Obama opens NLR office

LITTLE ROCK — President Barack Obama has created jobs, expanded access to health care and improved the nation during his first term, and will be re-elected this year, Obama’s national campaign manager told about 100 people as the campaign’s Arkansas headquarters opened in North Little Rock.

“I want to ask you to remember that day when the president put his hand on the Bible and was sworn in as president on that day in January 2009,” Jim Messina said. “Remember what he walked into.

“Remember that we were losing 750,000 jobs a month.We had a health-care system that had been broken and for 80 years people were trying to reform it,” he said. “You had laws that weren’t passed to help women get equal pay. You had us spending too much time overseas fighting a war that didn’t make sense to be in.”

Messina said he remembers when the Bush administration handed the keys to the White House to Obama administration officials and thinking, “Wow, this thing is going to be really hard.”

He said Obama signed federal health-care legislation because it is a fundamental right for all people to have healthcare overhaul in the U.S.

“We passed a bill to allow people to serve in the armed services no matter who they love because America is a tolerant place,” Messina said.

There have been 24 consecutive months of privatesector job growth in the U.S. under Obama after he came into office, he said.

Obama’s campaign has field offices in 50 states because Obama has said “there is not a red America, there is not a blue America, there is a United States of America,” Messina said.

In the 2010 election, Arkansas Republicans linked Democrats to Obama as the GOP won the offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of stateand land commissioner, 15 seats in the 35-seat state Senate, 44 in the 100-seat House, as well as increasing from one to four the number of the state’s six congressional seats the party holds.

This time, Democrats maintain that the anti-Obama sentiment has crested in Arkansas and are linking their candidates with Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe’s policies as the GOP continues to link Democrats from Arkansas with Obama and has stepped up its criticism of Beebe.

North Little Rock Mayor Pat Hays, state Rep. Tracy Steele, D-North Little Rock, state Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, and 2nd District congressional candidate Herb Rule of Little Rock were among those attending the opening of the Obama campaign’s Arkansas headquarters.

“I hadn’t thought about [Obama] being toxic,” Rule told reporters.

“I have thought of him as being our president and being faced with the type of obstructionism and bickering and lack of action by basically a Republican Congress,” he said.