By Johnette Jernigan and Kathy Wray Coleman, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog

CLEVELAND,Ohio-In Cleveland, Oh., where Ohio is a pivotal state that will likely decide the upcoming election, presidential debate watchers that gathered Wednesday night to capacity at the Ward 8 community office of Cleveland Councilman Jeff Johnson in the predominantly Black city's Glenville neighborhood said President Barack Obama was a winner over Mitt Romney.

That posture, no doubt, is contrary to mainstream America and a CNN poll that found that Romney beat Obama 67 percent to 35 percent,  a poll that  political pundits said was admittedly skewed with Republicans.

Held in Denver, Colo at the University of Denver, the first presidential debate of the 2012 election was moderated by Jim Lehrer, 78, a prominent journalist and frequent debate moderator who  is accused of letting it go off course with Obama and Romney making long speeches rather than timed responses in a continual fashion.

It covered domestic policy issues such as tax platforms, green energy, and education, and the federal budget and deficit.

"The president was the winner," said Councilman Johnson, a Clevelander and one of 13 all Black Obama delegates from Ohio's majority Black 11th congressional district to the since done Democratic National Convention held last month in Charlotte, NC.

Johnson did not give Obama a slam dunk but he said that his incumbency in a close debate took him over the edge to win it.

State Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat, agrees.

"If we base the debate on facts, truths, and informative data," the president won," said Patmon.

Those at Johnson's debate watch party ate fried chicken, potato salad, and collard greens, compliments of the councilman and his ward club.

At times you could hear a pin drop in the room.

The Black audience was motivated. And they graded the debate themselves.

"I would give the president an A and Mitt Romney an F," said, Glen Vinson, 53, a truck driver and Ward 8 resident, who added that "Romney was angry and combative throughout the debate."

And while Vinson may have appeared over zealous in his judgment of who won or lost, the people in the room for the hour and a half debate shared his view that Obama won, an indication that Blacks see the president differently.

The Democrat Obama still leads Republican Mitt Romney nationally, and in the battleground states of Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania  with the same CNN poll showing that voters did not change their minds enough by the debate to switch allegiances to either the Democratic or Republican parties.

CNN did not report that America's poor people caught Romney's wrath too, with a highlight of the debate being his having called poor people "Obama's poor."

Long time  Cleveland political strategist Arnold Pinkney, who ran Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's campaign in 2005 and managed the successful Cleveland schools operating levy campaign in 1996  as well as Ohio's successful campaign for gambling casinos, predicted skewed polls for Romney Thursday evening at a rally at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland  of nearly a thousand Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) union members and national union leaders of The Amalgamated Transit Unit Local 268, the local union for RTA.

"Don't believe them when they say he lost the debate," predicted Pinkney, who stressed that if Obama wins Ohio and Virginia on election night its all over for Romney.

"What Mr Pinkney meant was that Barack Obama was going into hostile territory for the debate," said former Cleveland School Board Member Gerald C. Henley, who is Black too but gave the debate to Romney.

Among others at the Greater Abyssinia rally held the Tuesday evening before the great debate where First Lady Mitchell Obama's brother Craig Robinson spoke where Greater Abyssinia Senior Pastor the Rev. Dr E. T. Caviness, Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (D-11), The Rev. Hilton Smith, Community Activists Khalid Samad, the Rev Larry Harris, Cleveland Municipal Court Judgse Pinkey Carr and Michael John Ryan, and Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Yvonne Conwell.

"Do not be afraid to engage the other side," said Robinson, Michelle Obama's only sibling.

"I can't wait to tell my sister," Robinson said about the enthusiastic crowd that cheered throughout the hour and a half long rally.

What is clear is that the nation's labor unions made up their minds which side they would take long ago, and are behind Obama, debate or no debate.

"I'm here in Cleveland because Cleveland drives Ohio, and Ohio decides the president," said Larry Hanley, national president of the 190,000 member Amalgamated Transit Union, whose local RTA union is led by William Nix.

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