Recordpub.com - Lt. Gov., candidate for U.S. Senate, makes stop in Portage County

By MIKE SEVER | STAFF WRITER

Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher says he’s not a tax-and-spend Democrat.

That’s a broad-brush categorization used against all Democrats, said the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.

“I’m a cut-and-invest Democrat,” Fisher said Friday during a campaign stop in Portage County.

Fisher is vying with Republican Rob Portman for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. George Voinovich.

Fisher said he is fiscally conservative and a progressive at the same time. He said he believes in government investment that will help private business leverage opportunities and create jobs.

Fisher called Portman “the ultimate Washington insider.” Portman had a 20-year career as a Congressman, as U.S. trade representative and as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Fisher said his career has been within Ohio.

“I think I bring a lot of Ohio values and common sense,” Fisher said.

Pollsters have the Ohio Senate race in a dead heat, showing little change over the past two months.

Traveling around the state, Fisher said he’s hearing “a lot of anger and frustration” from voters.

People are angry at too many people engaged in unnecessary partisanship and frustrated at a lack of cooperation and action to get the country moving, he said.

In Ohio, he said, jobs and the economy are the No. 1 issue.

“For every one time immigration comes up, jobs comes up 100 times,” he said.

Fisher said he believes the federal stimulus package pushed by President Obama has worked to soften the recession’s impact. While it wasn’t as large or as successful as he would have liked, it was the right thing to do, he said.

“Without it, the Republicans would have allowed the country to fall off a deep (economic) cliff,” he said.

Portman’s camp has portrayed Fisher as at least partly responsible for Ohio’s job losses.

“As Ohio was losing nearly 400,000 jobs in the last three years, Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher was asleep at the switch while those jobs were going to other states like Indiana, Kentucky and Georgia,” said Portman’s press secretary, Jessica R. Towhey.

Fisher said that, as state economic director, “we have provided more leadership than any administration.”

He said the state has aggressively reached out to companies of all sizes, convincing businesses to stay and expand in Ohio.

Ohio won Site Selection magazine’s coveted Governor’s Cup award three years in a row, although the first year the Strickland administration was so new that credit went to the previous administration.

Fisher said he thinks “we should begin withdrawing” troops from Afghanistan.

He said he supports the troops, “but I do not believe we should be expanding our forces in Afghanistan.”

Fisher said he believes the war against al-Qaida can be waged more efficiently with more drone attacks and “strategic strikes with elite forces.”

“We have learned that conventional force does not work well against terrorists,” he said. “We should never give up the fight (against al-Qaida). The issue is how we fight (terrorism),” he said.