Attorney General Tom Horne accused the Obama administration Tuesday of trying to thwart Arizona’s voter-ID laws in a bid to get more illegal immigrants to the polls — presumably to cast ballots for the president and Democrats.
Horne acknowledged that a brief filed by the Department of Justice in a case to be heard next month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals centers around the agency’s argument that Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship to register is pre-empted by federal law. But Horne, a Republican, told Capitol Media Services he sees something more sinister.
“I think the motive is that the more illegals that vote, the better the Obama administration thinks it will do,’’ he said. Read the entire story….
Voters in the key battleground state of Ohio have an opportunity to deliver a verdict on President Obama’s landmark legislative accomplishment a year ahead of the 2012 election. Ohio’s chief election official confirmed last week that voters will get to decide whether they want Ohioans and Buckeye State employers to participate in the health care law Congress passed last year.
A group of Tea Party, limited-government and constitutional law activists spent over a year collecting signatures to get a health care amendment to the state’s constitution on the ballot this November. Earlier this month, they sent Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted 546,000 of them, and on Tuesday, the secretary confirmed 426,998 signatures; 386,000 were required.
The bill on the ballot would amend Ohio’s state constitution to block the federal government from requiring residents to carry health insurance, as the law Obama signed last year requires. Under the federal law, states are to set up their own health insurance markets. Ohio’s referendum measure, if passed, would make it illegal for state and local governments to regulate health insurance. That means that even if the federal health care law didn’t exist, Ohio couldn’t create its own state health care system, like the one in place in Massachusetts. Arizona, Oklahoma and Missouri voters have passed similar propositions.
When it comes to the individual mandate, however, the bill is largely symbolic. Federal law supersedes state law, and the courts are in the process of deciding the larger question of whether the government can require people to carry health insurance.
The symbolism, though, is important when it comes to 2012 politics. “Ohioans will send a very clear message to Washington that they don’t want politicians in D.C. controlling their health care decisions,” predicted Jeff Longsteth, campaign manager for Ohioans for Health Care Freedom, a group that helped collect the signatures.
That message will fall hard on President Obama, as health care reform has been perceived, for better or for worse, as his signature accomplishment, and Ohio has long been an election year bellwether for presidential candidates.
In 2008, Obama won the state by four points over John McCain. But voters in the state are unpredictable, and can’t be taken for granted by any candidate. For example, the state narrowly elected, and re-elected, Democrat Bill Clinton, swung for Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and pivoted back to a Democrat three years ago after Obama’s campaign launched an extensive get-out-the-vote effort. Then Ohio turned red in the 2010 midterms, electing a Republican governor (John Kasich) and replacing five Democratic congressmen with Republicans.
Complicating Obama’s prospects in Ohio are the state’s high unemployment rate and voters’ sentiments about health care reform. The state’s unemployment rate was 8.8 percent in June, and a recentQuinnipiac University poll shows a large majority (67 percent) of Ohio voters oppose the individual mandate in the health care law (29 percent support it). The poll also shows that the majority of Ohio Republicans back the state ballot measure while the bulk of Democrats oppose it. But independents — a key voting block for any candidate in a swing state — support it, 49 percent to 44 percent. Overall, 48 percent of Ohio voters say they support the amendment while 45 percent oppose it.
Looking forward to the 2012 general election, the health care amendment, regardless of whether it passes, will be “an important issue for conservative Republicans, and they obviously will go into 2012 with this as a key issue for them,” said Paul Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University. “But they aren’t going to vote Democratic anyway. So it’s this middle group of independents” that will make a difference.
Of course, just because voters say they support or oppose an idea doesn’t mean they will show up to vote on it. This measure will appear on the 2011 ballot and off-year election turnout is traditionally low. Longsteth’s and other groups will spend the next few months encouraging voters to go to the polls in November and educating them on the bill. (Also on the ballot is a measure to overturn the state’s collective bargaining law, which activists hope will encourage voter turnout.)
Progressives in the state, however, will certainly be just as active in mobilizing their voting bloc against the ballot measure. ProgressOhio pored over the signatures last week looking for discrepancies in an effort to challenge the secretary of state’s decision.
Conservatives’ efforts to block the federal health care law in Ohio appear to be stirring up progressives, whose enthusiasm for Obama had waned. Many felt the president’s health care plan didn’t go far enough, for example, and are frustrated by a perceived shift by the president to the center.
