WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Slipping in states
that could sink his presidential bid, Republican Mitt Romney declared
Wednesday
that "I care about the people of America" and can do more than
President Barack Obama to improve their lives. In an all-day
Ohio duel, Obama scoffed that a challenger who calls half the
nation "victims" was unlikely to be of much help.
Romney's approach reflected what he is up against: a widening Obama lead in polls in key states such as Ohio, the backlash
from a leaked video in which he disparages Obama supporters as government-dependent victims, and a campaign imperative to
make his policy plans more plain.
With under six weeks to go, and just one
week before the first big debate, Obama's campaign reveled in the latest
public polling
— but tried to crush any sense of overconfidence. "If we need to
pass out horse blinders to all of our staff, we will do that,"
said campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
The day's setting was Ohio, where Obama's momentum has seemed to be growing. It's also a state no Republican has won the White
House without carrying.
Romney went after working-class voters
outside Columbus and Cleveland before rolling to Toledo. Obama rallied
college crowds
at Bowling Green and Kent State, reminding Ohioans their state
allows them to start cast ballots next week. Early voting has
already begun in more than two dozen other states.
For Romney, in his appearances and in a new TV ad in which he appeals straight to the camera, it was time for plain talk to
contrast himself with Obama.
"There are so many people in our country who
are hurting right now. I want to help them. I know what it takes,"
Romney told
the crowd in Westerville. "I care about the people of America, and
the difference between me and Barack Obama is I know what
to do."
That message so late in the campaign — a presidential nominee declaring his concern for all the people of the country — was
part of his widening effort to rebound from his caught-on-video comments at a fundraiser.
In those comments, made last May but only
recently revealed, Romney said "47 percent of the people" pay no federal
income
tax, will vote for Obama no matter what, are victims, think the
government must care for them and do not "take personal responsibility
and care for their lives."
New opinion polls, conducted after the video
became public, show Obama opening up apparent leads over Romney in
battleground
states, including Ohio and Virginia. And majorities of voters in
Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania say Romney's policies would
favor the rich over the middle class or the poor.
Specifically in Ohio, two surveys show the
president crossing the 50 percent mark among likely voters. A Washington
Post poll
found Obama ahead 52 percent to 44 percent among those most likely
to turn out, and a Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York
Times poll showed a 10-point Obama lead among definite voters.
Noting anew the Romney video comments, Obama said Wednesday: "We understand that America is not about what can be done for
us. It's about what can be done by us together, as one nation, as one people."
And he added: "You can't make it happen if you write off half the nation before you take office."
Romney was showing signs of picking up his pace.
He scheduled a blizzard of interviews with ABC, CBS and NBC, his second round of broadcast network appearances in three days
after weeks of ignoring their requests. He also did interviews Tuesday with Fox News and CNN.
The new Romney TV ad, at 60 seconds, is a longer and softer approach in which he speaks about people struggling to pay for
food and gas with falling incomes.
At one point on Wednesday, the two candidates spoke from different sections of northern Ohio at the same time, their scenery
as different as their message.
At a factory in Bedford Heights, Romney
appeared on a stage surrounded by visual evidence of Ohio's
manufacturing base — giant
coils of steel wire, metal beams, yellow "caution" signs — and
spoke as machines whirred in the background. He appeared with
Mike Rowe, an everyman TV personality and pitchman.
Obama appeared at two packed college basketball arenas, delivering his message first to a boisterous crowd of more than 5,000
at Bowling Green State University and then to 6,000 screaming supporters at Kent State University.
He said a student who introduced him broke his wrist during a game of ultimate Frisbee. Exhorting the crowd to vote, he said,
"You got to play through injuries."
The campaigns tried, too, for footholds on other fronts.
Both sides kept up their attempts to paint each other as weak in dealing with China, efforts aimed at wooing support from
working-class voters whose jobs might suffer from imports from China.
The Romney campaign has started setting up
flat-screen TV monitors at its events to screen a video about his
personal and
business story. It was first aired at the Republican National
Convention as a way to introduce him to America but went unseen
by most viewers because it did not run during prime-time coverage.
Romney also focused Wednesday on interest
paid on the national debt, a subject he hasn't regularly discussed in
his standard
campaign speech. His comments came after a Washington Post poll
showed the federal debt and deficit are the one set of issues
where he has an advantage over Obama with likely voters.
Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, took a sharper approach. He told radio host Sean Hannity that Obama was using hollow tactics
to paint his opponents as evil.
"He's basically trying to say 'If you want any security in your life stick with me. If you go with these Republicans they're
going to feed you to the wolves. It's going to be a dog-eat-dog society,'" Ryan said.
In recent weeks, Romney has lost his polling edge on the economy generally, with more people saying they now trust Obama to
fix the nation's economic woes.
Fighting back, new Republican-leaning
independent groups jumped in Wednesday with advertising aimed at voters
who supported
Obama in 2008 but are undecided now. The commercials join those
from the campaigns and outside groups swamping a narrow and
possibly shrinking map of competitive states.
"I will say that as time progresses, the
field is looking like it's narrowing for them," said Psaki, the Obama
campaign spokeswoman.
"In that sense, we'd rather be us than them."
The president, though, did have his own ups and downs.
Air Force One aborted its approach into Toledo because of bad weather, forcing the commander of the presidential plane to
circle the airfield.
The second try was a success without incident.