Leading McCain's uphill charge

Bill Baroni is a true believer.

A self-described "McCainiac," Baroni is leading the uphill campaign to deliver New Jersey to a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years. He insists U.S. Sen. John McCain, unlike some past GOP nominees, plans to contend in the Garden State.

"This is not a traditional Republican campaign for president of the United States in New Jersey, largely because we intend to win it," Baroni said.

A state senator from Mercer County who has risen fast as a moderate Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, Baroni hopes to turn his enthusiasm for grassroots politics into a McCain victory.

To do so, he will have to defy the state's history, a vast deficit in voter registration, and polling showing McCain down by double digits to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. In a Monmouth University poll from mid-July, Obama had a 14-point lead in New Jersey.

"With numbers like these, it's very hard for McCain to make up that gap," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "I think you need to start off with a much narrower spread at this point to make it a game-changer."

Baroni, state chairman of McCain's campaign, waves off the polls, saying political history is littered with comebacks. With his history of winning comfortably in a swing district where Democrats outnumber Republicans, Baroni is gearing up a campaign that he hopes will pick up "soft Democrats" - blue-collar voters who he said backed Ronald Reagan and then Bill Clinton, swept Hillary Rodham Clinton to victory in the state's February primary, and will be drawn to McCain.

"This is a state with a large veterans population, a state with a lot of seniors, and John McCain's story appeals to the vast middle of New Jersey politics," Baroni said.

The work to reach that middle for McCain emanates from a low-slung building in Woodbridge, a Democratic-voting, solidly middle-class community in Middlesex County, the kind of place where, Baroni said, McCain can make up ground.

The site buzzed one afternoon as 14 volunteers, a mix of senior citizens and college students, placed campaign calls. On the walls were poster-size photos of McCain: outside a military helicopter, his tie wildly flaring into the air; in front of a massive American flag; on the set with Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa. Baroni arrived in an open-collared shirt, his sleeves rolled up.

"We're going to win New Jersey for John McCain because of what we're doing here today," he told the volunteers.

The office has been open since early this summer, getting a head start on the Obama campaign, which named its New Jersey director, Tricia Mueller, only in late July.

Baroni said he had gotten to work after McCain visited his hometown, Hamilton, for a rally just before February's Super Tuesday primaries.

"John McCain looked me in the eye after the Hamilton event, on the bus, and said, 'Build a grassroots organization in New Jersey,' " Baroni said. He flashed back to his days as a staffer during McCain's 2000 presidential bid. "He didn't have to tell me twice."

Baroni, 36, has spent much of his own career reaching out to the political center. A fitness fanatic and tireless campaigner, he won election to the Assembly at age 31 in one of New Jersey's most competitive districts, just outside Trenton.

"He's organized, articulate, and very much a worthy adversary," said Assemblyman Joseph Cryan (D., Union), chairman of the Democratic State Committee.

Baroni talked up his target voters while sitting in a spartan staff office at McCain's New Jersey base, a picture of Abraham Lincoln on the wall and a daytime soap opera playing silently on television. He said he expected Hispanics and some of Hillary Clinton's numerous New Jersey supporters to turn to McCain in November.

"We believe there's lots of people who may have made a different choice if the battle was between Hillary Clinton and John McCain, but that's not the campaign that's going into November," Baroni said.

He pointed to McCain's four trips to New Jersey since February as evidence of his commitment to the state. McCain plans another visit Tuesday in Bergen County for a fund-raiser.

New Jersey donors had given McCain $2.5 million by the end of June, eighth most among the states, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Obama, however, had raised more than twice as much in New Jersey by that point, and Democrats like their chances to retain their hold on the state.

Mueller, Obama's New Jersey campaign director, agreed that independent-minded blue-collar voters were key and were not afraid to cross party lines, but she said the fervor behind Obama and broad frustration at the sputtering economy would bolster the Democrats.

"People will vote their pocketbooks," Mueller said. "That is a really, really big incentive to say something has to change."

And although Republicans say they made inroads in 2004, when President Bush lost New Jersey by only 7 points, Democrats have added 500,000 registered voters since then, compared with 145,300 new Republicans.

As of June 3, registered Republicans made up 21 percent of New Jersey's electorate and Democrats 34 percent.

Nevertheless, Baroni has thrived, forming close ties with the state's influential unions, usually Democratic stalwarts, even winning an endorsement from the union Mueller heads, the New Jersey Council of Carpenters. Baroni knocked on 10,000 doors when he won his first election, and has now hit 25,000 in total, he said.

"If I can knock on 10,000 doors to go to the legislature," he said, "we can knock on a whole lot more to send John McCain to the White House."