Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama to kick off president's reelection campaign next week in Ohio, Obama campaign says prospect of U.S. Sen Portman from Ohio on Republican presidential ticket with Romney for vice president poses no threat, says Portman was chief adviser to Bush administration on failed economic policies, Romney campaigning this week in Ohio with Gov. Kasich

United States of America President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Executive Publisher, Editor, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog (www.clevelandurbannews.com)

WASHINGTON, D.C.-President Barack Obama will officially kick off his reelection campaign with First Lady Michelle Obama by his side at a public rally on Saturday morning May 5 at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Oh., his campaign team told Cleveland Urban News.Com in a conference call with reporters Wednesday evening.

The Democratic president will then go to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond,VA that same day for an afternoon rally.

And Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is campaigning in Ohio today, touring with Gov. John Kasich, also a Republican,

Asked by Cleveland Urban News.Com if the Obama campaign is threatened in anyway with the prospect that U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio will be Romney's vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket, the president's campaign said that "the contest is about the two men at the top of the ticket and their competing philosophies."

David Axelrod, a senior campaign strategist for the Obama for America campaign, chuckled at the suggestion that Portman, a former congressman and budget director for the Bush administration who beat former Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher in 2010 to win the Senate seat left open when U.S. Sen George Voinovich announced his retirement, poses any threat, if he is chosen as the former Massachusetts governor's vice presidential running mate.

He said that Portman was a chief adviser to former President George W. Bush on the economy and was an architect of the failed economic policies of the Bush administration, and that Obama has lifted the country out of the red.

"This is the president who stood up and stepped in to rescue the American auto industry and save a million jobs and, with the help of all involved, put the industry back on its feet," Axelrod said. "That's meant a lot to Ohio. This is the president who's emphasized manufacturing as a key to our strong economy and future and the revitalization of the middle class. And last quarter, we had the best manufacturing numbers in almost two decades."

Retired Ohio state Rep Vermel Whalen, a Cleveland Democrat, said that Portman is overrated and that the Republicans have no new ideas that will help catapult Romney to win Ohio or the presidency over the popular Obama.

"They will not win Ohio in November," said Whalen."The Republicans are singing the same tired old tune."

The first Black president of the United States of America, Obama won the presidency in 2008 by a landslide against Republican nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain, a historic election that rocked the nation.

His unprecedented victory is a source of pride to America's Black community, and to Cleveland, a majority Black major metropolitan city that elected Carl B. Stokes in 1967 as the first Black mayor of a major American city.

“It is the dawn of a new springtime in the life of the Democratic process in America and a spiritual and prophetic moment in the history of our nation,” the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss Jr ., then the pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland and a Civil Rights pioneer who marched with the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told the Call and Post for a news story published on the 2008 presidential election that was written by Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman, a community activist who now publishes and edits Cleveland Urban News.Com.

Moss said then that Obama's election to president "says to the Black community that there is no substitute to having access to the ballot box and using it."

Ohio is a pivotal state where no modern day Republican has won the White House without first winning Ohio, and the last Democrat to do so successfully was the late John F. Kennedy in 1960.

Reach Cleveland Urban News.Com by email at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and by phone at 216-659-0473.

Reach Editor and Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and phone number: 216-932-3114.