Progress Illinois

Obama Plans To Double Campaign Presence In Indiana

by Josh Kalven on July 07, 2008 - 5:53pm

According to The Times (of Northwest Indiana), the Obama campaign will be doubling its number of offices in Indiana in the near future:

Obama began running a biographical ad here in late June, and last week the campaign added a second television spot in Indiana and 17 other states.

Emily Parcell, political director for Obama's key caucus victory in Iowa, was selected to head up the campaign's Indiana operation. And Jonathan Swain -- an aide to U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who served the Clinton campaign this spring -- became Obama's Indiana spokesman last week.

Swain said Obama plans to open 25 to 30 regional campaign offices across Indiana in the coming weeks. The campaign had 26 offices here prior to the May 6 primary.

The staff and advertising dollars pouring into Indiana, Georgia, North Carolina and other GOP-leaning states follow the 50 State Strategy that Howard Dean adopted after becoming Democratic National Committee chairman in 2005.

In related news, the Indianapolis Star triggered some buzz over the weekend around the idea of Obama tapping Sen. Evan Bayh as his running mate. It's an interesting piece, though I don't agree with some of the purported advantages of picking Bayh. For instance, the idea that he would bring ambivalent Hillary Clinton supporters over to Obama (he was a strong supporter of hers in the primary) seems far-fetched. However, I can get behind former Gore aide Ron Klain's argument that he has "great regional appeal":

"The election is going to be won or lost within 200 miles of Indianapolis," he [Klain] said. "Evan would be a great person on the ticket to help carry states like Ohio and Kentucky and Michigan and Wisconsin and a lot of the states that are battleground states."

On the vice-presidential front, Sen. Jim Webb today explicitly withdrew his name from the field of potential Obama running mates, saying: "Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for vice president." The news led FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver to look at the veepstakes and ask: "Has a VP field ever been so completely wide open?"