CLEVELAND — Unemployment rates fell last month in nearly all of the battleground states that will determine the presidential winner, according to statewide data released by the Labor Department on Friday.
The declines, however, were modest.
The data provide one of the last comprehensive looks at the health of the U.S. economy ahead of Election Day, now a little more than two weeks away. Voters will get one more update on the national unemployment rate just four days before the Nov. 6 election.
But the state reports matter greatly to the presidential campaigns, which believe that the public’s impressions of the economy are shaped mostly by local conditions rather than national ones.
In Ohio, perhaps the most crucial battleground state for both President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, the unemployment rate ticked down last month to 7 percent from 7.2 percent, below the national average of 7.8 percent.
“I knew a lot of people who were laid off and now they’re working,” said firefighter Matt Sparling, an Obama supporter from Parma Heights, Ohio. “So something good is happening here.”
The state’s September unemployment rate is now more than 2 percentage points lower than it was during the same month in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won Ohio in his “Morning in America” reelection campaign themed on an economic rebound. Iowa’s jobless rate of 5.2 percent compares with 7 percent the same month in 1984.
Ohio has a pivotal role in electoral politics: It has gone with the winning candidate in every presidential election since 1964, and no Republican has won the White House without carrying the state.
Obama’s team is banking on the president getting credit for improvements in Ohio’s economy, particularly for the bailout of the auto industry, which has deep roots in the Midwestern swing state. But Romney has opportunities to run on the economy in Ohio, too. The state actually lost nearly 13,000 jobs in September and the drop in the unemployment rate was probably due in part to people dropping out of the job market.
Obama’s campaign released a new ad in Ohio on Friday, touting the president’s rescue of General Motors and Chrysler. Without the auto bailout, one man in the ad says, “Ohio would have collapsed.” Another man says, “Mitt Romney would have just let us go under — just let them go bankrupt.” The ad’s tagline shows the map of Ohio with the words: “Mitt Romney. Not one of us.”
The president didn’t mention the state jobless numbers during a campaign stop Friday in Virginia, one of two battleground states where the rate didn’t drop. It held steady at the relatively low level of 5.9 percent.
Obama quipped in a raucous rally at George Mason University that a case of “Romnesia” was preventing his opponent from remembering his own stances on health care, energy and a slate of policies.
“He’s forgetting what his own positions are — and he’s betting that you will, too,” Obama said. “We’ve got to name this condition that he’s going through. I think it’s called Romnesia.”
“If you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website or the promises that you’ve made over the six years that you’ve been running for president, here’s the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions,” Obama said in a reference to the health-care law enacted in 2010.
Romney appeared with running mate Paul Ryan at a rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., Friday evening.
They spoke to a crowd of thousands of supporters who were warmed up by the singing of country music star John Rich of the group Big and Rich.
Obama’s re-election effort has become the “incredibly shrinking campaign,” Romney said. “Have you been watching the Obama campaign lately? It’s absolutely remarkable,” the GOP nominee said. “They have no agenda.”
But even as Ryan and Romney spoke, a crowd of Obama supporters gathered and shouted “Obama. Four More Years,” drowning out parts of Romney’s 20-minute speech.
In Wisconsin, former President Bill Clinton said Friday that Obama is facing a tough re-election race because “impatient” Americans haven’t fully recognized an economy on the mend.
Campaigning in Green Bay, Clinton urged voters to stay the course as more signs of a recovery sink in. Clinton said voters should judge Obama on the past three years, in which private-sector job growth has made up for lost ground.
“This shouldn’t be a race,” Clinton said. “The only reason it is, is because Americans are impatient on things not made before yesterday and they don’t understand why the economy is not totally hunkydory again.”
The two candidates were stepping off the campaign trail this weekend for debate preparations ahead of Monday’s third and final face-off in Boca Raton, Fla. Romney was staying in South Florida to practice, while Obama and top aides headed to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, to prepare for the foreign policy-focused debate.
