Obama Courts Veterans’ Votes with Outreach Campaign
Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Obama is making a targeted effort to court the votes of military veterans and their families, believing the constituency is in play for November and could make a difference in key battleground states.
The Obama campaign Thursday kicked off a grassroots organizing effort — dubbed “Veterans and Military Families for Obama” — led by retired Naval officer and Iraq war veteran Rob Diamond.
“It’s no secret to anyone where our military bases are in this country and where our veterans and military communities are located,” Diamond said of the strategy on a conference call with reporters. “And the goal of our program is to mobilize and energize and activate those folks where they live.”
“Obviously, a state like Virginia is a critically important state with a large military presence, and that’s where our veterans and military families live, states like North Carolina and a state like Florida,” he said.
Obama lost the veterans’ vote in 2008 to John McCain (himself a veteran), 55 to 45 percent. But campaign officials now believe that changing demographics in the country and the military, coupled with Obama’s record on veterans issues, could give him an edge.
“We’re going to break down that mythology about the military voting history and veteran voting history,” Diamond said.
The campaign is highlighting Obama’s support for the post-9/11 GI Bill, tax credits for businesses that hire veterans, public-private partnerships to boost veteran employment, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as foreign policy achievements like ending the war in Iraq and killing Osama bin Laden.
Central to the pitch to veteran voters is first lady Michelle Obama, who appears with the president in a web video announcing the political outreach effort. She has spent the past few months traveling the country to mark the one-year anniversary of her Joining Forces initiative, which promotes support for veterans and their families.
The White House and Obama campaign have insisted her efforts have had no ties to politics. “Obviously the first lady’s Joining Forces effort is part of her initiatives at the White House and not linked to the campaign,” campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Thursday.
But the president himself suggested that his wife’s advocacy is a part of his pitch for a second term.
“There’s nothing I take more seriously than my responsibility to those who sacrifice their own safety to defend ours,” Obama says in the video. “That’s why Michelle and I have made supporting veterans and military families a top priority from the start.”
The president’s backers say “tens of thousands” of veterans have already enlisted with the Obama campaign group.
“They’re stepping up because they know voters will face a clear choice in November,” said Delaware Attorney General, Army veteran and son of the vice president, Beau Biden. “Veterans know the vision and leadership we need in a commander-in-chief and they know the stakes and the consequences of sitting on the sidelines and would wake up on the morning after election day would be too late.”
The campaign has been sharply critical of Romney on veterans issues, claiming that his support of the House Republican budget would mean veterans programs would be cut by $11 billion a year. They also say he would reduce veterans health care benefits by privatizing the system, pointing to the governor’s November 2011 suggestion that benefits could be delivered as vouchers.
Romney allies have pointed to his record as governor of Massachusetts as evidence that he would be a staunch advocate for veterans and their families. They also say his economic policies would do more to boost economic status of veterans overall.
Veterans “are not being well served today because of some of the policies in place under the Obama administration,” said former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi, who served in the Bush administration and is a Romney supporter.
“Today, we see a significantly higher unemployment rate amongst those young men and women who are coming home and can’t find meaningful jobs. And it impacts their well being; it impacts their mental health which is another area that they are not being well served,” he said.
The unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan was 9.2 percent in April, according to the Labor Department. Among all veterans, the jobless rate was 7.1 percent.
The national unemployment rate was 8.1 percent during the same period, the government reported.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney, Billionaire Joe Ricketts Disavow Plan to Tie Obama to Jeremiah Wright
Joe Raedle/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Reports of a plan to air attack ads against President Obama by rehashing ties to his former pastor, the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, quickly drew the condemnation Thursday of presumed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Joe Ricketts, the money man reported to be considering the plan.
Romney on Thursday disavowed the conservative group that The New York Times said had planned to possibly bankroll the ads.
“I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they’ve described,” Romney told the conservative website Townhall.com. “I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity, particularly for those in the middle class of America.”
The Times reported Thursday that a $10 million plan developed by “a group of high-profile Republican strategists” and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, will seek to link “Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.”
“The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,’” the Times reported.
But a statement released on behalf of Ricketts argued that the Wright plan was only one being considered by the PAC. Brian Baker, president of the Ending Spending Action Fund, said Ricketts is an independent who is focused on fiscal policy to help defeat President Obama.
“Not only was this plan merely a proposal – one of several submitted to the Ending Spending Action Fund by third-party vendors – but it reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take,” according to the statement released by Baker.
“Mr. Ricketts intends to work hard to help elect a president this fall who shares his commitment to economic responsibility, but his efforts are and will continue to be focused entirely on questions of fiscal policy, not attacks that seek to divide us socially or culturally.”
Romney said if anyone is guilty of launching personal attacks, it is the Obama campaign, which he accused of “character assassination” against him.
“I think what we’ve seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination,” he added. “I hope that isn’t the course of this campaign. So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they’re thinking about….It’s interesting that we’re talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]; I hope people also are looking at what he’s doing, and saying, ‘Why is he running an attack campaign? Why isn’t he talking about his record?’”
Prior to the candidate’s own remarks about the report, first reported by The New York Times, Romney had told the media aboard a charter flight that he had yet to read the papers and couldn’t comment.
Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, also issued a statement distancing the campaign from the unaffiliated GOP group and arguing that Romney would run his campaign based on issues, unlike, according to Rhoades, the Obama campaign.
“Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” Rhoades said in an email statement. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney” and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
Prior to Romney’s interview with Townhall, the Obama for America campaign accused Romney of “falling short” in his campaign’s response.
“This morning’s story revealed the appalling lengths to which Republican operatives and SuperPacs apparently are willing to go to tear down the President and elect Mitt Romney,” it said in a statement Thursday. “The blueprint for a hate-filled, divisive campaign of character assassination speaks for itself. It also reflects how far the party has drifted in four short years since John McCain rejected these very tactics. Once again, Governor Romney has fallen short of the standard that John McCain set, reacting tepidly in a moment that required moral leadership in standing up to the very extreme wing of his own party.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney: Bain Attacks Part of Obama’s "Character Assassination" Attempt
Ethan Miller/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Mitt Romney said Thursday that he is “disappointed” in President Obama’s campaign for being “focused on character assassination,” specifying that he considers the president’s attacks on his career at Bain to be an attempt to make him appear to be “not a good person or not a good guy.”
“I have been disappointed with the president’s campaign to date, which is focused on character assassination,” said Romney. “I just think that we’re wiser to talk about the issues of the day, what we do to get America working again, talk about our respective records.”
When asked to specify what he considers to be a character assassination, Romney pointed to the recent advertisement released by the Obama reelection campaign that pegged him as a “job destroyer” for his time at Bain Capital.
“Obviously his efforts to look at my work at Bain is to try to characterize me in a way that isn’t accurate,” said Romney. “My effort at Bain Capital, as you know, was in effort case designed to make the enterprises we invested in more successful, to grow them.”
