Heck with debate: Democrats win race to the spin room

• Obama surrogates arrive early to claim victory for the president
• Both sides agree Obama was more spirited than last debate
• Republicans say Romney still has the momentum in the race

The outcome of Tuesday night's presidential debate at Hofstra University can be argued well after its end, but Team Obama won the race to the spin room with a flood of blue signs.

Following the embarrassment of being late to the post-debate interviews earlier this month in Denver, Obama surrogates arrived in the spin room Tuesday while the president and Mitt Romney were still on stage wrapping up their contentious debate.

"The president was strong; he was decisive,'' said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. "We thought we had a dominant performance tonight.''

Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod praised his candidate for being specific about his accomplishments and his plans to help economically struggling voters -- while portraying Romney as just the opposite.

"Everyone in this country, particularly the middle class, got to see that the emperor has no clothes,'' Axelrod said.

Conceding that Romney improved in opinion surveys after the first debate, Axelrod said Romney's appearance Tuesday would do little to cement his advantage. "He was backpedaling all night, he looked nervous and defensive, his appeal was fundamentally a negative appeal.''

Romney adviser Ed Gillespie said it was to be expected that the Obama team would jump the gun to start spinning. "I suspect they felt they had some damage control to do,'' he said. "Romney clearly won tonight; the momentum continues on our side. We look forward to building on our success tonight.''

Former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, a Romney adviser, called Obama's answers on the timeline of the Libya attack "dishonest,'' but conceded that the president had made a stronger showing than in the Denver debate Oct. 3.

"At least there was something in the suit this time,'' Sununu said. "He made it a little more competitive.''

Gillespie called Obama's spirited performance "a change in style."

"A change in tactics doesn't change your record and doesn't change the fact that you have no plan to make things better in the next four years,'' he said. Romney's success was not from a single answer, Gillespie said, but "a cumulative effect'' from outlining his plan to cut tax rates and improve job growth.

"He was very effective in refuting some of the false charges that have been out there in this campaign,'' Gillespie said, referring to Romney's assertion that he does not oppose access to contraception.

Sununu noted that he wished Romney had mentioned religious freedom in the contraceptive question. "I wish he had been able to put it in the first part of his answer.''

The Obama team worked the spin room even before the debate began: Messina and Sen. John Kerry, who played Romney in Obama's debate practice sessions, gave television interviews, while campaign communications director Stephanie Cutter walked the aisles of the media center.

Such as it ever was in the spin room, which has been around since almost the beginning of regular televised presidential debates in 1976, when the League of Women Voters, then the debate sponsor, set up a press room so journalists did not have be in the debate hall. Terry Michael, once a spokesman for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which took over the debates in 1992, says he remembers operatives for President Reagan and Walter Mondale being interviewed by TV correspondents in the press room at the 1984 debate in Louisville.

Back then, it was known as "spin alley,'' says Ann Compton, the ABC correspondent who was a panelist at debates in 1988 and 1992. It quickly became institutionalized "because the campaigns realize what sets the tone, what passes judgment, comes within minutes'' of the debate's end. A lousy debate makes for heavy spinning afterward -- and vice versa, she said.

"If a candidate screws up or says something that needs correction the spin becomes another defining element of the evening,''' says Compton, who calls the spin room "an ER for political injuries.''

Once spin alley began, "It became pretty formal pretty quickly, with placards and such'' says Dan Balz, the Washington Post correspondent who has covered debates since 1980.

Team Obama's early arrival Tuesday night has a precedent, Balz says: In 1992, "the Clinton people came storming into the room before the debate ended ...They went out and immediately declared victory."

Balz says he doesn't find the spin room useful as a reporter -- and isn't sure how much good it does candidates, either. "If it hasn't been said in the debate, you can't say it afterward.''

Contributing: Gregory Korte