Here are a couple samples from close races. In many races, the issue was treated as a vehicle for negative attacks rather than a serious problem facing the district, and given other factors there is no telling whether immigration-based attacks were effective.

Despite attacks against their immigration stances, Ohio Congressman-elect Steve Dreihaus won, as did Senator-elect Kay Hagan, of North Carolina. Perhaps the attacks fell flat, or perhaps

John McCain Fights For Colorado

McCain operatives say rumors of their candidate’s departure from the Centennial State are greatly exaggerated. CNN’s John King reported on Monday that GOP strategists were massaging the math looking for a path to the White House that didn’t include Colorado. One unnamed source said the state was “gone,” while the on-the-record pronouncement from a McCain spokeswoman suggested the campaign is still “within striking distance” in Colorado and other battleground states. (Two state polls conducted in the last week came back with identical numbers; Barack Obama has majority support and a 5 point advantage over McCain, 51 to 46 percent.)

“John McCain is fighting to win Colorado. Just look at where the campaign is sending the candidates,” said Christian Ferry, deputy campaign manager for McCain, in today’s Denver Post.

Sarah Palin made three stops in Colorado on Monday, where she continued her attacks on Barack Obama and urged supporters to vote early. Outside one of the rallies, Todd Palin told a crowd, “Get all your fishing buddies and hunting buddies to vote.”

Given that her trip included a much criticized interview with a local station where the Alaska governor incorrectly stated the vice president is “in charge of the U.S. Senate,” perhaps tracking where the VP candidate gets sent isn’t the best gauge of where the McCain campaign hopes to win as she tends to leave a trail of gaffes in her wake. In her defense, a spokeswoman for the governor suggested Palin knows the role of the veep but was merely answering in a way understandable to the questioner, a third grader.

McCain is scheduled to make three stops in Colorado on Friday.

And though sources say the McCain campaign is “reconfiguring their advertising buys in Colorado,” the RNC continues to spend heavily in Colorado and other swing states.

“How can anyone say we’re going anywhere? We’re spending a boatload of money in Colorado,” said Frank Donatelli, the RNC’s deputy chairman, in the Post.

Newspaper Endorsements

At least 26 newspapers who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 are endorsing Obama this year, including two papers in Battle for the West states, according to Editor & Publisher. No papers in Battle for the West states that endorsed John Kerry have endorsed McCain. The Denver Post and Las Cruces Sun-News both endorsed the Illinois senator in the past week. Excerpts below.

Denver Post:

In unsteady times, it may seem obvious to gravitate toward the veteran politician, but in this campaign, it’s been the newcomer who has had the steady hand… Obama’s [economic] plan, while not perfect, is far superior to McCain’s catastrophic ideas… Republicans love to mock Obama’s history as a community organizer. But here was a man with no money to offer, no patronage to dispense, no way to punish his opponents. All he could do was to work with people from all walks of life, liberals and conservatives, business people and the unemployed, and bring them together in common cause for a better community. Could there really be better preparation to reunite a worried and divided America to again pursue our “more perfect union”?

Las Cruces Sun-News:

Like many Americans, we would feel more comfortable with the Democratic nominee if we knew him a little better; if he had been on the national scene a little longer; if his résumé had been filled out a little more. But, we also share the belief of most Americans that our country is heading in the wrong direction and is in dire need of fundamental change…McCain is offering a tweak or a minor adjustment to current policy, when what is needed is an overhaul…While Obama’s résumé may be thin, his talents and abilities are anything but… He has demonstrated steady leadership and a keen intellect at a time when those qualities are most needed.

Editor & Publisher tracks all newspaper endorsements, and as of this writing Obama leads 124 to 46. Circulation figures of the respective papers stand at 13,774,039 to 3,926,478.

Below are the newspaper endorsements in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, along with each paper’s circulation, per Editor & Publisher. Links to endorsements provided, where available.

