John Kerry courts votes in Massillon

WASHINGTON POST
MASSILLON -- John Kerry decided to fly through the night to bring his economic message to this gray industrial community Friday morning, perhaps with very good reason: Stark County, famous for its swing voting patterns, has picked the winner in the presidential elections all but once in the past four decades.
Kerry's coast-to-coast swing capped a lucrative week, in which the presumptive nominee raised about $10 million.
The first Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter to visit this blue-collar county in Northeast Ohio, Kerry met with workers at a high school here to talk about their economic woes, attributed to ongoing plant closings and mounting job losses.
According to the Kerry campaign, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, the county has lost more than 12,000 jobs since 2001, and the state has lost 218,000 jobs.
"Nowhere in the country has felt it as hard as this area the way you have taken it on the chin," Kerry told several hundred people in a town hall meeting, and thousands at rally afterward.
Job losses announced
In May, Timken Co. -- a historic manufacturer of bearings and steel here -- announced it would close three factories over a labor dispute, which would cost the community tax revenues and 1,300 jobs. The announcement immediately took on political ramifications as the Kerry campaign seized on the hardship of workers who President Bush had touted in 2003 as an example of benefiting from his tax cuts.
In addition, Hoover -- a subsidiary of Maytag and a landmark here for nearly a century -- said it would soon move to Maytag headquarters in Iowa, eliminating 500 white-collar jobs.
In a community that trends Republican, the bad economic news has created a sense of electoral uncertainty, as both campaigns battle for the state. No Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio -- and Bush has been here 18 times since the 2000 election.
"I don't know where George Bush thinks the country really is today, because it's clear he's not in touch with lives of real Americans," Kerry said as he fielded questions from a half-dozen workers on everything from job loss to veteran benefits.
Pledges job creation
Kerry pledged to create more jobs, if elected, through bringing outsourced jobs back home and ending tax breaks for companies to send jobs overseas.
Ohio's unemployment rate fell from 5.8 percent to 5.6 percent last month, but Kerry said the new jobs being created paid less than the jobs that were lost. "We're here to put America back to work in good-paying jobs," he said at the rally.
"We are hurting. What I'm hearing people, conservative, religious people who usually vote a single [social] issue, rethinking that," said Bill Wright, vice president of the local Steelworkers, whose job at Timken is in jeopardy. "What I tell them is vote your job, lobby your hobby. ... If you have a problem with gun control or abortions, take it up. But vote to save your job."
Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt refuted Kerry's claims on the state of the economy, saying the Massachusetts senator was "again talking down the fastest-growing economy in 20 years. The reality is that Ohio's economy has added 30,000 new jobs this year."
Kerry arrived in Ohio from Los Angeles, after a $5 million superstar fund-raising concert. Hollywood's Democratic elite pulled no punches about its choice for president. Billy Crystal shamelessly joked about Bush's intellect.