Obama bets electorate matches 2008 _ and wins

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama and Mitt Romney made sharply different bets about who would vote this year.

It turned out that Americans who cast ballots looked collectively much more like what Obama had envisioned — a diverse tapestry that reflected a changing America — than the whiter, older electorate Romney had banked on.

Younger voters and minorities came to the polls at levels not far off from the historic coalition Obama assembled in 2008. The reality caught off-guard Republicans who banked on a more monolithic voting body sending them to the White House — and who had based their polling on that assumption.

The outcome revealed a stark problem for Republicans: If they don't broaden their tent, they won't move forward.

And it foreshadowed changes over the next generation that could put long-held Republican states onto the political battleground maps of the future.

"Clearly, when you look at African-American and Latino voters, they went overwhelmingly for the president," said John Stineman, a Republican strategist from Iowa. "And that's certainly a gap that's going to require a lot of attention from Republicans."

In exit polling Tuesday, voters mirrored the voting public's makeup of four years ago, when Obama shattered minority voting barriers and drove young voters to the polls unlike any candidate in generations.

White voters made up 72 percent of the electorate — less than four years ago — while black voters remained at 13 percent and Hispanics increased from 9 percent to 10 percent.

That flew in the face of GOP assumptions that the fierce economic headwinds of the past three years and the passing of the novelty of the first African-American president would trim Obama's support from black voters, perhaps enough to make the difference in a close election.

However, Obama carried Virginia, the heart of the old South, in part by having increased his record support from black voters there in 2008, which reached 18 percent, to more than 20 percent, according to Obama campaign internal tracking polls.

It was also reflected in turnout that matched his 2008 totals in places like Cleveland, which helped Obama carry Ohio solidly despite Romney's all-out effort there in the campaign's final weeks.

"Republicans have been saying for months" that Obama's black support would slip, Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said. "And what happens? When African-Americans had the chance to affirm him, they came out in droves."

Obama won in 2008 by carrying several long-held Republican states, including North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana. And while Romney easily carried Indiana and narrowly peeled back North Carolina, the fact that Obama held Virginia points to a long-term demographic shift that survived the pressures of the poor economy.

Obama carried each contested state except North Carolina by aggressively registering first-time voters. He matched his share of the youth vote from 2008, and nearly matched his support from seniors.

The 2012 electorate mirrored 2008 in terms of party identification and racial makeup, with self-identified Democrats topping Republicans and independents.

During his victory speech Tuesday, Obama nodded to the Democratic coalition he had held together.

"It doesn't matter if you're black or white, or Hispanic or Asian, or Native American, or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight," Obama told his crowd of supporters gathered in Chicago. "You can make it here in America if you're willing to try."

The minority and youth turnout was not the only assumption Romney made that turned out to be wrong.

While voters considered the economy the driving issue in the election, they did not hold Obama wholly responsible, as Romney long had assumed they would.

That realization forced Romney to pivot late in the campaign and attempt to turn the election into a choice of competing visions. Republicans argued late in the campaign that Romney's performance during the first of three debates had energized a groundswell of enthusiasm seen in their polling.

But it seemed Obama's support was quietly amassing with more vigor, GOP strategists said.

"There really wasn't an enthusiasm gap," said Republican strategist Charlie Black, an informal Romney adviser. "And independents didn't break our way."

In California, a Tight Battle Over a Tax Initiative to Help Schools

SAN FRANCISCO — California voters weighed in on a ballot measure Tuesday that would raise taxes by $6 billion annually over seven years, bringing an end to an acrimonious, $123 million battle between Gov. Jerry Brown, who said the money was necessary to save the state’s public schools, and conservative opponents in and outside the state.

With 53 percent of precincts reporting, and recent polls indicating that the campaign over the measure was too close to call, its fate remained unclear.

Such a struggle was not unique to California. Voters in 38 states considered more than 170 ballot measures on a range of fiscal, political and social issues that in many cases resonated nationally.

Voters in Colorado and Washington made their states the first to legalize marijuana for recreational use. In Oregon, a similar measure appeared headed for defeat.

Supporters of Washington’s initiative said they hoped its passage would ultimately change federal law, which regards any possession or sale of marijuana as illegal.

“By sending this message, we can hopefully have a collaborative conversation with the federal government, and that they can see that their policy can be done differently and that prohibition is not working,” said Tonia S. Winchester, outreach director for the campaign behind the measure, Yes on I-502.

In Maryland, voters endorsed a ballot measure allowing in-state tuition at public colleges for illegal immigrants. Massachusetts was considering whether to legalize physician-assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses. Though most of the votes were counted, the result was too close to call.

But nowhere was the fight over ballot measures fiercer than in California, where spending on campaigning for and against 11 measures totaled nearly $370 million, according toMapLight, an organization that tracks campaign spending.

Under Mr. Brown’s tax initiative, or Proposition 30, income tax rates for those earning more than $250,000 annually would be raised for seven years, and a one-quarter-cent increase in the state sales tax would be put in place for four years. Without the new revenue, Mr. Brown said, California would need to cut $6 billion a year in spending, mostly from the state’s already battered education system — a threat that appeared to have persuaded some voters on Tuesday.

“We need more funding for the schools,” said Omega Jules, 31, who lives in Oakland and works for United Parcel Service of America. “They keep taking money out of education, and that is where we need it most.”