Endorsing Obama:

COLORADO
Aspen Daily News: 12,500
The Aurora Sentinel: 46,000
Boulder Camera: 28,994
Cortez Journal: 6,700
The Denver Post: 225,193
The Durango Herald: 8,870
Gunnison Country Times: 4,000
Ouray County Plaindealer: 3,000

NEVADA
Las Vegas Sun: 174,341

NEW MEXICO
Las Cruces Sun-News: 21,341
Santa Fe New Mexican: 25,249

Endorsing McCain:

COLORADO
Mountain Valley News (Cedaredge): 2,000
The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction): 31,349
The Pueblo Chieftain: 49,169
Daily Times-Call (Longmont): 21,127

NEVADA
Las Vegas Review-Journal: 174,341

NEW MEXICO
Roswell Daily Record: 11,700

Sen. John McCain has held slim, within-the-margin-of-error edges in Nevada polls since the GOP convention. But Jon Ralston writes today in the Las Vegas Sun that “despite the history and some of the intangibles… [Nevada] is starting to lean to Obama, if ever so slightly.” Ignoring the (statistically meaningless) polls, the numbers game favors Sen. Barack Obama. Ralston notes the voter registration trends: George W. Bush bested John Kerry by 21,000 votes in 2004 when Republicans held a 5,000 voter advantage in registrations, but today Democrats command a 76,000 lead in registered voters; Clark County Democrats have more than doubled their registration edge since 2004, leading Republicans by 100,000; and Republicans in the media’s new favorite swing county in a swing state, Washoe County, have seen their 17,000-person advantage dwindle to 3,000. Turning out Latino voters and winning over conservative Democrats could still pose a problem, as could making inroads in rural communities.Ralston asks if Obama’s continued effort to reach the seemingly unreachable is smart politicking or a “fool’s errand,” using Obama recent visit to rural Elko, Nevada, as a case in point. “Elko is 2-to-1 for the GOP in registration, and Bush beat Kerry 4-to-1. So if Obama can make it there — that is, cut his losses to 2-to-1 — he can make it anywhere.”

But don’t count out McCain just yet. “If Barack Obama rented a house and lived there from now until Election Day, he wouldn’t move that county by five points,” Pete Ernaut, a Republican consultant who grew up in Elko, told the Las Vegas Sun. New volunteers shot up from a few hundred to more than a thousand a week following Gov. Sarah Palin landing the VP slot on the Republican ticket and her recent stops in the state, Rick Gorka, the McCain campaign’s regional communications director, told Bloomberg News. And as for the Republicans’ disadvantage with statewide voter registration, Sue Lowden, chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party isn’t worried, telling Bloomberg, “We have a huge number of Democrats who are part of our `Democrats for McCain,’ so the numbers this time around as far as registration do not mean as much to us.”

Diddy For President

Is it just me, or does the Obama drawing from a recent Maureen Dowd column look more like Sean “Puffy” Combs than the Illinois senator?

New Mexico: Leaning Left

With polls in the last week showing Obama up in New Mexico by 7 to 11 points, CQPolitics.com is moving the former tossup state from “Leans Democrat” to “Democrat Favored.” Obama continues to campaign aggressively in the state, with a particular emphasis on reaching out to Latino voters. But McCain won’t give up without a fight, outspending Obama on TV ads in the state the week following the GOP convention $214,000 to $155,000. McCain should benefit when the NRA comes out shooting this week with anti-Obama ads aimed at voters in New Mexico, Colorado, and Pennselvania.

But in the state with the highest concentration of Latinos, the controversy surrounding comments made by a local GOP leader — basically saying McCain will benefit since Latinos won’t vote for a black man — can’t help McCain-Palin’s cause. Bernalillo County GOP Chairman Fernando C de Baca was quoted in the BBC’s “Talking America” blog saying, “The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors… African-Americans came here as slaves. Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won’t vote for a black president.” Despite calls for his resignation by the state GOP chairman and Republican Sen. PeteDomenici, de Baca insisted the quote was taken out of context.

