Ohio Autoworkers' Stories Reflect Obama-Romney Dead Heat

In Ohio, the mathematical narrative trotted out by the Obama re-election campaign is simple.

Add together:

? 850,000 Ohio jobs linked to the automotive industry

? 7.2 percent unemployment in the state, a figure below the national average

? $25 billion in automotive bailouts, micromanaged by the Obama administration in 2009

And you get:

A persistent lead for the president (three percentage points in the latest aggregation of polls) in the traditionally Republican-leaning state -- something Obama is never shy boasting about.

So, all Ohio autoworkers (and their families and the residents who depend on the industry) are thrilled with Obama, right?

Not quite, and if you drill down into Ohioans' individual stories, the picture is murkier. Even card-carrying UAW members and long-time factory workers are vacillating on the president, and some who disagree with Obama on other topics are irked to be tied to a single issue.

As Ohio carries its status of a swing-state darling down the stretch run of the campaign, Yahoo News asked residents to share their thoughts, via email, about the presidential race and the auto bailouts, and how these issues relate to their lives. Here are some perspectives.

Todd Sims, 38, of Norwalk, Ohio, works at Kyklos Bearing International in Sandusky, which has supplied General Motors with wheel bearings since the 1950s.

He says he's a proud third-generation UAW member and notes that the auto industry has provided his family with middle-class wages and benefits for more than 60 years. He's supporting Obama.

"When President Obama chose [how] to bailout the auto industry, he made a decision to fight for the jobs of the middle class," Sims told Yahoo News in an email. "These manufacturing jobs support our local communities and strengthen our national economy."

Mark Burns, of Dayton, feels differently. "This president never stops talking about fairness while he left many of my dedicated friends and co-workers devastated," he wrote.

The 46-year-old automotive engineer left the industry in 2005 after Delphi, a parts manufacturer, declared bankruptcy. While Delphi's troubles (irregular accounting practices, for one) and plant closures and sell-offs (21 of 29 sites in 2006) predated the 2009 bailouts, he says the favoritism shown by the president angered many.

"I believe the government has no business picking favorites in the private sector," Burns writes in an email. "Why were GM and Chrysler treated differently than Delta Airlines, Kodak, and other American companies that have recently gone bankrupt? Forcing GM and Chrysler to go though the proper legal process would have made the companies much more competitive in the long run. But that would have upset the president's friends in the UAW leadership."

Bailouts in Dayton, particularly for Delphi employees, were irrelevant, Burns says. To him, the American auto industry still struggles, despite the president's crowing.

"Most of the auto industry remnants are shut down and were closed long before the bailouts began. Plants have been torn down or have been idle for years," Burns, who backs Mitt Romney, writes. "The area was hit pretty hard by the closings."

Ohio auto manufacturing is a family affair for 30-year-old Kristy Lorenz, who lives outside Columbus, the state capital, and has worked at the nearby Marysville Honda plant.

"My dad was one of the first 500 Americans hired when the plant was build 30 years ago; he met my step-mom there, and he bribed me into working there for three summers while I was in college. It's where I met my husband of seven years," she writes in a first-person account published on Yahoo News.

In better times, work was consistent and overtime welcome: "During many of those years, I hardly saw my parents or my husband because of the overtime and production Saturdays; sure I complained about losing out on time with my family, but I was also thankful they had stable jobs."

The recession of 2007 and 2008 hit and auto sales fell, parts suppliers shuttered shops and concern mounted: "I worried whether my husband would have a job the next week, the next month, or the next year."

But when Honda reduced production, laid off temporary workers and offered buyouts, it saved her family. And she gives Obama some credit: "With the auto bailout and the cash for clunkers program, the auto industry as a whole started to turn around."

"So when conservative politicians ask if my family is better off now under Obama than we were four years ago, I can answer with an emphatic 'yes,' " she writes, "because manufacturing is slowly coming back to Ohio."

Jerry Grakauskas, a Ford employee, won't be pigeonholed as a single-issue voter.

"Though I strongly agreed with the automotive bailouts, I cannot vote for President Obama. There are too many other things he has done that have crippled this economy and will for years to come," writes the union member and 25-year veteran of Ford's Avon Lake plant.

He points, specifically, to environmental issues that he ties to automobile manufacturing: "President Obama's non-policy on the Canadian pipeline will hurt future oil and gas prices, which, in turn, affects the auto industry." Grakauskas also criticizes the administration's limitations on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, and believes Obama's stance against coal hurts jobs and drives up energy prices.

He also disapproves of how Obama executed the automotive bailouts and argues that no matter who occupied the Oval Office in 2009, help would have arrived.

"Focusing on a single issue [?] does a disservice," he says. "There should be no tunnel-vision focus."

Grakauskas says he hopes to hear the words "President-elect Romney" come November.

Roy Smith recalls the healthy, bustling days at General Motors in the mid '70s.

"I remember when I was first interviewed and hired in at the Inland Division of General Motors," he writes in a first-person account. "There were more than 6,800 hourly and approximately 1,200 salaried employees. There were so many people working here; it was difficult to find a parking spot, and during the shift changes, there were major traffic jams."

But over the years, GM fiddled with Inland multiple times -- changing its name, spinning it off -- and eventually GM rebranded the parts supplier as Delphi Automotive Systems. It became an independent company in 1999.

Tough times followed. Nearly 12,000 jobs were slashed in 2001. The SEC subpoenaed the company in 2004 for suspect accounting. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2005. Dozens of plants closed or were sold in 2005 and 2006.

Smith, 64, retired on Jan. 1, 2009.

"I remember the retirement and going away-parties as the people left the plant," he writes.

One month later, he said Delphi terminated health benefits and life insurance. He says he lost 24 percent of his pension when Obama's auto task force (which oversaw the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies) "interfered," he says, with GM's bankruptcy.

"Others fared worse," he says.

He says he can't believe the government played such a heavy hand, picking winners and losers.

"Unfortunately," Smith says, "we ended up on the losing end of that decision."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-autoworkers-stories-reflect-obama-romney-dead-heat-134900847.html

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