOP leader on budget issues and his latest stint on the presidential campaign trail. Franklin said Ryan should give Romney a boost of between a quarter to a half of a percent in his final statewide totals, which could be useful if the presidential race ends up as close as it did in 2000, when Al Gore won by less than 6,000 votes, or 2004, when John Kerry beat George W. Bush by a little more than 11,000 votes.

Romney’s campaign also hopes it can hitch a ride on the coattails of former four-term Gov. Tommy Thompson, who’s locked in a close Senate race with Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a liberal, openly gay Democrat.

“It’s one of the few Senate races or congressional races that can actually help the top of the ticket,” Priebus said. “Tommy Thompson is like Miller Lite and Harley Davidson in Wisconsin. He’s a brand. He’s able to do things that a lot of Senate candidates can’t do for us on the top of the ticket.”

Obama’s numbers have many Democrats feeling confident. Five polls released at the end of the week had Obama up, with one even putting the president ahead by 14. The president’s approval ratings also topped 50 percent in an NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll. PPP said Wisconsin independents favored Obama by nine points, with nearly 40 percent saying they were less likely to vote for Romney after hearing about the Republican’s unscripted remarks during a South Florida fundraiser where he said 47 percent of Americans don’t pay their taxes and wouldn’t vote for him anyway.

That’s enough to combat the growing Republican strength in the state, argued former Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), whose rural northwestern district sent a Republican to Washington in 2010 for the first time in more than four decades.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a landslide by any means,” Obey said. “But I think Obama will have a significantly comfortable margin because, in the end, he’s talking common sense and Mitt Romney is campaigning like he’s everybody’s rich uncle.”

Obama’s visit to Wisconsin marks his first since mid-February, when he made a brief stop at a Master Lock factory in Milwaukee that had gotten a State of the Union mention because it had brought 100 manufacturing jobs back from China.

Labor groups and some state Democrats fumed when the president didn’t campaign in Wisconsin during the recall. Republicans used the results to reinforce their argument that the state was turning red, but Democrats said the loss against Walker would simply energize the base and the labor unions who’d championed the effort, turning it into a stronger push for the president.

Obey said he wasn’t angry at Obama for failing to come back to the state sooner—but called Saturday’s stop “prudent.”

“It says he’s not taking anything for granted,” Obey said. “It’s what any candidate would do if he wants to keep territory that’s on his side of the ledger in that same place.”

Former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, one of Obama’s earliest backers in 2008, pointed to recent polls in Ohio as evidence that Romney’s chances are getting smaller with every battleground poll that trends toward the president. “Ohio is much more likely to vote Republican than Democrat,” Doyle said. “If [Romney] loses Ohio, he isn’t winning Wisconsin.”

And that could mean Saturday will mark one of the few Wisconsin stops for the president between now and November.

“I share the hope,” Doyle added, “that maybe we won’t have to see him very much in the next two months because he’ll be in North Carolina and other states that will really be up for grabs.”