Obama Terrorist T-Shirt Update

The “liberal loons” that head up Aurora Public Schools insist they weren’t quashing free speech when they suspended 11-year-old Daxx Dalton for wearing a homemade t-shirt emblazoned with “Obama – A Terrorist’s Best Friend.” Superintendent John Barry told the Rocky Mountain News the shirt only became an issue when it caused a disruption. “A number of kids came to a number of teachers expressing that they were upset. There was shouting and yelling,” Barry said. He also noted that Dalton’s sister also wore an anti-Obama shirt but since there was no disruption, she was not reprimanded. In the article, Dalton acknowledged the shirt was disruptive, but doesn’t think he should have been suspended. When an African-American student confronted Dalton and accused him of just not wanting a black president, “I agreed with that because that would be the only thing that made him shut up,” Dalton said. “But I’m not racist.”

“Students have a constitutional right to express their opinions about politics, and this t-shirt was not vulgar or anything other than a political statement,” said E. Christopher Murray, president of the New York chapter of the Civil Liberties Union, in an email to the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog. Conservatives may find themselves conflicted should a group like the ACLU take up this case. “I agree with the message [on the shirt], but I agree with the school keeping discipline too, but it’s still a controversial free speech argument. I wonder if the ACLU would break from their usual absolutist opinion or sit on their hands if asked to defend this one,” read a blog post discussing the controversy on the Stop The ACLU blog, whose logo refashions the “C” as a communist sickle and hammer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fClpMEG2N2o

In response to Barack Obama’s “Dos Caras” ad, John McCain is bringing up Obama’s promise to meet with Venezuelan demagogue Hugo Chavez, painting the Democrat as naïve and juxtaposing him with a fiery, expletive laden speech by Chavez. The ad is airing in Florida, home to many anti-communist Latin American exiles and the one state where McCain is ahead among Latino voters.

You can see it in English here.

(While it’s hard to imagine Chavez’s remarks were really “taken out of context” in this ad, the Venezuelan government has issued a statement condemning McCain’s attempt at “fear-mongering.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry9LnAazwMg

Barack Obama is airing this new ad, “Dos Caras” (“Two Faces”) in heavily Latino media markets in the Southeast U.\S. The ad’s ominous Spanish-language voiceover ties John McCain to Rush Limbaugh and George Bush, saying,

They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with, the intolerance. They made us feel marginalized in a country we love so much. John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One tells lies just to get our vote, and the other, even worse, continues the failed policies of George Bush, putting the interests of powerful groups above working families. John McCain, more of the same Republican deceptions.

Though the voiceover is standard-issue Democratic rhetoric, Newsweek’s Andrew Romano and other analysts are calling this new ad unfair, pointing to the screen shot of Rush Limbaugh, with racist Limbaugh quotes in text below (“Mexicans are stupid and unqualified” and “Shut your mouth or get out”).

Limbaugh actually opposed McCain in the Republican primary, because of the Senator’s former support of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Though McCain recently changed his mind about comprehensive immigration reform, saying in a debate that he would vote against his own bill if it were to come up again, he still won the ire of many on the far right for championing such a cause in the first place.

Stay tuned for McCain’s response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyKGHvRL2_U

Proving that the presidential candidates see Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico as key states and Latinos as a key demographic, John McCain has begun airing this ad in those markets. The ad blames Obama and Democrats in Congress for the failure of the comprehensive immigration reform that McCain championed.

Obama and his allies in Congress say they’re on the side of immigrants. But are they? News reports say their efforts were like ‘poison pills’ that caused immigration reform to fail. The result: No to the guest worker program, to the road to citizenship, to secure borders. No reforms passed. Is that being on our side? Obama and his allies in Congress: Ready to block immigration reform but not ready to govern.

Interestingly, McCain’s message in Spanish does not match his message in English. In a debate during the primary, McCain declared his bill faulty and said that he would not vote for it if it came up again (scroll down about halfway).