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Youngstown woman attends Obama luncheon
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
YOUNGSTOWN
Artha Mitchell was one of 10 Ohioans who won a drawing to be added to the large group invited to lunch with President Barrack Obama on Wednesday in Columbus.
Mitchell, of Ford Avenue on the city’s North Side, was among some 1,000 who signed up to volunteer with the 2010 Ohio Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign and were thereby automatically entered into the drawing that led to her being invited to the luncheon.
In a written statement, the Ohio Democratic Party said President Obama’s visit to Ohio Wednesday was met by a large number of supporters who lined the streets of downtown Columbus, “vastly outnumbering Tea Party protesters.”
Mitchell, a neighborhood team leader for the Democratic Coordinated Campaign and a volunteer for President Obama’s presidential campaign, said it was a great honor to be in that forum with the president.
Though she did not get to personally meet the president Wednesday, she said she previously met him in person when he visited V&M Star here last spring.
“The Columbus event was wonderful ... just to be in the same room with the president of the United States,” said Mitchell, who retired in 2003 from Delphi Packard Electric.
“President Obama stressed that we have to build on the progress we have made economically and with health-care reform and continue to move the country forward,” she added.
“The sense I get from him, he is genuine. His heart is in moving the country forward. He said we did not send him to Washington to worry about polls, but to do what is right for the entire country,” said Mitchell, a native of Alabama, whose daughter and son-in-law, Leondra and John Burchall and grandson, Terin Mack, live in Virginia.
Mitchell thinks President Obama is doing an excellent job, particularly based on what he inherited.
“He’s trying to heal the suffering. He’s trying to bring us out of the deep recession we are in. We have to look at the total picture,” she said.
During his address, Obama urged patience: “We’re not going to get all 8 million jobs that were lost back overnight. ... A lot of it’s sort of like recovering from an illness — you get a little bit stronger each day. You take a few more steps each day. And that’s where our economy’s at right now.”
Obama made the comments during his ninth visit to Ohio since he took office 19 months ago and his second in Columbus this year.
Republican State Auditor and GOP lieutenant governor candidate Mary Taylor, in a released statement, said, “There is only one issue in Ohio, and that’s jobs. The president has a lot to answer for, because more than 130,000 jobs have been lost in Ohio since February 2009, when the president’s ‘stimulus’ spending bill became law and helped explode the national debt to $13 trillion.”