Supported by California teachers’ unions, Mr. Brown was tenacious in seeking support for the initiative, but he encountered fierce and sometimes unexpected opposition. Last month, an obscure Arizona group called Americans for Responsible Leadership donated $11 million, in part to defeat Proposition 30. Also, Molly Munger, a civil rights lawyer and the daughter of Warren E. Buffett’s partner at Berkshire Hathaway, Charles Munger, spent more than $44 million on a rival tax measure, Proposition 38, which was overwhelmingly defeated.

About $135 million was spent in the battle over Proposition 32, which would outlaw political donations by labor unions.

Also in California, voters considered an initiative to end the death penalty. Supporters, including law enforcement officials, argued that administering the death penalty was inefficient and that eliminating it would save the state money. The argument appeared to have swayed voters, even those who did not oppose the practice on moral grounds.

“It would be one thing if they said they were going to kill a criminal and then did it the next day,” said Lamarr Standberry, an Oakland resident who voted to repeal the death penalty. “If you’re going to do it, then just do it already. Instead it takes forever and costs a lot.”

Voters appeared to endorse a measure that would make the state’s three-strikes law somewhat more lenient by imposing a life sentence only for a third felony conviction considered serious or violent. California also considered a measure to make mandatory the labeling of genetically modified food.

Two crucial education measures put charter schools on state ballots. By a wide margin, Georgia voters approved an amendment to the state Constitution that will allow for the creation of a commission to authorize new charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently operated. The measure drew national attention and campaign contributions from Alice Walton, the daughter of Sam Walton, Walmart’s founder, and Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party organization founded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

In Washington, voters were asked to allow charters into the state for the first time. Similar measures had failed three times in the past 16 years.

Michigan voters considered a measure that would expand the powers of emergency administrators to take over financially troubled local governments, and the ability of governors to appoint them. Another proposal that would make collective bargaining a right for employees in the public and private sectors appeared headed for defeat.

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Displaced by Hurricane, but Returning Home, Briefly, to Vote

Just after daybreak, under a pink-hued sky, the first voters began to pick their way through the sand and muck that had been the streets of Bay Head, N.J. Sidestepping the occasional dead fish with its one-eyed stare, they steadily found their way to the firehouse, where a huge generator powered one of the few sources of heat in the tiny seaside borough.

From dawn till past nightfall on Tuesday, displaced residents from dozens of storm-smashed communities up and down the New York and New Jersey coastlines streamed home, gathering with their neighbors for the first time sinceHurricane Sandy, with one simple goal in mind.

“I wasn’t going to let no hurricane stop me from voting,” said Amos Eberhard, 61, of Queens, who journeyed 90 minutes by bus to the Rockaways from Brooklyn to cast his ballot.

For many people whose hometowns have been evacuated, whose houses were damaged by flooding or fire, or whose regular polling places were rendered unusable by a lack of electrical power, this was an Election Day unlike any in memory.

On Staten Island, voters from flooded-out neighborhoods trudged past National Guard trucks on a sports field and a line of drivers desperate to buy fuel by the local high school, where some said through tears that they had lost everything but their determination.

In Long Beach, the Long Island city that suffered some of the storm’s worst damage, Jose Barcia, a waiter who immigrated from Franco’s Spain — and withstood five feet of water on his first floor last week — said he was grateful just to be able to cast a ballot.

“I love America,” Mr. Barcia said, after voting in a darkened elementary school, where hundreds of people, some walking with canes, pushing strollers or clutching pets, clamored to vote.

And on the barrier islands of New Jersey, where emergency workers from around the nation are removing debris and downed power lines and plowing piles of sand to make the streets passable, Ocean County officials drove a bus across Barnegat Bay to deliver provisional ballots to National Guard troops, Red Cross volunteers, firefighters and law enforcement officers.

Aboard the bus, poll workers rolled into Ortley Beach to see a moonscape of vanished homes or their skeletal remains. In a supermarket parking lot, they found an Army mess tent, a Navy heater and police officers including Summer Cunliffe, 29, of Lakewood, serving up chili, soup and corn bread to relief workers.

Officer Cunliffe said she was grateful for the opportunity to vote, because her attention had been focused on other matters.

“The biggest thing was getting out here and giving the hard-working men and women the food to eat to keep them going,” she said.

Throughout New York, some displaced residents seeking to use provisional ballots to vote away from home reported problems from elections officials who declined to accept them. And in New Jersey, so many displaced residents sought to vote by e-mail or fax that the state extended by three days the deadline for returning provisional ballots, to 8 p.m. on Friday.

But in the hardest-hit locales, municipal officials and ordinary citizens insisted not just on their right to vote, but to do so as close to home as possible.

In Bay Head, where nearly all 800 voters had been evacuated for the storm, Ocean County officials did not think there were enough people currently in the borough to warrant a polling place. But Mayor William Curtis mounted a fierce resistance, and on Monday, the county relented.

“They didn’t want to deliver voting booths down here,” Mr. Curtis said. “They wanted us to go across the bridge because they didn’t think there was going to be enough people here to vote. I just said, ‘No, no, no.’ ”

He added: “This is us. This is our home.”

So Bay Head’s refugees filled the firehouse Tuesday, exchanging survival stories and recovery updates: Who has water? Hot water? Heat? Propane?

“I’m going to vote in here all day long — it’s nice and warm,” declared Brent Wentz, 72, as he arrived early Tuesday.

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Obama Wins New Term as Electoral Advantage Holds

Barack Hussein Obama was re-elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock-step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising as a divided nation voted to give him more time.

