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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (30233)	2/18/2004 2:58:04 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793696

In Ohio, A First Strike By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 18, 2004; Page A10 President Bush's reelection campaign moved deeper into its general-election playbook yesterday and launched a preemptive defense of his economic record in Ohio ahead of a visit by his likely opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). The decision reflects the Bush campaign's growing concern about Ohio, a state he won by 4 percentage points in 2000 but is among the hardest hit by job losses. The move is the latest of near-daily signs Bush's campaign is engaging Kerry as if he were the Democratic nominee. Labor Department figures show that in 2003, Ohio was second only to another swing state -- Michigan -- in number of jobs lost. In January, Michigan was first and Ohio second in the number of jobs lost in the previous month. Ohio reporters jammed a conference call that the Bush-Cheney campaign set up yesterday with Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who began by saying he wanted to "set the record straight" about how Bush's economic policies have benefited the state. Portman said the state's jobs picture is "trending upwards" and "looks like it's going in the right direction." Echoing a White House refrain, he said, "This is exactly the wrong time for us to be raising taxes." Kerry says he would roll back Bush's tax cuts only on people making more than $200,000 a year. Ohio will hold its Democratic primary March 2, part of Super Tuesday. Kerry plans to hold a town hall meeting on jobs and the economy in Dayton today, then appear at a union hall in Columbus. The most recent Bush figures in the Ohio Poll, taken by the University of Cincinnati's Institute for Policy Research, found that his job-approval rating in the state fell 22 points between April, when Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collapsed, and October. The Buckeye State is a closely watched barometer in presidential elections because its trends tend to mirror those of the nation, and no Republican has been elected president without carrying it. Bush has visited the state 14 times as president, most recently as his first stop after last month's State of the Union address. "He's been here so many times that someone joked that he could get residency," Portman said. "He will be back a lot." Portman said he has been part of four previous presidential campaigns in the state, and that the Bush-Cheney ground operation is by far the most extensive. The campaign announced last week that it has chairmen in all 88 of the state's counties. As a measure of the aggressive tactics planned by both parties, the call was arranged by the campaign's rapid-response operation, even though it occurred before Kerry was in the state. Portman said that, with the news coverage of the Democratic primaries, he was concerned "we weren't necessarily getting our message out as to what the president has done to improve the economy here in Ohio." "I thought that in the absence of that, that you all would be forced just to write about John Kerry," he said. Moments after Portman rang off, Kerry's campaign held a rebuttal conference call with Democratic mayors from Cincinnati and Toledo, who said they had not seen the signs of recovery the congressman was heralding. Ryan J. Barilleaux, chairman of the political science department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, said Bush has "a lot of ability to win the state." But he added that if one of the candidates establishes a clear lead nationally, "Ohio's going to be with that candidate." © 2004 The Washington Post Company