Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama with employees while touring the Linamar factory on Feb. 13, 2012 in Asheville, North Carolina.

Do President Barack Obama’s post-presidency plans include Asheville, North Carolina? White House officials are loath to discuss Obama’s plans past January 2017, but he may have just dropped a hint.

“I love coming to Asheville,” Obama said at a Linamar factory plant, where he stumped today on his post-State of the Union tour. He told the crowd that “after this whole presidency thing,” he and Michelle Obama will be “looking for a little spot, you know, to come on down, play a little golf, do a little hiking, fishing, eat barbecue.”

Obama lost North Carolina to Republican Mitt Romney in November, but he’s still feeling the love.

Since his travels in the 2008 campaign, Obama has regularly visited the state. He played basketball with the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, held his party’s 2012 convention in Charlotte and makes a point of stopping for barbecue every chance he gets.

“There are two things that keep bringing me back here: Number one is I really like the people, and number two is 12 Bones, which I will be stopping on the way back to the airport,” Obama said to cheers.

12 Bones Smokehouse was a restaurant stop for the first family on its short vacation to Asheville in April 2010. The town’s website has a page dedicated to the Obama vacation, proudly listing his itinerary and inviting visitors to “vacation like a president.”

Obama also spent a week in Asheville during the 2008 campaign preparing for a debate against then-Republican rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

When the first family took its 2010 vacation, the White House issued the following statement:

“The president first visited the Asheville area during the campaign, and he liked it so much that he vowed to take his family there. The president and first lady are planning to spend a quiet weekend enjoying some of the many things this beautiful part of the country has to offer.”

Original post is Obama’s Post-Presidency in Asheville, North Carolina? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Kowalsky/Bloomberg

Michigan lawmakers approved bills to prohibit mandatory union dues in workplaces as thousands of chanting protesters thronged the capitol in Lansing.

That’s the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of a labor union in 2012, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released yesterday.

About 14.4 million of 127.6 million such workers belonged to a union last year, BLS data show. The 11.3 percent unionization rate set a record low for the third straight year, falling from 11.8 percent in 2011.

State unionization rates in 2012 generally were correlated with party preference in the November presidential election. President Barack Obama won 22 of the 25 states where at least 10 percent of workers were unionized. Republican challenger Mitt Romney won 21 of the 25 states with a unionization rate below 10 percent.

The most unionized state is New York (23.2 percent), followed by Alaska (22.5 percent), Hawaii (21.6 percent), Washington (18.5 percent) and Rhode Island (17.8 percent).

The least-unionized state is North Carolina (2.9 percent), followed by Arkansas (3.2 percent), South Carolina (3.3 percent), Mississippi (4.3 percent) and Georgia (4.4 percent).

Labor unions give campaign donations overwhelmingly to Democrats, who are more likely than Republicans to side with unions in opposing free-trade pacts and curbs in Medicare spending and supporting higher taxes for wealthy income-earners and an increase in the federal minimum wage.

“Union workers fought political leaders in states such as Wisconsin where Republican Governor Scott Walker supported legislation in 2011 curbing the collective bargaining rights of some public unions,” Bloomberg’s Jim Efstathiou Jr. wrote yesterday. “The law sparked protests outside the state’s Capitol and a 2012 recall election, in which Walker defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat.”

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 11.3 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tina Paul/Camera Press/Redux

President Barack Obama shown in Times Square in New York.

That’s the number of electoral votes in the states that Democrats have won in six straight presidential elections.

The tally includes 18 states and the District of Columbia. The total of 242 electoral votes is just 28 below the 270 needed to win the presidency. The grouping includes California, New York and Illinois, which together have 104 electoral votes. President Barack Obama won those three states on Nov. 6 by an average of 26 percentage points.

Republicans sought to put some of the Democratic-voting states in play late in the 2012 campaign, making limited television buys and some campaign visits in states like Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In the end, though, the only two states that shifted to Republican in 2012 from Democratic four years earlier were Indiana and North Carolina, which had voted Republican for president for decades prior to 2008.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 242 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Voters at a polling station in the garage of the Los Angeles County lifeguard headquarters on Nov. 6, 2012 in Los Angeles.

That’s how many votes President Barack Obama received in Los Angeles County, California, in the Nov. 6 election, or 70 percent of the total vote in the nation’s most populous county.

The president won more votes in Los Angeles County than he did in 42 states including North Carolina (2,178,391) and New Jersey (2,122,786). The Obama votes in Los Angeles County exceeded the combined vote total for the president in 10 small-population states and the District of Columbia.

There were 9.89 million people in Los Angeles County in 2011, according to a Census Bureau estimate. More than one in four Californians live in the county, which includes Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale and Santa Clarita.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 2,216,903 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney attends a campaign rally at Ida Lee Park on Oct. 16, 2012 in Leesburg, VA.

The Republican National Committee sent more than $14 million this month to its affiliates in 28 states led by Wisconsin and Virginia, both key states in the Nov. 6 presidential and U.S. Senate elections.

The RNC sent more than $3.3 million to Wisconsin, according to a filing to the Federal Election Commission that listed donations and expenditures for the first 17 days of October.

Wisconsin, the home state of Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, is one of about nine states that will decide the White House race. Republicans are helping former Gov. Tommy Thompson in a Senate race against Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin that polls show is close.

The RNC sent more than $2.8 million to Virginia, another presidential swing state where Republican George Allen, a former governor and senator, is running against Democrat Tim Kaine, a former governor, for the Senate seat of retiring Democrat Jim Webb.