In defeating Mitt Romney, the president carried Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin, a near sweep of the battleground states, and was holding a narrow advantage in Florida. The path to victory for Mr. Romney narrowed as the night wore along, with Mr. Obama winning at least 303 electoral votes.

A cheer of jubilation sounded at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago when the television networks began projecting him as the winner at 11:20 p.m., even as the ballots were still being counted in many states where voters had waited in line well into the night. The victory was far narrower than his historic election four years ago, but it was no less dramatic.

“Tonight in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back,” Mr. Obama told his supporters early Wednesday. “We know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come.”

Mr. Obama’s re-election extended his place in history, carrying the tenure of the nation’s first black president into a second term. His path followed a pattern that has been an arc to his political career: faltering when he seemed to be at his strongest — the period before his first debate with Mr. Romney — before he redoubled his efforts to lift himself and his supporters to victory.

The evening was not without the drama that has come to mark so many recent elections: For more than 90 minutes after the networks projected Mr. Obama as the winner, Mr. Romney held off calling him to concede. And as the president waited to declare victory in Chicago, Mr. Romney’s aides were prepared to head to the airport, suitcases packed, potentially to contest several close results.

But as it became increasingly clear that no amount of contesting would bring him victory, he called Mr. Obama to concede shortly before 1 a.m.

“I wish all of them well, but particularly the president, the first lady and their daughters,” Mr. Romney told his supporters in Boston. “This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”

Hispanics made up an important part of Mr. Obama’s winning coalition, preliminary exit poll data showed. And before the night was through, there were already recriminations from Republican moderates who said Mr. Romney had gone too far during the primaries in his statements against those here illegally, including his promise that his get-tough policies would cause some to “self-deport.”

Mr. Obama, 51, faces governing in a deeply divided country and a partisan-rich capital, where Republicans retained their majority in the House and Democrats kept their control of the Senate. His re-election offers him a second chance that will quickly be tested, given the rapidly escalating fiscal showdown.

For Mr. Obama, the result brings a ratification of his sweeping health care act, which Mr. Romney had vowed to repeal. The law will now continue on course toward nearly full implementation in 2014, promising to change significantly the way medical services are administrated nationwide.

Confident that the economy is finally on a true path toward stability, Mr. Obama and his aides have hinted that he would seek to tackle some of the grand but unrealized promises of his first campaign, including the sort of immigration overhaul that has eluded presidents of both parties for decades.

But he will be venturing back into a Congressional environment similar to that of his first term, with the Senate under the control of Democrats and the House under the control of Republicans, whose leaders have hinted that they will be no less likely to challenge him than they were during the last four years.

Republicans Face Struggle Over Party’s Direction

Mitt Romney’s loss to a Democratic president wounded by a weak economy is certain to spur an internecine struggle over the future of the Republican Party, but the strength of the party’s conservatives in Congress and the rightward tilt of the next generation of party leaders could limit any course correction.

With their party on the verge of losing the popular presidential vote for the fifth time in six elections, Republicans across the political spectrum anticipate a prolonged and probably divisive period of self-examination.

The coming debate will be centered on whether the party should keep pursuing the antigovernment focus that grew out of resistance to the health care law and won them the House in 2010, or whether it should focus on a strategy that recognizes the demographic tide running strongly against it.

“There will be some kind of war,” predicted Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican Party consultant, suggesting it would pit “mathematicians” like him, who argue that the party cannot keep surrendering the votes of Hispanics, blacks, younger voters and college-educated women, against the party purists, or “priests,” as he puts it, who believe that basic conservative principles can ultimately triumph without much deviation.

“We are in a situation where the Democrats are getting a massive amount of votes for free,” Mr. Murphy said.

But the debate will not just be about demographics. Ralph Reed, a veteran of the conservative movement, said that Mr. Romney’s loss would stir resentment among those who believe the party made a mistake in nominating a more centrist Republican who had to work to appeal to the party’s base.

“There’s definitely a feeling that it would be better to nominate a conservative of long-standing conviction,” he said.

As a party, Republicans continue to depend heavily on older working-class white voters in rural and suburban America — a shrinking percentage of the overall electorate — while Democrats rack up huge majorities among urban voters including blacks, Hispanics and other minorities. Not to mention younger Americans who are inclined to get their political news from Comedy Central and will not necessarily become more conservative as they age. The disparity means that Democrats can get well under 50 percent of the white vote and still win the presidency, a split that is only going to widen in the future.

According to exit polls, about 7 in 10 Hispanics said they were voting for Mr. Obama. Mr. Romney won the support of nearly 6 in 10 whites. In urban areas, white voters were split over the two candidates, but about 6 in 10 white voters in the suburbs went for Mr. Romney, as did nearly two-thirds in rural areas.  

Mr. Romney won a majority of voters 65 or older, while Mr. Obama was backed by 6 in 10 Americans under 30, and won a narrow majority of those under 44.

Even as they absorbed Mr. Romney’s defeat, the party’s top elected officials, strategists and activists said they believed that Republicans had offered a persuasive message of economic opportunism and fiscal restraint. While the messenger may have been flawed, they argued, Republicans should not stray from that approach in a moment of panic.

“The party has to continually ask ourselves, what do we represent?” said Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican seen as a top White House contender in 2016. “But we have to remain the movement on behalf of upward mobility, the party people identify with their hopes and dreams. People want to have a chance.”