“There’s this fiction that some have that somehow you can be highly successful by stripping assets from enterprise and walking away with lots of money and killing the enterprise. There may be some people who know how to do that. I sure don’t,” said Romney. “And the purpose of the president’s ads are not to describe success and failure but to somehow suggest that I’m not a good person or not a good guy and I think the American people will know better than that if they don’t already.”
Romney, referring to a New York Times report Thursday morning that detailed the plans of a conservative group to develop an ad that would link Obama to the controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., said that he saw glimpses of character assassination in that ad, too.
“Having a campaign focused on character assassination is one of the things I find offensive among many others in the PAC description that came in the New York Times,” said Romney.
“If that’s accurate, why, that’s something I repudiate,” said Romney.
Romney also revealed that his own campaign plans to release a television ad in the next few days that will be positive.
“I certainly hope that you get a chance to see our first ad, that’ll come up in I think a couple of days, it will be a positive ad on what I would do if I were president,” Romney said. “It’ll be contrasting with the president’s ad, which again is a character assassination ad.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
McCain Adviser: Fred Davis ‘Requires Round-the-Clock Adult Supervision’
ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Fred Davis, the GOP media guru who pitched the attack ad campaign against President Obama focused on Rev. Jeremiah Wright, describes John McCain in the document as a “crusty old politician who often seemed confused, burdened with a campaign just as confused…”
Davis was a media consultant for McCain’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, having come up with the “celebrity” ad that generated some buzz, and an attack ad focused on Wright that McCain refused to green-light. But he retained his relationship with the Senator and came up with the media for McCain’s successful Senate re-election campaign in 2010, including the “complete the dang fence” ad.
Mark Salter, a close friend and top adviser to McCain, says of Davis, “Fred is a creative guy, but he requires round-the-clock adult supervision. If you take your eyes off him for a moment, you’re chasing demon sheep, witches and the yellow peril.”
Salter was referring to Davis ads for ultimately unsuccessful Republican candidates: one for GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina that depicted a primary opponent as a “demon sheep”; one for GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell in which she denies being a witch; and one for Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Pete Hoekstra that uses some unfortunate images.
Davis could not be reached for comment, but he has said, “If I picked what’s on my tombstone, it would be: ‘If you don’t notice it, why bother?’”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Tsunami Debris Cleanup: Lawmakers Frustrated Over Lack of Plan
Sankei via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — A set of lawmakers on Capitol Hill expressed frustration Thursday that states, not the federal government, will have to deal with the majority of clean-up when marine debris from last year’s tsunami in Japan hits the West Coast.
During the first hearing on tsunami debris held by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard Thursday, David Kennedy, Assistant Administrator for NOAA’s National Ocean Service, outlined the agency’s efforts to handle the debris, which includes developing models to predict the track of the debris to conducting marine debris surveys in impacted areas over the next two years.
But Kennedy also admitted states will have to assume the majority of debris clean-up responsibilities, a suggestion with which the chair of the subcommittee took issue.
In the 2012 fiscal year, NOAA’s Marine Debris Program received $4.6 million, but President Obama’s 2013 fiscal year budget proposed a 25 percent cut to the program.
“I think we should be discriminating in terms of what’s essential as a priority, and obviously this is a priority and we should have some pre-planning and some forethought involved knowing that the bulk of this degree is going to occur presumably in 2013 and 2014,” Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said. “Here we are facing reductions in the very program that’s going to be essential. Ok, well obviously it doesn’t make sense, and that’s something that needs to be remedied.”
The government of Japan estimated last year’s tsunami swept 5 million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean. Over half of the debris sank near the coast of Japan, but 1.5 million tons of debris are still floating and while some of the debris is expected to break down, it is still expected that some products, including lumber, plastics and vessels, will hit the coasts of the United States in the next two years. Kennedy said experts say it is highly unlikely the debris is radioactive, but there is a possibility for hazardous items to drift ashore.
“I’m definitely going to react when thousands of cans of hazardous materials wash ashore and they have things like rat poisoning and gas in them. We are going to react,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said.
In early April, a “ghost ship” set adrift by last year’s tsunami in Japan surfaced off the coast of Alaska and eventually sank in the Gulf of Alaska after a Coast Guard cutter fired at it. Earlier this month, a Harley Davidson that was swept away by the tsunami washed up on the shores of Canada.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney to ‘Repudiate’ Any GOP Shots at Obama’s Character
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Mitt Romney’s campaign manager said the campaign would “repudiate any efforts on our side” to run “a campaign of character assassination” after a New York Times story revealed on Thursday the possibility of a group of conservatives bankrolling ads that would link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
“Unlike the Obama campaign, Gov. Romney is running a campaign based on jobs and the economy, and we encourage everyone else to do the same,” Matt Rhoades said in an e-mail statement Thursday. “President Obama’s team said they would ‘kill Romney’ and, just last week, David Axelrod referred to individuals opposing the president as ‘contract killers.’ It’s clear President Obama’s team is running a campaign of character assassination. We repudiate any efforts on our side to do so.”
The Times reported Thursday that a $10 million plan developed by “a group of high-profile Republican strategists” and Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, will seek to link “Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.”
“The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an ‘extremely literate conservative African-American’ who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a ‘metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,’” the Times said.
Romney was asked about the story on a charter flight between Miami and Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday morning, declining to comment and instead saying that he had yet to read the papers on Thursday, according to Bloomberg News.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney’s April Fundraising Haul Nearly Matches Obama’s
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) — Mitt Romney’s around-the-clock fundraising schedule seems to be paying off — literally.
Romney, with the help of the Republican National Committee, raised $40.1 million in April — nearly matching the $43 million raised by President Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the same month — proving the strength of his fundraising campaign since essentially clinching the nomination.
The fundraising numbers, expected to be released formally by the campaign Thursday morning, were first reported by The New York Times and later confirmed by ABC News.
The April haul far exceeds the money the presumptive GOP nominee raised in March — just $12.6 million — and clearly shows the boost the campaign got from joining forces with the RNC to develop a Victory Fund, which allows donors who have already maxed out to Romney to then give more money — and in larger amounts.
Romney, a multi-millionaire, has still not given any of his personal fortune to his campaign, which will report Thursday morning that it has $61.4 million in cash on hand.
Romney’s fundraising schedule has undoubtedly ramped up since joining forces with the RNC in early April, but the candidate spent only the later half fundraising with the Victory Fund — the first two fundraisers officially organized by the committee not occurring until April 15 in Florida. Since then, Romney has maintained an aggressive fundraising schedule.
On Wednesday alone, Romney is said to have raised more than $4.3 million at two fundraisers in South Florida. The candidate has two more fundraisers in the Sunshine State on Thursday, and has held several earlier in the week.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Senators to Unveil ‘Ex-Patriot Act’ in Response to Tax ‘Scheme’
Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again.
