James Q. Lynch, CR Gazette –
CEDAR RAPIDS — Signaling the continuing — and, perhaps, growing — importance of Iowa to his re-election effort, President Barack Obama will make a second trip this year to Cedar Rapids for a “grass roots” event Tuesday.
According to campaign officials, the president will talk with Iowans about what he calls a clear economic choice between an economy that grows from the middle out and one that grows from the top down.
The trip will be the first-term Democrat’s fourth to Iowa this year. It will be the ninth time since January that either Obama, first lady Michelle Obama or Vice President Joe Biden have traveled to Iowa, one of a handful of swing states that are expected to determine the outcome of the 2012 election. Biden made multiple stops in Eastern Iowa in late June.
The president’s frequent visits to Iowa are “simply amazing,” according to Chris Larimer, a political scientist at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.
Four high-profile visits to a state with only six electoral votes “suggests Iowa is absolutely in play,” Larimer said. It also signals that the political climate in Iowa “has significantly changed from November of 2008,” when the state that launched Obama gave him a 54 percent to 45 percent win over Republican Sen. John McCain.
In addition to a January trip to Cedar Rapids, Obama visited the University of Iowa in Iowa City in April, and in May he stopped in Newton and at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines.
Obama for America has stepped up its rural outreach, including the release July 3 of a Rural Americans for Obama video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCHgxm8Jau4.
