CINCINNATI, OHIO -- As President Obama tried to maximize the precious few stops he has left in crucial Ohio, his rally here Sunday night was full of musical interludes, but not without a few interruptions.

Taking the stage at the University of Cincinnati shortly after R+B superstar Stevie Wonder warmed up the crowd, the president was sidetracked by a lone protestor up in the rafters, who held a sign and yelled, his words loud but hard to make out.

“I guess y’all are still fired up,” Obama said as the crowd began a counter-chant of “four more years!” attempting to drown the heckler out.

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At first the president tried to soldier through and deliver his remarks over the protestor, but he finally gave in as the crowd cheered on state troopers who pried the man away from the balcony bars he had grabbed onto.

But it wasn’t over yet – there was still one more protestor who had to be removed from the arena.

“It’s okay folks. Everybody, it’s okay. We’re good,” Obama said before once again giving up until the cheering and shouting subsided.

Despite the dissonance at the beginning of his remarks, the rest of the president’s event was much more harmonious, given that Wonder played the president offstage to “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” – an Obama campaign favorite.

As the band struck up the first recognizable chords of the song, most of the 13,500 audience members started to dance and clap along.

Not even the president could resist – he was seen shuffling back and forth, modestly clapping to the beat.

After his event in Cincinnati, the president headed to Aurora, Colorado, where he would be joined by singer/songwriter Dave Matthews.

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The clock ticking down in this critical state, Mitt Romney spent his Sunday afternoon rally in Cleveland reaching out to the independent voters he'll need to claim victory on Tuesday, saying that President Barack Obama has refused to listen to voices like theirs.

“Four years ago, let’s look at the promises the president made. He promised to do so very much, but frankly he fell so very short. He promised to be a post-partisan president, but he’s been most partisan, he’s been divisive, blaming, attacking, dividing," Romney said. "And by the way, it’s not only Republicans that he refused to listen to; he also refused to listen to independent voices."

"You’ve watched what’s happened in this country over the last four years with an independent voice," Romney said. "You hoped that President Obama would live up to his promise to bring people together to solve big problems, but he hasn’t. And I will.”

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The calculated appeal to independents, similar in every recitation of the Romney closing argument, takes on additional importance here in Ohio, where a poll out this morning conducted by The Columbus Dispatch newspaper shows President Obama ahead of Romney, 50 percent to 48 percent, in the Buckeye state overall, helped by winning unaffiliated voters by ten points.

Romney advisers say their polling shows the former Massachusetts governor winning independent voters, and they argue that whoever wins independent voters almost certainly wins Ohio.

With that mindset, closing argument promises to focus on economic issues and to work beyond partisan boundaries are designed to resonate.

"I won't spend any of my efforts trying to pass partisan legislation that won't help with economic growth," Romney told the roughly 6,000 supporters who gathered to hear his remarks on Sunday afternoon.

Democrats have scoffed at Romney's claim of a record of bipartisanship, or that he would be better than President Obama at reaching across aisle. They cite that Romney issued more than 800 vetoes during his time as governor in Massachusetts, where the state legislature was overwhelmingly Democratic.

 

 

 

 

DEFIANCE, Ohio – Under the bright lights of a high school football field here in Northwest Ohio, Mitt Romney's opposition to the 2009 auto bailout reared its head again as a campaign issue that could help decide the result of this critical swing state.   

 Sen. Rob Portman, introducing Romney, brought up the bailout, telling a crowd of more than 10,000 supporters that "we need to talk about this tonight" in an effort to clear up what he said were dishonest attacks by the president at the last debate.   

"First, it was President Obama who actually took GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy. That’s a fact," Portman said. "Second, Mitt Romney did propose government help. He proposed government guarantees for loans. He proposed the government backing up the warranties, and folks, all the independent fact checkers who have looked at this agree: President Obama was wrong."

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Romney did not mention the bailout explicitly, but did voice his support for the U.S. auto industry, saying he would stand up to China on trade issues that affect auto companies and mentioning reports today that automaker Jeep was considering moving its operations entirely overseas.  

 "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers of this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America. I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win," Romney said.   

 Democrats quickly seized on any mention of the auto industry to reinforce Obama's bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, looking to capitalize on an issue they believe is particularly resonant among voters in this corner of Ohio.  

