Romney visits Mansfield

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

MANSFIELD—Tucked away in the back cor­ner of a stor­age ware­house with a few other local reporters, one could feel a sense of excite­ment in the air as the crowd poured into the build­ing. Then, as Van Halen’s “Right Now” pulsed through the loud­speak­ers for the third time, the trav­el­ing news media swarmed in and began unpack­ing their lap­tops and other equip­ment, mak­ing an already cramped and sti­fling room feel even more so.

Every­one was there for one thing: to catch a glimpse of the man with the per­fect head of black hair with the white tufts on the sides, just above each ear. The man was Mitt Rom­ney, the place was PR Machine Works, Inc. in Mansfield.

On the after­noon of Sept. 10, Rom­ney vis­ited the site, which spe­cial­izes in pre­ci­sion man­u­fac­tur­ing and fab­ri­ca­tion. PR Machine is located at 1825 Nuss­baum Parkway—part of the indus­trial com­plex that also includes the Pepsi Cola Bot­tling Com­pany, Out­source Part­ners and Marco Photo Service.

The rally was a smaller, more exclu­sive event, yet peo­ple still packed the ware­house from wall to wall. A siz­able crowd also stood out­side of the build­ing. All were there to hear what the pres­i­den­tial hope­ful had to say.

Mans­field Mayor Tim­o­thy Theaker also spoke that day. “A few weeks back [Mans­field] had another vis­i­tor and I was not invited to par­tic­i­pate,” he began (refer­ring to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s visit to the city on Aug. 1). “But I was invited to this and I can­not think of a bet­ter place to have it.”

Theaker said PR Machine exem­pli­fies the hard work and per­se­ver­ance that makes a suc­cess­ful busi­ness. “Our com­mu­nity has seen a lot of busi­nesses depart recently…We need a leader who can cre­ate more jobs in the pri­vate sec­tor and help small busi­nesses grow.”

He also gave a false wel­come for Rom­ney, which got some laughs from the audience.

Bob Gibbs, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ohio’s 18th dis­trict, and Rob Port­man, U.S. Sen­a­tor for Ohio, both spoke briefly as well. In between the speak­ers, who all got the audi­ence cheer­ing, there were plenty of O-H-I-O cheers.

Mark Romanchuk owns PR Machine and invited Rom­ney to speak in Mans­field. He ascended the stage imme­di­ately before the man of the hour, with some of his employ­ees seated in the back­ground beneath a sign that read “We DID build this.”

“About 50 years ago, my dad started this busi­ness. In fact, he started it in our garage,” Romanchuck stated with pride. “I’ve got news for the pres­i­dent: we did build it.”

He made a few remarks about Rom­ney and then intro­duced him to the crowd. Romanchuck is a can­di­date for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in this year’s election.

Dur­ing his 15 minute speech, Rom­ney explained how he dif­fered from the pres­i­dent. He crit­i­cized Obama for rack­ing up even more debt for the coun­try, an issue Rom­ney said would be his num­ber one pri­or­ity as pres­i­dent and would do every­thing pos­si­ble to reduce the debt.

Based on what Rom­ney said that day, it is clear that he has a tra­di­tional polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy to Obama’s more pro­gres­sive one. He explained the bread and but­ter of his plat­form: a five-part plan.

The first aspect of the plan is energy, and he expressed his sup­port for con­tin­ued use of coal, as well as oil drilling on pub­lic lands.

The next aspects are trade and man­u­fac­tur­ing. He referred to the employ­ment sta­tis­tics released last week as an indi­ca­tor that the job out­look has not improved under Obama’s pres­i­dency, say­ing that it was time for a change.

He also com­mented that one rea­son many Amer­i­cans are unem­ployed is because they do not meet the required skills of many avail­able jobs, so a focus on education—the fourth part of his plan—would also be needed to get peo­ple work­ing and get the younger gen­er­a­tion bet­ter pay­ing jobs.

The final part of Romney’s plan is small busi­ness. He excit­edly talked about the entre­pre­neur­ial spirit and how to reen­gage it.

After­ward, he shook hands with some audi­ence mem­bers before briefly address­ing the crowd out­side just a few min­utes later.