Obama Rallies Wayne State Crowd To Vote For Schauer, Peters On Tuesday
DETROIT (WWJ) -- President Barack Obama made a stop in the Motor City urging voters to back Democrats in this midterm election on Saturday night.
Before the president took the stage at the rally on the campus of Wayne State University, gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer addressed the crowd and spoke about his opponent, incumbent Rick Snyder.
"These last four years, Rick Snyder -- the self-proclaimed tough nerd -- has only been tough on the middle class," Schauer said. "Snyder's tough choices work for you if you're wealthy or a big corporation or a member of his administration, who got 80 to 90 percent pay raises."
About 6,000 people cheered Obama, as he rallied for Schauer and Senate candidate Gary Peters. Obama said that the economy is good-shape, but could be better.
"As fast as we've been moving, we know we'd be moving faster if a lot more of our politicians lived by the same values of hard work and responsibility that the ordinary people they represent take with them every single day when they go to their job, " Obama said. "Over the next week, you've got a chance to make that happen."
The only Senate candidate to welcome Obama at an event this campaign season was Gary Peters, who has a comfortable lead in the polls. The race for governor is a different story -- polls show Democratic candidate Mark Schauer in a dead heat with Republican Rick Snyder.
Obama urged voters to back Democrats seeking to help the middle class with equal pay for women and a higher minimum wage.
"You have a chance to choose leaders who don't put political ideology first, they don't put just winning an election first -- they put you first," Obama said. "You couldn't have a better example than Mark and Gary."
Obama said the two candidates supported the auto industry bail-out which helped spur the nation out of the "worst economic crisis of our life time." Because of that, the President says American businesses have been able to create more than 10 million new jobs.
"Since they've taken office, they've led -- they led to clean up the Great Lakes, they helped to cut taxes for Michigan small businesses and invest in new, high-tech manufacturing," Obama said. "They fought to give Michigan's minimum wage law to give workers the raise they deserve. When the chips were down and our most iconic industry was on the line, they said we shouldn't walk away."
Obama told the crowd that Republicans are patriots who love their family, but they just have bad ideas.
"I always try to explain, look, I've got members of my family who I love and have bad ideas," Obama said. "I still love them, I just wouldn't put them in charge, right? You've all got someone in your family like that -- you're going to have them over for Thanksgiving, but you don't want to put them in charge."