Now “they’re, in a way, giving Obama a life raft” by working to stop this opposition measure, said Cliff Schecter, president of the progressive public relations firm Liberatas. “These are the people that were excited about Obama last time.” Attacks from the right on health care “led to a resurgence” among progressives, he said. The president, though, can’t take them for granted either. “I think he should be worried about communicating with his base what his priorities are and . . . living up to more of the promises he made as candidate Obama,” Schecter said.
Meanwhile, state Republicans are also mobilizing their base on the health care amendment and insist that the measure, even if it doesn’t pass, will have national implications, as Ohio will be a major player in deciding who wins the White House. “This directly correlates with who is going to be on the ballot in 2012,” said Chris Maloney, communications director for the Ohio Republican Party. “Clearly this a referendum on ObamaCare.”
But Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts signed into law a state health care plan that has similarities to Obama’s, could also be on the general election ballot in 2012. The presidential candidate visited Ohio, which is not an early voting state, this week to speak about jobs and the economy and to rail against nationalized health care. He made a similar stump speech in another battleground state, Pennsylvania, last month. On the health care issue, Romney has repeatedly said that the plan he signed into law was specifically designed for Massachusetts and not the entire nation. It was the right plan for the state at the time, he often argues. And as president, Romney insists, he would move to repeal the national health care law.
He might have more defending to do on the issue in Ohio, however.
“He’s going to have to demonstrate to the Ohio constituency and the rest of America that his policies are radically different from what people are rejecting from Barack Obama,” said Rex Elsass, an Ohio-based Republican strategist not affiliated with any of the GOP campaigns. “He will have to explain what his vision is and how he is a contrast to Barack Obama. If he is not able to do that, he won’t be capable of winning.” Romney’s current defense, said Elsass, isn’t good enough, “and in the end, he is wrong. You’re going to see people of Ohio very clearly send a signal about that kind of thinking, and if that’s the way Romney thinks, he’s not going to fare very well in Ohio.”
The Ohio GOP, though, disagrees. “This is Ohio proactively taking the steps in addressing the health care challenges we face here and what’s good for the Buckeye State,” said Maloney. “I think that has been a lot of what we’ve seen Governor Romney communicate.”
Voters in Oklahoma have shouted “No” to the Obama administration’s signature legislation, Obamacare.
Sooners voted overwhelmingly, 65 percent to 35 percent for a ballot initiative amending the state constitution to declare mandates to purchase health insurance illegal.
The central, and most controversial, provision of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, better known as Obamacare, requires every American to purchase health insurance beginning in 2014 or pay a hefty penalty to the IRS.
Ballot initiatives upholding citizens’ freedom to make their own decisions about health care were also being considered in Arizona and Colorado, but the outcomes were not certain at the time of this report.
The ballot initiatives were the latest salvoes in the battle to block Obamacare on the state level.
Amazing video by Molotov Mitchell shows the state of the fight between those that want to enforce illegal immigration laws and those that don’t. This is a great video showing what is really going on with this struggle to secure our borders.
The state had asked Tucson, in view of a new state law that takes effect at the end of this year that bans promoting to students “the overthrow of the United States government” and other issues, to record its “Raza” classes this fall to documentwhat is being taught.
No, said Tucson officials.
So the state, which starting Jan. 1 can withhold 10 percent of the district’s state funding, confirmed it would cite that refusal when the dispute comes up for judicial review.
When the funds are withheld, said a state letter to the district, “You will have the right to appeal to an administrative law judge. If you agree to this videotape, it will be helpful evidence to the administrative law judge. If you refuse, we will offer that refusal as evidence to the administrative law judge that the school district has deliberately hidden facts that would show that the district is in non-compliance with H.B. 2281.”
The new law was adopted this year by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer. But it largely has been overshadowed by the international furor over the state’s plan to make illegal under state law what already is illegal under federal law – being in the state without permission.
The law, S.B. 1070, now is under consideration by possibly dozens of other states even as its enforcement in Arizona has been suspended by a federal judge pending a trial over its constitutionality.
S.B. 1070 even attracted the criticism of Mexican authorities, who decried that it would crack down on illegal aliens in Arizona. However, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly said the crackdown on illegals “may not be the most controversial Arizona law about illegal aliens.”
The additional law, Schlafly wrote, “bans classes that ‘promote the overthrow of the United States government’ or ‘promote resentment toward a race or class of people’ because schools should treat all pupils as individual Americans.”
She explained the issue arose because the Tucson School District offers courses in “Mexican-American studies (known locally as Raza Studies) that focus on that particular group and its influence.”
