Obama pressures Romney to break his Mourdock ties

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama waves to sup­port­ers dur­ing a cam­paign rally in Byrd Park in Rich­mond, Va., Thurs­day. The pres­i­dent is on the sec­ond day of his 48 hour, 8 state cam­paign blitz. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

JULIE PACE, STEVE PEOPLES

Asso­ci­ated Press

CINCINNATI — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, seek­ing to shore up sup­port among women, inten­si­fied his pres­sure Thurs­day on Mitt Rom­ney to break any ties with a Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­date who said that if a woman becomes preg­nant from rape it is “some­thing God intended.” Rom­ney ignored the emo­tional social issue, hold­ing to an opti­mistic cam­paign tone as he fought for vic­tory in cru­cial Ohio.

Obama, wrap­ping up a 40-hour bat­tle­ground state blitz, also headed to his home­town of Chicago and cast his bal­lot 12 days before Elec­tion Day. The stopover was more than a photo oppor­tu­nity — it was a high-profile attempt to boost turnout in early vot­ing, a cen­ter­piece of Obama’s strategy.

The 2012 pres­i­den­tial con­test was expected to cross the $2 bil­lion fundrais­ing mark Thurs­day, putting the elec­tion on track to be the costli­est in his­tory. It’s being fueled by a cam­paign finance sys­tem vastly altered by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of “super” polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees that are bankrolling TV ads in closely con­tested states.

Back on the cam­paign trail, the pres­i­dent made repeated, though indi­rect, ref­er­ences to Indi­ana Repub­li­can Richard Mourdock’s con­tro­ver­sial com­ment on rape and pregnancy.

“We’ve seen again this week, I don’t think any male politi­cians should be mak­ing health care deci­sions for women,” Obama told a crowd of about 15,000 on an unsea­son­ably warm fall day in Rich­mond, Va. The president’s aides pressed fur­ther, using a web video to high­light Romney’s endorse­ment of Mour­dock and to accuse the GOP nom­i­nee of kow­tow­ing to his party’s extreme elements.

Rom­ney, who appears in a tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ment declar­ing his sup­port for Mour­dock, brushed aside ques­tions on the mat­ter from reporters through­out the day. He cen­tered his efforts instead on turn­ing his campaign’s claims of momen­tum into a more prac­ti­cal — and ulti­mately nec­es­sary — roadmap to win­ning the required 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes. Ohio is cru­cial to that effort.

“This elec­tion is not about me,” Rom­ney told 3,000 peo­ple at a south­ern Ohio man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany. “It’s not about the Repub­li­can Party. It’s about Amer­ica. And it’s about your fam­ily.” To an esti­mated 12,000 peo­ple at a high school foot­ball sta­dium in Defi­ance, Ohio, the Repub­li­can declared Thurs­day night: “We have a big elec­tion, and we want a pres­i­dent who will actu­ally bring big changes. And I will and he won’t.”

Rom­ney has dis­avowed Mourdock’s com­ments, but his cam­paign says he con­tin­ues to sup­port the Indi­ana Republican’s Sen­ate candidacy.

Less than two weeks from Elec­tion Day, both can­di­dates fever­ishly cam­paigned across the coun­try in an exceed­ingly close race.

Opin­ion polls show Obama and Rom­ney tied nation­ally. A new Asso­ci­ated Press-GfK poll of likely vot­ers had Rom­ney up 47 per­cent to 45 per­cent, a result within the poll’s mar­gin of sam­pling error. But the race will really be decided by nine or so com­pet­i­tive states: Ohio, Florida, Vir­ginia, North Car­olina, New Hamp­shire, Iowa, Wis­con­sin, Nevada and Colorado.

The urgent task for both cam­paigns is to cob­ble together wins in enough states to cross the 270 threshold.

Obama advis­ers have iden­ti­fied at least three viable options. Win­ning Ohio, Iowa and Wis­con­sin would put him over the top, as would win­ning Ohio, Iowa and Nevada. A five-state com­bi­na­tion of Iowa, New Hamp­shire, Wis­con­sin, Nevada and Col­orado would also seal the deal for the president’s re-election.

Romney’s team has yet to pub­licly out­line any spe­cific path­ways to 270. With­out a win in Ohio, how­ever, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee would have to sweep every other com­pet­i­tive state.

That real­ity was the moti­va­tion behind Romney’s day­long swing through three Ohio cities Thurs­day. Obama fin­ished his day in Ohio, too, with a 12,000-person rally on an air­port tar­mac — the final stop on his marathon, two-day drive for votes.

