If the past week is any indicator, the presidential race in Pennsylvania is close enough for the wives of the candidates to pay a visit, but not the candidates themselves.
Ann Romney stumped for her husband at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County Monday afternoon. Her visit to the area comes a week after that of Jill Biden, the Vice President’s wife, who touched down in seven cities in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
Before Mrs. Romney took the stage, Pennsylvania GOP chairman Rob Gleason warmed up the crowd of hundreds – more than 900 according to the party’s check-in lists.
“The polls have closed in Pennsylvania,” said Gleason. “We are dead even in Pennsylvania. We can win Pennsylvania.”
But two polls released Monday by Public Policy Polling and The Morning Call/Muhlenberg College show the president leading by seven and four points, respectively, among likely Pennsylvania voters.
The campaigns aren’t running television ads in the commonwealth. And, as Mrs. Romney noted in Elizabethtown, though four of her sons are on the campaign trail for their dad, not one of them is in Pennsylvania.
“I can’t even tell you where they are,” she joked. “Probably Ohio, probably Florida. Probably Wisconsin.”
Therein lie the hotly contested states.
Mrs. Romney urged her audience to do their own voter outreach on the Romney campaign’s behalf. She was piggybacking on a suggestion offered by Gov. Corbett, another link in the line of opening acts who preceded her on stage, along with Gleason and Republican candidates for statewide office.
Corbett called his advice to the crowd a homework assignment: to talk to five undecided voters, daily.
“If you talk to five a day for five minutes, that’s a 25 minute investment,” said the governor. “You could do more, but that’s minimum. That’s how you can participate.”
Mrs. Romney called the assignment a good idea.
“Find an independent that voted for Barack Obama last time,” she said. “Or, find a Democrat that voted for Barack Obama last time and say, ‘How have the last four years been? You want more of the same? Go ahead. You want something different – better, more prosperous future? Vote for Mitt Romney.’”