"While Barack Obama bet on the American worker and saved the American auto industry and more than one million jobs, Mitt Romney would have just ‘let Detroit go bankrupt.’ Voters in Ohio won’t forget how—at a make or break moment for one of America’s key industries—Mitt Romney would have turned his back and watched GM and Chrysler go under," Obama campaign spokesperson Lis Smith said in a statement.  

 The Obama campaign also forwarded reporters a statement from a Chrysler spokesperson claiming there were never plans to move assembly lines to China.   

“Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation,” Gualberto Ranieri, a spokesman for Chrysler said in the statement posted on the automakers' blog.

Coincidentally, after the Thursday night rally, a group of Detroit newspapers announced they would be endorsing President Obama, shredding Romney for his position in opposition to the bailout. 

 "It is an unforgivable and unconscionable [sic] position by a man with the audacity to claim himself a son of Detroit. Romney may have grown up here, but he left long ago," the editorial on MLive.com read in part.

All this serves to highlight how the auto bailout legacy continues to be a political minefield for Romney here in the industrial Midwest.  

 On Friday, Romney will return to safer ground in Iowa where he is scheduled to deliver a speech on the economy, debt and deficits, which could serve as a summation of his views on the election's most important issue as the campaign moves into its final full week.  

 

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Perhaps the most impactful part of President Barack Obama’s speech here Thursday night wasn’t anything he said, but how he arrived.

The presidential aircraft, Air Force One, taxied right up to a crowd of 12,000 at the Burke Lakefront Airport, easing to a stop in front of the podium.

After a dramatic few minutes when the crowd cheered on the plane itself, the president descended, breaking into a full jog to the stage, the words “United States of America” emblazoned on the aircraft behind him, gleaming in stark white and blue against the darkness of the night behind it.

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While such theatrics were an example of the power of the presidency, Obama’s hoarse voice proved that even presidents get run down sometimes – for example, after 48 hours covering eight states and catching a few hours of sleep on the plane – even if it is Air Force One.

“We’ve been going for two days straight, from the East Coast to the West Coast,” he told the crowd. “I’ve still got a spring in my step because our cause is right. Because we’re fighting for the future,” he continued.

The president hit some notes that he reserves for Ohio events, including a special focus on the auto bailout, popular with Ohio’s autoworkers, which his presidential rival Mitt Romney opposed.

“If Mitt Romney had been president when the auto industry was on the verge of collapse we might not have an American auto industry today,” Obama said. “The auto industry supports one in eight Ohio jobs. It’s a source of pride to this state. It’s a source of pride for generations of workers. I refused to walk away from those workers.”

After his speech, the president turned and got right back on his plane, and took off for the White House.

 

DAYTON, Ohio – Taking his campaign into car country, President Barack Obama touted his from-the-start support of the auto industry bailout, contrasting it with what he said was Mitt Romney’s shifting position on the issue.

Highlighting what is a popular topic in this swing state, where one in eight jobs is tied to the auto industry, Obama joked that his Republican opponent had “Romnesia” in Monday night’s debate when he said he would have helped car companies avoid bankruptcy during the 2009 auto crisis.

“If you said that you love American cars during a debate, you’re a car guy – but you wrote an op-ed titled, ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt’ – you definitely have a case of Romnesia,” Obama said as he spoke to a crowd of 9,500 at a public park here.

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Seeking to characterize his opponent as untrustworthy, Obama said, “Last night Gov. Romney looked you right in the eye, looked me in the eye, tried to pretend that he’d never said, ‘Let Detroit go bankrupt.’ Tried to pretend he meant the same thing I did when we intervened and worked to make sure management and workers got together to save the U.S. auto industry.”

“Pretended like somehow I had taken his advice,” Obama said.

But, he continued, “People don’t forget. The people of Dayton don’t forget. The people of Ohio don’t forget,” he said.

The president returned to the White House after his Dayton event; he heads Wednesday to Davenport, Iowa where he kicks off another two days full of campaign events.

 

 

Updated 10:07 a.m. - ATHENS, OH – Energized by a huge crowd and, likely, his improved debate performance against Mitt Romney Tuesday night, President Barack Obama went on an extended riff during remarks here about what he said was Romney’s inauthentic support for coal energy.

