GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — The discouraging new unemployment numbers present President Barack Obama with a sobering reminder that an uneven recovery from the recession can be a fragile argument for his re-election. It’s all deepening his anxiety over the political and economic threat posed by the European debt crisis.
BOSTON — A battle over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional.
EUCLID — Targeting middle-class voters, President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled a sweeping $25 million, nine-state ad campaign whose centerpiece is a commercial portraying him as the steward of an economic comeback and confronting Republican criticism that recovery has sputtered on his watch.
APPLETON, Wis. — Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney on Friday defended his personal wealth amid intensifying criticism from his main GOP rival and President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, unlikely allies working to portray the former businessman as out of touch with most Americans.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — When Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum calls President Barack Obama “a snob” for wanting all Americans to attend college, he may be out of step with the public’s overall view of higher education.
MIAMI — Cheered by new polls, Mitt Romney is all but predicting victory in Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary. Newt Gingrich is looking past Florida to regroup, vowing he won’t stay buried long.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — In mailboxes across South Carolina in 2007, likely Republican voters received a Christmas card signed by “The Romney Family” with a quotation from a 19th century Mormon leader suggesting God had several wives. Mitt Romney’s campaign, just a few weeks away from the 2008 presidential primary in a state where evangelicals look skeptically on the former Massachusetts governor’s Mormon faith, condemned the bogus card as politics at its worst. The sender never took credit. And it was just another anonymous shot in the endless volleys of nasty campaigning in South Carolina.
WASHINGTON — What gives? Some of Mitt Romney’s rivals are waging a fierce attack that you’d never think would come from the mouths of Republicans who claim Ronald Reagan as their hero. They’re blasting the GOP front-runner for aggressive, wealth-creating business tactics.