“The law doesn’t prohibit these classes so long as they are open to all students and don’t promote ethnic resentment or solidarity,” she explained. “However, Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, says the basic theme of the Mexican-American studies program is that Latino students ‘were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle- and upper-class whites.’”
The district’s goals for its Mexican-American Studies include “social justice” along with “Latino Critical Race Pedagogy,” and Schlafly reported pictures of the classroom walls revealed “heroes” such as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
Horne, who also is running for attorney general, and Deputy Superintendent Margaret Dugan had asked Tucson to videotape its “so-called ‘ethnic studies’ classes during the upcoming fall semester to provide important evidence as to whether those courses are in violation of H.B. 2281.”
The school district, however, sent WND a copy of a letter it dispatched to Horne refusing his request. Tucson Superintendent John Carroll cited his decision that the taping “would unnecessarily disrupt” the classes.
Horne had suggested state officials have reason to suspect the district may be in the position to infringe on the law.
“Margaret Dugan and I have worked for more than two years to get legislation passed to ensure that students are taught to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds,” Horne said in an announcement about the request.
“Though we are pleased the legislation passed, it is very unfortunate that it will not take effect until January of 2011. Margaret Dugan and I are asking the Tucson district to videotape the classes to provide evidence for an expected appeal to an administrative law judge, as to whether these courses violate H.B. 2281,” he said.
“The Ethnic Studies curricula that will be prohibited by law are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism and there is never a time or place for that in the classroom,” Dugan continued. “The lessons divide students on the basis of their race and ethnicity, instead of promoting the fundamental American value that we are all individuals.”
Horne’s recent letter to Carroll said that teachers and former teachers have reported the “whole inference and tone” of the “Raza Studies” was “anger.”
“(They taught students) that the United States was and still is a fundamentally racist country in nature, whose interests are contrary to those of Mexican-American kids,” the letter said.
“Individuals in this (Ethnic Studies) department are vehemently anti-Western culture. They are vehemently opposed to the United States and its power. They are telling students they are victims and that they should be angry and rise up,” the letter continued.
“A teacher describes how the TUSD administration intimidated him by removing him from his class, and calling him a ‘racist,’ even though he himself is Hispanic,” it added.
The state officials charged that Tucson “has hired a group of radical socialist activists who promote an anti-capitalist and anti-Western Civilization ideology. They use ethnic solidarity as their vehicle of delivery. A climate of outright intimidation has stopped many from standing up to this group for fear of being labeled racists. ”
Further, “Impressionable youth in TUSD have literally been reprogrammed to believe that there is a concerted effort on the part of a white power structure to suppress them and relegate them to a second-class existence. This fomented resentment further encourages them to express their dissatisfaction through the iconoclastic behavior we see – the contempt for all authority outside of their ethnic community and their total lack of identification with the political heritage of this country. ”
The letter also cited a statement from Augustine Romero of the district’s Ethnic Studies program on a television interview about why the course uses the word “Raza.”
His response, according to the letter, was, “So that our students could recognize and connect to their indigenous side, just like the word ‘dine’ for the Navajo translates to ‘the people,’ like the word ‘O’odham’ for the Tohono O’odham translates to ‘the people.’ The word ‘Yoeme’ for the Yoeme people translates to ‘the people.’ It was an attempt to connect to our indigenous sides, as well as our Mexican side. ”
“This would appear,” Horne wrote, “to us to be an admission, not only that the course violates the provisions of H.B. 2281, but that it was intended to do so by those who designed and implemented it.”
He wrote that he understands the district denies the charges and said the best course to determine the nature of the classes would be to record them.
“Please consider this a formal request to video tape the Ethnic Studies courses, and in particular, the Mexican-American/Raza Studies course, in their entirety, in the coming semester. To protect privacy of students, the videos should focus on the teacher alone. The videos should be of all classroom hours, and not selected,” Horne wrote.
He said he expects that when the law takes effect after Dec. 31, the state will announce it is withholding 10 percent of its allocations for Tucson, as allowed under the law.
The Mexican American Studies page on the Tucson school website boasts it advocates for curricula “that is centered within the Mexcian American-Chicano cultural and historical experience,” and “promoting and advocating for social and educational transformation.”
According to a report in the Tucson Sentinel, one of the books in use for the classes has been “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos.” The report also cited Tucson board president Judy Burns saying, “We don’t teach all those ugly things they think we’re teaching.”
Burns said there were no plans to end the program.