In September 2011, Saverin relinquished his U.S. citizenship before the company announced its planned initial public offering of stock, which will debut on Friday. The move was likely a financial one, as he owns an estimated 4 percent of Facebook and stands to make $4 billion when the company goes public. Saverin would reap the benefit of tax savings by becoming a permanent resident of Singapore, which levies no capital gains taxes.
At a news conference Thursday morning, Sens. Schumer and Bob Casey, D-Pa., will unveil the “Ex-PATRIOT” (“Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy”) Act to respond directly to Saverin’s move, which they dub a “scheme” that would “help him duck up to $67 million in taxes.”
The senators will call Saverin’s move an “outrage” and will outline their plan to re-impose taxes on expatriates like Saverin even after they flee the United States and take up residence in a foreign country. Their proposal would also impose a mandatory 30 percent tax on the capital gains of anybody who renounces their U.S. citizenship.
The plan would bar individuals like Saverin from ever reentering the United States again.
“Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Tom Goodman, Saverin’s spokesman, told Bloomberg News in an email.
Last year 1,700 people renounced their U.S. citizenship.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
House, Senate Unanimously Reject Obama Budgets — Or Do They?
Hemera/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The White House on Wednesday reacted to news that representations of President Obama’s budget had been voted down by the House and Senate by decrying the introduction of the amendments, by Republicans, as “gimmicks.”
“Gimmicks are not solutions,” White House press secretary Jay Carney emailed to ABC News. “The American people overwhelmingly support a balanced approach to our long-term budget challenges. That’s the approach the President supports. The sooner Republicans drop their intransigence and join the American people in supporting a balanced approach, the sooner Congress will be able to come together and reach a compromise.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Miss., introduced a budget amendment representing the president’s budget request; the Sessions amendment was voted down 99-0.
A similar effort from Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-SC, was rejected in the House 414-0.
Sessions told reporters that it was “stunning” that no one voted for the version of the Obama budget he put forward.
“A sitting president of the United States, seeking reelection, can’t lay out a plan that will gain a single vote in the House or Senate for the financial future of America,” he said. “It speaks volumes
While the Sessions and Mulvaney bills put forward the same topline numbers as those in the president’s budget, neither offered any specifics. The Sessions legislation was 56 pages long; actual budgets are closer to 2,000 pages long.
Thus, a White House official said, the Sessions proposal was a “shell that could be filled with a number of things that could hurt our economy and hurt the middle class. For example, rather than ending tax breaks for millionaires his budget could hit the revenue target by raising taxes on the middle class and rather than ending wasteful programs, his budget could hit its spending target with severe cuts to important programs.”
“This is the president’s budget,” said the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad of South Dakota, indicating the voluminous budget proposal Obama offered. “This is what Sen. Sessions has presented as being the president’s budget,” he said, indicating the much slimmer document.
“I think it’s readily apparent there is a big difference between the president’s budget, which I hold in my hands, and what Sen. Sessions has presented as being the president’s budget. This is not the president’s budget. So, of course, we’re not going to support it. It’s not what the president proposed,” Conrad continued.
The White House official said the Sessions and Mulvaney’s bills were mere GOP stunts to get Democrats on record opposing “the president’s budget” as well as distracting from what the House Republican budget would do, which the official described as “protect(ing) massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires while making the middle class and seniors pay.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
House Passes Violence Against Women Act
Architect of the Capitol(WASHINGTON) — The House voted Wednesday evening to approve the Republican version of the Violence Against Women Act, also known as VAWA, 222-205. The bill would have failed had it not won the support of six Democrats.
Twenty-three Republicans voted against the bill with most of the House Democratic Caucus.
House Speaker John Boehner said that the legislation provides the tools necessary “to prevent these crimes from occurring, protect the victims of these crimes when those efforts fail, and bring those responsible to justice.” He urged the Senate to work out the differences with the GOP bill in a timely manner in order to get a final bill to the president.
“In the 18 years since the Violence Against Women Act was first enacted, Congress has twice acted in a broad, bipartisan fashion to reauthorize the law. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats are, by their own admission, attempting to exploit the issue in hopes of generating ‘fodder’ for election-year campaign ads,” Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote in a statement after the vote. “It is not only a cynical ploy, but a dangerous one for those depending on the resources and protections provided under the law.”
Vice President Joe Biden also released a statement following the vote, contending that the GOP’s version, which the White House has threatened to veto, “will roll back critical provisions to help victims of abuse.”
“I urge Congress to come together to pass a bipartisan measure that protects all victims,” Biden stated. “VAWA has been improved each time it’s been reauthorized, and this time should be no different.”
One key disagreement was over a provision for Native Americans that was included in the Senate legislation. The GOP legislation enables battered Native Americans to file in U.S. District Court for a protection order against an abusive spouse, whether Indian or not, who commits abuse on Indian land. The White House and other Democrats prefer the Senate’s version, granting tribal courts the ability to prosecute offenders — a provision Republicans believe is unconstitutional. Current law prevents non-Indians from being prosecuted by tribal courts for crimes committed on tribal land, as decided by the Supreme Court in 1978.
The Department of Justice recommended changing the law to give tribal courts jurisdiction, but the Republican bill does not go that far.
“The Senate version extends new protections to Native Americans and to all who are targeted, regardless of sexual orientation,” Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said on the House floor before the vote. “Isn’t that our value, to protect every individual? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all individuals are endowed by their creator.’ Shouldn’t we protect all individuals? Not exclude some?”
With two different versions having passed each chamber of Congress, lawmakers will have to come together to reconcile the differences between the two bills.
The six Democrats voting with the GOP majority were Reps. John Barrow of Georgia, Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Jim Matheson of Utah, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney Spokesman Throws a Question at Biden During Dinner Run-In
ABC News(STEUBENVILLE, Ohio) — One of Mitt Romney’s spokesmen, in Ohio to attend Vice President’s Joe Biden’s speech Wednesday in nearby Youngstown, Ohio, got some unexpected one-on-one time with the veep that evening when he was seated next to him at dinner, where he apparently proceeded to drill him on his position on coal production.
Romney spokesman Ryan Williams told ABC News that he went to find a restaurant in Steubenville, Ohio, after the Biden event and came across Maples Spaghetti House. He and his dinner partner, Romney’s Ohio State Director Chris Maloney, walked into the restaurant, where they got swept by Secret Service, which Williams said tipped him off to Biden’s impending arrival.
Williams said he was seated at the “first available table” in the dining room when, moments later, Biden came down and sat at the table right next to him. Williams promptly tweeted a photo.
After a brief photo-op with the traveling press, Williams said a staffer leaned over to Biden and whispered something, prompting the vice president to summon the Romney spokesman over to his table.
“Oh, there’s Ryan,” Williams recalled Biden saying. “He pointed me out and called me over, and we exchanged pleasantries.”
According to Williams, while there was no mention of Romney, Biden did ask if he’d like to join his table so he’d have a better chance of eavesdropping.
