McCain and Romney fight for recession-hit Michigan

(Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The Republican presidential hopeful John McCain took his simmering rivalry with Mitt Romney to the appropriately named Kalamazoo yesterday, the Indian name meaning "boiling waters", with both men looking for a crucial win in the state's primary.

With starkly contrasting styles on the campaign trail – Mr McCain is conversational almost to the point of rambling and Mr Romney has the polish of a 1950s game-show host – both men are battling for victory in the first state to assert its presidential preferences after New Hampshire and Iowa.

This is different terrain: economic conditions left Michigan in a virtual single-state recession, worsened by accelerating lay-offs in the hard-hit automotive industry. Michigan's unemployment rate is 7 per cent, the highest in the US.

"The best and most productive workers in the world reside in this state," Mr McCain told a crowd in a school gym. He referred to Michigan's history of manufacturing Jeeps and tanks, calling it "the state that saved the world during the Second World War". Mr Romney laid out plans for economic revival at the Detroit Economic Club.

But it may take more than flattery and promises of better times by either candidate – or by Mike Huckabee, who is likely to place third here – to lift morale in a state where there are more unemployed people than there were Republican voters in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries combined.

The stakes here are particularly high for Mr Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who badly needs a win to stay in play as the primary schedule gains speed ahead of votes in South Carolina this weekend and in Florida 10 days later. Predictably, he is playing his roots hard as the son of George Romney, the governor of Michigan in the late 1960s, when economic times here were much rosier.

Should Mr Romney, who tends to evoke Ronald Reagan's famous likening of America to a "shining city on a hill" and makes syrupy appeals to the patriotic emotions of voters, win in Michigan, the party will find itself more nonplussed than ever about whom it should rally behind. It would give Mr Romney, Mr McCain and Mr Huckabee one major victory each and confer the status of front-runner on no one.

Michigan is a peculiar state for the Democrats. It was sanctioned by the national party after the state unilaterally moved its primary date forward. No Democrat has campaigned here and only Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich are on the ballot. Democrats who bother to visit the polls this morning will mostly either tick her name or mark "uncommitted", perhaps as a sign they support Barack Obama.

"If the Democrats aren't willing to ask for your votes, why give it to them?" the chairman of the state Republican Party, Saul Anuzis, asked a crowd gathered to hear Mr Romney at an elderly people's centre.

A Reuters-Zogby poll yesterday favoured Mr McCain to win by a razor-thin margin. But a poll in the Detroit Free Press picked Mr Romney as winner.