First lady Michelle Obama will swing through the Allentown area Thursday to
fire up Democratic volunteers before the party conventions signal the official
start of the fall campaign.
While President Obama toured the Lehigh Valley in December 2009,
it will be Michelle Obama's second visit to the Valley as first lady.
Michelle Obama will stop in West Philadelphia, Montgomery County and the
Allentown area, according to a campaign official, as part of the campaign's
"It Takes One" effort, aimed at motivating its army of grassroots volunteers
to take their outreach efforts up a notch.
"That one conversation you have, that one new volunteer you recruit, that
could be the difference between waking up on Nov. 7 and feeling the promise of
four more years or asking yourself: Could I have done more?" Michelle Obama
said in a YouTube video announcing the effort.
Details of the three stops, which will be ticketed but open to the
public, are expected to be released later this week. The Obama campaign has
opened neighborhood campaign offices in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has opened a volunteer office in
Bethlehem.
The first lady is expected to "talk to voters about the president's
accomplishments, what's at stake this election and the importance of
registering to vote to make their voices heard in the election," according to
a campaign official.
The Obama campaign spent most of last week talking about a report by the
nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that determined Romney's plan to slash federal
income tax rates by 20 percent would force him to strip the tax code of
popular deductions, ultimately raising middle-class taxes.
The Romney campaign criticized the report as biased, and seized on a July
jobs report that showed U.S. unemployment ticking up to 8.3 percent to hammer
home its message that Obama has failed to get the economy moving after the
Great Recession.
Michelle Obama last visited the Lehigh Valley in September 2008 when she
held a forum at Cedar Crest College on helping military families. She was
accompanied by Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden.
At the time, her husband was battling Sen. John McCain for the
presidency.
Michelle Obama was in Philadelphia as recently as June, hosting a forum
at the National Constitution Center that also aimed to fire up volunteers.
Obama leads Romney in Pennsylvania in recent polls, but the state remains
key to the president's effort to win a second term. A Quinnipiac
University/New York Times/CBS News poll released last week showed Obama with
an 11-point lead over Romney in Pennsylvania among likely voters.
