President Barack Obama sent first lady Michelle Obama to the Park City area in 2011 on a fundraising trip.
Vice President Joe Biden appeared in the Snyderville Basin in July to raise money for the president’s re-election campaign.
And Mitt Romney held a large event for top donors in Deer Valley in June.
There will probably be few high-caliber local appearances, if any, as the campaign moves into the fall, though. The swing states are far more important as Election Day approaches.
But the two campaigns each have people assigned to the area even though they will be focused on the swing states of Colorado and Nevada, each an easy drive from Summit County. It seems there will not be much local politicking on the presidential level.
The Obama camp appears to be the more organized in Summit County. Liana Teteberg, a Summit Park resident who has lived in the county since 2005, is a campaign volunteer who is the lead organizer for Summit County and Wasatch County.
Teteberg said approximately 80 people are involved in some fashion in her group of Obama supporters. She has set up a booth at the farmers market at Canyons and has held events at private houses preparing volunteers. Teteberg said the Obama supporters could hold debate-watching events locally in the fall.
Teteberg, though, said she is focused on Colorado. She has traveled to the state three times in 2012 on behalf of the campaign and will be spending some time during upcoming weekends there. Teteberg mostly heads to Grand Junction, which is in western Colorado and is the closest major city in that state to Summit County.
“Colorado is very important. It’s nine electoral votes, and we want those votes,” Teteberg said.
She said she will also be making campaign calls into Colorado. Her group is not attempting to raise money for the campaign,
The Obama side’s grassroots efforts in Summit County were better organized than John McCain’s four years ago, capped by a public appearance by Obama early in the campaign in front of a large crowd in a parking lot off S.R. 224 in the Snyderville Basin. Obama, then a senator from Illinois, also attended a private fundraiser during the trip to the Park City area.
The Romney campaign said there is nothing imminent scheduled in Summit County. Alison Hawkins, a campaign spokesperson focused on the West, said four call centers will be launched in Utah. None of them are expected to be in Summit County, she said. Hawkins said, though, Utah borders the swing states of Colorado and Nevada, and volunteers from Utah will be dispatched to those states.
“Volunteers are key to winning elections. We have to have a ground game,” she said, adding, “Utah volunteers are going to be critical.”
Romney is expected to win Utah by a wide margin on Election Day. He remains popular in the state from his days leading the 2002 Winter Olympics. He once was a Park City homeowner.
The results in Summit County, though, will probably be much closer. Obama in 2008 won Summit County with a little less than 57 percent of the vote, carried by Park City and the Snyderville Basin. It was one of three counties Obama won in the state in 2008 and the county with the widest margin in his favor.
Teteberg said it is “highly likely” Obama will take Summit County again in November, noting that many people who live in the county moved from elsewhere in the U.S. She said Obama will “probably not” win Wasatch County, however.