Matt Kibbe, the president of the Tea Party-aligned group FreedomWorks, acknowledged there would be a natural struggle for the identity of the party in the election’s aftermath. But he argued that in some respects the fight had already been waged and won by the energized grass-roots forces that have shaped the contours of Republican politics in recent elections.

“You are going to see a continuation of the fight between the old guard and all of the new blood that has come in since 2010, but I don’t know how dramatic it is going to be,” he said. “It is getting to point where you can’t reach back and pull another establishment Republican from the queue like we have done with Romney.”

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Romney Makes Appeal to Undecided Voters

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — With just 72 hours before the polls open here, Mitt Romney kicked off his busiest day of the general election so far, racing through four events in three states as he made his final appeal to voters.
His message: A Romney administration offers the reality of the hope, change and across-the-aisle bipartisanship that President Obama promised four years ago and then failed to deliver.

“I’ve watched over the last few months as our campaign has gone from a start to a movement,” Mr. Romney said. “It’s not just the size of the crowds. It’s the conviction and compassion in the hearts of the people.”

The lessons he picked up as governor of Massachusetts, working with a largely Democratic legislature, he added, would serve him well in the White House.
“I learned that respect and good will goes a long way, and it’s likely to be reciprocated,” he said. “That’s how I would conduct myself as president. I won’t just represent one party. I will represent one nation.”

Mr. Romney also made an explicit appeal to undecided voters, urging his supporters to “spend some time in the next three days to see neighbors and maybe ones with an Obama sign in front of their home and just go by and say, ‘Look, let’s talk this through a bit.’”

“Because you see, President Obama came into office with so many promises and he’s fallen so fall short,” Mr. Romney said. “And just remind them of some of the things that they may have forgotten. He said he was going to be the post-partisan president, but he’s been the most partisan, dividing and demonizing.”

Mr. Romney was joined on his campaign plane by nearly his entire top team, a close-knit coterie of senior advisers, many of whom have been with him since his days in the Massachusetts Statehouse. Their mood was both upbeat and nostalgic.

Boarding the plane in New Hampshire to head onto Iowa, they posed for a quick group picture on the tarmac — a photo that, depending on the outcome of Election Day, could be either a glimpse into a future White House, or a keepsake for old friends of a campaign that didn’t quite go their way.

Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, made a brief trip back to the press cabin to pass out pumpkin whoopee pies. Though she remained determinedly on-message and positive, talking about the people who are “really, really hurting,” her face and demeanor belied a weariness. (Mrs. Romney, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was seen limping off the campaign plane Friday night, though aides said it was not a flare-up like the one she had during the primaries and that she was merely “exhausted.”)

“Three more days,” she said, echoing what has become a refrain on the campaign trail, as voters chant how many more days are left until, they hope, Mr. Romney becomes the president-elect. “It’s been long. It’s been a long road.”

On the stump, Mr. Romney offered a series of aggressive lines against Mr. Obama, criticizing the president for remarks he made in Ohio on Friday when he told his supporters that “voting is the best revenge.”

“Vote for revenge?” Mr. Romney asked, rhetorically. “Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country.”

Referring to the three presidential debates, largely credited with helping him pull closer to Mr. Obama in the polls, Mr. Romney presented what he said was a stark contrast between himself and the president.


“He says it has to be this way. I say it can’t stay this way,” Mr. Romney said. “He’s offering excuses. I’m offering a plan. I can’t wait to get started. He wants to convince you to settle. But Americans don’t settle. We dream, we aspire, we reach for greater things.”


He ended his speech, as he has been doing recently, with another call to unity.


“Come walk with me,” Mr. Romney urged. “Walk together to a better place. We’ve got to take back this country.”

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While Romney didn't serve in military, many Mormons do

WASHINGTON/SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) - While neither of the candidates in next week's U.S. presidential election was in the military, Mitt Romney's age - he was eligible to serve in Vietnam - has raised questions during the campaign about why he didn't serve and whether his Mormon faith had anything to do with it.

Guy Hicks, a Mormon and former officer in the Army Reserve Special Forces, said there is a public misperception that members of the Mormon Church do not serve in the military.

"There is a sense in our culture and in our religious belief that we have an obligation to serve our country, and that's found in military service; it's also found in public service," said Hicks, a senior vice president at aerospace and defense firm EADS North America.

The participation of Mormons in the armed forces is roughly equivalent to their proportion of the population; senior figures in the Church served during World War II; and at least 10 Mormons have won the Medal of Honor.

According to Pentagon records, nearly 18,200 military service members identified themselves as belonging to the Mormon Church as of March, about 1.3 percent of the nearly 1.4 million active-duty personnel. Around 2 percent of the U.S. population identify as Mormons.

Romney was a 19-year-old student at Stanford University in the spring of 1966 when opponents of the military draft occupied a campus building. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the formal name of the Mormon Church) was a strong supporter of the Vietnam War, and the clean-cut young Romney protested against the protesters. Photographs show him carrying a placard saying: "Speak Out, Don't Sit In."

Rather than joining the armed forces, however, Romney later that summer chose another path. He obtained a deferment allowing him to avoid military service and traveled to France to work as a missionary for his Church, a traditional form of service for young Mormons. Romney's five sons all followed in his footsteps, serving as missionaries but not soldiers.

Military service used to be a crucial element of a presidential resume, adding gravitas to the person applying for the job of commander-in-chief. But in recent years it has become less of a requirement, and neither Obama nor Bill Clinton served.

