Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Mitt Romney spoke to supporters at a campaign rally on Wednesday in Las Vegas.Mitt Romney plans to deliver a closing speech framing the economic choice facing voters during a campaign visit to Ames, Iowa, on Friday, a top adviser to Mr. Romney's presidential campaign said on Wednesday.
The speech will come just over a week before Election Day and as voters across Iowa and several other swing states are voting early. Aides said Mr. Romney would seek to reinforce in voters the economic differences between the two presidential candidates.
Aides declined to provide details about what Mr. Romney would say in the speech. The last major address Mr. Romney delivered was focused on foreign policy, and came earlier this month at the Virginia Military Institute.
Mr. Romney had considered giving an economic speech on Thursday in Cincinnati, according to some top advisers earlier in the week. It was not immediately clear why the campaign decided on delivering the address in Iowa instead.
Both states - Ohio and Iowa - are seen as critical to Mr. Romney's efforts to win the White House. Public polls have consistently shown Mr. Obama to be leading in both, though by narrow margins. Aides in each campaign say the states are very close.
The economy is also doing better in the two states than the nation over all. The unemployment rate in Iowa is 5.2 percent, well below the national rate of 7.8 percent. The unemployment rate in Ohio is 7 percent.
Mr. Romney has made the economy the cornerstone of his bid to unseat President Obama, arguing that the cur rent administration has done too little to help the country recover from the economic collapse at the end of 2008.
His campaign is pressing that issue in television ads across the battleground states. But with no more debates attracting millions of viewers, the candidates are eager to find ways to help their closing messages break through the clutter of the final weeks.
The campaign said on Wednesday that Mr. Romney planned a noon rally in Ames at Kinzler Construction Services.