Noting that Romney praised coal during the debate at Hofstra University, Obama pointed out that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney appeared in front of a coal factory to criticize its high level of toxic pollution, saying, “that plant kills people.”

Obama said voters should be skeptical of Romney’s embrace of coal, mocking him as “running around talking like he’s Mr. Coal,” as a crowd of 14,000 at Ohio University cheered him on.

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“Does anybody ever actually look at that guy and think, man, he’s really into coal?” Obama asked the audience as he chuckled.

Obama then brought up an ad, released earlier this week, that showed Romney speaking to workers at an Ohio coal mine, saying the workers in the ad were forced to attend the August Romney event – which the mining company and some of the workers have refuted.

“Did you see when he was doing that ad, he was in front of all those guys – all these miners with hard hats. Find out later they had to come. Boss made them come. Come on, gotta be on the level if you want to be the president of the United States!” he exclaimed.

The Romney campaign responded to the president's remarks in Athens by releasing a statement from spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. "“As we approach Election Day, President Obama’s rhetoric and personal attacks will not mask a failed record that has left middle-class families hurting.  Under this President, permits for drilling on federal lands have declined, over one hundred coal-fired plants are schedule to close by the end of the year, and gas prices have more than doubled.  Mitt Romney has an all of the above energy strategy, which will create millions of jobs and put our nation on a course toward North American energy independence by 2020.”

Obama returned to the White House on Wednesday night. He heads to New Hampshire Thursday before taping "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" in New York City.

 

 

 

CLEVELAND, OH – Shortly after casting her ballot for her husband, first lady Michelle Obama visited Ohio to encourage voters in this critical swing state to follow her lead and vote for the president before Election Day.

"I'm feeling pretty fired up and ready to go, because this morning, let me tell you what I did – I cast my ballot for Barack Obama," the first lady told a cheering crowd at Cuyahoga Community College. "It felt so good. Right now my absentee ballot is on its way to my hometown, Chicago. That means we are one vote closer to re-electing my husband."

Before taking off for Ohio on Monday, Obama tweeted that she had just dropped her absentee ballot in the mail, and President Obama followed shortly with a tweet announcing that he would be voting on October 25. He'll vote in person in Chicago, giving cameras a chance to get a photo-op of him casting his ballot, even though it will be nearly two weeks before most of the rest of the country votes.

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Michelle Obama has been one of the campaign's chief advocates for mobilizing the Democratic base to vote early. Her campaign schedule has often been crafted to put her in swing states when early voting begins. Rallies – like an earlier event in Delaware, OH – end with transportation to a polling place. Like her husband, Michelle Obama has gotten to know Ohio well.

She was here on Oct. 2 when early voting began. After a rally in downtown Cincinnati, volunteers directed many of the 6,000 attendees to the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

On the stump, she calls early voting the campaign's "secret weapon."

From here, Michelle Obama heads to Chapel Hill, N.C. on Tuesday and to Wisconsin on Friday, both states that begin early voting this week.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Obama for America spokesperson Jen Psaki said they had a "superior" early voting effort compared with Mitt Romney's campaign. While both campaigns have pushed to bank votes before Nov. 6, Democrats have been most aggressive. In 2008, those who cast ballots before Election Day heavily favored Barack Obama.

"We want you all to vote early. We want you to think about voting early, whether it’s by mail, or in person, vote early,” she said. “Because if you vote early, then you can spend your time on election day getting everyone that you know out to vote."

Legal battles have yet to be resolved in the pivotal state of Ohio over early voting and how to deal with mishandled ballots.

The Republican-controlled state government is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Ohio to have two separate deadlines for early voting – Monday, Nov. 5 for members of the U.S. military and Friday, Nov. 2 for everyone else.

Last minute legal briefs were filed over the weekend, which means the justices could deliver a decision any day now.

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State Attorney General Mike DeWine must decide whether to pursue an appeal in a separate case, after federal courts ruled that the state is required to count votes cast in the wrong precinct.

Ohio, like 31 other states and D.C., allows early in-person voting in the days leading up to the general election. The Ohio legislature decided to adopt the practice after the state's disastrous experience of 2004, when voting machine breakdowns and other problems caused people to stand in line for as long as 12 hours on election day.

