WASHINGTON — President Bush, seeking to “really sink his teeth into a local market,” will hold a news conference in Chicago tomorrow as part of an effort to focus more on local issues, said Dan Bartlett, a top White House adviser.

“Every team changes the playbook once in awhile,” Mr. Bartlett said in an interview today. “It give the president an opportunity to get a sense of what is on the mind of people locally, and it gives him an opportunity to cover a broader range of subjects.”

The shift in communications strategy comes as Mr. Bush’s job-approval ratings have hovered near record lows. The president’s approval rating stood at 41% according to a June 24–27 Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, up slightly from a record low of 39% in April. Registered voters favor Democrats over Republicans in their congressional districts by 49% to 35%, the poll found.

In press conferences at the White House, issues such as the war in Iraq and Iran’s attempts to gain a nuclear weapon often dominate the questions asked by reporters. “Sometimes there is a dominant issue, like the war, that’s the only one discussed,” Mr. Bartlett said.

Mr. Bartlett said that the new strategy isn’t an attempt to exclude the national press from asking questions, a tactic Mr. Bush’s campaign employed in the fall of 2000, when the then-Texas governor was falling in public opinion polls. During that time, Mr. Bush met only with local reporters who often asked questions of parochial interest.

Mr. Bush’s Chicago trip features a meeting with local entrepreneurs to discuss the economy and is part of an effort to have the president spend more time in local communities, Mr. Bartlett said. The president is staying overnight in Chicago before tomorrow’s events.