Colorado's voters key till the very end

On one of the last stops in a campaign that vaulted her onto the A-list of American politics, Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, urged a vocal crowd in Colorado Springs on Monday to help her running mate, Sen. John McCain, win Colorado's nine electoral votes.

"Colorado, are you ready to help us carry your state to victory?" the Alaska governor asked a roaring crowd estimated by a campaign spokesman at 5,000 to 6,000.

"What a pivotal state this is," she said, her words -- and her presence in the campaign's final hours -- testifying to Colorado's importance to her ticket's hopes of victory.

Palin has visited the Springs three times, headlining a rally at Security Service Field on Oct. 20 and appearing here with McCain on Sept. 6, in the same hangar where Monday's rally was held.

Other key states were on Palin's schedule. A brutal final day of campaigning started in Ohio, then went to Missouri and Iowa. After Colorado Springs, Palin still had two rallies in Nevada on her schedule before flying home to Alaska, with a scheduled arrival at 7:30 a.m. MST.

Accompanied by her husband, whom she introduced as "Alaska's first dude, Todd Palin," the governor whipped through a 30-minute speech that touched on all the major themes of the McCain-Palin campaign: government reform, tax cuts, a strong military, energy independence.

"You deserve better than what has been going on, and we need to transform your government," she said, adding that McCain is the man for the job. "He has the track record to prove it," she said.

She added that "only John McCain has the wisdom and the experience, the courage to get our economy back on the right track." The solution, she said, is tax cuts.

"We will keep our commitments to seniors and veterans, and we will make sure things like defense fully funded," she said. "We're going to lower your income taxes and we'll double the child tax deduction for every family. We're going to cut the capital gains tax and we'll bring tax relief to every American and every business."

In seeming contradiction to all these promises, she also pledged to balance the federal budget "by the end of our first term."

She said the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, is committed to higher taxes, bigger government and "spreading the wealth."

"It is the far left wing of the Democrat Party preparing to take over your entire federal government," she said. "Consider the monopoly of unchecked power that would be in the hands of those controlling the House, the Senate and, heaven forbid, the White House."

Palin did not come any nearer to acknowledging the possibility of defeat. But if her ticket wins, it will be by coming from behind. Statewide polls over the last week show a four- to 10-point lead for Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

The Republicans also trail nationally, though a flurry of late polls in battleground states indicate some tightening of the race in its final hours.

Because McCain and Palin will have to generate a strong turnout from Colorado Springs' Republican majority to offset a Democratic edge in the Denver area, crowd counts for political rallies here are closely watched.

Palin's audience on Monday was as enthusiastic as ever, but smaller than the one that turned out for her here two weeks ago, even though the weather at the Sky Sox ballfield was cold and damp, and it was held on a Monday morning when many folks have to be at work.

And Monday's airport rally paled in comparison to the event two months earlier, when an estimated 13,000 jammed the hangar and spread well out onto the tarmac to see McCain and his then-brand-new running mate.

McCain himself has scheduled one last crack at Colorado, stopping in Grand Junction on Tuesday on his way to his home in Arizona.

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Contact the writer: 476-1654 or dean.toda@gazette.com