In the last election, Barack Obama, who is 51, faced an opponent who was a Vietnam War hero, Senator John McCain, and his predecessor as president, George W. Bush, served in the Texas Air National Guard.

Mormon Church members say the decision to enter the military, government or some other form of service is a personal one. Those who do serve as missionaries are considered officials of the Church, which qualified them for a draft exemption.

"During the Korean conflict and Vietnam War, the Church voluntarily placed restrictions on the number of missionaries sent out from each ward. A bishop could recommend one young man every six months for missionary service," said Mormon Church spokesman Eric Hawkins. "Young men who had received induction notices or whose draft number was likely to be called were not recommended for missionary service."

Romney was prepared to serve in the military after his student deferments expired in the early 1970s, but he wasn't called, his campaign said. "His career choices did not take him into the military, but he has deep respect for all who have served," a spokesperson said.

BOYS TO MEN

Although Romney, 65, is not a veteran and is running against an incumbent whose administration tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, he heads into Election Day on November 6 with strong support among the military and veterans.

Polling by Reuters/Ipsos during October found that active-duty military personnel and their families support Romney over President Obama by 49 percent to 43 percent. When military veterans and their families are included, Romney led the president 53 percent to 38 percent.

Romney's wife, Ann, told television interviewers recently that the decision by her husband and sons not to serve in the military was unrelated to their religious beliefs. Both Church missionary work and military service help young people to grow and mature, she said.

"My boys did all serve missions, and they went away for two years," she said on the television program 'The View.' "I sent them away boys and they came back men ... and I think this is where military service is so extraordinary, too, where ... you are working and helping others. And that changes you."

She noted, however, that those who serve in the military deserve particular respect for putting their lives on the line.

MILITARY HISTORY

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints boasts plenty of former servicemen.

Church President Thomas Monson joined the U.S. Navy as a teenager in the closing months of the Second World War. Boyd Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, a Church governing body, was a bomber pilot in the Pacific.

Other senior Mormon leaders also have served in the military, including retired four-star General Bruce Carlson, who was head of the Air Force Materiel Command before retiring in 2008. He now is a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, another Church body.

The Mormon tradition of U.S. military service dates back to the Church's early history following its founding by Joseph Smith and other leaders in 1830.

When war broke out between the United States and Mexico in 1846, President James Polk asked Church leaders to raise a Mormon battalion of some 500 troops, agreeing in exchange to support the Mormons' move to the Salt Lake area. The Mormon battalion marched from Iowa to Southern California, where it performed occupation and border duties until it was disbanded in mid-1947. It never engaged Mexican forces in battle.

Relations between the Church and the U.S. government were tense in succeeding years. A Church-backed militia known as the Nauvoo Legion nearly came to blows with a U.S. military force sent to Utah Territory because of reports of a Mormon rebellion.

The Church abandoned controversial religious practices such as polygamy under pressure from the government in the latter part of the century, and Utah became a state in 1896. Since then, Mormons have consistently served in the military and fought in America's wars.

In modern times, Church leaders have touted the United States as "God's country" and believe that its existence fulfills a prophetic destiny, said Patrick Mason, an associate professor who holds a chair in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in California.

"Serving America is only half a step removed from serving God," he said. Mormon solders in Vietnam were basically told "you're doing God's work here strapping on your M-16 - just like Mitt Romney is doing God's work strapping on his Book of Mormon every day," Mason added.

Obama Banks on Bill Clinton to Clinch Close States

PALM BAY, Fla. (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney has millionaire backers, a huge staff and years of campaign experience, which may be enough to win the White House. President Barack Obama has one asset Romney can't match, however: Bill Clinton.

The former president is sprinting through battleground states, delivering more speeches than Obama himself and, arguably, carrying much of the president's re-election hopes on his 66-year-old shoulders.

There's nothing secret about this campaign weapon. If it's a competitive state, Clinton is there — and there and there — picking apart Romney's proposals in the folksy yet detailed style he unleashed at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. Many party activists left there wondering why Obama can't make his own case as compellingly.

Friday was typical for Clinton. He made five stops in Florida, stretching from Palm Beach in the southeast to Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast to Tallahassee in the panhandle.

Romney had hoped to lock down the mega-swing state long ago. But he will return Monday because of its uncertainty.

Clinton, his raspy voice hoarser than usual, mixed nostalgia with lawyerly dissections when criticizing Romney's tax-cut plans in Palm Bay, the day's second stop, south of Cape Canaveral.

"I don't understand how people like me could sleep at night taking another tax cut, and taking it away from you," he said to cheers from several hundred people, who clearly did not resent his post-presidential wealth.

After shucking his suit jacket and loosening his orange tie under a brilliant midday sun, Clinton rattled off statistics about recent slowdowns in the growth of health care costs, and benefits of Obama's health law. "That is what Mr. Romney wants to repeal," he said.

"Bring it home, Bill" a woman shouted.

At every stop, Clinton praises Obama effusively, but he also reminds voters of his own days in office.

"I am the only living former president that ever gave you a budget surplus," he said in Palm Bay. Obama's policies, he adds, are much more in line with his than are Romney's.

Obama amplifies Clinton's boasts, knowing they give credence to the endorsements. In one Ohio stop Friday, Obama named Clinton four times.

"For eight years we had a president who shared our beliefs, and his name was Bill Clinton," Obama said. "His economic plan asked the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more so we could reduce our deficit and invest in the skills and ideas of our people." Romney opposed that plan, Obama said, and his math "was just as bad back then as it was today."

