DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — President Barack Obama will try to run up the score in Democratic-leaning Dubuque when he visits Saturday, while Republican challenger Mitt Romney will try to limit his losses when he makes a stop the same day.
Obama and Romney plan dueling campaign events in the Mississippi River city of 58,000 residents as they make final pitches to voters in their bids to win Iowa’s six electoral votes. The stops will also appeal to voters across the border in Wisconsin, another battleground state.
Romney will make his pitch first, appearing at the Dubuque Regional Airport for a noon rally. Obama will fly into the same airport hours later and speak at a park in the afternoon. Each candidate will appear with working-class icons, a blatant nod to the type of voters they are trying to woo: NASCAR legend Richard Petty for Romney and rocker John Mellencamp for Obama.
The area typically favors Democrats, but has many independent voters. Dubuque is largely white, heavily Catholic and has a strong United Auto Workers presence thanks to a John Deere plant.
Dubuque voters are often aggressively courted before the first-in-the-nation state caucuses, but not usually so close to the general election, one local political scientist said. Polls show a tight race in Iowa, one of several states expected to decide Tuesday’s election.
Obama carried Dubuque County by 10,000 votes in 2008, winning 59 percent of the county’s votes on his way to an easy statewide victory. But in 2010, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad only lost the county by 750 votes during his ouster of Democratic Gov. Chet Culver.
County GOP Chairman David Cushman conceded Obama would win Dubuque, but said Romney could limit the margin by making a strong closing argument that he will tackle the national debt and better manage the economy. Cushman said many voters he has talked to are apprehensive about the nation’s future, but not ready to back Romney.
“If he cuts Obama’s advantage in Dubuque, that makes Romney’s advantages in other parts of the state hold up that much better,” said Cushman, manager of a winery outside Dubuque. “There’s opportunity here. I go door-knocking once or twice a week and I’m still running across a fair number of people that are undecided.”
Dubuque’s economy has been strong, with unemployment dipping below 4 percent. John Deere announced in April a $44 million investment in its plant, and about 400 employees who were laid off during the housing downturn have slowly returned to work, said local UAW President Dan White.
He said the union is urging members, including about 1,100 at the plant and 2,500 retirees, to re-elect Obama. Plant production is picking up as the housing market improves and the president’s health care law that requires insurers to cover pre-existing conditions is critical for retirees, he said. The union has also talked up the auto industry bailout, which saved thousands of UAW jobs.
“We have put out a lot on what Obama has done, what the situation was when he started, where we’re at now,” White said. “We really believe that progress is being made.”
Obama and Romney will address a county where about 40 percent of the electorate has already voted. Nearly 20,000 residents have returned absentee ballots, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans more than 2-1, said County Auditor Denise Dolan.
The election also has captivated Dubuque’s large Catholic population, in part because both Vice President Joe Biden and GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan share their faith.
David Cochran, a political scientist at Loras College in Dubuque, has held meetings with local Catholics to discuss the election. He said GOP supporters most often brought up opposition to abortion and the Obama administration’s rule requiring contraception to be included in employee benefit plans. He said Obama’s Catholic backers were focused on ending wars and preventing cuts to welfare.
But most Catholics won’t try to reconcile their ballots with their faith, he said.
“Catholic voters tend to be a pretty good cross-section of the American electorate,” Cochran said. “The Catholic vote usually goes the same way the national vote goes.”
