I am trying to replace:
function checkValue() {
    if (remainingTime < 10) {
        document.getElementById("leading-zero").style.display = "inline";
    } else {
        document.getElementById("leading-zero").style.display = "none";
    }
}
..with this:
var leadingZero = document.getElementById("leading-zero");
function checkValue() {
    if (remainingTime < 10) {
        leadingZero.style.display = "inline";
    } else {
        leadingZero.style.display = "none";
    }
}
The first block of code works just fine but I don't want to be accessing the DOM everytime checkValue() is called (every half a second). That's why I attempted assigning the object (is it called an object??) to the variable named leadingZero. Why will this not work??