The white-haired Clinton looks drawn and tired at times, and he makes a few flubs. He apologized this week for saluting Pennsylvania when he happened to be in Ohio.

Clinton still runs late, even at morning events. Former Vice President Walter Mondale had to spin political yarns to kill time this week as voters waited in Minneapolis.

But the man who once headlined nine events in one day for his wife in the 2008 North Carolina primary — when Hillary Rodham Clinton was battling Obama — still feeds off crowds' energy and affection.

In Green Bay, Wis., Clinton gave a 57-minute dissertation on why the economy is better than many think. The only reason the Obama-Romney race is close, he said, "is because Americans are impatient on things not made before yesterday, and they don't understand why the economy is not totally hunky-dory again."

Clinton campaigned for Obama on Thursday in Wisconsin and Ohio. Earlier in the week he was in Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

He will join Obama on Saturday for a rally in Virginia and on Sunday morning for an event in New Hampshire. Clinton also will campaign Sunday in North Carolina and Minnesota. And on Monday, the Obama camp hopes Clinton will snuff out any possible Romney eruption in Pennsylvania, scheduling stops for him in Pittsburgh and Scranton, plus two in Philadelphia.

No state underscores Clinton's value more than Florida, where the Republican Bush family looms large. While Obama makes every possible use of his party's most recent president, Romney can hardly mention George W. Bush, who left office amid an economic collapse and an unpopular war in Iraq.

Romney campaigned Thursday in Tampa, however, with Bush's brother Jeb, a former Florida governor who remains widely popular.

Much has been made of Clinton's once-frosty relationship with Obama. Clinton, among other things, in 2008 called Obama's history of opposing the Iraq war a "fairy tale."

The two men may never be chums. But Clinton's endorsements now seem full-throated. It delights Democratic loyalists.

"The Republicans have nothing to match the personal appeal and persuasive power of President Clinton," said Doug Hattaway, a consultant with close ties to the Clintons. "He can energize Democrats and close the deal with moderate swing voters."

Bruce Marvin, who attended Clinton's event in Chillicothe, Ohio, said the ex-president explains Obama's plans even more understandably than does the nominee.

"I think it's backing up what Obama may not have been able to get across," Marvin said.

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Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Citing Climate Change

In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that Hurricane Sandy had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign and that as a result, he was endorsing President Obama.

Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent in his third term leading New York City, has been sharply critical of Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and Mitt Romney, the president’s Republican rival, saying that both men had failed to candidly confront the problems afflicting the nation. But he said he had decided over the past several days that Mr. Obama was the better candidate to tackle the global climate change that he believes might have contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View.

“Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement is another indication that Hurricane Sandy has influenced the presidential campaign. The storm and the destruction it left in its wake have dominated news coverage, transfixing the nation and prompting the candidates to halt their campaigning briefly.

The announcement is also the latest in a series of steps Mr. Bloomberg has taken in a bid to assert his influence nationally as his final term as mayor enters its twilight — and after he appears to have abandoned his own hopes of one day becoming president.

Last month, the mayor said that he was creating his own “super PAC” to support candidates from either party, as well as independents, who he believes are devoted to his brand of nonideological problem solving, and he has increasingly used his personal wealth and the bully pulpit of his office in an effort to persuade elected officials to support same-sex marriage, gun control and education reform.

The impact of Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement is unclear; his city and his state are overwhelmingly Democratic, and although he is a well-known and long-serving public official who frequently appears in the national media, his influence is difficult to measure: an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in December found 30 percent of Americans had a favorable view of Mr. Bloomberg, 26 percent had an unfavorable view, and many — 44 percent — had no opinion of him one way or the other.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns had aggressively sought the mayor’s endorsement, in large part because they believed he could influence independent voters around the country. Mr. Bloomberg had recently signaled he would not make an endorsement, telling reporters several weeks ago that he had decided whom he would vote for, but that he was not sure he would share that decision with the public.

John Weaver, a prominent Republican political strategist, said the timing of the mayor’s endorsement was notable.

“His announcement is sandwiched between this horrific calamity and the presidential election,” he noted. “So the timing could not have been more significant for him and his views.”

Steve McMahon, a veteran Democratic strategist, said he believed that now that Mr. Bloomberg had come to terms with not running for the presidency, he was interested in cementing his political legacy.

“Many politicians reach the point in their careers where they have built up considerable political equity and the only question is how they use it to make a difference,” he said. “In endorsing President Obama, the mayor seems to have decided to use some of his equity.”

Even before the hurricane struck, Mr. Bloomberg had been concerned about climate change. He is the chairman of an organization called C40, a network of cities seeking to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Yet until the storm, climate change had not been much of an issue in the presidential campaign. The topic did not come up during the three presidential debates, and the candidates have not provided detailed legislative or regulatory plans outlining their stances on the issue.

Since the hurricane, a number of elected officials have come forward, chiefly in New York, to say that they have concluded the planet is undergoing climate change, that huge storms are no longer freak occurrences but expectable reality, and that public policy must begin to prepare for the impact.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Tuesday, “Anyone who says there is not a dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality.” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Wednesday, “We’re going to pay a price for the change in climate.” And Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of Manhattan, echoed the consensus of local officials on Thursday, saying simply, “There will be a storm of this magnitude again.” 

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Campaigns Brace to Sue for Votes in Crucial States

CLEVELAND — Thousands of lawyers from both presidential campaigns will enter polling places next Tuesday with one central goal: tracking their opponents and, if need be, initiating legal action. It will be a kind of Spy vs. Spy.