Williams said he asked the vice president why he was in coal country, challenging him on his support of the coal industry. According to Williams, Biden refused to answer when he asked the vice president why he believes coal is more dangerous than terrorism.
“He disagreed with that and didn’t want to answer my questions,” said Williams, who added that Biden was “very cordial” and “seems like a nice man.”
After the exchange, Williams said he returned to his table and Biden was relocated to another area of the dining room.
Amy Dudley, Biden’s press secretary, also tweeted a photo of the run-in with the message, “So nice of @RyanGOP to join us for dinner at Naples Spaghetti House in Steubenville.”
Ben LaBolt, a press secretary for the Obama reelection campaign, seemed less amused in his tweet, writing to Williams, “Staffer apparently doesn’t believe the press is capable of asking questions, shouts his own at the candidate. #classy.”
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who was dining with Biden, told the Columbus Dispatch that Biden didn’t seem put off by Williams’ questions.
“The vice president did not seem to be the least bothered by it,” Strickland told the paper. “I wasn’t bothered by it, I didn’t perceive it being out of line in any way or inappropriate in any way. I think politics can be fun and enjoyable. They can be a little spicy at times.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Obama Aide Admits Bain Attacks on Romney Haven’t Stuck
Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Alex Wong/Getty Images(CHICAGO) — A top Obama campaign strategist made a surprising admission Wednesday about Democrats’ efforts to undermine Mitt Romney’s economic chops: they haven’t worked.
“No one has a good understanding of what Mitt Romney’s economics are or what Mitt Romney’s business experience really was,” said deputy Obama campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on a conference call with reporters.
She was asked to explain why the former governor and private equity executive holds an edge over Obama in some public polling on who Americans believe would better improve the economy.
“In a rare moment of candor a few months ago, Mitt Romney admitted that his job was not about job creation, it was about wealth creation,” Cutter said. “So, what we have been doing today, and all week, is explaining that that ‘wealth creation’ came at a price.”
“I think that over time people will become aware of these things,” she added.
Democrats have spent months hammering Romney’s economic record as governor of Massachusetts, his lack of transparency with tax returns and his business dealings at Bain Capital — through online and TV ads, social media campaigns, and local and network news interviews. The problem, she said, is that a clear message has yet to break through.
The Obama campaign is amplifying their case about Romney this week, through a coordinated TV ad campaign, a tour by Vice President Joe Biden through Ohio, and other public events in key states featuring laid-off workers from former Bain-owned companies.
And aides appear to be trying to further simplify their message — avoiding the nuances of the practices of private equity — casting Romney as a ruthless wealth seeker, not a job creator.
“You can take it from me: Mitt Romney is no job creator. He was a corporate raider. He tried every way possible to create profits for himself and his buddies instead of trying to create jobs for American workers,” Cutter said.
She underscored later, “As the CEO of Bain, Romney’s first priority was creating wealth for himself and making return on his investment for his investors, not building companies that created jobs for hard-working Americans. As president Romney would do the same.”
And again, hammering the same point home: “As a corporate buyout specialist like Mitt Romney…was very successful at one thing: creating wealth for himself and his investors, getting a return for that investment. He wasn’t successful at ensuring that people get to keep their jobs.”
The question now is whether persuadable voters are listening, and agree.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Even with Calculators, Senate Still Comes Up with Zero on the Budget
Photodisc/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Despite beginning the day with a vote permitting the use of calculators on the Senate floor, Wednesday turned out to be less than productive for the U.S. senators.
The Senate spent the whole day Wednesday, with over six hours of straight floor speeches, debating five non-binding budget resolutions that everyone knew in advance would not pass. And, no surprise, none of them passed — not by a mile.
For Republicans, it was about making a point that the Democrat-led Senate has not produced a budget. So they brought five of their own budget proposals to the floor to offer a direct comparison.
“If you’re looking for a simple three-word description of the Democrats’ approach to the problems we face, it’s this: duck and cover,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday on the floor of the Senate. “By the end of the day, we’ll know whether there is a budget that Washington Democrats support, and the American people will know without a doubt who is voting for solutions in this town and who isn’t. They will know who has got a plan to fix the mess we’re in and who doesn’t.”
Senate Democrats cast the day as a display “to waste a day with political show votes on stunt budgets.” Democrats say they already have a legally binding budget, the Budget Control Act, that is sufficient.
“They don’t mind wasting a day of the Senate’s time on useless political showboats. Republicans can say over and over they are only forcing votes on Republican budgets today because Democrats failed to pass their own budget. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., rebutted Wednesday. “In August, Congress passed and President Obama signed a budget that reduces the deficit by more than $2 trillion…28 Republican senators, including my friend, the Minority Leader, voted for the last legally binding budget.”
Five versions of the Republicans’ proposals were voted on, all far from passing in the Democratically controlled Senate.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., based his proposal on an interpretation of President Obama’s budget, which failed badly, not receiving a single vote at 0-99. Republicans immediately jumped on this as unanimous rejection to the president’s own budget.
And the House of Representatives’ Paul Ryan’s budget failed by a vote of 41-58.
The back and forth over the existence or non-existence of a budget is nothing new around Capitol Hill. But in an election year, the votes Wednesday will provide both sides with fresh political ammunition in the key fight over deficits, debt, and which party has the upper hand in the economic recovery of the nation.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Joe Biden Lays Into Romney, GOP: ‘They Don’t Get Who We Are!’
Joe Raedle/Getty Images(YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio) — At a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio, Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden lit into Republicans and their presumed presidential nominee Mitt Romney for what he described as a failure to understand the plight of the middle class.
“I resent when they talk about families like mine that I grew up in. I resent the fact that they think we’re talking about envy: it’s job envy, it’s wealthy envy; that we don’t dream,” an impassioned Biden told a crowd of manufacturing workers.
“My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be president of the United States, that I could be, I could be vice president! My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could be a millionaire! My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams!
“They don’t get us! They don’t get who we are!” he yelled before the crowd, drawing loud applause.
Biden was referring broadly to Republican criticism of the administration’s push for higher taxes on wealthier Americans and expanded investment in federal programs aimed at boosting low- to middle-income families.
The vice president argued for a populist vision — “Obama economics” — that “believes everyone deserves a fair shot, a fair shake, and everybody should play by the same rules.”
“Then there’s the Romney philosophy,” he said. “The Romney economics which says as long as the government helps the guys at the top to do well, workers and small business communities, they can fend for themselves but the country will be OK if the big guy is doing well.”
For the first time, Biden directly and publicly critiqued Romney’s business record at Bain Capital, claiming it illustrates a worrisome approach to running the U.S. economy.
“By the way, Romney raised this. We didn’t raise this. He says it’s his business experience. So let’s take a hard look at that business experience,” Biden said. “In the 1990s there was a steel mill in Kansas City, Mo. It had been in business since 1888. When Romney and his partners bought that company, eight years later that company was in bankruptcy.”
