Romney, Ryan to campaign 'on different tracks' until convention

14 hours ago CNN Political Unit (CNN) – Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, will campaign together in Wisconsin on Sunday, but going forward the two members of the newly formed Republican ticket will campaign "on different tracks," a Romney campaign adviser told reporters Sunday.

"It's likely that they'll be campaigning on different tracks until we get to the convention," Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden said, adding that the campaign saw the potential for Ryan to made inroads for the Republican ticket in the Great Lakes states. Ryan is a seven-term Wisconsin congressman, who was re-elected in 2010 with over two-thirds of the vote.

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"We have a number of states that are competitive where we believe he helps us - obviously his home state of Wisconsin and some of these other Great Lake states," Madden said. "But Iowa in particular, that is a state where I think his life story is important for others, something that I think helps him connect with a lot of those voters there."

Ryan will attend the Iowa State Fair on Monday, a Romney campaign official said on Saturday.

Romney's vice-presidential candidate rollout began Saturday morning, when Romney and Ryan appeared side by side on stage in Norfolk, Virginia. The pair made additional joint appearances on Saturday. Romney's bus tour is scheduled to continue over the next several days in North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida.

Asked if Ryan's absence from the bus trip to Florida was because of the changes to Medicare in his proposed budget plan, Madden said splitting the two candidates was more about spreading resources than avoiding tough questions from Florida's large senior population.

"This has more to do with expanding our bandwidth," Madden said. "Gov. Romney is going to be talking about the issues that are important to Floridians."

On Sunday evening, Romney and Ryan will attend a "Homecoming Rally" in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a late addition to the Republican bus tour.

The county is the state's biggest suburban county and biggest Republican county, and is one of three seen as critical for Republican electoral success in the state.

The Badger State went for Barack Obama in 2008 by nearly 15 percentage points, but the latest polling in Wisconsin shows a much tighter race this time around.

A Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll showed 51% of likely Wisconsin voters backing Obama, compared to 45% who back Romney. The former Massachusetts governor won the Wisconsin GOP primary on April 3 with 44% of the vote.

– CNN's Jim Acosta, Rachel Streitfeld, Peter Hamby and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report

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