In 2008, roughly 1.7 million Ohio residents voted early, making up about 30 percent of the total turnout. About 100,000 of those votes were cast during the final three days before the election.

But legislative changes to Ohio's election procedures in the last two years produced an apparently unintended consequence. The deadline for early voting was changed to the Friday before the general election, barring counties from allowing in-person voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before Election Day.

Separate legislation on procedures for members of the U.S. military inadvertently set two deadlines for them – both the Friday and the Monday before the election. The Ohio secretary of state then ordered local election officials to honor the later deadline for military members only.

The Obama campaign and Ohio Democrats immediately sued, accusing the state of trying to suppress the turnout among older and poorer voters, those most likely to go to the polls early and improperly discriminating between military and non-military voters. The state responded that election officials needed those three days to prepare for Election Day.

Two federal courts blocked the earlier deadline for non-military voters, ruling that the state cannot value one person's vote more than another.

According to the ruling by a panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals:

"With no evidence that local boards of elections have struggled to cope with early voting in the past, no evidence that they may struggle to do so during the November 2012 election, and faced with several of those very local boards in opposition to its claims, the State has not shown that its regulatory interest in smooth election administration is 'important,' much less 'sufficiently weighty' to justify the burden it has placed on non-military Ohio voters."

In a separate legal dispute, Ohio officials are considering whether to appeal a federal court's insistence that the state must count ballots that, through errors by poll workers, are mistakenly cast in the wrong precinct.

The problem arises because many polling places in Ohio handle voting for more than one precinct.  Poll workers are responsible for handing voters the correct ballots, but they make mistakes.

State law, however, forbids counting ballots cast in the wrong precinct -- even when the error is caused by a poll worker and not the voter. The state rejected more than 14,000 wrongly cast ballots in 2008, and turned down 11,000 more in 2010.  It's an issue, a federal court found, that is "systemic and statewide."

In response to a lawsuit filed by Ohio Democrats and other groups, a federal appeals court ruled last week that the state must count the wrongly cast votes, known to election officials as "right church, wrong pew" ballots.

"The State would disqualify thousands of right-place/wrong-precinct provisional ballots, where the voter's only mistake was relying on the poll worker's precinct guidance. That path unjustifiably burdens these voters' fundamental right to vote," the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said.

 

COLUMBUS, OH -- Feathers were ruffled on Sesame Street on Tuesday when the Obama campaign launched a campaign ad starring Big Bird.

The new spot, which airs on cable networks, mocks Mitt Romney for saying during last week’s debate that he would cut public funding to the Public Broadcasting Service – even though he likes Big Bird.

But Sesame Workshop – the nonpartisan nonprofit behind Sesame Street – wasn’t pleased. In a statement, Sesame Workshop objected to the ad: “We have approved no campaign ads, and, as is our general practice, have requested that both campaigns remove Sesame Street characters and trademarks from their campaign materials.”  

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The ad begins with an ominous voiceover listing the names of Wall Street criminals, including Bernie Madoff and Kenneth Lay. The deep, dramatic voice then says, “It’s not Wall Street you have to worry about; it’s Sesame Street.”

The camera then cuts to a shot of Big Bird sleeping.

President Barack Obama has seized on Romney’s Big Bird comment to argue that his Republican challenger would crack down on beloved American institutions such as Sesame Street but would allow Wall Street to run wild.

Speaking to a crowd of 15,000 in Columbus, OH the President said, “Today (Romney) decided we’re going after Big Bird. Elmo’s making a run for the border and Oscar is hiding out in a trash can.”

Emphasizing the Sesame Street theme, recording artist will-i-am kicked off his performance at the Ohio event by playing the Sesame Street theme song.  

The Obama campaign has also dispatched Big Bird mascots to stand outside Romney campaign events and even Michelle has entered the fray. On Tuesday, the first lady told supporters in Loudon, Va.: “We all know good and well that cutting Sesame Street is no way to balance a budget.”

Related: 'Sesame Street' wants Obama campaign to yank ad mentioning Big Bird

Speaking in Van Meter, Iowa, Romney fired back: “These are tough times with real serious issues. You have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving Big Bird.”

