WASHINGTON: Republican challenger Mitt Romney is spending a second day in Ohio yesterday, a must-win state in the November election, as he tries to build on a shift in momentum that has him closing in on President Barack Obama after the incumbent’s dismal performance last week in the first presidential debate.
No Republican candidate has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, the Midwestern state that Obama also visited a day earlier. He returned to the White House after a fundraising trip through California and a stop Tuesday at Ohio State University, where he urged students to cast their ballots early.
Romney is trying to drive home his economic message in the key state where Obama has held a significant polling advantage because of his decision early in his presidency to pump vast amounts of federal money into the failing auto industry. Since then Ohio’s economy, which is heavily depend on that industry, has fared better than most states, with unemployment falling to levels below that national average.
As the tight race for the presidency grows closer, US voters still say that fixing the struggling economy and accelerating the creation of jobs is uppermost in their minds with Election Day less than a month away.
“This economy is not creating the jobs it should. We’ve got to fix it,” Romney said Tuesday in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. “We’re going to do it here in Ohio.”
US presidents are not chosen according to the nationwide popular vote but in state-by-state contests. Ohio, one of a handful of states that are not already locked in for Romney or Obama, is likely to decide this year’s election. “Don’t wait. Do not be late. Go vote today,” Obama said.
His campaign staged buses nearby, ready to ferry students or other supporters to registration centers. Obama was staying off the campaign trail on Wednesday and then heading to Florida on Thursday for events in the nation’s largest battleground state.
As Romney campaigned in Ohio, his comments on abortion to an Iowa newspaper brought attention to social issues. Romney told The Des Moines Register in an interview Tuesday that he would not pursue any abortion-related legislation if elected president. His campaign tried to walk back the remarks, saying he would support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life, without elaborating.
That has happened before in the Romney campaign. Most recently, the candidate declared in the first debate that his vision for altering the health care system would ensure that people who are ill would be able to buy insurance. His aids quickly said that only would be the case for people who have been insured and not allowed coverage to lapse.
Obama’s campaign jumped on the apparent shift on abortion “One more time we’ve got an example of Mitt Romney changing a position in public even though everybody knows what he believes,” Senior Obama political adviser Robert Gibbs said Wednesday in an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.
Polls indicate Romney’s push in Ohio may pay dividends. A new CNN survey showed Obama leading Romney 51 percent to 47 percent among likely Ohio voters. The spread had been significantly greater before the debate last week. Republicans said Romney’s strong debate appearance also has helped his standing in national polls and they were beginning to see evidence of that in the battleground states most likely to decide the election.
“There isn’t any question that he has breathed new life and new energy into the Republican Party,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Tuesday on a conference call with reporters. “We’re seeing that there is greater intensity among Republicans and a great willingness to get out and vote and participate than we’re seeing with Democrats.”
Gibbs said the shifting poll numbers shouldn’t be automatically viewed as a sign that the president’s re-election campaign is sagging.
“We always expected this to be a very close race and we expected that as we got closer to Election Day, the race would tighten even more,” Gibbs said on NBC.
With 18 electoral votes, Ohio remains a linchpin in Romney’s strategy to string together enough state victories to amass the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take the White House. If Romney were to lose Oho, he would have to carry every other battleground state except tiny New Hampshire.
Under the US system, each state gets one electoral vote for each of its Congress members. Like most other states, Ohio awards all its electoral votes to the candidate who wins the state.
Romney has far fewer state-by-state paths to the White House than Obama, who still has several routes to victory should he lose in Ohio.
Romney is spending three of the next four days in Ohio before the second presidential debate New York on Tuesday. Running mate Paul Ryan meets Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday in Kentucky for the only vice presidential debate of the campaign.
Building on momentum, Romney renews push for Ohio
