On Target

John McCain's senior campaign leadership presented a broad general election strategy to reporters today, including a fundraising structure, target states and the details of its relatively-untested regional campaign manager organization. The group also spoke about how they'd approach match-ups against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Campaign Manager Rick Davis led the briefing, flanked by senior advisors Charlie Black, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter. Davis began by trying to address concerns that his campaign may be outmatched on the money front as the Democrats rake in record amounts of money. Davis said that by teaming up with the RNC – which has $30 million cash on hand – the McCain campaign has created a hybridized legal structure allowing them to accept donations beyond the individual limits.

When large donations come into the 'McCain Victory '08' fund, the money gets divided between the campaign, the RNC's Victory Fund and four target states that have been identified as having weak GOP fundraising infrastructures: Wisconsin, New Mexico, Colorado and Minnesota.

Additional fundraising structures have been set up in Florida, Ohio and California to allow for large donations to be divided between those key states' individual RNC funds and the campaign's coffers.

With this, Davis assured the small group of reporters invited to the briefing, McCain's campaign "has as much if not more [cash on hand] than the Democrats have."

Davis suggested that the diversified campaign structure will allow the campaign to act quicker in important areas. Maps were provided to reporters with the country broken up into 11 color-coded regions each with at least two identified 'swing states' and each with its own regional campaign manager.

Regional political directors have been common in past presidential campaigns, Davis said, but the McCain campaign's "RCMs" will have much more autonomy than state or regional directors typically have. They will be equipped with complete campaign structures beneath them and they will be allowed to control nearly every aspect of how the campaign is executed in their regions.

Black said the campaign planned two general election campaign strategies with only small differences. Then they handed out two electoral maps highlighting which states they feel will be competitive in November against each of the Democratic opponents. Clinton's map showed no path to a Democratic victory.

The McCain camp's map showed McCain beating Clinton by an electoral score of 290 to 225 with only 23 votes up for grabs. In contest against Obama, the campaign also predicted that they have the edge, 253 to 203, but this time they see 81 electoral votes up for grabs – enough for Obama to emerge victorious even by their standards. So although they say they have no preference, the numbers showed that officials believe they would fare better against Clinton.

On each map many of the swing states are the same, but there are some notable differences. In current polls, McCain loses to Clinton in Arkansas by a sizeable margin but beats Obama. New Jersey, McCain's team indicated will be in play against Obama but less so against Clinton, who they said has a sizeable lead in recent polls of the state.

Davis and his team painted a mostly rosy picture of their candidate's chances in the general election, but they admitted that facts would indicate an uphill battle for the Republicans in November. Most of the polls showing McCain with double digit support from Democrats aren't worth much this far away from election day, Davis said. But the moral of the day seemed to be that there are several paths to a McCain victory, and the campaign is trying to use its head start to gain an organizational edge.

(NBC/NJ's ADAM AIGNER-TREWORGY)