The Romney campaign noted that Obama has in recent days made more public references to Big Bird than Libya – where the U.S. consulate was recently attacked and the ambassador killed. 

But the Obama campaign stands by its strategy.

“The point we’re making here is that when Mitt Romney was given the opportunity to lay out how he would address the deficit … his first offering was to cut funding to Big Bird and that is absurd and hard to take seriously,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

With polls showing Romney improving since the debate, it remains to be seen whether the president’s “Big Bird Offensive” will sway undecided voters.

But one thing is clear – Big Bird says the campaign ad doesn’t fly.

 

COLUMBUS, OH – As the presidential race heats up in Ohio, President Barack Obama took to the state the same day as Mitt Romney to urge young people to vote -- and to hammer his rival’s positions on foreign policy and cuts to popular government programs.

Telling a crowd of about 15,000 at Ohio State University to take advantage of Ohio’s early voting period, Obama said, “Grab your friends and grab everybody in your dorm, grab your fraternity or sorority” and go to a polling place after his speech, adding that buses waited around the corner to shuttle voters there.

Obama’s appearance here comes at the end of a three-day trip that consisted mostly of fundraising events in California, while Romney, who arrived here this afternoon, will hunker down in the state for the next three days, making up for his previously light footprint here.

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At Ohio State, Obama also decried Romney’s foreign policy speech Monday during which he criticized the president’s policies and said he would have kept a troop presence in Iraq.

“If (Gov. Romney) got his way, those troops would still be there,” Obama said. In a speech yesterday, he doubled down on that belief. He said ending the war was a mistake,” Obama said.

The president also added some new embellishments to his now-routine warnings that Romney would cut funding for PBS programs like Sesame Street.

“He's decided we're going after Big Bird. Elmo's making a run for the border – and Oscar's hiding out in a trash can. And Governor Romney wants to let Wall Street run wild again, but he's going to bring down the hammer on Sesame Street,” he said.

To hammer home the point, rapper will.i.am, who performed before the president arrived at the event site, blasted the Sesame Street theme song over the public address system.

 

 

CINCINNATI, OH – A marching band took to the streets of downtown here Tuesday, leading the crowd to a destination not usually associated with much fanfare: the voting booth.

On the opening day of early voting in the Buckeye State, first lady Michelle Obama rallied 6,800 supporters at the Duke Energy Convention Center in downtown Cincinnati.

"Here in Ohio, it is already election day," she said, flanked by a large banner that read “Cincinnati fired up! Ready to vote!”

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The first lady encouraged the large and boisterous crowd to make the short walk directly from the rally to the Hamilton County Board of Elections where they could become some of the first Americans to cast their ballots for President Barack Obama's re-election. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows the president maintaining a slight lead nationally over Republican challenger Mitt Romney, and a recent polls show that lead is even bigger in Ohio.

Even with the positive polls, Michelle Obama warned supporters that a second term for her husband is far from certain, which is why they need to start voting.

"Thirty-five days is a long, long time in an election. No one should be comfortable," she said. She later added: "I'm going to be honest with you, this journey is going to be hard, let’s count on that. And there are going to be plenty of ups and downs for the rest of the way."

Michelle Obama warned the crowd of apathy, recalling how narrowly her husband won the battleground state of Ohio four years ago.

"Back in 2008, back then we won Ohio by about 262,000 votes," she said. "Now that might sound like a lot, but when you break that number down, and you spread it across all the precincts, that is just

24 votes per precinct ... That could mean just a couple of votes in your neighborhood or your block."

Obama won here in Hamilton County in 2008, a traditionally Republican county that turned blue that year for the first time since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.  If Obama is able to repeat his success in the state's southwest corner, the path for a Republican to win the state becomes incredibly difficult.

In 2008, an estimated 30 percent of voters cast ballots early. The Democratic National Committee and the president's campaign have tried to capitalize on getting as many votes as possible before November. The "Gotta Vote" bus tour kicked off in Iowa to encourage early voting in the Hawkeye State and will continue the tour through Ohio on Wednesday – meaning some Americans will decide with more than a month left in the campaign and before the first presidential debate.

