Al Gore ignored North Dakota during his presidential campaign eight years ago. In 2004, John Kerry gave one February speech in Fargo - on Super Bowl Sunday - and spent much of his time in North Dakota watching the football game.

Barack Obama has chosen North Dakota as one of a handful of traditionally Republican states where he's going to challenge John McCain for their electoral votes, and North Dakota Democrats say the investment may pay off in November.

No Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Dakota since Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory over Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. George W. Bush won North Dakota handily in the last two elections, with Gore getting 33 percent of the vote and Kerry 36 percent.

Democrats say Obama's decision to campaign personally in North Dakota and open offices in the state's four largest cities can reverse that history.

"It is fundamental that if you want somebody's vote, that you have to ask," said Jim Maxson of Minot, who is a North Dakota representative on the Democratic National Committee.

Jamie Selzler, director of North Dakota's Democratic Party, said Obama's strong campaign finances allow him to compete in any state. Obama also might force McCain to divert resources into states that he normally would expect to have locked up, Selzler said.

McCain is "either going to have to choose to concede North Dakota or he's going to have to put some resources up here," Selzler said. "McCain's resources are quite a bit more limited than Obama's, and so for everything that McCain does up here, that's a little bit less that he can do in these big battleground states we always hear about."

Gary Emineth, chairman of North Dakota's Republican Party, believes many undecided North Dakota voters eventually will land in McCain's column.

"It's still a long shot" for a Democrat to carry North Dakota, Emineth said.

"I don't think a lot of people have really sat down and made their decision where they are going to go for president, and they are the deciding voters at the end of the day," he said.

Obama has "kind of drawn into the hard-core Democrat base," Emineth said. "There's a few people who have feelings about the war, and that may be affecting some of it, along with all of (Obama's) activity in the state … It's a very fluid election, and a lot of dynamics this time that are different."

Obama made his first North Dakota campaign visit in April, speaking at a North Dakota state Democratic convention crowd in Grand Forks that was estimated at more than 18,000 people. He also held a veterans' forum in Fargo last month.

Besides opening campaign offices in Fargo, Grand Forks, Minot and Bismarck, Obama is deploying organizers in the state.

Their work is likely to help Democratic candidates for North Dakota's statewide offices and the Legislature, said Selzler and Mac Schneider, who is a Democratic state Senate candidate in Grand Forks' District 42. The district includes the University of North Dakota.

"For years, it's been a chicken-or-the-egg discussion, whether Democratic presidential candidates don't win in North Dakota because they don't compete, or they don't compete in North Dakota because they can't win," Schneider said. "But we've seen Sen. Obama visit the state twice, and now he's committed organizers in every major city, reaching out to every voter in every county in North Dakota."

Schneider's race against Republican Nate Martindale - the two men are competing to succeed incumbent GOP Sen. Nick Hacker, who is not seeking re-election - is viewed as crucial to Democratic hopes of winning control of the North Dakota Senate. Republicans now hold 26 Senate seats to Democrats' 21.

"In a district like mine, when about half the voters are under age 25, when you have Sen. Obama at the top of the ticket, generating enthusiasm, and all of his organizers in the state - identifying new voters, turning out those voters - it's only going to help," Schneider said.