The case of GST Steel and its 750 laid-off workers is featured in an Obama campaign TV ad running in Ohio and four other states during Wednesday night’s network evening newscasts. Romney had left Bain by the time the company went bankrupt, but he retained a financial stake in the firm, which profited from the GST deal.
“Of course, they don’t mention a couple of other things, one is we were able to create over 100,000 jobs, and secondly on the president’s watch about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry and auto dealers and auto manufacturers,” Romney said in a Wednesday interview. “So you know, he’s hardly one to point a finger, and oh by the way, he has no problem, he has no problem going out and doing fundraisers with Bain Capital and private equity people.”
Biden’s event was the first stop on a two-day campaign swing through eastern Ohio, a critical general election battleground.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Herman Cain Evolves, Endorses Mitt Romney
Ethan Miller/Getty Image(WASHINGTON) — Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain formally endorsed Mitt Romney for president of the United States Wednesday, telling reporters that he was making the endorsement now “for unity” within conservative circles because “in order to win, we have got to rally around our nominee.”
“This is about unity and, today, I want to formally endorse Gov. Mitt Romney for president of the United States of America,” Cain said Wednesday afternoon on Capitol Hill. “It is clear that Gov. Mitt Romney’s going to be the Republican nominee and so I wanted to formally endorse him today for president of the United States of America.”
Cain said that while many conservatives “may not be as excited” about the primary process or Romney’s candidacy, the country is at a turning point and must elect a Republican.
“Gov. Romney gets it right on the big issues,” he said. “President Obama gets it wrong on all of the big issues. That’s why we have got to have a different occupant of the White House.”
Asked why voters should listen to his latest endorsement after he initially signaled support for “the American people” and then Newt Gingrich, Cain attempted to poke fun at President Obama’s evolution on gay marriage.
“My endorsement evolved,” he said to laughter. “Early in the process is one thing, but as we converge toward the convention, what we did earlier isn’t as relevant. It wasn’t a matter of changing my mind.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney’s Dog On The Roof Story Gets Book Tour
Darren McCollester/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — That infamous and seemingly immortal tale of Mitt Romney crating his dog on the roof of his car during a 14-hour road trip has already weaseled its way into the narrative of the 2012 campaign and is now splashing its way onto America’s bookshelves.
The Romney family’s now-deceased Irish setter Seamus’ story is being cemented in history in a 64-page satirical book, Dog on the Roof, set to be released June 19.
And while the story has already incited pet lovers, pestered the presidential candidate and punctuated attack ads, a national book tour devoted solely to propagating the decades-old event will likely reinvigorate the Seamus saga, which Romney has tried to put to sleep.
“Now for the first time, here is the completely true—and only mildly embellished— shaggy-dog story of Seamus Romney,” reads the books description. “It is the inside (well . . . overhead) look at the Man Who Would Be President and the wild ride that’s sweeping—and bewildering—the nation.”
The authors, political satirists and frequent contributors to NPR’s All Things Considered Bruce Kluger and David Slavin, declined ABC’s request for comment.
The book is the latest edition to a growing grassroots advocacy movement using the Seamus story to point out Romney’s “overall appearance of meanness,” as Sean Crider, the founder of Dogs Against Romney, said. “It’s a character illuminating anecdote about Romney for a lot of people,” Crider said. “A lot of people are just pure dog lovers and see what he did as being abusive; others see it as a little window about what kind of guy he is.”
Romney’s treatment of Seamus represents a “pattern” of “meanness” from Romney, he said, that is amplified by the recent controversy over his high school bullying and his comments that he “likes being able to fire people.”
Crider, who is promoting the Dogs on the Roof book to the 55,000 Dogs Against Romney Facebook followers, said the book “makes Romney look silly.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Osama Bin Laden Compound Model on Display at Pentagon
Luis Martinez/ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Turning a lot of heads Wednesday in a Pentagon hallway is the once-classified scale model of Osama bin Laden’s compound used to plan last year’s Special Forces raid.
It marks the first public display of what was once Ameria’s most secret scale model.
Hundreds of civilian and military employees at the Pentagon spent time Wednesday gawking at a temporary display that includes the tabletop model of the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that bin Laden used as his hideout for five years.
Under a glass canopy is a model built by National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency (NGA) model makers who used overhead satellite imagery to create a 3-D view of the compound in painstaking detail. The agency manages the network of intelligence gathering satellites and distributes that information throughout the national security apparatus.
A NGA fact sheet vaguely refers to the model as having “traveled extensively, including to the White House for use at senior-level briefings.”
As the intelligence community began to suspect that bin Laden might be hiding out in the compound, the model was built to help President Obama and the limited number of top officials briefed on his potential whereabouts so they could visualize what they were seeing on satellite photos.
Built over the span of six weeks, the styrofoam model was made to scale and shows the walls and infrastructure inside the compound’s walls. Every shrub and piece of ivy lining the walls seen in the satellite pictures is accurately represented in the model. The model’s scaling is one inch represents 7 feet.
“Model making is one example to replicate what people are seeing from imagery,” said Karen Finn, a spokesperson for NGA. She said the model is one of several built by the agency to help senior administration officials, as well as military personnel involved in the planning and carrying out of last year’s raid on the compound.
“That’s what we do at NGA,” said Finn. “We provide geospatial intelligence information on all sorts of national security issues.”
Because operational and planning details for last year’s raid were some of the most tightly held secrets in the U.S. government, the model was a closely held secret. Information about the bin Laden compound was so tightly held that analysts at various intelligence agencies knew only the compartmentalized information they were supposed to know. It’s likely that the NGA model makers had no idea that the model they built was housing the most wanted man on the planet.
The model has now been declassified and since last October has been on display in the lobby of the NGA’s headquarters in Virgina. But you can only visit that facility if you’re conducting business so Wednesday’s display marks the first time it’s been publicly displayed at the Pentagon.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Obama Pushes ‘To-Do List’ For Congress
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Obama is urging lawmakers to put politics aside and act on his “handy to-do list” for Congress in order to sustain the economy’s momentum.
“One of the ways we can sustain momentum is for Congress to take some actions right now — even though it’s election season, even though there’s gridlock, even though there’s partisanship — take some actions right now that would really make a difference,” the president told small business owners during a visit to a local D.C. sandwich shop Wednesday morning.
President Obama called for lawmakers to pass legislation that would give small businesses a 10 percent income tax credit for hiring new employees or raising the salaries of existing employees, one of the five items on his wish list for Congress. The president’s action plan revolves around a series of economic initiatives he has been pushing for months, but that have gained little traction on Capitol Hill.
“My message to Congress… is let’s go ahead and act to help build and sustain momentum for our economy. There’ll be more than enough time for us to campaign and politick. But let’s make sure that we don’t… lose steam at a time when a lot of folks like these are feeling pretty optimistic,” Obama told the small group gathered at Taylor Gourmet.
