Welcome to the Business Journal Archives
Search for articles below, or continue to the all new BusinessJournalDaily.com now.
Search
Democrats Celebrate Ohio Giving Obama His Victory
NILES, Ohio –The fist pumped in the air and triumphant war whoop by U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan at 11:13 p.m. perfectly captured the mood in McMenamy’s Banquet Center last night as MSNBC called Ohio for President Obama, putting the Democrat over the 270 votes needed to defeat Republican Mitt Romney and claim a second term in the White House.
Hugs, cheers and chants of "four more years" filled the hall, circled by television screens, where Trumbull County Democrats gathered to watch the election results.
“It’s unbelievable. There’s a lot of people out there who worked really, really hard to overcome the money and nonsense that goes into these campaigns,” exclaimed Ryan, D-17 Ohio. “You may not like everything he’s done, but he was there for us when we needed him with the auto industry. He was there when we needed tariffs on Chinese steel. [There are] 1,700 families in my congressional district that won’t have to go bankrupt because they lost their health care. … These elections have consequences and this is just an amazing night.”
Ryan also was pleased to see the re-election of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who he called “a great friend of the Mahoning Valley,” over state Treasurer Josh Mandel. Brown “has been front and center for our community the entire six years,” he said. Brown is on the Senate Appropriations Committee and Ryan is hopeful that he would get reappointed to the House Appropriations Committee so they could further collaborate to advance local interests.
The awarding of Ohio’s 18 electoral votes to provide Obama the win confirmed weeks of prognostications about Ohio’s importance in Tuesday’s balloting.
“We were happy that Ohio put him over the top and happy to be part of Ohio putting him over the top,” said David Betras, chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, who stopped by the celebration shortly after Ohio was called for Obama.
The president slightly increased his 2012 margin in Mahoning County compared to 2008, up to 63% of the vote this year, 1% higher than 2008. In Trumbull County, Obama received 60% of the vote, about the same as 2008. To see vote totals in all 88 Ohio counties, CLICK HERE.
Ryan, who handily defeated Republican challenger Marisha Agana, garnering 72.47% of the vote in the newly drawn 13th District, pointed to Obama’s focus on issues such as the rescue of the automobile industry and “the renaissance of the Mahoning Valley” as the keys to the president’s performance here, which helped contributed to his statewide victory over Romney. Obama received over 63% of the vote in Mahoning County and just over 60% of the vote in Trumbull County.
The auto rescue, the new V&M Star mill, which the president is credited with assisting through the stimulus bill, tariffs on Chinese pipe imports, and the new National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute “drove the energy but then it got into the ground game,” with the Obama for America campaign and members of labor unions going door to door, the congressman continued.
“We poured our hearts and souls out into this campaign because we knew that we had a president who believed in us, a president who was going to do the right thing for working men and women and labor unions across the country, and we prevailed today,” said Gary Steinbeck, sub-district director of the United Steel Workers.
“It shows that it’s not about money or ads. It’s about a strong ground game and it’s about a strong message,” affirmed state Sen. Capri Cafaro, D-32 Hubbard, who won election to a second full term Tuesday. “We’ve seen a strong night for Democrats across the country and I think it’s because no one ever took anything for granted. They really went through with going door-to-door and house-to-house and call-to-call, and I think it paid off.”
“It was the most sophisticated campaign I’ve ever seen in my 13 years in politics but you’ve got to have the issues,” Ryan said. “You’ve got to have the issues, you’ve got to have the candidate and then it feeds into the organization, and fortunately this time we had both.”
The federal assistance to General Motors and Chrysler, credited with preserving jobs at the GM Lordstown plant, which now is running three shifts, was a “cornerstone issue” for the president in the Mahoning Valley as well as across the state, Cafaro agreed. “The ‘auto bailout’ is truly what resonated with the people of Ohio,” as well as the state’s unemployment rate, which is running below the national average.
By the same token, Romney’s stance on the auto issue -- from his 2008 op-ed piece, in which he advocated the carmakers go through a structured bankruptcy with loan guarantees rather than the direct federal aid that was provided by the Obama administration, to recent ads implying that GM and Chrysler were adding jobs in China at the expense of American workers -- damaged the Republican nominee in the state, the Democrats agreed.
When the epilogue of the race is written, the op-ed piece will be known as “the sandstone around [Romney’s] neck, and he flip-flopped on the issue and then he lied about the issue and Ohioans knew better,” Betras said. The ads were “grasping for straws” and “dishonest.”
“Anytime someone misrepresents the facts, it’s never good,” Cafaro stated.
Obama volunteers and supporters were equally enthusiastic about Obama's victory.
"I'm just so excited," said Tina Wilkerson of McDonald, who volunteered for the campaign for the past two months. She said she found Obama "more in touch with everything" and his plans were more reasonable.
"We're hard-working people and we need somebody in that seat to look out for us and make sure that hard-working people get exactly what they deserve," said Fetima Vogle of Warren.
Romney supporters in Ohio left little question regarding their feelings about the president’s reelection or the kind of cooperation he may expect to receive.
In his statement thanking voters for electing him to a second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Bill Johnson, R-6 Ohio, who with more than 53% of the vote against Charlie Wilson, said he would do “just what we outlined in this campaign: fight burdensome government regulations, fight to repeal Obamacare and strengthen and preserve Medicare, give small business owners the tools they need to create jobs, and reign in out-of-control government spending.”
Gov. John Kasich, who faces voters in two years, congratulated the president and wished him well in a second term but lamented the outcome for Romney, who "poured his heart and soul into this race,” he said.
Romney’s ideas are “the ones we need to pursue in order to get Ohio and the nation moving again," Kasich said. "In the coming months I hope the president and Congress can come together behind the kinds of jobs-friendly ideas we so desperately need. If they can I think they will find support -- especially among governors -- for bipartisan, common sense solutions to our debt, deficit and economic problems, as we did in 1997 when we balanced the federal budget. These problems are too big to fall victim to any more partisan paralysis and too big to let fester any longer. Working together we can tear down the barriers to growth that are holding Ohio and America back."
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.