Slipping in polls, Romney assures voters ‘I care’

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney speaks dur­ing a cam­paign stop at Amer­i­can Spring Wire, Wednes­day, in Bed­ford Heights. (AP Photo/ David Richard)

BEN FELLER, STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

WESTERVILLE — Slip­ping in states that could sink his pres­i­den­tial bid, Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney declared Wednes­day that “I care about the peo­ple of Amer­ica” and can do more than Pres­i­dent Barack Obama to improve their lives. In an all-day Ohio duel, Obama scoffed that a chal­lenger who calls half the nation “vic­tims” was unlikely to be of much help.

Romney’s approach reflected what he is up against: a widen­ing Obama lead in polls in key states such as Ohio, the back­lash from a leaked video in which he dis­par­ages Obama sup­port­ers as government-dependent vic­tims, and a cam­paign imper­a­tive to make his pol­icy plans more plain.

With under six weeks to go, and just one week before the first big debate, Obama’s cam­paign rev­eled in the lat­est pub­lic polling — but tried to crush any sense of over­con­fi­dence. “If we need to pass out horse blind­ers to all of our staff, we will do that,” said cam­paign spokes­woman Jen Psaki.

The day’s set­ting was Ohio, where Obama’s momen­tum has seemed to be grow­ing. It’s also a state no Repub­li­can has won the White House with­out carrying.

Rom­ney went after working-class vot­ers out­side Colum­bus and Cleve­land before rolling to Toledo. Obama ral­lied col­lege crowds at Bowl­ing Green and Kent State, remind­ing Ohioans their state allows them to start cast bal­lots next week. Early vot­ing has already begun in more than two dozen other states.

For Rom­ney, in his appear­ances and in a new TV ad in which he appeals straight to the cam­era, it was time for plain talk to con­trast him­self with Obama.

“There are so many peo­ple in our coun­try who are hurt­ing right now. I want to help them. I know what it takes,” Rom­ney told the crowd in West­er­ville. “I care about the peo­ple of Amer­ica, and the dif­fer­ence between me and Barack Obama is I know what to do.”

That mes­sage so late in the cam­paign — a pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee declar­ing his con­cern for all the peo­ple of the coun­try — was part of his widen­ing effort to rebound from his caught-on-video com­ments at a fundraiser.

In those com­ments, made last May but only recently revealed, Rom­ney said “47 per­cent of the peo­ple” pay no fed­eral income tax, will vote for Obama no mat­ter what, are vic­tims, think the gov­ern­ment must care for them and do not “take per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity and care for their lives.”

New opin­ion polls, con­ducted after the video became pub­lic, show Obama open­ing up appar­ent leads over Rom­ney in bat­tle­ground states, includ­ing Ohio and Vir­ginia. And majori­ties of vot­ers in Florida, Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia say Romney’s poli­cies would favor the rich over the mid­dle class or the poor.

Specif­i­cally in Ohio, two sur­veys show the pres­i­dent cross­ing the 50 per­cent mark among likely vot­ers. A Wash­ing­ton Post poll found Obama ahead 52 per­cent to 44 per­cent among those most likely to turn out, and a Quin­nip­iac University/CBS News/New York Times poll showed a 10-point Obama lead among def­i­nite voters.

Not­ing anew the Rom­ney video com­ments, Obama said Wednes­day: “We under­stand that Amer­ica is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together, as one nation, as one people.”

And he added: “You can’t make it hap­pen if you write off half the nation before you take office.”

Rom­ney was show­ing signs of pick­ing up his pace.

He sched­uled a bliz­zard of inter­views with ABC, CBS and NBC, his sec­ond round of broad­cast net­work appear­ances in three days after weeks of ignor­ing their requests. He also did inter­views Tues­day with Fox News and CNN.

The new Rom­ney TV ad, at 60 sec­onds, is a longer and softer approach in which he speaks about peo­ple strug­gling to pay for food and gas with falling incomes.

At one point on Wednes­day, the two can­di­dates spoke from dif­fer­ent sec­tions of north­ern Ohio at the same time, their scenery as dif­fer­ent as their message.

At a fac­tory in Bed­ford Heights, Rom­ney appeared on a stage sur­rounded by visual evi­dence of Ohio’s man­u­fac­tur­ing base — giant coils of steel wire, metal beams, yel­low “cau­tion” signs — and spoke as machines whirred in the back­ground. He appeared with Mike Rowe, an every­man TV per­son­al­ity and pitchman.

Obama appeared at two packed col­lege bas­ket­ball are­nas, deliv­er­ing his mes­sage first to a bois­ter­ous crowd of more than 5,000 at Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity and then to 6,000 scream­ing sup­port­ers at Kent State University.

He said a stu­dent who intro­duced him broke his wrist dur­ing a game of ulti­mate Fris­bee. Exhort­ing the crowd to vote, he said, “You got to play through injuries.”

The cam­paigns tried, too, for footholds on other fronts.

Both sides kept up their attempts to paint each other as weak in deal­ing with China, efforts aimed at woo­ing sup­port from working-class vot­ers whose jobs might suf­fer from imports from China.

The Rom­ney cam­paign has started set­ting up flat-screen TV mon­i­tors at its events to screen a video about his per­sonal and busi­ness story. It was first aired at the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion as a way to intro­duce him to Amer­ica but went unseen by most view­ers because it did not run dur­ing prime-time coverage.

Rom­ney also focused Wednes­day on inter­est paid on the national debt, a sub­ject he hasn’t reg­u­larly dis­cussed in his stan­dard cam­paign speech. His com­ments came after a Wash­ing­ton Post poll showed the fed­eral debt and deficit are the one set of issues where he has an advan­tage over Obama with likely voters.

Romney’s run­ning mate, Paul Ryan, took a sharper approach. He told radio host Sean Han­nity that Obama was using hol­low tac­tics to paint his oppo­nents as evil.

“He’s basi­cally try­ing to say ‘If you want any secu­rity in your life stick with me. If you go with these Repub­li­cans they’re going to feed you to the wolves. It’s going to be a dog-eat-dog soci­ety,’” Ryan said.

In recent weeks, Rom­ney has lost his polling edge on the econ­omy gen­er­ally, with more peo­ple say­ing they now trust Obama to fix the nation’s eco­nomic woes.

Fight­ing back, new Republican-leaning inde­pen­dent groups jumped in Wednes­day with adver­tis­ing aimed at vot­ers who sup­ported Obama in 2008 but are unde­cided now. The com­mer­cials join those from the cam­paigns and out­side groups swamp­ing a nar­row and pos­si­bly shrink­ing map of com­pet­i­tive states.

“I will say that as time pro­gresses, the field is look­ing like it’s nar­row­ing for them,” said Psaki, the Obama cam­paign spokes­woman. “In that sense, we’d rather be us than them.”

The pres­i­dent, though, did have his own ups and downs.

Air Force One aborted its approach into Toledo because of bad weather, forc­ing the com­man­der of the pres­i­den­tial plane to cir­cle the airfield.

The sec­ond try was a suc­cess with­out incident.

Posted by AP News on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.