Mitt Romney

Barack Obama

Joe Biden

Paul Ryan

Mr. Romney held a rally in Pueblo, Colo., on Monday before departing for New York to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting on Tuesday. President Obama is also scheduled to address the meeting after Mr. Romney. Campaign aides are seeking to shift to a busier schedule in the field, recognizing that Mr. Romney needs more time on the campaign trail if he is to halt what appears to be slowly building momentum, at least in opinion polls, for Mr. Obama, who has taken a small but worrying lead in some swing states after months in which the race had seemed deadlocked. Mitt Romney is best known for his credentials as a business executive. He served as Massachusetts governor for one term and he has been running for president nearly nonstop since 2007, but his strength as a businessman is an advantage in an election dominated by economic discussions. Mr. Romney is trying to persuade voters that President Obamas policies have not worked and that he should be elected to complete the nations economic recovery. The room for error for Mr. Romney is narrow. He must win several states that voted Democratic four years ago, particularly a combination of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia and at least one other state. His campaign is also trying to catch up to the presidents team, which has been steadily building an organization for more than a year. He must energize Republicans, while appealing to independent voters, including many of those who supported Mr. Obama last time.

President Obama traveled to Wisconsin the home turf of his opponents running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, on Saturday. He repeated his attack on Mitt Romney for remarks Mr. Romney made behind closed doors characterizing Obama voters as the 47 percent of the population who depend on government handouts and do not pay federal income taxes. The president is currently in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. He taped an interview with "The View" on Monday, and will address the United Nations on Tuesday morning. His speech will focus on the recent unrest in the Middle East. President Obama faces a highly competitive bid for re-election. Economic growth has been tepid throughout his presidency, but one of his biggest advantages is that he has a variety of paths to victory in key battleground states. He is unlikely to repeat his margin from 2008, when he captured 365 electoral votes. But he only needs 270 to win a second term, allowing him to lose a handful of states that he carried four years ago and still be victorious. The presidents disapproval ratings, in addition to the large number of Americans who say the country is on the wrong track, have stirred serious alarm about Mr. Obamas prospects. The presidents central argument for re-election is built around fairness and pushing back against the assertion that he is not up for the job and could not improve economic circumstances in a second term. Mr. Biden just finished a two-day swing through New Hampshire, where he continued to criticize Mr. Romney's comment about the 47 percent of Americans who vote for President Obama. The vice president also continued his trend of unannounced stops at diners and restaurants along the trail, in which he picked up a 36-pound pumpkin from a local farm and set the record straight about his Joe Bidenopoulos comment from a campaign stop in late August. Mr. Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972 at the age of 29, and served there until 2008, when he was elected vice president after his own failed bid for the White House. He has become something of a utility player and troubleshooter for the White House, and has been the presidents point person on issues ranging from Iraq to budget negotiations with Congress. Mr. Biden, 69, delights in speaking bluntly even as that can complicate things for the White House. Known for his working class roots Mr. Biden has become something of an emissary to the Rust Belt. He embarks on what could be his last campaign after a sometimes uneasy term, marked by triumphs and occasional tensions with a boss markedly different in style and temperament. Mr. Ryan is kicking off the "Romney Plan For a Stronger Middle Class" Ohio bus tour with a town hall rally in Lima, Ohio, on Monday afternoon. He will hold another rally in Cincinnati on Tuesday morning, before handing bus-tour duty over to Mitt Romney. The Republican ticket will not appear together on the bus tour. Representative Paul D. Ryan, a seven-term Wisconsin Republican who first won his seat at age 28, is not just a rising G.O.P. star; he may be the partys most important figure other than Mitt Romney. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, he has become perhaps the most influential policy maker in the Republican Party, its de facto head of economic policy, intent on erasing deficits through a fundamental transformation of the federal government. Lauded by members of both parties as serious and likable, Mr. Ryan ignored calls to enter the 2012 presidential race and has been a frequent surrogate for Mr. Romney, joining him often on the campaign trail.