The Romney campaign countered with its own get-out-the-vote effort on Tuesday, kicking off the “Commit to Mitt Early Vote Express” tour around Ohio. In light of polls showing Romney losing this critical swing state, the campaign released a memo from Ohio State Director Scott Jennings arguing the race here remains a dead heat.

"Bottom line – the race in Ohio is close, undecided voters are extremely unhappy with Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney’s campaign has built a ground game that is at the very least matching Obama’s while surpassing all previous Republican efforts when it comes to knocking on doors and contacting voters face-to-face," Jennings wrote.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – On the opening day of bow hunting season in Ohio, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan addressed a large group of sportsmen in the battleground state proclaiming he is a hunting and fishing enthusiast.

“Our opening day (in Wisconsin) was two weeks ago. I’ve got some stands out in the woods, but they’re not going to see me this year. And you know why? Because we are going to give this country a choice,” Ryan told the crowd, speaking at the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance’s 16th Annual Save Our Heritage Banquet.

Later, he talked about taking his three children fishing.

“Teaching your kid how to take a night crawler and split it into about five pieces and put it on the hook ... make sure they don’t cut their hand when they push the gill down, take it off the hook. That’s a good life lesson. These are the things we teach our kids as hunting and fishing enthusiasts,” Ryan said about he and his wife, Janna.

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The former chairman of the Congressional Sportsmen Caucus -- which Ryan described as the largest bipartisan caucus in Congress -- turned partisan midway through his speech expressing concern about another term for President Barack Obama.

“I shudder as a gun owner, seeing his [Obama’s] record when he was in the Illinois state Senate. What would he do if he never has to face the voters ever again? These are the kinds of questions we think about,” Ryan told the roughly 1,000-person crowd.

The attacks on the Obama-Biden ticket didn’t stop there as Ryan read word for word a response to Vice President Joe Biden’s comments Friday in Florida hitting the GOP ticket on Social Security and Medicare.

“Let me be very clear: There is only one person in this race threatening the health and retirement security programs of our seniors, and that is President Obama. There is only one person in this race insisting on raising taxes and that is President Obama,” the Wisconsin congressman said.

He went on to promise: “Mitt Romney and I will never waiver in our commitment to our seniors. Our plans actually save these programs, they make no changes for people in or near retirement, they strengthen Medicare and Social Security for a generation.”

Biden claimed in Boca Raton on Friday that a President Romney would not help the middle class.

“Well, if Governor Romney’s plan goes into effect, it could mean that everyone, everyone of you, would be paying more on taxes on your Social Security. The average senior would have to pay $460 a year more in taxes for their Social Security,” Biden said. “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s why these guys, while these guys are out there having hemorrhaging tax cuts for the super wealthy.”

The event Saturday evening marks Ryan’s 13th campaign appearance in the state since being chosen as Romney’s running mate. He was presented with a shotgun made in Ohio but because of congressional ethics rules asked to have the gift be made part of the event's silent auction. 

Ryan readies for 3-day debate camp

Before heading to the annual banquet, Ryan stopped at a popular sports bar just a few hundred yards away from Ohio State University to watch the Buckeyes play the Michigan State Spartans in East Lansing. He was joined by his wife plus his old college roommate from Miami University of Ohio, Tom Blackstone.

The surprise visit at The Varsity Club -- during which the VP nominee enjoyed a Miller Lite and shook hands with many patrons -- comes at a time when the Romney-Ryan ticket seems to be falling behind in the battleground state of Ohio.

According to a recent Washington Post poll of the state, Obama leads Romney there 52 percent to 41 percent.

Some have argued Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich has not helped the GOP ticket enough as he likes to boast the state’s success in creating jobs. Saturday night, speaking before Ryan at the sportsmen banquet, he again gave his state rave reviews. 

“Folks as I walked around through the audience here, a lot of nice people saying, ‘You know, things are getting better.’ They are getting better. You know we are up 123,000 jobs in our state and that’s good news,” Kasich said. “I will say this to you: If at times I’ve got to take some heat, that’s OK because it is my job to build a stronger Ohio. Forget all the politics. Man to man, man to woman, this is all about making our state strong, and you know what, we’ve got what it takes.”

Ryan heads to Connecticut and New York for the next two days to raise money before heading to Iowa on a two-day bus tour of the Hawkeye State.