“Even though I’ve been going for about 38 hours straight, even though my voice is get­ting kind of hoarse, I’ve still got a spring in my step because our course is right, because we’re fight­ing for the future. I’ve come to Ohio today to ask you for your vote,” said Obama, speak­ing against the back­drop of Cleveland’s sky­line and Air Force One.

An upbeat Rom­ney pro­claimed his cam­paign had the momen­tum head­ing into Elec­tion Day. But there were signs in Ohio, as well as Vir­ginia, that his surge fol­low­ing the first debate might have run its course.

In Ohio, inter­nal Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign polls this week showed Obama with a lead, just out­side the mar­gin of sam­pling error.

The race in Vir­ginia remains close. Rom­ney has estab­lished a slim lead, but the shift toward him seen dur­ing the three weeks of debates has slowed or stopped, inter­nal polls from both par­ties showed.

Rom­ney is hop­ing to boost his elec­toral prospects in part by cut­ting into Obama’s long-standing advan­tage with women. The AP-GfK poll sug­gested that effort was bear­ing fruit, with Rom­ney eras­ing the president’s 16-point advan­tage among female likely voters.

Obama advis­ers insist they’ve lost no ground with women. But their eager­ness to high­light Romney’s con­nec­tions to Mour­dock indi­cated some degree of ner­vous­ness within the campaign.

Romney’s cam­paign reached out to female vot­ers Thurs­day by send­ing Ann Rom­ney on daytime’s “Rachael Ray” show, where she pre­pared her meat­loaf cakes recipe and took cam­eras along on a trip to Costco to shop in bulk for fam­ily gath­er­ings. Mrs. Rom­ney said that, with 30 mouths to feed, her fam­ily always eats buffet-style and that “Mitt is often at the front of the line.”

The Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee also faced fresh scrutiny of his busi­ness record Thurs­day fol­low­ing the release of newly unsealed tes­ti­mony related to Sta­ples founder Tom Sternberg’s divorce. Doc­u­ments show Rom­ney said he was ini­tially skep­ti­cal of the idea for Sta­ples, the office sup­ply chain he lauds as a busi­ness suc­cess story that he helped create.

Rom­ney also acknowl­edged in tes­ti­mony in Mass­a­chu­setts pro­bate court in 1991 that he and other Sta­ples direc­tors cre­ated a spe­cial class of com­pany stock for Stemberg’s then-wife as a “favor” to Stem­berg, who was a speaker at the August Repub­li­can con­ven­tion. Through­out the cam­paign, Rom­ney has described Sta­ples as a “great Amer­i­can suc­cess story” and took credit for its growth to a mega-firm employ­ing nearly 90,000 workers.

Robert Jones, an attor­ney for Rom­ney, rejected the notion that Rom­ney under­val­ued Sta­ples stock to help Stemberg.

While the cam­paigns speed ahead, about 7.2 mil­lion peo­ple already have cast early bal­lots, either by mail or in per­son, accord­ing to the United States Elec­tions Project at George Mason Uni­ver­sity. In all, about 35 per­cent of the elec­torate is expected to vote before Elec­tion Day. That would be a small increase over 2008.

“I’m told I’ll be the first sit­ting pres­i­dent to take advan­tage of early vot­ing,” Obama said in an email to sup­port­ers, urg­ing them to cast their votes before Nov. 6.

As the cam­paign enters its final days, both sides are focused on win­ning the increas­ingly nar­row sliver of unde­cided vot­ers. Obama made a per­sonal appeal to late-deciding vot­ers Wednes­day in a con­fer­ence call from Air Force One. His cam­paign is also mail­ing unde­cided vot­ers copies of a new 20-page book­let fea­tur­ing Obama’s second-term agenda, a col­lec­tion of poli­cies that have been pre­vi­ously introduced.

The president’s cam­paign also trum­peted the endorse­ment by for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell, a Repub­li­can who sup­ported Obama in 2008. Pow­ell praised Obama’s han­dling of the eco­nomic recov­ery, telling “CBS This Morn­ing,” ”I think we’ve begun to come out of the dive and we’re gain­ing altitude.”

Else­where Thurs­day, GOP vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Paul Ryan show­ered atten­tion on Vir­ginia, telling vot­ers in Appalachian coal coun­try that win­ning a close race won’t be enough for the GOP ticket.

“The worst thing that could hap­pen is Pres­i­dent Obama gets re-elected and we have more of the same with a debt cri­sis,” Ryan said. “The sec­ond worst thing that could hap­pen is we get elected by default, with­out a mandate.”

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden took time off the cam­paign trail to attend a prayer ser­vice for for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. George McGovern.

Posted by AP News on Oct 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.