The president made his pitch ahead of his White House meeting with Congressional leadership Wednesday afternoon. In addition to urging the leaders to act on his economic proposals, the president said he was “going to offer them hoagies while they’re there.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Romney Won’t Name Bush When Talking about Debt Crisis
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.) – Never once mentioning President George W. Bush by name, or acknowledging that the former president endorsed his candidacy Tuesday, Mitt Romney spent the morning in Florida railing President Obama for not doing enough to solve the debt crisis he inherited from his “predecessor.”
“I love this country as I know you do, but I’m concerned about this country. I’m concerned about the debt. I’m concerned about the spending,” said Romney, who is on his first public campaign swing in the battleground state since winning the primary here in January. “I find it incomprehensible that a president could come to office and call his predecessor’s record irresponsible and unpatriotic and then do almost nothing to fix it.”
Bush told ABC News Tuesday, as an elevator door closed, “I’m for Mitt Romney,” joining the rest of his family in backing the presumptive GOP nominee. But since then the Romney campaign, and now the candidate, has remained mum on the endorsement.
Instead, Romney mentioned Obama’s “predecessor,” insinuating Bush, no fewer than five times in talking about the debt crisis.
“[Obama] was very critical of his predecessor for the debts his predecessor put in place,” said Romney. “And sure it’s true you can’t blame one party or the other for all the debts this country has, because both parties in my opinion have spent too much and borrowed too much when they were in power. But he was very critical of his predecessor because the predecessor put together $4 trillion of debt over eight years. This president however – oh by the way, he said that doing that was unpatriotic, irresponsible and unpatriotic. And he said he would cut the debt in half if he became president.”
“Instead he doubled it, alright, he doubled it,” said Romney.
The National Debt shot up nearly $5 trillion during the Bush administration, and has increased by about the same amount under the Obama administration, according to the Treasury Department. The debt, however, was greatly affected by the onset of the recession, which began during the Bush administration.
Romney made no mention of his own economic background – or his years at Bain Capital – during his remarks Wednesday.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Boehner Presses Obama for Presidential Plan to Avert Fiscal Crisis
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — As congressional leaders prepare to meet with President Obama at the White House on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said he will urge the president to put forward his own ideas to deal with a range of economic obstacles staring down lawmakers later this year.
“It’s time for us to deal with the big issues that are affecting our country and our society,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill. “We’ve spent enough time playing small ball.”
Closed-door negotiations to reach a “grand bargain” between Obama and Boehner to deal with the debt and the deficit failed last year, but the problems have not gone away. Congress is expected to raise the debt ceiling sometime after the November election.
Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will all join Obama for a meeting in the president’s private dining room on Wednesday to discuss their legislative priorities.
The speaker told reporters that he will push the president to present his own alternatives to extend the current tax rates, replace the defense sequester and rein in the country’s debt.
“Where is the president’s plan to tackle our looming debt crisis?” Boehner asked. “Where’s the president’s plan to stop the largest tax increase in American history from occurring on Jan. 1? Where is the president’s plan to replace these indiscriminate cuts to our military, which will devastate their ability to keep America secure?”
Despite ratcheting up the rhetoric that’s critical of the president over the past month, such as complaining that Obama has diminished the office of the presidency, the speaker said he expects a productive conversation with the president.
“It’s not a personal issue. The president and I, as you well know, we get along fine,” he said. “But he has issues with what I believe and frankly I’ve had some issues about what he believes in.”
Boehner said that the debt crisis “is standing in the way of a lot of employers hiring new people” because “no one knows what the tax rates are going to be in January,” when numerous provisions are set to expire.
“[The tax code] causes business people and investors to sit on their hands because the picture is uncertain, and then when it comes to what’s going to happen to our military with these cuts in January, you can imagine that there are a lot of people concerned,” the speaker said. “The defense secretary has made clear that these cuts will devastate our ability to keep our country safe. The White House has admitted that these cuts will have a devastating impact on our military, so where is their plan? It’s as simple as that.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Deb Fischer Wins Republican Nomination in Nebraska Senate Race
Douglas Graham/Roll Call(WASHINGTON) — Mitt Romney picked up two more states on Tuesday, winning the presidential primaries in both Oregon and Nebraska. But the main focus that evening was on Nebraska’s Republican senate primary.
State Sen. Deb Fischer made a come from behind win to beat Attorney General John Bruning for a chance to occupy the senate seat being vacated this fall by Nebraska’s Ben Nelson.
Fischer, 61, was considered to be an underdog in the Republican’s senate primary battle. Bruning, 43, was seen as the frontrunner — he had higher name recognition than Fischer and his campaign far outpaced hers in terms of fundraising.
Fischer’s candidacy didn’t take off until late in the game, and for most of the primary season Bruning focused his attacks on Don Stenberg, who initially appeared to be his biggest challenger. The attacks lodged by Bruning and Stenberg likely ended up helping Fischer.
Texas Sen. Jon Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, released a statement congratulating Fischer on her victory.
“I congratulate Deb Fischer on winning the Nebraska Republican Senate Primary, and look forward to her election in November. The difference in this race couldn’t be more clear. Deb is a small business rancher, mother and conservative leader who believes we need to spend less, balance our budget and repeal ObamaCare, while her opponent supports bigger government and higher taxes” Cornyn said. “It’s time to restore fiscal sanity and enact pro-jobs policies in Washington and we can do that with Deb Fischer as the next U.S. Senator from Nebraska.”
Fischer will run against Bob Kerrey in the fall. The former governor and senator of the Cornhusker state officially won his party’s nomination on Tuesday, though he had been considered the likely nominee since he entered the race. Nelson, the state’s Democratic senator, announced he would not seek re-election in December 2011.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Obama, Dems Raise $43.6 Million in April
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — President Obama’s reelection campaign raised $43.6 million in April, the campaign announced Wednesday morning.
That’s down from the $53 million raised in March — the Obama camp’s best fundraising month of the cycle — but well above the $31 million Obama raised the same month four years ago.
The total reflects funds collected directly by Obama for America, the Democratic National Committee and two joint fundraising accounts. Combined, they have now raised nearly $400 million total for the 2012 campaign — on pace to hit their record-setting $746 million from 2008.
In a video posted online Wednesday, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina says more than 437,000 supporters donated last month, 169,500 of them giving for the first time.
He also points out that 98 percent of the donations received in April were less than $250, with the average donation being $50.23.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Poll: Views on Romney Policy Proposals Underscore Challenges
Joe Raedle/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — Two of Mitt Romney’s key campaign proposals fall short of majority approval, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, with swing-voting independents especially cool on his plan to repeal health care reform and evenly divided on his offer of a hefty tax cut.