The National Review reported when John Ward, a Tucson teacher “who saw his U.S. history course co-opted by the Raza Studies department,” said students were being taught “that Mexican-Americans were and continue to be victims of a racist American society driven by the interests of middle and upper-class whites.”
A federal judge sharply questioned the Justice Department’s key argument that Arizona’s immigration law interferes with federal enforcement of immigration law.
She also questioned the argument that federal law “pre-empts” (i.e. trumps) theArizona statute.
“Where is the pre-emption if everybody who is arrested for some crime has their immigration status checked?”
But Bolton also suggested that making it a state crime to lack immigration documents could violate aSupreme Court ruling prohibiting states from creating their own “immigration registration systems,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Justice Department is asking Bolton to bar the law from going into effect next week.
Gov. Jan Brewer has employed a sock puppet frog on YouTube to mock and put down those who have been criticizing Arizona’s purportedly racist immigration law. However funny it is, it goes to show many of those in Federal Government positions, including Arizona’s John McCain who have not read the 10 page bill that 70% of Americans support.
I guess the real question here is who really are the sock puppets?
In what is developing into a standoff between states and the federal government that could be bigger than gun control or even health care, 17 states have launched versions of Arizona’s immigration law, even as federal officials say they may not bother to process illegal aliens caught by the states.
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC,which has been trying to get officials to address the open southern border for years, warned the consequences could be dire.
“Over the last couple days, Obama and the chief of ICE have refused to honor their oaths of office,” he said. “Their constitutional requirement is to enforce existing laws.
“They’ve told the American public to go eat cake,” he said.
His organization is assembling the list of state efforts to emulate the Arizona law, which makes it illegal under state as well as federal law to be in the state without documentation.
“Seventeen states are now filing versions of Arizona’s SB 1070, which is designed to help local police enforce America’s existing immigration laws,” ALIPAC said in a report today.
The report said numerous national and local polls indicate 60 to 81 percent of Americans support local police enforcing immigration laws.
“Our national network of activists have been working overtime trying to help the state of Arizona and the brave Arizonans who have passed this bill,” he said. “Arizona no longer stands alone and we have now documented state lawmakers filing, or announcing they will file, versions of the Arizona bill in seventeen states! We will not stop until all states are protected from invasion as required by the U.S. Constitution.”
President Obama several times has said he doesn’t like the Arizona law. He’s called it misguided and ordered a review by the Justice Department.
John Morton, who heads the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, said his agency might not process illegal aliens caught under state jurisdiction, the Chicago Tribune reported.
He insisted that only the federal government should respond to the problem.
“I don’t think the Arizona law, or laws like it, are the solution,” Morton said.
One blogger expressed concern that “a senior Homeland Security official has openly declared that he won’t be doing his job.”
“Morton has sworn an oath to uphold the laws of the United States. He is not allowed to pick and choose which ones he likes and which he doesn’t.”
Gheen said the Arizona law and the plans it has spawned in other states is a victory for Americans. But he said those are just battles, and winning the war will require success in elections this fall.
A “comprehensive” solution to the problem will arrive when there are enough “hostile” members of Congress to tell the administration to uphold the existing immigration and border laws or the impeachments will start, he said.
“[We need to send] to Washington a hostile Congress that is going to encircle the executive branch and tell them to [follow the law] or we’ll impeach all the way down to the speaker of the House,” he said.
Gheen said he is alarmed over the pending release, expected sometime just before the election, of a movie called “Machete,” which reportedly is the story of a Mexican uprising in the United States.
Gheen said the message in the movie reportedly is that Americans will either submit to the “rape” of their land or else.
He said he believes the project is intended to create turmoil just as the mid-term elections draw near.
“There is nothing as important right now as getting [people] fully involved with all the campaigns,” he said.
ALIPAC already has helped to pass some form of immigration enforcement legislation in more than 30 states. And Gheen has developed a national reputation for defeating sociallyprogressive plans to hand out licenses, in-state tuition and other taxpayer benefits to illegal aliens.
“It is incumbent upon our states to protect American lives, property, jobs, wages, security, and health, when the executive branch fails to honor its constitutional responsibility to do so by enforcing our existing border and immigration laws,” he said.
The Arizona law, which strictly prohibits racial profiling, empowers local police to enforceimmigration laws.
To monitor the growing number of states considering similar legislation, ALIPAC utilizes a public forum in which members can update the organization with news articles and other information from states where the push for an Arizona-like law is making headway.
In Arizona’s neighboring state Utah, for example, Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, reportedly is drafting a bill that would similarly require immigrants to carry proof of status and require law enforcement officers to check for it.
