Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan kicked off a two-day swing through battleground Ohio on Saturday with a pitch aimed at workers displaced by upheaval in the economy’s manufacturing sector, including the auto industry.
“We’re got factories that are closed, we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs just since he took office – 38,000 just in the last two months,” the Wisconsin Republican told a crowd of supporters at Zanesville High School. “We’re going in the wrong direction.”
Rep. Ryan, campaigning with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and other local and state Republicans, compared the central Ohio town with his own hometown in Janesville, Wisconsin.
“Janesville is not all that different than Zanesville. We used to build Suburbans and Tahoes for GM in my hometown and we used to say ’As GM goes, so goes Janesville.’ But we lost our plant.”
“We’ve got big problems. We don’t want a president blaming someone else for four more years,” the congressman said.
Mr. Ryan plans to hit eight cities in Ohio on a two-day bus tour across the state, including New Philadelphia and Sabina later on Saturday, and Celina, Findlay and Marion, Ohio, on Sunday.
• David Eldridge can be reached at deldridge@washingtontimes.com.
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