Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain brought his town-hall campaign to Appalachian Ohio yesterday, "the first in what he said would be repeated visits to southern and rural Ohio between now and the November election," writes Mike James of The Independent in nearby Ashland, Ky. "Ohio’s rural counties are shaping up to be a deciding factor in who wins the state’s electoral votes." (Photo is from The Ironton Tribune, which had no credit online. For a nicely done slide show of McCain's visit, by Independent photographer John Flavell, click here.)Aboard McCain's "Straight Talk Express" bus, Frank Lewis of the Portsmouth Daily Times interviewed the candidate and Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine, who said, "What we find is, when a Democrat wins as president in Ohio, they do well in southeast Ohio." DeWine noted that in the primary election, Obama lost some counties in the region to Hillary Clinton by 6 to 1. "McCain said he still was attempting to get Obama to join him in a series of town hall meetings, but told the audience, so far, Obama had declined. But McCain said he is holding out hope Obama will change his mind," Lewis reports. (Read more)
James, reporting on the Portsmouth town-hall meeting, writes, "One questioner asked McCain why he didn’t distance himself from the increasingly unpopular President George W. Bush." McCain replied, “I respect President Bush, but I believe it is time for a change in America … We’ve got to stop the out-of-control pork-barrel spending … It corrupted us … We forgot that it’s your money, not our money.” (Read more)
Benita Heath of the Tribune found an emblematic observer in the crowd: "Was he a sign of things to come? That young teen with a crew cut and deep blue Hillary T-shirt sitting in the bleachers at Portsmouth High School. Not only did this anonymous supporter of the Democrat who lost show up at John McCain’s town hall meeting Wednesday, he applauded over and over as McCain took pot shots at his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama." Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said last month that he would not be Obama's running mate, but he showed up to marshal Obama forces "across the street from the McCain event at the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 577 Hall in his own rally where he denounced the Republican nominee’s platform," Heath reports. (Read more)
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign "has not only given the country a chance to meet Mr. Obama. It has also given Mr. Obama a chance to meet the country, taking him to large swaths of the United States that he has never seen before. Since his political rise began less than four years ago, he has visited New Orleans, toured parts of the Great Plains and traveled across the South — all for the first time."
The story is written by Jeff Zeleny, an Iowa native who covered Obama in small-town Iowa. He writes, “One of his most pressing challenges is to assure voters that he is one of them, that his background and upbringing are not so different from theirs. . . . Many of the regional distinctions in the United States, he said, 'in terms of culture, politics, attitudes, people,' have been muted. After 18 months of traveling extensively across the country, he said, 'the biggest differences have more to do with rural, suburban, urban, as opposed to north, south, east or west.'”
Zeleny writes, "Having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and spending much of his adult life in large cities, Mr. Obama, 46, is now acquainting himself more deeply with his country and finds himself unusually surprised by some of his findings. he told Zeleny, “A place that I’ve come to love, which I did not expect until this campaign, is Texas. I ended up loving Texas!” As we have noted before, Zeleny has a sharp eye for local coverage of Obama, and reports that "Local newspapers have picked up on a handful of his on-location gaffes," such as calling Sioux Falls, S.D., Sioux City, which is in Iowa. (Read more)
The story is written by Jeff Zeleny, an Iowa native who covered Obama in small-town Iowa. He writes, “One of his most pressing challenges is to assure voters that he is one of them, that his background and upbringing are not so different from theirs. . . . Many of the regional distinctions in the United States, he said, 'in terms of culture, politics, attitudes, people,' have been muted. After 18 months of traveling extensively across the country, he said, 'the biggest differences have more to do with rural, suburban, urban, as opposed to north, south, east or west.'”
Zeleny writes, "Having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and spending much of his adult life in large cities, Mr. Obama, 46, is now acquainting himself more deeply with his country and finds himself unusually surprised by some of his findings. he told Zeleny, “A place that I’ve come to love, which I did not expect until this campaign, is Texas. I ended up loving Texas!” As we have noted before, Zeleny has a sharp eye for local coverage of Obama, and reports that "Local newspapers have picked up on a handful of his on-location gaffes," such as calling Sioux Falls, S.D., Sioux City, which is in Iowa. (Read more)
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