 The lawyers will note how poll workers behave, where voters are directed, if intimidation appears to be occurring, whether lines are long. And they will report up a chain of command where decisions over court action will be made at headquarters in Chicago and Boston.

This will go on in every battleground state — including Wisconsin, Virginia, Florida, even Pennsylvania — but it will be most focused in Ohio and especially in Greater Cleveland, which is heavily Democratic and where many people believe history teaches a simple lesson: the more votes cast here, the likelier President Obama is to win.

As the persuasion effort winds down, campaigns are focused on getting their supporters to vote and getting those votes counted.

The result has been a mass mobilization of lawyers. The Democrats will have 600 lawyers in action here in Cuyahoga County and 2,500 across the state, their organizers say. They have been holding training sessions, grouping legal volunteers into workers and supervisors. The Republicans have much smaller teams — about 70 in this county — and will rely more on surrogates, including nonlawyer poll workers. Each side says the other cannot be trusted and, given the likelihood of a tight presidential race, the risks of litigation here — and delayed results — are high.

“If it’s close, you will see both sides running to court,” said Jeff Hastings, a Republican and chairman of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

The Democrats say they fear acts of sabotage. “How tough would it be for them to send people to the wrong precincts and tie up poll workers to slow things down?” asked Stuart Garson, chairman of the Democratic Party of Cuyahoga County. “If we see someone getting in someone’s face, our lawyers will be there.”

Robert S. Frost, the chairman of the county Republican Party, said his legal volunteers would be at precincts where Republican poll workers were thinly represented in past elections and where there had been allegations of impropriety. He said the Democrats had built up such a huge legal team because their strategy was to create enough confusion so the race would have to move to court. “It’s pretty cynical,” he said. “That’s why we need to have people on the ground: to keep an eye on the other side.”

The Democrats feel the same way. “In each battleground state, we are recruiting thousands of attorney volunteers to help recruit, train, educate and observe at polling locations,” the Obama campaign said in a statement. “We’ve retained or opened pipelines to the nation’s top experts on voting systems, registration databases, ballot design, student voting, and provisional ballots.”

Party organizers say the recruitment is similar in number to those of the past two presidential elections, a result of the Florida stalemate, recount and Supreme Court decision in 2000 that gave the election to George W. Bush. But it began earlier and appears to be more widely spread this time. Some of the recruits are brought in from out of state, but most are local and will see any recount or challenge through what could be weeks of litigation on a range of issues.

This week, Robert F. Bauer, the chief counsel to the Obama campaign, sent a letter to the Wisconsin attorney general complaining about misinformation he said the Mitt Romney campaign was giving its poll observers during training there. According to the letter, the observers were being given incomplete information on voter identification requirements and assistance available for handicapped voters. They were also being urged to sign into polling stations as “concerned citizens,” which Mr. Bauer said was a misrepresentation and a possible legal offense.

In Pennsylvania, confusion remains over voter ID requirements that could lead to courtroom battles. Because of a new law passed earlier this year, poll workers there are instructed to ask voters for official photo IDs, but a judge ruled that voters who do not have them may vote in a normal way anyway. Ellen Kaplan of the nonpartisan citizen group Committee of Seventy said that she had warned state officials that their advertisements emphasized IDs in a misleading way and that court action might follow. “For this election, we have many, many lawyer volunteers,” she added.

Elsewhere, there are questions about absentee ballots and the rules on vote recounts as well as whether state or federal court is the right venue for each question. In Wisconsin, Romney officials are asking for an extension of the deadline for absentee ballots because some went out late to military personnel overseas.

A coalition of liberal nonpartisan groups led by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law will be operating in 22 states offering voters help and a hotline.       

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Jobs Report Offers Little Change in Dynamic Between Obama and Romney

WASHINGTON — The jobs report on Friday had held the potential to inject an unpredictable, last-minute jolt into the race for the White House.

 Instead, somewhat stronger job growth than expected and a slight uptick in the unemployment rate seemed to offer little change in the dynamic between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, as they enter the final weekend of an election already shaped by the changing contours of the nation’s economy.

Economists had predicted the addition of about 125,000 jobs and said the unemployment rate, which had dropped to 7.8 percent in September, might rise slightly.

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics beat those expectations for job growth, showing the addition of 171,000 jobs in October. And the unemployment rate, which ticked up to 7.9 percent, remained below 8 percent.

Mr. Obama is likely to cite the report as further evidence that the nation’s economy is continuing to recover slowly under his policies. The president argues that nearly three years of expansion in employer’s payrolls has added almost five million jobs since the economic collapse in 2008 and 2009.

That the unemployment rate remains below 8 percent allows Mr. Obama and his supporters to argue that the economic improvement over the past several months is not a fluke and that the country is headed in the right direction.

The White House said the jobs report showed the “biggest monthly gain in eight months.” In a statement, Alan B. Krueger, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said it provided “further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”

But the data did not provide the kind of unambiguous boost for the president that he received last month, when the unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent.

For Mr. Romney, the numbers offer little new ammunition. For months, he has hammered the president for presiding over an economy with unemployment over 8 percent. With Friday’s report, the rate remains below that level for the second month in a row.

On the campaign trail in recent weeks, Mr. Romney has argued that the country’s modest jobs growth is inadequate in the face of an economy that continues to struggle.

