Obama Flying into Ohio Political Storm? - East Idaho News
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Obama Flying into Ohio Political Storm?

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Getty 072012 PresidentObama4?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1343779251532MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GettyImages(MANSFIELD, Ohio) — Air Force One will touch down in a swirl of defense controversy in Mansfield, Ohio, Wednesday as President Obama makes a third campaign trip in four weeks to the battleground state.

“If President Obama has his way, his Air Force One arrival would be one of the final flights into Mansfield-Lahm Airport,” claims Sen. Rob Portman, who is often a surrogate campaigner in Ohio for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The Mansfield News Journal has run a series of stories and editorials expressing local worries that the air mission of the 179th Airlift Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard will end if proposed Pentagon budget cuts close it down. The local paper quotes Vice Commander Col. Michael Howard as saying he will park the wing’s C-27J aircraft on the tarmac in full view of Air Force One to make a point to the visiting president. The 179th has four of the planes, two currently deployed in Afghanistan. The newspaper reports the Air National Guard in Mansfield employs more than 200 airmen and more than 550 part-time employees.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters he will check into the matter.

“There is not an inch of Ohio that the President does not love to visit, ” Carney told his daily White House briefing, describing the campaign stops President Obama will make in Mansfield and later Akron.

It is not just Ohio Republicans who are seeking to protect the Air National Guard mission. A Republican National Committee spokesman is circulating an email quoting Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, an Obama supporter, as calling the proposed cuts, “penny-wise but pound foolish” and pledging to save the program.

But the 179th Airlift Wing may be doomed. It was targeted for elimination once before during the 2005 base closings process.

Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio

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