Pictured are Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Cleveland (wearing red tie) and U.S. Representatives Marcy Kaptur (wearing blue), Tim Ryan (wearing blue tie), Marcia L. Fudge (wearing orange and Black), and Joyce Beatty (wearing orange with neglace) (Members of Ohio's five-member Democratic Congressional Delegation)
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Fighting for votes in the final hours of the election, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden visited Cleveland on the eve of the Nov. 3 presidential election, his second visit to the majority Black city since it hosted the First Presidential Debate on Sept. 29
He spoke before a group of supporters, including elected officials and other dignitaries at a drive-in event at Burke Lakefront Airport in the downtown area of city that in 1967 elected the first Black mayor of a major American city.
Biden's visit to battleground Ohio on Monday afternoon comes as a heightened coronavirus pandemic sweeps the country, and it follows an Oct 24 campaign visit to the city by his running mate, vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a junior U.S. senator and the first Black woman to compete on a major party presidential ticket in America.
"Thank you Reps. Marcia Fudge, Marcy Kaptur, Joyce Beatty, and Tim Ryan," Biden said at the beginning of his speech, Fudge of Warrensville Heights and Kaptur of Toledo, whose congressional districts include parts of Cleveland, and Beatty and Ryan representing the Columbus and Youngstown areas respectively.
"And thanks to Senator Sherrod Brown," the former vice president who served two terms under former president Barack Obama said, Brown a Cleveland Democrat and seasoned member of Congress.
He said that Brown invited him to make a last minute stop to Cleveland, a Democratic stronghold like the county it sits in, Cuyahoga County in fact, a 29 percent Black county, and the second largest of the state's 88 counties.
Brown, Kaptur, Fudge, Beatty and Ryan are the five members of Ohio's Democratic Congressional Delegation, all of them fighters who have campaigned vigorously for the Biden campaign.
Biden said that he and Harris will do right by Americans, if given the opportunity.
"In 2020, I'm asking for your trust again, in me and Kamala. I'm proud of the coalition this campaign has built to welcome Democrats, Republicans, and Independents."
He spoke at length on the pandemic that has plagued the United States since early March, the U.S. breaking a world record Friday for infections with more than 100,000 confirmed cases in a single 24-hour period at 100, 233 cases, a CNN report says.
"This president knew in January this virus was deadly, but he hid it from the American people,' Biden complained. " He knew it was worse than the flu. But he lied to the American people. He knew it wasn't going to disappear. But he kept telling us a miracle was coming," he said of President Trump.
And he promised to get Covid-19 under control if elected president as he leads over Trump in national polls and in nearly all of the swing states.
Those national polls show him leading by eight points, 52-44 percent, a decrease from 10 points in October where he topped the president 53-43 percent.
He leads Trump by five percentage points in Ohio, a state president Trump won in 2016 over then opponent Hillary Clinton, and is leading in neighboring Pennsylvania, and in Florida and Iowa, a recent Quinnipiac University poll reveals.
All four states, including Ohio, are swing states Trump won in 2016, states also that Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president and Trump's predecessor, won in 2008, and again in 2012 when he won reelection.
Biden said Monday in Cleveland that Trump is a divisive leader, and that he is petty and full of hatred.
"Tomorrow we can put an end to a presidency that has divided this nation," he said. "We are done with chaos."
He said "I'm running as a proud Democrat, but I will govern as an American president."
Ohio has 18 electoral votes up for grabs, a presidential nominee needing at least 270 electoral votes to win.
Biden spoke on early voting and why it is key to winning elections.
"Millions of Americans have already voted. Millions more will vote today and tomorrow," Biden said.
Some 2.3 million Ohioans have already voted, either by mail or early in person.
Early voters in Ohio are among some 96 million Americans who have also voted early, that figure representing 70 percent of all ballots casts in 2016.
No Democratic president and no Republican president of remembrance has won the White House without first winning Ohio.
Also center-stage during Biden's campaign stop in Cleveland today were the loss of union jobs from the closing of the GM automobile plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and declining jobs in general.
"Did you know Donald Trump is going to be the first president in 90 years who is going to finish his four years in office with fewer jobs under his leadership than he started with?" Biden asked.
He said that "after President Obama and I bet on the American worker and helped rescue the auto industry nearly 500,000 jobs were created in Ohio."
Obama is Trump's predecessor who served two terms as president from 2009-2017, and he has been consistently on the campaign trail with his former vice president in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
"Well, I was just with Barack in Detroit and Flint. It was great to be with a president with character. A president respected around the world. A president our kids could and did look up to," Biden said.