In a statement Friday morning, Mr. Romney said the jobs report was evidence of the need to change the nation’s economic policies.

“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill,” Mr. Romney said. “The jobless rate is higher than it was when President Obama took office, and there are still 23 million Americans struggling for work. On Tuesday, America will make a choice between stagnation and prosperity.”

In fact, there are about 12 million people unemployed in the country. Mr. Romney often says that there are 23 million people who are out of work, have stopped looking for work or are in part-time jobs when they want full-time work.

For economists, the new report is just one piece of evidence about how the economy is doing. But among voters, the unemployment rate remains one of the most recognized barometers of economic progress or retrenchment.

The jobs reports, usually released on the first Friday of every month, have become a regular feature of the 2012 presidential campaign. Political strategists in Boston and Chicago — where the two campaigns have their headquarters — nervously anticipated the impact of the report each month.

But none was anticipated more than the one on Friday. Coming just days before the end of the election, the report was viewed by some as a potential bombshell that might have helped sway undecided or uncertain voters in a race that polls suggest could be exceptionally close.

Still, the trajectory of the economic arguments by the candidates has been set for months, with even last month’s unexpected improvement doing little to change the political dynamic in the race.

There is now little time for new television ads or rewritten stump speeches. And in many of the most important swing states, millions of people have already voted, diminishing any potential impact of Friday jobs report, the final one of the campaign.        

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Modest Growth in Jobs Seen in Final Report Before Election

In the last assessment of the job market before the presidential election, the Labor Department announced Friday that the nation’s employers added 171,000 positions in October, and more jobs than initially estimated in both August and September.

The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 7.9 percent in October, from 7.8 percent in September, as more workers joined the labor force and so officially became counted as unemployed.

The report showed persistent but modest improvement in the American economy, and broad-based gains in just about every industry except the government. It was based on surveys conducted too early in the month to capture work disruptions across the East Coast caused by Hurricane Sandy.

“Generally, the report shows that things are better than we’d expected and certainly better than we’d thought a few months ago,” said Paul Dales, senior United States economist for Capital Economics. “But we’re still not making enough progress to bring that unemployment rate down significantly and rapidly.”

The latest figures are probably good news for President Obama. They officially recorded a net gain in jobs under his presidency, and they allayed widespread suspicion that September’s large drop in the unemployment rate — below 8 percent for the first time since the month he took office — might have been a one-month statistical fluke.

In a statement, Alan B. Krueger, the chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, said Friday’s report provided “further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression.”

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said in a statement that the jobs report is evidence of the need to change the nation’s economic policies.

“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill,” he said.

The numbers arrived somewhat late in the game to have a huge impact on the election next Tuesday, particularly given the ongoing focus on Hurricane Sandy.

Economists were hopeful that once the election was over and Congress addressed the major fiscal tightening scheduled for the end of this year, job growth could speed up further.

“If we can do this kind of job growth with all the uncertainty out there, imagine if we were to clear up those tax issues and hold back the majority of tax increases that are pending at the end of the year,” said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. “We could do much better in 2013, maybe as well as we appeared to be doing earlier this year.”

Job gains in previous months were revised to show bigger gains. September’s increase of 114,000 new jobs was revised to 148,000, and August’s 142,000 was revised to 192,000, the government said.

In October, the biggest job gains were in professional and business services, health care and retail trade, the Labor Department said. Government payrolls dipped slightly. State and local governments have been shedding jobs most months over the last three years.

One of the lowlights of the report was in hourly wages, which remained flat in October after showing barely any growth in the previous several months.

“Perhaps the decline in real wages is a factor here in being able to employ more people,” Mr. Ryding said. “It’s something to keep in mind when we think about creating jobs and whether we’re maybe creating the wrong sort of jobs.”

A report from the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy organization that focuses on labor issues, found that while the majority of jobs lost in the downturn were middle-wage jobs, the majority of the jobs created since then have been lower-wage ones.

There have now been 25 straight months of jobs gains in the United States, but the increases have been barely large enough to absorb people entering the work force. A queue of about 12 million unemployed people remain waiting for work, about two out of five of whom have been out of a job for more than six months.

That is in addition to more than eight million people who are working part-time but really want full-time jobs.

“I’m not just competing against all the other people who are out of work,” said Griff Coxey, 57, of Cascade, Wis., who was laid off in May from his controller job at a small business. “I’m also competing against all those people who are actually working but are underemployed.”

Like two million other idle workers, Mr. Coxey is scheduled to lose his unemployment benefits the last week of the year, when the federal extensions abruptly expire. He said he still has some savings to fall back on, but many workers do not.

Labor advocates and economists are hopeful that Congress will renew the benefits as part of their discussions of the “fiscal cliff” during their postelection session. So far, though, the issue has received little attention, and analysts worry that ending extended benefits could disrupt what modest forward momentum the economy currently has.

“Federal unemployment benefits are one of the most effective stimuli we have,” said Christine L. Owens, the executive director of the National Employment Law Project.

“The recovery is still fragile,” she said, “and to pull that amount of income and expenditure out of the economy — particularly at a time when people thinking about the holiday season — will have a significant impact on not just those individuals and their families but the economy as a whole.”

Friday’s jobs report is unlikely to affect policy from the Federal Reserve, which has pledged open-ended stimulus until the job market improves “substantially.”

“This was not a perfect report by any means,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist for Mesirow Financial. “We would like to see double these kind of gains in jobs. Our benchmark on improvement is still pretty low.”    

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