Thursday, June 28, 2012
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama is ramping up a fresh phase of his re-election bid with a bus tour next week, focusing more on direct engagement with voters and less on ritzy fundraisers.
Obama’s two-day road trip through Pennsylvania and Ohio, two key battleground states in the November election, kicks off next Thursday, a campaign official said. It will be the president’s first bus tour of the 2012 campaign.
The bus trip also will coincide with the release of the monthly nationwide jobs report, a key economic indicator that could directly affect the president’s re-election prospects. The most recent report, for May, showed a slight uptick in the unemployment rate, raising fears among Obama aides of an election-year economic slowdown.
Though Obama has been running for re-election for months, his efforts thus far have focused largely on hauling in cash from supporters in dozens of fundraising events across the country as his campaign seeks to compete with energized Republican donors. He spent the early part of this week on a two-day, four-state fundraising blitz that brought in more than $5 million.
The president still will headline campaign fundraisers through the fall, but the official said Obama’s schedule would start to include more of a mix of campaign rallies and other events focused on speaking directly to a wide swath of voters in the states Obama needs most in order to hold the White House.
A new poll by Quinnipiac University shows Obama holding a 9-percentage-point lead over Romney in Ohio, and a 6-point lead in Pennsylvania.