President Barack Obama again pushed early voting and poked a little fun at Mitt Romney during a rally on the Cornell College campus in Mount Vernon today.
Steve Gravelle fact-checked some claims the president made to the crowd of about 2,000 people today. Although Obama drew contrasts between his plans and Romney’s proposals, the speech was more about rallying the troops than persuasion.
The Obama campaign has been organizing early voting events on Iowa college campuses all week. Today the president appealed to his audience:
“Iowa, are you going to vote for me today if you haven’t already voted?” Obama asked and the crowd cheered. Obama responded: “All right. I need you.”
Sidewalks on the Mount Vernon campus are decorated with chalk signs, pointing the way to a satellite voting station open today only for those who want to cast their ballot on campus.
“You can go vote right after this event, at the Cole Library,” Obama told the crowd.
Iowa Democrats have requested approximately 70,000 more absentee ballots statewide than Republicans, who are also pushing early GOTV through robocalls, direct mail, and public events. The Democratic lead on early votes cast (absentee ballots returned to county auditors) is closer to 54,000.
In the 2008 general election, 250,104 registered Iowa Democrats voted early; just 156,986 Iowa Republicans did the same.
Speaking at Cornell College, Obama reminded his audience of Romney’s “binders full of women” comment, which went viral even before last night’s debate had ended.
Obama referenced that remark today in Mount Vernon, right after the president said it should be a “national mission” to make sure “our daughters as well as our sons” are thriving in math and science.
“I’ve got to tell you, we don’t have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women ready to learn and teach in these fields right now,” Obama said, to cheers. “And when young women graduate, they should get equal pay for equal work. That should be a simple question to answer.”
Though you wouldn’t know it from Jason Noble’s blog post for the Des Moines Register, many reporters noticed today Romney exaggerated his initiative in seeking out qualified women. From the debate transcript:
An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.
And I – and I went to my staff, and I said, “How come all the people for these jobs are – are all men.” They said, “Well, these are the people that have the qualifications.” And I said, “Well, gosh, can’t we – can’t we find some – some women that are also
qualified?”ROMNEY: And – and so we – we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.
Actually, no. A bipartisan group of women prepared the binders before the 2002 election and presented them to Romney after he won the governor’s race. Several of those women talked to reporters today. Instead of inventing the tale about seeking out qualified applicants through women’s groups, Romney should have left it at, “I appointed many women to senior positions in Massachusetts government.”
The Romney campaign rolled out a new video today featuring women who served in his cabinet. Noble reported on other damage control today:
On the conference call with national reporters, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, said that, as a mother of two children, what struck her the most about Obama’s debate remarks Tuesday night was that he didn’t say how he would “make sure that the next four years are not like the last when it comes to the anemic economic growth we’ve seen, over $5 trillion added to the debt, and frankly less opportunities for everyone, including women.”
“It’s the president that does have the empty binder because there’s no legislation planned for the second term other than more spending. And how can we afford that given our $16 trillion in debt?”
Ayotte said Romney has “a phenomenal track record” of women of recruiting women to lead with him in Massachusetts. “It speaks for itself.”
The campaign also noted that as governor Romney was lauded for his efforts at hiring women in high-level jobs and that 10 of the top 20 positions in his administration were held by women – the highest proportion in the nation.
Some of the women from Romney’s cabinet campaigning in Iowa tomorrow and Friday include Ellen Roy Herzfelder, former Massachusetts secretary of environmental affairs; Renee Fry, former secretary of business & technology; Cindy Gillespie, former counselor to Romney; Beth Lindstrom, former secretary of consumer affairs & business regulation. Donna Tillery, who was Romney’s executive assistant during the Salt Lake City Olympics, will be in Iowa, too.
Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread.
Iowa’s six electoral votes won’t matter in November if Obama carries Ohio. On the other hand, if Romney wins Ohio, Obama’s path to 270 electoral votes would involve some combination of the following states: Nevada, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire.
National polls this week are mixed, with slight leads for Obama in some and leads for Romney in others. Gallup has the best nationwide numbers for Romney, showing him ahead of Obama 51 percent to 45 percent among likely voters.
Speaking of Gallup, this piece is an interesting read: “Women in Swing States Have Gender-Specific Priorities.” Abortion is a high-priority issue for more women than I would have guessed, though the way Gallup phrased the question doesn’t indicate how many of those women are pro-choice and how many are against reproductive rights.
UPDATE: The Romney campaign took out a full-page ad in the Cedar Rapids Gazette today featuring an open letter signed by 13 Iowans who voted for Obama in 2008 but now support Romney.