Obama to prepare for debates during three-day visit to Las Vegas area

President Barack Obama will spend three days in Henderson starting Sunday to prepare for the first presidential debate Oct. 3 against GOP challenger Mitt Romney, an Obama campaign official confirmed Wednesday.

The president also is scheduled Sunday to hold a public "grass roots" rally in Las Vegas at Desert Pines High School. Doors will open at 4 p.m. with the president speaking a couple of hours later.

The first presidential debate will be in Denver, one of three scheduled in October between Obama and Romney, who appears to be slipping in key state polls and needs to shake up the race to beat the incumbent. In Nevada, most recent surveys show Obama edging out his challenger by several points on average.

Obama's frequent visits to Nevada, more than any president before him, demonstrate the importance of the battleground state in the 2012 White House race. Early voting starts Oct. 20 here ahead of the Nov. 6 election, and both candidates have focused on Nevada as one of a dozen states that could decide the outcome.

It's no accident that the president picked Nevada to hunker down for a few days, a campaign official said. Four years ago, he prepared for the general election debates in Florida, another swing state.

Using Nevada as his base for debate prep shows the state is part of Obama's game plan to win re-election. He easily won the Silver State in 2008, but Nevada has suffered harder economic times than the rest of the nation since then and still has the highest unemployment rate at 12.1 percent.

"This is a huge deal for Nevada," one Obama campaign official said of the president's decision to prepare here.

Romney campaign spokesman Mason Harrison said Obama needs to shore up his support in the state.

"No amount of debate preparation is going to help President Obama explain Nevada's highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate, his decision not to help Nevada homeowners, and a long list of taxes and regulations that are killing Nevada small businesses," Harrison said in a statement.

"As he practices his defense for the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, President Obama should look out his window at the homes in foreclosure, empty storefronts and stalled construction projects, which are emblematic of tens of thousands of Nevadans who are suffering in the Obama economy. It's clear we can't afford four more years of the last four years."

Obama's Sunday visit will be his eighth trip to Nevada this year, including a two-day stop Aug. 21-22, and his 15th since becoming president in 2009. He visited the state two dozen times in 2007-08 to win.

Romney has visited Nevada at least 16 times in the two years and six times since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee in April, according to his campaign. He has used Las Vegas to announce his major initiatives, including an economic plan to create 12 million jobs and a five-point plan addressing the home foreclosure crisis.

The president is expected to stay three nights at the Westin Lake Las Vegas, a Moroccan-style resort in Henderson, where he stayed the last time he visited Southern Nevada on Aug. 22. A reservations clerk at the hotel said most of the 493 rooms were booked up Sunday through Wednesday, with rooms going for $162.75 each.

A White House official said the president doesn't have any scheduled public events on Monday or Tuesday before he departs Wednesday morning for Denver and the debate that night. But Obama is expected to make an unscheduled excursion or two during his stay, according to a campaign official.

Obama will come with a big entourage, both from the White House and the campaign. He has practiced for the debate with U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who has been playing the role of Romney.

Obama will hold three afternoon debate sessions during his stay unless presidential business or a crisis gets in the way, the Los Angles Times reported Wednesday. The president apparently has canceled some debate prep because of violent flare-ups in the Middle East, his campaign said.

Romney has been practicing for the debates on the campaign trail at his campaign headquarters in Boston and at his New Hampshire home. U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, has been playing Obama in mock debates.

The two other presidential debates are Oct. 16 in New York and Oct. 22 in Florida, a battleground state.

On Sunday, Obama will be holding his campaign rally at an academically troubled school. Desert Pines High School, in east Las Vegas near Pecos Road and Washington Avenue, has about 2,300 students. Some 80 percent of those students are Hispanic, and 60 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch with their families living below the poverty line. A third of students have limited English-speaking skills, according to the district.

The graduation rate at Desert Pines has hovered around 50 percent since 2005, meaning one out of every two freshmen graduates their senior year. But students don't stay there long. The transiency rate is just below 50 percent, with only half the students seeing high school through at Desert Pines before going to another school or leaving the district. The school has failed the federal No Child Left Behind program during the past decade.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Trevon Milliard contributed to this report. Contact reporter Laura Myers at lmyers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919. Follow her on Twitter @lmyerslvrj.