Trimming taxes does better overall. Among all Americans, 48 percent of those surveyed express a favorable opinion of Romney’s proposal to reduce federal tax rates by 20 percent, while 39 percent see it unfavorably. His call to repeal the Obama health care law, for its part, gets a 40-40 split.
Neither proposal earns majority support in this poll, putting Romney in a similar bind as President Obama, with results that mark both candidates’ difficulties breaking beyond partisan and ideological boundaries to marshal majorities for their positions.
Independents, customarily a critical voting group in presidential elections, respond more unfavorably than favorably to Romney’s support for repealing the health care law, 47-33 percent. As noted, they only split evenly, 43-42 percent, favorable-unfavorable, on a tax plan.
Romney’s net score on taxes is similar to Obama’s — reported last week — on the auto industry bailout seen favorably by a 7-point margin; Obama also is +5 on greater regulation of financial institutions (albeit in a poll done before the JPMorgan derivative debacle).
Obama gets an even split both on his economic stimulus program and on gay marriage, much like responses to Romney’s proposed repeal of health care reform (albeit, in this case, with more undecided.)
There is, naturally, a political aspect to these opinions.
In an ABC/Post poll in March, Americans by 55-37 percent said they’d rather have the Supreme Court entirely reject the health care law than entirely uphold it. This poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, though, adds the direct partisan element of asking favorable or unfavorable views of Romney’s proposal to repeal the law. The 40-40 percent split on that question suggests that some are more ill-disposed toward Romney than they are toward the law.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Biden Pushes ‘Obama Economics’ in Ohio Swing
Joe Raedle/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Joe Biden kicks off a two-day campaign swing through eastern Ohio on Wednesday, pushing a populist economic message — dubbed “Obama economics” — that he’ll use to draw sharp contrasts between the president and Mitt Romney.
The vice president also plans to offer his first direct, public scrutiny of Romney’s record at the private equity firm Bain Capital, according to excerpts of his first speech in Youngstown released by the Obama campaign.
He will recount the case of GST Steel — the now defunct Kansas City, Mo., company that is also featured in the campaign’s latest TV ad, airing Wednesday in Ohio and four other states.
“He thinks that because he spent his career as a ‘businessman,’ he has the experience to run the economy,” Biden plans to tell a crowd at M7 Technologies, an advanced manufacturing facility. “So let’s take a look at a couple of things he did. He’s raised it. So let’s take a real hard look at it.”
GST Steel was acquired by Bain Capital in 1993, but went bankrupt in 2001 after being saddled with debt. Roughly 750 workers lost their jobs and retirement benefits, while executives and investors profited from investments. (Romney left Bain in 1999, but retained a stake in the company.)
“Romney made sure the wealthy played by a separate set of rules, he ran massive debts, and the middle class lost. And folks, he thinks this experience will help our economy?” Biden will say.
“Where I come from, past is prologue,” he will say. “So what do you think he’ll do as president?”
The Romney campaign has said GST was a single case and sought to highlight other positive examples of Bain investments, including the Indiana company Steel Dynamics, which continues to thrive.
Republicans also contend that Biden’s focus on Romney’s background in private equity is meant to be a distraction from the administration’s record on the economy, which is recovering sluggishly from recession.
Biden will claim credit for the recovery on the campaign trail, arguing in his remarks that the economy is “starting to come back.” But he focuses most of his attention on what he calls competing economic philosophies for the future.
“There’s Obama Economics, which values the role of workers in the success of a business, and values the middle class in the success of the economy,” Biden will say. “And then there’s Romney Economics, which says as long as the government helps the guys at the very top do well, workers and small businesses and communities can be left to fend for themselves.”
“Nobody knows better than the people of the valley the consequences of that kind of philosophy,” he will say. “You’ve been through hell and back.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Chris Christie Jokes About VP Spot in Web Video: ‘I Got This’
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie put on his acting hat and joked around about receiving a call from Mitt Romney about the vice president spot, saying, “I got this.”
The web video plays off of Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who is a vocal supporter of President Obama, and his recent displays of heroism, and features him swooping in to save the day while Christie stands idly by — from providing Bruce Springsteen with a guitar when his goes missing to fixing a flat tire for Christie, who curses Booker’s heroic antics each time, gritting his teeth as he says “Booker…”
But things turn brighter for Christie at the end of the video when Booker pretends to field a call from Romney asking him to consider a spot on his ticket. The Newark mayor tries to turn down the offer and Christie quickly intervenes.
“Governor, Governor Romney, yes, yes, that was me running into the fire. Yes, I do shovel snow as well. Yes, you’re very persuasive. But I’m not a number two guy. I’m not background singer. Mitt, sir, with all due respect, I know you need a big…” Booker says on the phone to Romney.
“Excuse me mayor,” Christie says. “I got this.”
“Christie…” Booker says.
Booker and Christie collaborated on the video for the New Jersey Press Association Legislative Correspondents Club Show.
Earlier Tuesday, Christie’s office released a preview clip of the video in which Christie laments the amount of times he’s asked questions about joining Romney on the GOP ticket this fall.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Obama Favored to Beat Romney, Despite Even Split in Support
Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Alex Wong/Getty Images(PRINCETON, N.J.) — A majority of Americans surveyed said President Obama would win re-election in November, according to a new Gallup poll released Tuesday.
The polling numbers — 56 percent for Obama, 36 percent for Romney — suggest that Democrats have more faith in their candidate than Republicans have in theirs. Among Democrats, 81 percent believe that Obama will win the election, while 68 percent of Republicans believe Romney will prevail.
More independents, 58 percent, chose Obama as the likely victor too, while 31 percent went for Romney.
How Obama comes out the favorite remains a conumdrum. A majority of polls so far has shown an even divide in support for the two candidates. The most recent Gallup tracking has Obama at 46 percent, and Romney at 45 percent — a statistical tie given the margin of error of +/- 2 percent.
History has proven more kind to incumbents than to challengers in presidential races. It’s been 20 years, when Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush in 1992, since a sitting president was voted out of office after one term.
Past Gallup polls have also given better odds to incumbents. In 2004, more Americans believed George W. Bush would win over John Kerry. In 1996, Gallup polling indicated that voters believed Clinton would defeat Bob Dole.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Republicans Attack Obama on Debt, Repeat ‘No Experience’ Accusation
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — In conference calls around the country Tuesday, the Republican National Committee attacked President Obama on the nation’s deficit, government spending, and the unemployment rate.
In calls with reporters all day in the battleground states of Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Colorado, Romney backers blasted the president for his “historic debt and deficit.” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called the president the “undisputed debt king of the last five presidents.”
Monday, the RNC released a Web video highlighting the same issue, with footage of the president promising to cut the nation’s deficit in half and pay it down. Tuesday, Romney campaigned in Iowa, pushing the same theme.
The goal is to keep the heat on the president and focus on the economy and try to keep the national conversation there instead of other issues that have come up, most notably Obama’s declaration last week that he supports same-sex marriage. Several supporters on the calls, including Nevada Rep. Joe Heck, called that nothing more than a “distraction.”
