Sunday, October 31, 2010
BY LISA REICOSKY
Canton Repository
CANTON
John Boehner, the man who hopes to be the next speaker of the House made campaign stops Saturday in Columbiana and Stark counties where he urged attendees to help send current speaker Nancy Pelosi packing by voting for Republican House candidates.
At the Spread Eagle Tavern in Hanoverton, he urged voters to elect Bill Johnson, Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson of St. Clairsville, D-6th.
In Canton, he spoke on behalf of Republican Jim Renacci, a businessman and former Wadsworth mayor, who is bidding to unseat first-term U.S. Rep. John Boccieri, D-Alliance.
House Republican Leader Boehner rolled into the Renacci for Congress campaign headquarters at 2729 Fulton Dr. NW on his tour bus about five minutes ahead of the scheduled 1 p.m. time and took his place on the back of a flatbed with several Republican candidates from the local ballot.
Dressed casually in jeans and a pullover, he told the crowd of about 300, including an army of both local and national media, that a vote for Renacci could bring change to the national agenda, including how the Congress itself is run.
The Republican party needs to win 39 seats for that to happen.
“If I’m lucky enough to be speaker, it’s going to be different,” he said. ‘And not just different from what the Democrats have been doing.”
He went on to say he wanted to “fix” Congress.
“No more 2,300-page bills that no one reads,” he said to cheers.
He told the audience that President Barack Obama once said that it is OK to have ideological differences and “that’s what elections are for.”
“Boy was he right,” said Boehner. He told the crowd also that Obama refers to those who disagree with him as “enemies.”
Boehner’s word for those people, he said, is “patriots.”