“Utah is seen as state that welcomes illegal immigrants. We almost encourage it with driving privilege cards and in-state tuition for illegals,” Sandstrom told the Salt Lake Tribune. “With Arizona making the first step in this direction, Utah needs to pass a similar law or we will see a huge influx of illegals. The real issue is just establishing a rule of law in our state.”
Across the country in Maryland, Baltimore’s WBAL-TV reported earlier that State Delegate Patrick McDonough, R-Baltimore County, is drafting a bill identical to Arizona’s. He’s alsoplanning to poll his fellow legislators before the bill is filed.
Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman has banned city-worker travel to Arizona because of that state’s new law allowing police to demand documentation from people they suspect are in the country illegally.
“The mayor will not be approving any travel to Arizona,” spokesman Dan Williamson said this morning.
“He agrees with those who want to send a message to the state of Arizona that this is not the American way.”
Already, he has rejected a request from the city’s technology director to attend a seminar in Phoenix, Williamson said.
The order was issued in a recent meeting with city department heads.
The Arizona law says local officers should, when practical after a stop, detention or arrest related to other laws, seek proof of a person’s immigration status if they suspect that the “person is an alien and unlawfully present in the United States.”
Some of that wording was added to “make it crystal clear and undeniable that racial profiling is illegal and will not be tolerated in Arizona,” according to a statement that Gov. Jan Brewer released when she signed the revision.
As Columbus joins a growing number of U.S. cities protesting the Arizona law, Williamson said the mayor has no plans to propose that the city stop doing business entirely with companies based there.
Seattle took that step on Monday.
In Columbus, contracts will be decided on a case-by-case basis, Williamson said.
Columbus recently extended its agreement with Phoenix-based Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., which owns and operates the city’s 20 red-light cameras. The new contract will double the number of cameras posted at Columbus intersections to issue tickets to red-light-runners.
Rescinding that program “wouldn’t make sense to the taxpayers,” Williamson said.
An Arizona utility commissioner said he’s willing to pull the plug onLos Angeles if the city goes through with a boycott of his state.
In a letter to the city of LA, a member of Arizona’s power commission said he would ask Arizona utility companies to cut off the power supply to Los Angeles. LA gets about 25 percent of its power from Arizona.
“That is one commissioner who has that idea — whether he can do that or not is another idea,” said LA Councilman Dennis Zine. “They are the ones who have to make the move, not us.”
The commissioner’s power grid play is in response to the city’s approval of a resolution directing city staff to consider which contracts with Arizona can be terminated.
Buckeye Firearms Association
National Precinct Activists
The Ohio Liberty Council
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
Voters in Oklahoma have shouted “No” to the Obama administration’s signature legislation, Obamacare.
The 
By 
Cartoon From 1948 Has It Right – How Could We Not See It?
Ohio Going Obama? Better Look Again…
Health Care Vote Highlights Obama’s Challenge in Ohio
Voters in the key battleground state of Ohio have an opportunity to deliver a verdict on President Obama’s landmark legislative accomplishment a year ahead of the 2012 election. Ohio’s chief election official confirmed last week that voters will get to decide whether they want Ohioans and Buckeye State employers to participate in the health care law Congress passed last year.
A group of Tea Party, limited-government and constitutional law activists spent over a year collecting signatures to get a health care amendment to the state’s constitution on the ballot this November. Earlier this month, they sent Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted 546,000 of them, and on Tuesday, the secretary confirmed 426,998 signatures; 386,000 were required.
The bill on the ballot would amend Ohio’s state constitution to block the federal government from requiring residents to carry health insurance, as the law Obama signed last year requires. Under the federal law, states are to set up their own health insurance markets. Ohio’s referendum measure, if passed, would make it illegal for state and local governments to regulate health insurance. That means that even if the federal health care law didn’t exist, Ohio couldn’t create its own state health care system, like the one in place in Massachusetts. Arizona, Oklahoma and Missouri voters have passed similar propositions.
When it comes to the individual mandate, however, the bill is largely symbolic. Federal law supersedes state law, and the courts are in the process of deciding the larger question of whether the government can require people to carry health insurance.
The symbolism, though, is important when it comes to 2012 politics. “Ohioans will send a very clear message to Washington that they don’t want politicians in D.C. controlling their health care decisions,” predicted Jeff Longsteth, campaign manager for Ohioans for Health Care Freedom, a group that helped collect the signatures.
