HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Paul Ryan will make his first campaign appearances in Pennsylvania 10 days and nine swing states after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney picked him to be his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, yet Pennsylvania supporters said Monday his relatively late arrival does not reflect a diminishing expectation of victory here in November.
“Pennsylvania is very much in play,” said Valentino F. DiGiorgio III, the Republican Party chairman in Chester County in suburban Philadelphia and home to the site of Ryan’s afternoon rally at the American Helicopter Museum & Education Center.
Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, is the second-most valuable swing state in the country, although its track record favors Democrats — it has backed Democrats five straight times since George H.W. Bush, a Republican, won it in 1988 — and no Democrat has won the White House, but lost Pennsylvania since 1948.
Ryan will begin his day at a morning rally at a steel processor in suburban Pittsburgh, an area of growing strength for Republicans, before he heads to the helicopter museum and an evening fundraiser at the Union League in Philadelphia’s Center City.
Jim Roddey, the chairman of the Republican Party in Allegheny County, home to the most registered Republicans in the state, said he thinks the Romney-Ryan campaign still believes it can win Pennsylvania in the Nov. 6 election. The campaign is planning more candidate trips to Pennsylvania and expects to air its first TV commercial in Pennsylvania after next week’s GOP convention in Florida, Roddey said.
Romney announced Aug. 11 in Norfolk, Va., that Ryan, a Wisconsin congressman, was his pick for vice president. Since that day in Virginia, Ryan has visited his home state, plus Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida — all states viewed broadly as competitive states in the campaign against President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
But Ryan’s itinerary is not necessarily in order of importance, and scheduling a national campaign is complicated, Roddey said. Still, he acknowledged that Pennsylvania will be more difficult to win in the Nov. 6 election than most, if not all, of the other swing states that Ryan has visited.
“As far as we are concerned, the polling will begin to be in our favor by Sept. 1,” he said.
The most recent independent polling has favored Obama in Pennsylvania, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans four to three.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Aug. 1 showed Obama beating Romney, 53 percent to 42 percent, while a Franklin and Marshall College poll released last week showed Obama with a narrower edge over Romney, 44 percent to 38 percent.
Romney last visited Pennsylvania in mid-July.
Chris Borick, a pollster and professor of political science at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said Ryan’s visit means the Romney campaign still believes it can compete in Pennsylvania.
“But coming here after the other states is a statement of where they prioritize Pennsylvania in the order of states in play,” Borick said.
Matthew Kerbel, a professor of political science at Villanova University, said he would not read anything into the sequence of Ryan’s visits before the fall begins.
“I would have been surprised if he didn’t come to Pennsylvania at all,” Kerbel said.
Rather, he said, visits by members of the ticket and spending on ads in Pennsylvania in the fall will be more telling.
