Romney to campaign in Abingdon on Friday
Mitt Romney at Carter Machinery in Salem in June. (Photo by Kyle Green/The Roanoke Times)
Republican Mitt Romney will campaign in Abingdon on Friday, becoming the first presidential candidate in this cycle to stump in the coalfields region of far Southwest Virginia.
Romney will appear at what his campaign is calling a “coal country event” at Carter Machinery in Abingdon at 11 a.m. Friday.
Tickets for the Abingdon event can be reserved at www.mittromney.com/states/virginia. The first 250 attendees will receive a Romney-Ryan hard hat, no doubt designed to enhance the event’s visual effect.
Carter Machinery already has hosted a Romney campaign rally at its corporate headquarters in Salem in June. The company draws about two-thirds of its business from the coal industry and employs about 1,300 people at 23 locations in Virginia and West Virginia.
Romney, U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, and other Republicans have relentlessly criticized President Barack Obama for implementing environmental regulations that they consider hostile to the coal industry. Romney also has used the issue in television ads in coal-producing states.
Romney’s visit to Southwest Virginia will come two weeks after Abingdon-based Alpha Natural Resources announced that it will close eight coal mines, including three in Virginia, and eliminate 1,200 jobs company-wide.
Alpha is shifting away from thermal coal used for domestic power generation and will focus on metallurgical coal used in overseas steel production. Alpha has said the transition is necessary because power companies are relying more on cheaper and cleaner-burning natural gas, and because federal regulations have put new constraints on burning coal.
Romney’s Abingdon event will be his second Western Virginia campaign stop in as many days. On Thursday, Romney and running mate Paul Ryan will hold a rally in Augusta County.
Obama also will campaign in Virginia Friday, holding an event at George Mason University in Fairfax County.
– Michael Sluss
October 3, 2012 - 5:55 PM
Please let us know the next time obama visits his `friends at ANY Virginia coal field…We ALL want to go and witness the warm visit he recieves.
How often has Morgan Griffith visited the coal fields prior to re-election season? Yeah, exactly. He makes sure to swing by the Koch headquarters in DC, but doesn’t have time for the real people of SW Va. Tell me again, how many bills has Morgan Griffith gotten passed, about anything?
I guess Romney is staging his ‘coal country’ stop in Abingdon because he knows it will be far enough away from the actual coal fields so that his $3000 suit won’t get any coal dust on it.
Yep Romney is making a play for Virginia! SWVA is coming out to vote for Romney.
Gov. Romney, if he is sincere that he is a friend to coal, should also be a friend to the miners. Why hasn’t he made a comment concerning the miners who were told attendance to a Romney campaign event at a mine was mandatory? He should have said this was inappropriate and unexceptable for employers to treat employees this way. He would have if a union had done the same. Truthfully, does anyone think Gov. Romney really gives a care to those miners and how they are treated?
No, Romney is no friend of coal, but he is friends with some coal owners, no doubt.
“…Romney’s nine-year-old crusade against a coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts.
“I will not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people,” Romney said during a 2003 news conference as he denounced the deeply unpopular coal plant in Salem. “And that plant, that plant kills people.”
Incidentally, the plant in question is scheduled to shut down in 2014 and could be replaced by a natural gas plant.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79734.html#ixzz28QmoNw93
Miners beware, don’t jump out of a frying pan and into a fire!
Virginia for Romney!