ADISON, Wis. - Al Gore drew a record crowd when he campaigned here yesterday, and he will be back in Wisconsin for a bus tour Monday. George W. Bush rocked the Milwaukee Auditorium with a huge rally Monday. And he is hustling in tomorrow for his third visit this month to the Green Bay area.
Blink, and you might miss a campaign appearance by a presidential candidate in a state that has been off the radar of national politics for 20 years but that has become a fierce battleground in this election.
''I'm wondering if they're ever going to leave,'' said Gore's weary Wisconsin spokesman, John Kraus, who is trying to manage the unexpected crush of candidate coverage. ''I mean,'' he added quickly, ''I hope they don't.''
By any standard, 17 separate stops in a single state by the major president candidates, plus three visits by Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, put Wisconsin
(only 11 electoral votes) on a par with the big, vote-rich kahunas like Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Voters in the rest of the country may think this election is ho-hum, but here, where the political heat is as intense as New Hampshire at primary time, these Midwesterners are excited and elated by the unprecedented courting and attention.
Tom Nieland, 39, of New Berlin, is a lifelong Republican but never had attended a political event until a friend gave him a ticket to the Bush rally in Milwaukee. He was lucky - he was one of the estimated 8,000 who got inside the auditorium; 2,000 were left lined up outside.
''Usually we're a flyover state or good for one campaign stop at the most,'' Nieland said. ''It's neat when we get attention for something other than the Packers playing well, or our football team going to the Rose Bowl.''
Marvelle Strand, a retired shop owner in Sun Prairie, said this close-up look at the presidential contest persuaded her to be a first-time volunteer at Gore's Madison headquarters. ''I can't remember a time when I've been this concerned about who wins,'' she said.
A combination of factors, including the every-electoral-vote-counts strategy of both campaigns, has put the candidates' laser focus on Wisconsin. Democratic candidates have won here in the last three presidential elections (Republican Bob Dole ignored Wisconsin in 1996), but seesawing polls show this race is too close to call.
One reason is that Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin's four-term GOP governor, convinced Bush that he could be competitive in the state if he spent time and money wooing voters, who have a reputation for taking their politics seriously, studying issues, and thinking independently. Voters here have elected a Republican governor, two Democratic senators, and a State House that is closely split along party lines. Republican Ronald Reagan won here, and so did Richard Nixon.
Another factor is Nader. With Wisconsin's progressive labor and farm traditions and its large student population, Nader has made a fairly deep groove here, cutting into Gore's liberal base of support. The Gore campaign says it is not worried about Nader's 5 percent in the polls, but the vice president's stop yesterday in Madison, the state capital and the home of the main campus of the University of Wisconsin, was to personally tell a crowd estimated at more than 20,000 that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.
When the candidates have to be somewhere other than Wisconsin, their surrogates are here, picking up the slack. On the Democratic side, Representative Barney Frank of Newton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have come to Madison to try to suppress the Nader vote. Gore's daughter Kristin toured campuses across the state this week.
Bush has his own army in the state, led by Thompson. The ''W Stands for Women'' bus tour was scheduled to roll through Wisconsin earlier this week, but mechanical problems with Laura Bush's plane forced its cancellation. Barbara Bush is scheduled to visit a senior center here next week, and actress Bo Derek recently attended a poolside event on Bush's behalf at a Wausau motel. Green Bay Packers legend Paul Hornung has touted Bush in the Republican stronghold of the Fox River Valley.
Dick and Lynne Cheney, who both received advanced degrees at the University of Wisconsin, have been in and out of the state. GOP Assemblyman Scott Walker of Wauwatosa said his neighbor couldn't coax her daughter to attend a Dick Cheney event because the child had already had dessert with Mrs. Cheney at her elementary school.
''It's like being part of the Iowa caucuses - nobody in Wisconsin is satisfied now until they have met all the candidates,'' said Walker, who is coordinating the Bush campaign in Milwaukee County.
Angelique Pirozzi, who worked for the Clinton-Gore campaign in New Hampshire in 1996 and for Gore in Iowa earlier this year, says the exposure to the candidates is informing the electorate but also contributing to a larger-than-expected undecided vote.
''In Iowa and New Hampshire, it took generations for the voters to become this spoiled - they want to see the candidates,'' said Pirozzi, who is directing Gore's Wisconsin field operations. ''People are paying attention.''
Voters can't miss the television commercials. The campaigns reportedly have spent almost $4 million advertising in Milwaukee and Green Bay, putting them in the presidential candidates' top 15 media markets.
''I easily see a dozen commercials in one day, and I work full-time,'' said Cate Zeuske, who heads the state Department of Revenue. ''For political junkies, having all this information and ... visits from the candidates is a dream come true.''
The state party organizations, accustomed to voter apathy, are having trouble adjusting to the new climate. Volunteers at GOP headquarters automatically answer the phone by saying ''We are out of yard signs.'' One woman was so irritated that she grabbed a Bush-Cheney sign out of the campaign-office window, took it to a printer, and paid for 1,000 copies, Scott Walker said.
