Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Obama launches group of supporters from GOP

He hopes high-profile, disaffected Republicans will help him in some of the swing states.

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama yesterday announced a group of disaffected high-profile Republicans who he hopes will help him win the support of Republican voters in swing states.

"This is simply not a time for politics as usual," said former Rep. Jim Leach (R., Iowa), who endorsed Obama yesterday.

Leach, one of the "Republicans for Obama," said he thought the Illinois senator would return the presidency to a less partisan style that looked to more international cooperation and was "rooted in very old American values."

The group's strategy will focus on winning support for Obama in states that have tended to favor Republican presidential candidates, such as North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio and Florida. The group will launch a Web site this week and plans campaign appearances on Obama's behalf.

The Republican Party dismissed the announcement as a gimmick to keep Obama in the news while he vacations with his family in his native Hawaii. The Republican National Committee issued a release noting Obama's party-line voting record for his first three years in the Senate and his designation as the "most liberal senator" last year by the National Journal.

In a conference call organized by Obama's campaign to announce "Republicans for Obama," Leach was joined by former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who dropped his Republican affiliation after he lost reelection two years ago, and Rita Hauser, an Iraq-war opponent who's a former adviser to President Bush.

Chafee said that although Republican John McCain seemed independent from Bush on domestic policy as a senator, as a presidential candidate "it's a different John McCain, saying, 'Make the tax cuts permanent' " or advocating offshore oil drilling. Chaffee said McCain's foreign policy had been "consistently Bush-Cheney."

Hauser said that among her circle of Republican friends, a "very large number of us feel deeply that John McCain, good man that he is, will be a continuation of Bush," and "that is something that we are strongly opposed to."

The organizers said they expected to engage hundreds of thousands of Republican and independent voters from various camps: those who oppose the Iraq war, are disillusioned with Bush's record, or are wavering on McCain as a candidate for other reasons.

They'll build the group from a preexisting organization called Republicans for Obama that isn't affiliated with the campaign.