Friday, April 27, 2012LORDSTOWN, Ohio – Clad in the United Auto Workers jacket her late husband, Grady, wore, Elaine Price recalled the pride he had in being an employee at General Motors Co.'s Lordstown plant, where he worked in the shipping and receiving department.
"He was a very proud autoworker and he believed strongly in American-made products, and especially what General Motors was producing out here," she recalled today, just a day before the one-year anniversary of his death.
Price, a co-chairwoman of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, joined local Democrats and auto industry supporters in the Obama campaign's latest effort to hammer the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, on what they see as a key vulnerability, his opposition to federal intervention four years ago on behalf of GM and Chrysler.
The Obama supporters gathered at a parking lot near the Magna Seating plant, which manufactures seats used in the Chevrolet Cruze, built at the nearby Lordstown GM plant, for the final stop of the Obama campaign's "Made in Ohio" auto industry tour.
Obama "stood tall" despite opposition reflected in polls and from pundits and Republicans like Romney, "and made the right decision to step in and allow the companies to restructure," Price said. The president "kept his feet on the ground and he told us that he had faith in the U.S. autoworker," she said.
The line of attack is a familiar one for Democrats. For months, long before Romney essentially wrapped up the GOP nomination this week, local, state and national democrats have hammered the former Massachusetts governor for his opposition to the federal government's intervention on behalf of the auto industry. As Exhibit A in their case, Obama supporters cite an op-ed piece by Romney that appeared in The New York Times headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
Romney "would have let this industry go by the wayside along with thousands of Ohio jobs," she said. "Who knows what would have happened to their livelihoods, our communities, and our state's economy if the auto industry just ceased to exist."
The economic downturn three years ago cost the nearby Magna plant 300 union and nonunion jobs and brought the plant down from three shifts to one, said Kevin Scott, shop chairman for UAW Local 1112 at the plant. The plant now is back up to more than 300 workers.
The president's efforts "kept us working, kept our families working," Scott said.
"He's for everyone and he wants everyone to be treated fairly and have a fair shot at the things in life that they want," he said.
Obama "is the type of man who is for all of the people," Price remarked. "He's not just for some of the people."
What Romney doesn't understand, argued Jim Graham, UAW Local 1112 president and a familiar face at Democrats' anti-Romney events, is that had General Motors filed for bankruptcy without the benefit of the government aid it received, the automaker's failure would have triggered a collapse of the supplier network all the automakers rely on – not just Ford and Chrysler, but the transplants as well.
The federal government's stake in GM, once at 61%, is now down to 26%, Graham said. The government will get its money back "with a profit," he said.
"The bottom line is our president had enough courage to support us. That's why we support President Obama," he said.
“Remarkably, President Obama’s allies have attempted to justify his $80 billion auto bailout," responded U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-3 Ohio, in a statement issued by the Romney campaign.
The president's "mismanagement of the process cost the American taxpayers $23 billion," he added. "In the process, 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions." Romney "will make decisions based on what’s best for the economy and for American workers, not based on political favoritism and backroom deals,” he said, referring to what critics see as favoritism shown to union auto workers in the restructuring.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.