That message will fall hard on President Obama, as health care reform has been perceived, for better or for worse, as his signature accomplishment, and Ohio has long been an election year bellwether for presidential candidates.
In 2008, Obama won the state by four points over John McCain. But voters in the state are unpredictable, and can’t be taken for granted by any candidate. For example, the state narrowly elected, and re-elected, Democrat Bill Clinton, swung for Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and pivoted back to a Democrat three years ago after Obama’s campaign launched an extensive get-out-the-vote effort. Then Ohio turned red in the 2010 midterms, electing a Republican governor (John Kasich) and replacing five Democratic congressmen with Republicans.
Complicating Obama’s prospects in Ohio are the state’s high unemployment rate and voters’ sentiments about health care reform. The state’s unemployment rate was 8.8 percent in June, and a recentQuinnipiac University poll shows a large majority (67 percent) of Ohio voters oppose the individual mandate in the health care law (29 percent support it). The poll also shows that the majority of Ohio Republicans back the state ballot measure while the bulk of Democrats oppose it. But independents — a key voting block for any candidate in a swing state — support it, 49 percent to 44 percent. Overall, 48 percent of Ohio voters say they support the amendment while 45 percent oppose it.
Looking forward to the 2012 general election, the health care amendment, regardless of whether it passes, will be “an important issue for conservative Republicans, and they obviously will go into 2012 with this as a key issue for them,” said Paul Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University. “But they aren’t going to vote Democratic anyway. So it’s this middle group of independents” that will make a difference.
Of course, just because voters say they support or oppose an idea doesn’t mean they will show up to vote on it. This measure will appear on the 2011 ballot and off-year election turnout is traditionally low. Longsteth’s and other groups will spend the next few months encouraging voters to go to the polls in November and educating them on the bill. (Also on the ballot is a measure to overturn the state’s collective bargaining law, which activists hope will encourage voter turnout.)
Progressives in the state, however, will certainly be just as active in mobilizing their voting bloc against the ballot measure. ProgressOhio pored over the signatures last week looking for discrepancies in an effort to challenge the secretary of state’s decision.
Conservatives’ efforts to block the federal health care law in Ohio appear to be stirring up progressives, whose enthusiasm for Obama had waned. Many felt the president’s health care plan didn’t go far enough, for example, and are frustrated by a perceived shift by the president to the center.
Now “they’re, in a way, giving Obama a life raft” by working to stop this opposition measure, said Cliff Schecter, president of the progressive public relations firm Liberatas. “These are the people that were excited about Obama last time.” Attacks from the right on health care “led to a resurgence” among progressives, he said. The president, though, can’t take them for granted either. “I think he should be worried about communicating with his base what his priorities are and . . . living up to more of the promises he made as candidate Obama,” Schecter said.
Meanwhile, state Republicans are also mobilizing their base on the health care amendment and insist that the measure, even if it doesn’t pass, will have national implications, as Ohio will be a major player in deciding who wins the White House. “This directly correlates with who is going to be on the ballot in 2012,” said Chris Maloney, communications director for the Ohio Republican Party. “Clearly this a referendum on ObamaCare.”
But Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts signed into law a state health care plan that has similarities to Obama’s, could also be on the general election ballot in 2012. The presidential candidate visited Ohio, which is not an early voting state, this week to speak about jobs and the economy and to rail against nationalized health care. He made a similar stump speech in another battleground state, Pennsylvania, last month. On the health care issue, Romney has repeatedly said that the plan he signed into law was specifically designed for Massachusetts and not the entire nation. It was the right plan for the state at the time, he often argues. And as president, Romney insists, he would move to repeal the national health care law.
He might have more defending to do on the issue in Ohio, however.
“He’s going to have to demonstrate to the Ohio constituency and the rest of America that his policies are radically different from what people are rejecting from Barack Obama,” said Rex Elsass, an Ohio-based Republican strategist not affiliated with any of the GOP campaigns. “He will have to explain what his vision is and how he is a contrast to Barack Obama. If he is not able to do that, he won’t be capable of winning.” Romney’s current defense, said Elsass, isn’t good enough, “and in the end, he is wrong. You’re going to see people of Ohio very clearly send a signal about that kind of thinking, and if that’s the way Romney thinks, he’s not going to fare very well in Ohio.”
The Ohio GOP, though, disagrees. “This is Ohio proactively taking the steps in addressing the health care challenges we face here and what’s good for the Buckeye State,” said Maloney. “I think that has been a lot of what we’ve seen Governor Romney communicate.”
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