Obama campaign launches tour in Lima

LIMA — President Barack Obama's re-election campaign kicked off a statewide tour in Lima on Tuesday to drive home Obama's claim he rescued Ohio's automotive industry from financial collapse.The Obama campaign's state chairman, Greg Schultz, said the campaign launched its four-day “Made in Ohio Auto Tour” here to highlight how Lima benefitted from Obama's actions.Ford Motor Co. recently announced plans to add new engine work at the Ford Lima Engine Plant, where the company manufactures the Duratec V-6 engine and employs 700 people.Ford never took a share of the federal bailout several of its competitors accepted, but that doesn't mean Ford didn't benefit, officials with the Obama campaign and United Auto Workers said.“The company advocated directly for the auto industry rescue with the former Ohio governor, Ted Strickland,” said Larry Donaldson, regional vice president of UAW's community action programs. “What happened helped keep the vital supply chain intact. That was their main purpose in order to keep those people employed, and it's that supply chain and the health of the auto industry that has helped Ford to thrive.”Strickland, a national co-chairman of Obama's re-election campaign, announced the tour Monday in a telephone news conference along with Bob King, president of the United Auto Workers union.Donaldson contrasted Obama's actions with the course recommended by Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and the presumed Republican presidential nominee.“The 700 people who work at the Ford Lima Engine Plant would have suffered if Mitt Romney had his way. Mitt Romney urged in a much publicized editorial in the Detroit newspaper that we should let the auto industry just go bankrupt,” Donaldson said. “He would have let this critical industry go by the wayside along with thousands of Ohio jobs it supports.”Schultz also hammered the Romney contrast.“During the Great Recession, auto companies were on the brink of collapse,” he said. “Although polls, pundits and prominent Republicans like Mitt Romney advised against it, the president made the right decision to step in and allow the auto industries to restructure, and we all know the story that unfolded.”A prominent Romney supporter, U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, disputed the Obama campaign's claim of having rescued the auto industry. Turner is co-chair of Romney's campaign in Ohio.“Remarkably, President Obama's allies have attempted to justify his $80 billion auto bailout,” Turner said in a statement released through the Romney campaign. “President Obama's mismanagement of the process cost the American taxpayers $23 billion.”The $23 billion refers to the value of General Motors stock still held by the federal government.