Presidential candidates focus on Ohio college vote

DAN SEWELL

Asso­ci­ated Press

CINCINNATI — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and GOP vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Paul Ryan headed back to school Wednes­day in the stepped-up com­pe­ti­tion for col­lege vot­ers in swing state Ohio.

Ryan, a grad­u­ate of Miami Uni­ver­sity in Ohio, had a rally at Bald­win Wal­lace Uni­ver­sity near Cleve­land. Obama had an evening rally sched­uled at Ohio Uni­ver­sity in south­east­ern Ohio.

Ohio Uni­ver­sity will be the fifth Ohio col­lege the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent has vis­ited in less than a month.

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney and Ryan also have recently vis­ited sev­eral Ohio cam­puses. Last week­end, Rom­ney had a rally at Shawnee State Uni­ver­sity, while Ryan tail­gated with Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity foot­ball fans and then spoke at Youngstown State. Ryan, a Wis­con­sin con­gress­man, made his alma mater in Oxford one of his first stops after being named as Romney’s run­ning mate, and he also vis­ited with fans at the Miami-Ohio State foot­ball game in Colum­bus soon afterward.

Exit polling in 2008 indi­cated Obama won two-thirds of the vote among college-age adults as he car­ried Ohio, a state expected to be close this year and pos­si­bly cru­cial to win­ning the White House. Under­scor­ing the impor­tance of Ohio and its col­lege vote, Obama offi­cially kicked off his re-election cam­paign in May at Ohio State University.

In a return visit to OSU last week, Obama urged stu­dents to take buses pro­vided for them at the rally to go to early vot­ing loca­tions, say­ing: “Every­thing we fought for in 2008 is on the line in 2012.”

But the Rom­ney cam­paign thinks it will make inroads with young vot­ers this year, and a cam­paign offi­cial said it is well-organized on cam­puses across the state.

“We are mak­ing a huge push on the cam­puses,” said Scott Jen­nings, Romney’s state cam­paign direc­tor. “This is a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment for Obama than it was in 2008. The econ­omy is sput­ter­ing along, and these col­lege kids know they are about to grad­u­ate into a world that may not have a job for them.”

Obama cam­paign offi­cials say they are well-positioned on cam­puses. They say the pres­i­dent has been get­ting enthu­si­as­tic crowds, with stu­dents wait­ing for hours to see and hear him.

Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati stu­dent body pres­i­dent Lane Hart recalled that the cam­pus excite­ment in 2008, when Obama spoke at a huge UC rally, “was really pal­pa­ble.” But Hart, who said he is impar­tial on the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, dis­puted that stu­dents aren’t as inter­ested in this year’s race.

Hart, a 22-year-old Lewis­burg native who majors in infor­ma­tion sys­tems and finance, pointed to an enthu­si­as­tic, larger-than-expected turnout Tues­day night at a cam­pus cen­ter to watch the sec­ond pres­i­den­tial debate. Orga­niz­ers were kept busy adding hun­dreds of chairs for arriv­ing stu­dents, with more than 500 on hand by the time it started.

“I would say more young peo­ple are engaged,” he said. “I think every­one here under­stands the impor­tance of Ohio; and Cincin­nati, Hamil­ton County and the young vote. I sense a feel­ing of duty and responsibility.”

First-year Ohio State stu­dent Emily Rees of Cha­grin Falls said she has been push­ing her fel­low stu­dents to vote, even if they dis­agree with her sup­port of Obama.

“I’m like: ‘Lis­ten, you need to vote. It’s your duty to your coun­try.’ Obvi­ously, I want the pres­i­dent to win. ‘Like, I don’t care who you vote for, but it’s your voice. You just need to vote,’” she said.

Despite the abil­ity to vote early, she’s going to wait until Nov. 6 to cast her bal­lot for pres­i­dent for the first time.

“I just want to be caught up in the elec­tion crazi­ness,” said Rees, 18, dual-majoring in music edu­ca­tion and Russian.

Posted by AP News on Oct 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.