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HAMILTON — Both U.S. presidential campaigns are setting the pieces in place for a battle in Butler County.

Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama have dispatched lieutenants to base regional headquarters in and around Hamilton.

The state Republican party has established a two-person-and-growing "Victory Center" at the Butler County GOP headquarters in Fairfield Twp. This is one of nine such offices in Ohio set up to back the party's candidates on all levels.

The Obama camp is setting up its own three-person "Campaign for Change" office at the Democratic party headquarters in Hamilton. They will set up phone banks, register voters and hand out signs in Butler, Warren, Preble and Clinton counties.

The Victory Center's hope: to engineer a presidential victory on par with President George Bush's 2004 landslide. Bush walked away with 66 percent of the local vote then. Many credit this margin of victory with giving Bush the state, and in turn, the election.

"We need the same type of turnout this year," said Ohio GOP Spokesman John McClelland. "Butler County and all of southwest Ohio is critical for Republicans because that's really where a lot of our base lives."

As the election nears, paid staffers at the Democratic office here are expected to double.

They hope to seize on McCain's perceived weaknesses with the Republican base and the fact that the March primaries left Butler County with more registered Democrats than Republicans, though many call that edge a statistical anomaly stemming from a hyped-up Democratic primary.

"We are not conceding any vote," said Obama Campaign Spokesman Isaac Baker. "We are going to be actively campaigning in areas that have traditionally been Republican strongholds."