Obama to focus on economy during Iowa visit
Fresh from an overseas tour, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama plans to focus on economic issues today in his first stop in Iowa since he clinched his party’s nomination.
Obama will be in Cedar Rapids visiting with flood victims, then will host a town hall meeting on the economy.
Campaign officials say Obama recognizes that people are struggling with the economy and with flood recovery in Iowa.
“Senator Obama wants to hear directly from Iowans affected by the floods and listen to their concerns and the challenges they’re facing and talk about a way ahead,” said Jenni Lee, a spokesperson.
In Missouri on Wednesday, Obama said the country needs a new direction for the economy, but rival John McCain “thinks we’re on the right track.”
He also defended his tax plan, saying it would hit only families making more than $250,000.
McCain’s campaign has attacked Obama on taxes recently, charging he would raise taxes on middle income workers.
Obama’s visit, his first to the state since late May, comes as McCain launches a new television ad.
The ad, which the campaign says will run in Iowa, likens Obama’s popularity to that of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton but argues he isn’t ready to be president.
“Do the American people want to elect the world’s biggest celebrity, or do they want to elect an American hero?” said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain.
Lee responded: “On a day when major news organizations across the country are taking Senator McCain to task for a steady stream of false, negative attacks, his campaign has launched yet another. Or, as some might say, ‘Oops! He did it again’.”
The ad also accuses Obama of opposing offshore drilling and backing new taxes on electricity.
The latter claim refers to comments Obama made to a Texas newspaper in which he said rather than taxing clean energy sources such as wind, “what we ought to tax is dirty energy, like coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.”
The Obama campaign said it was referring to his support of a system called “cap and trade” that limits plant emissions and creates a market for the right to emit pollutants. McCain supports such a system, too.
Iowa is one of several states pegged as a battleground, even though Obama leads in early polling and Democrats have built a big registration edge in the state.
McCain, however, has been the more visible presence in Iowa lately — at least on television. The U.S. senator from Arizona has spent $946,000 on television ads in the state since June 3, according to a new report from TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG with analysis by the Wisconsin Advertising Project. Obama, the group says, has spent $700,000.
A large share of McCain’s spending has been in the Quad-Cities.
Ad spending nationwide in the presidential race is outpacing what it was in 2004. So far, Obama has spent $27 million, while McCain has spent $21 million.
Iowa, at $1.6 million, is in the middle of the pack of 21 states where ads are running. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan lead the way. More than $10 million has been spent in Pennsylvania.
(The Associated Press contributed to this article.)
Ed Tibbetts can be contacted at (563) 383-2327 or etibbetts@qctimes.com.