The Oklahoman’s Chris Casteel has this story today: Gov. Mary Fallin, who has spent the week on stage and off promoting the Republican presidential ticket, plans to crash the Democrats’ party next week in North Carolina.
Fallin has agreed to go to Charlotte, at the expense of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, to make counterpoints to messages coming out of the Democratic National Convention. Democratic-elected officials have been doing the same thing here; Vice President Joe Biden had planned to come here but canceled the trip because of the tropical storm that turned into Hurricane Isaac.
Fallin said, “President Obama and his party are going to be in Charlotte next week touting what they believe are their successes. It’s important for our elected officials and party spokesmen to remind the American people of the truth about their time in office, which has brought 42 straight months of unemployment over 8 percent and 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.”
In 1996, former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, a Republican, went to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and former Gov. David Walters, a Democrat, made appearances in 1992 for then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.
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Some of the thousands of members of the news media here found their way to the Oklahoma section of the Tampa Bay Times Forum to interview delegates.
Tony Lauinger, a delegate from Tulsa, said he was interviewed by a reporter from the Netherlands who wanted to know what the most important issue was to him; Lauinger said right to life.
Howard Houchen, a delegate from Hugo, said a Spanish television reporter questioned him and asked him to pull his ball cap down so viewers could see “Choctaw County.”
“I probably had 12 questions about how Mitt Romney could connect with the middle class,” Houchen said. “I said, ‘Look at me. I’m about as middle class as you get in Oklahoma.’”
