Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Presidential candidates aren’t spending much time in the Northwest. But their campaigns are beefing up their presence here.

The campaigns for both John McCain and Barack Obama are opening field offices East and West of the Cascades.

Rick Gorka is with the McCain campaign. He says while the Internet is a key tool these days, so is old-fashioned grassroots campaigning.

Rick Gorka: “We’ve been going door-to-door and doing phone-banking and doing voter registration and all that’s associated with a very successful grassroots campaign. And we obviously have our own system that’s put in place to record and report the information that’s brought back from the field.”

The Obama campaign also has an on-line system for identifying undecided voters in the Northwest and dispatching volunteers to talk to them.

So far Obama has 18 field offices in Washington State -- outpacing McCain. But a spokesman for McCain says more regional offices will open soon.

Twenty-two electoral votes are at stake in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.