Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney made his first general election campaign appearance in Davenport on Monday, telling a crowd at LeClaire Park that President Barack Obama hasn’t given Americans a “fair shot” and that he will.
Romney is on the fourth day of a five-day bus tour through battleground states, and he wrapped up Monday with a late afternoon rally on the riverfront, accompanied by his wife, Ann.
The former Massachusetts governor, in a 19-minute speech, centered much of his criticism of the president on the economy.
He argued that veterans who can’t find jobs and children who are seeing rising debt aren’t being treated fairly.
“If there’s ever been a president who has not offered a fair shot to the people of America, it’s this president,” Romney said. “I will go to work with every ounce of my energy to put America back to work, to see rising wages again, to keep us strong and to give the American people a fair shot.”
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He also faulted the president’s immigration policy, though he did not specifically mention the decision announced Friday to stop the deportation of young people who were brought to this country illegally if they met certain conditions. Romney has called the decision a political one, though he hasn’t said he’d move to repeal it. Instead, he told the Davenport crowd that Obama has failed to deal with the overall problem.
“He was going to deal with immigration, he said. In his first year. He was going to focus on that. Did he do anything on immigration when he had a (Democratic) House and Senate?” Romney said. “This is a president who has said one thing and done another.”
It was the economy that drew most of Romney’s comments, though.
Polls say that Iowans tend to favor the Republican on the issue of jobs and the economy. But Iowa also tends to be faring better economically than many states. Its unemployment rate, at 5.1 percent in May, is more than three points lower than the 8.2 percent nationwide jobless rate.
Scott County’s jobless rate in April was 6.1 percent.
Romney acknowledged Iowa’s economic climate, but he gave the credit to Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad.
“Governor Branstad is doing a heck of a job making Iowa an attractive place for business and jobs creators, for innovation,” he said. “This state is on the move with new leadership.“
The Obama campaign responded to Romney late Monday: “Mitt Romney’s day ended in Iowa like all of them of late — with a lot of angry and dishonest campaign rhetoric, and zero solutions to create jobs or strengthen the middle class. Unfortunately for him, he did it in Iowa, where Republican Governor Terry Branstad said that Iowa’s economy is seeing significant growth. ... Neither Iowa nor the country can afford to go back to the failed policies that crashed the economy in the first place.”
Earlier, a group of about two dozen people with the group Progress Iowa sought to portray Romney as an enemy of the middle class.
“We are not willing to let his claims stand alone,” Matt Sinovic, the group’s executive director, said. “His policies are bad for the middle class and bad for Iowa.”
At LeClaire Park, however, hundreds of people waved flags and cheered Romney as his bus pulled in, and during his remarks.
“He’s just exactly what we need in this country,” said Randy Siemsen, a retiree from Eldridge. “Because he’s got a vision for it; a vision that you know is right economically, that is right from a values standpoint. That is not filled with deceit and misleading the public every day, as our current president does.”
People from Illinois also came across the river to see Romney.
Pat Cunningham, of Rock Island, said he didn’t want to see his kids and grandkids saddled with debt.
Georgia Armstrong came from Galesburg to see Romney and said she supports his pledge to repeal the health care reform law and “getting this country to back where it was.”
Romney began the day in Wisconsin, predicting he would win the state. Then he journeyed to Dubuque, where he took to the Mississippi River aboard the Spirit of Dubuque for a short period before cruising into LeClaire Park aboard a large, blue and white bus.
Eastern Iowa is typically friendly to Democratic presidential candidates, but if Romney can gain support in places like Dubuque and Davenport and in other parts of eastern Iowa, he will help his chances of winning the state’s six electoral votes.
In 2004, then-President George W. Bush won the state by trimming Democratic margins in eastern Iowa and winning big in the Republican-leaning western part of the state.
Scott County has voted for Democratic presidential candidates for several election cycles in a row, but Republicans are heartened by their prospects here this year. Romney has performed well in Scott County in two Republican caucuses, and the GOP has increased its voter registration figures here, while running off a string of election victories in the 2010 election, including Branstad winning the county.
(Times reporter Kurt Allemeier contributed to this story.)