“The economy is the most important thing in the election and the most important thing that voters care about,” even as the next debate turns to foreign policy, said Stephen Hess, a presidential historian at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Romney’s campaign advisers “are probably hoping against hope there won’t be any more good news” on the economy, said Hess, who served in the administrations of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and as an adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
IT’S THE ECONOMY ...
Friday’s jobs report showed the unemployment rate falling slightly in seven battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. Rates held steady at 5.7 percent in New Hampshire and 5.9 percent in Virginia. Unemployment in both states has long been well below the national average.
The nine states have a total of 110 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Obama won them all in 2008.
Nevada’s 11.8 percent rate is the highest nationally. But it has also experienced the steepest decline in the past 12 months. The unemployment rate there was 12.1 percent in August and 13.6 percent a year ago.
Iowa has the lowest battleground-state rate, with 5.2 percent out of work, down from 5.5 percent a month before.
Obama has staked his reelection prospects on the notion that the economic crisis he inherited is easing. He’s been backed by positive trends for a handful of recent economic indicators, as well as polls showing the public’s view of the economy is improving.
But millions of Americans are still out of work, giving Romney an opportunity to cast the president as ineffective in solving the country’s economic troubles.
Among the other battleground states, Colorado’s rate in September was 8 percent, down from 8.2 a month before; Florida’s rate was 8.7, down from 8.8 percent; North Carolina’s was 9.6 percent, down from 9.7 percent; and Wisconsin’s was 7.3 percent, down from 7.5 in August.
EDITORIAL ENDORSEMENTS
Romney may be something of a Utah native son, having helped turn around the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Games, attended Brigham Young University and once owning property there. But on Friday, The Salt Lake Tribune tossed its support to Obama, in an editorial titled “Too Many Mitts.”
Though the endorsement begins by acknowledging Romney’s Utah and Salt Lake Olympics bona fides — “Romney managed to save the state from ignominy, turning the extravaganza into a showcase for the matchless landscapes, volunteerism and efficiency that told the world what is best and most beautiful about Utah and its people,” reads the second paragraph — the tone quickly changes.
The editorial calls Romney a “shape-shifting nominee” and adds that the major question of the campaign is, “Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?”
“Politicians routinely tailor their words to suit an audience,” reads the editorial. “Romney, though, is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear.”
The Tribune editorial page, which endorsed Obama four years ago but went with President George W. Bush before that, concludes: “Therefore, our endorsement must go to the incumbent, a competent leader who, against tough odds, has guided the country through catastrophe and set a course that, while rocky, is pointing toward a brighter day. The president has earned a second term. Romney, in whatever guise, does not deserve a first.”
Romney’s campaign declined to comment on the endorsement.
Obama picked up two other major newspaper endorsements Friday; both The Denver Post and the Tampa Bay Times threw their support to the president.
The Denver Post cited Romney’s secretly recorded comments at a closed fundraiser in May, in which he said he believed that 47 percent of Americans consider themselves “victims” and are dependent on the government, as one of the factors in the decision.
“His comments on the 47 percent of Americans who refuse to ‘take personal responsibility and care for their lives’ were a telling insight into his views and a low point of the campaign,” the Post wrote. “Obama, on the other hand, has shown throughout his term that he is a steady leader who keeps the interests of a broad array of Americans in mind.”
The Orlando Sentinel, however, endorsed Romney, a flip from its 2008 support of Obama.
“We have little confidence that Obama would be more successful managing the economy and the budget in the next four years,” the Sentinel wrote. “For that reason, though we endorsed him in 2008, we are recommending Romney in this race.”
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Christopher S. Rugaber, Nedra Pickler, Ken Thomas, Emery Dalesio and Brian Bakst of The Associated Press; by John McCormick, Michelle Jamrisko and Mike Dorning of Bloomberg News; by Jerry Markon, Nia-Malika Henderson, Felicia Sonmez and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post; and by Ashley Parker of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/20/2012