“Despite the fact that President Obama has repeatedly promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term,” Priebus said on the Missouri call, “we’ve seen the most rapid increase in debt under any U.S. president under this president…and by the time he’s finished President Obama will have added as much to the national debt as all of the predecessors before him combined.”
Although the lawmakers and backers on the calls were all different, the calls were similar and the message coordinated, lauding Romney for being a “turnaround artist” specializing in reviving struggling companies and chastising the president for “broken promises.”
While the debt has increased since Obama became president, his campaign cites record spending on the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which began while George W. Bush was president, and Bush’s tax cuts.
Priebus blamed the president’s health care plan and stimulus as reasons the debt has increased, calling them a “debt bomb” and saying “a guy like that needs to be held accountable.”
Florida Rep. Dennis Ross openly said the debt was the fault of both parties, but he criticized the president for not doing more.
“The president did not create our debt problem. I’ll be the first to admit that it has been a Republican and Democrat issue for the last 30 years at least, but the president has spent the last three years ignoring it,” Ross said on the Florida call. Romney will be in the state Wednesday campaigning in Saint Petersburg and holding a fundraiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Miami. Thursday he will campaign in Jacksonville.
The Virginia call, led by Romney delegate Barbara Comstock, who was a consultant on Romney’s 2008 campaign, was probably the most aggressive in comparing the nation’s economy to Greece and saying the president “simply has no experience,” a line used heavily in the last campaign.
Former Rep. Tom Davis, also on the Virginia call, touted Romney’s time working across party lines in Massachusetts, not something the campaign usually dwells on.
In response to the Republicans’ focus on the nation’s debt Tuesday and Romney’s speech in Iowa, the Obama campaign responded by saying his speech in Des Moines was “heavy on dishonest claims about President Obama’s record.”
“It was noticeably lacking in any mention of Romney’s own record of increasing spending and debt in Massachusetts and his failure to lay out a plan to pay for his $5 trillion tax plan,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement. “It’s not surprising why Mitt Romney consistently ignores his record as governor on the campaign trail — he raised state spending 6.5 percent each year and left Massachusetts with the largest per-capita debt of any state in the nation.
“And while President Obama has put forward a plan to reduce the national debt by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, Mitt Romney refuses to say what spending cuts or tax increases he’d make to cover the cost of giving $5 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. Mitt Romney simply wants to return to the same policies that caused the crisis and weakened the middle class: budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and letting Wall Street write its own rules.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Christie: No More VP Questions
Ramin Talaie/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is letting everyone know he’s tired of getting questions about whether he’ll be on Mitt Romney’s ticket this fall.
One of the reasons Christie is so widely known for both his tell-it-like-it-is style and humor is because of the YouTube videos his office has adopted as part of its messaging since he became governor in 2009. On Tuesday, his office was out with another.
In a new web video posted by his office, which ABC News obtained from Christie’s office but which was first reported by Buzzfeed, two of Christie’s aides — including Communications Director Maria Comella — are conspiring about ways to get his message out, deciding on more town halls.
Christie eavesdrops on their conversation and says to the camera, “More town halls? Are those guy kidding me? Easy for them to say. They never even show up at the town halls.”
“I can’t take one more question about flooding,” Christie said in the video. “I don’t want any more questions about being vice president. And these kids, these kids with all these questions. I can’t take it anymore. So no, they’re going to have to come up with something other than town halls. They have got to come up with some better ideas than that. I could maybe come up with something even bigger than that. I’ll come up with something.”
Christie is then seen walking out of the governor’s office and grabbing a fire extinguisher as the video ends and promises more to come. The New Jersey governor holds the town halls about once a week, and for those that attend them they will find a large amount of questions about flooding, students posing queries and the occasional vice presidential questions from the crowd.
It’s clear the video is supposed to be funny, as Comella almost always attends his town halls and Christie seems to relish the back-and-forth with fans and foes alike. But it’s just a preview. His office wouldn’t reveal more about the next video, which is expected to post Tuesday evening.
Christie’s blunt style led him most recently to tell a group of students that Mitt Romney might be able to “convince” him to be his running mate, even though he has often said his doesn’t want the number-two position.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
Article Cites Elizabeth Warren As First Woman of Color Hired by Harvard Law School
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) — A 1997 piece from the Fordham Law Review lists Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as the “first woman of color” hired by Harvard Law School, according to reports.
The article, which was unearthed by Politico, was titled “Intersectionality and Positionality: Situating Women of Color in the Affirmative Action Dialogue.” The author, Laura Padilla, who now serves as the associate dean of California Western Law School in San Diego, CA., reportedly based her description on a phone conversation with then-Harvard Law spokesman Mike Chmura.
There is no evidence that Warren was aware of the article — or that she necessarily ever read it.
Chmura is also the Harvard spokesman who described Warren as Native American in a 1996 Crimson article. Questions about Warren’s ancestry and whether her career benefited from it have sidetracked the Massachusetts Senate race for weeks.
Hard evidence of Warren’s Native American ancestry has so far not turned up. The New England Historic Genealogical Society found secondary sources tracing Warren’s heritage to her great-great-great-grandmother, who was listed as Cherokee on an 1894 marriage license application, but that document has yet to be located, the society told ABC News in an email.
Warren’s campaign issued a statement through spokeswoman Alethea Harney: “There is nothing new in this report. Elizabeth has been clear that she is proud of her Native American heritage and everyone who hired Elizabeth has been clear that she was hired because she was a great teacher, not because of that heritage.
“It’s time to return to issues — like rising student loan debt, job creation, and Wall Street regulation — that will have a real impact on middle class families. It’s also time for Scott Brown to answer serious questions about his votes to let interest rates on student loans double so our kids pay more while he votes to give oil companies — some of the most profitable companies in the world — tax breaks worth billions. There are plenty more, like his votes against jobs bills because they’d make billionaires pay their fair share, or his votes to water down rules to hold Wall Street accountable that have brought him millions in campaign contributions. Scott Brown’s explanation for these votes against Massachusetts families is long overdue.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio
George W. Bush: ‘I’m for Mitt Romney’
SAUL LOEB/AFP/GettyImages(WASHINGTON) — Mitt Romney has the support of former president George W. Bush.
“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News Tuesday morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, following a speech he gave on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.
Bush’s endorsement isn’t a surprise, given that Romney is virtually the Republican Party’s nominee. But the 43rd president has been absent from the 2012 campaign and hasn’t made any public comments showing his support for Romney.
Romney did get the backing of Bush’s parents, President George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush, in March.
People who worked in the Bush administration say they doubt the former president will be campaigning for Romney this year. Even in his post-presidential life, Bush still gets a lot of the blame for the poor economy, according to polls, though he has become more popular since leaving office.
Bush was speaking Tuesday at an event to promote the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s campaign for human rights activists around the world.
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