The RNC sent about $2.7 million to North Carolina, where Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has a small lead over President Barack Obama in most surveys. The party also is trying to win up to four Democratic-held House seats following Republican-controlled redistricting.

The RNC transferred funds to 25 other states led by Ohio ($1.54 million), Florida ($850,000), Michigan ($515,000), Pennsylvania ($405,500) and Colorado ($327,000). Ohio, Florida and Colorado are presidential swing states, while Republicans are making the Obama campaign work hard to keep Michigan and Pennsylvania in the Democratic column. Also in Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator Bob Casey is facing an unexpectedly close race against a wealthy Republican challenger.

North Dakota ($214,000), Indiana ($200,000) and Utah ($184,000) are all holding elections for governor and senator. North Dakota and Indiana also have close Senate races. Utah Republicans want to unseat Democratic Representative Jim Matheson.

Original post is Wisconsin, Virginia: Most RNC $ by Political Capital.

So acknowledged Vice President Joe Biden at the start of a nationally televised debate with Rep. Paul Ryan.

“It was. It was a tragedy.”

“I can make absolutely two commitments… One, we will find and bring to justice the men who did this. And second, we will get to the bottom of this… and whatever mistakes were made will not be made again.”

“It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack,” Ryan said. “Look, if we’re hit by terrorists, we’re going to call it what it is, a terrorist attack.

“This Benghazi issue would be a tragedy in and of itself. But unfortunately it is indicative of a broader problem,” he said, “the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.”

The sole vice presidential debate of the campaign is playing out at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, with Biden and Ryan seated at a table across from moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

The presidential candidates met Oct. 3 in Denver at a face-off widely credited for boosting Republican Mitt Romney’s standing in the polls. Romney and President Barack Obama will meet again on Oct. 16 and 22.

Romney was campaigning today in North Carolina, where he gained the public endorsement of the 93-year-old evangelist, Billy Graham. And Obama was campaigning today in Florida, addressing a campus rally at the University of Miami.

A new poll in Florida today portrayed a seven-point advantage there for Romney, taken as a measure of the last debate. Other swing state polls since the first presidential debate have shown a closing gap between Obama and Romney. The latest results of the Gallup Poll’s daily tracking of likely voters shows a contest virtually tied for the past four days of reports from the rolling average of a seven-day survey.

Original post is Biden-Ryan Debate: Libya `Tragedy’ by Political Capital.

Photographer: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Mitt Romney met with the Reverend Billy Graham at Graham's Cabin in Montreat, North Carolina, today.

When pro-life credentials are questioned, call out Mike Huckabee.

Stop by Billy Graham’s homestead.

Republican Mitt Romney has done both today.

Two days after Romney downplayed his plans to fight abortion rights, the Republican presidential candidate met privately today with evangelists Billy and Franklin Graham at the family’s home in Montreat, North Carolina.

The visit was part of an effort by his campaign to reassure some in his party that Romney would stand with them on fighting abortion and same-sex marriage, even as he works to moderate the tone of his message for swing voters.

In an Oct.9 interview with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in Iowa, Romney said he would not pursue any abortion-related legislation as president.

The visit to Graham’s mountaintop retreat is a standard stop for Republican presidential candidates, eager to boost their support from evangelical voters.

“Prayer is the most helpful thing you can do for me,” Romney said in the meeting.

After discussing religious persecution and the growth of his ministries in China, North Korea and Sudan, Billy Graham led the group in a prayer.

“I’ll do all I can to help you. And you can quote me on that,” Graham told Romney.

Graham issued a statement of his own later commending Romney’s commitment to family and his values and “strong moral convictions.” Graham said: “I will turn 94 the day after the upcoming election, and I believe America is at a crossroads. I hope millions of Americans will join me in praying for our nation and to vote for candidates who will support the biblical definition of marriage, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms.”

Former Arkansas Governor Huckabee, a Baptist pastor who ran for president in 2008 and favorite of evangelicals, will join Romney at his campaign rally tonight in Asheville, North Carolina.

Original post is Romney, Billy Graham Rally Base: `I’ll Do All I Can… Quote Me’ by Political Capital.

With limited assistance from Democratic-leaning outside groups, Obama’s campaign ran about four ads for every three by the Republican side in most of nine swing states in the 14-day period ended Oct. 1, according to Kantar Media’s CMAG. Those states include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.

The ad advantages are more lopsided in New Hampshire, where Obama is dominating Romney on television, and North Carolina and Wisconsin, where the Republican side ran more ads during the 14-day period.

In New Hampshire, which has four electoral votes, pro-Obama ads outnumbered pro-Romney spots by more than three to one, 3,469 to 1,166. The Romney campaign supplied just 211 ads, or fewer than one-fifth of the Republican spots.

Obama ran ads in Manchester, New Hampshire’s biggest city, as well as in Boston, Portland and Burlington, where the television markets take in part of New Hampshire. Romney’s campaign ran ads in the Manchester market only.

American Crossroads, a Republican super-political action committee, went off the air in Manchester on Sept. 27 and in Burlington and Portland on Sept. 28, CMAG data show. Crossroads GPS, a related non-profit group, stopped running ads in Manchester on Sept. 23 and in Boston on Sept. 24.

Obama led Romney by 52 percent to 37 percent in a poll of likely New Hampshire voters that was conducted Sept. 27-30 by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. The survey is a “piece of garbage,” former New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu, a Romney surrogate, told NBC’s Chuck Todd yesterday. Other New Hampshire surveys give Obama a smaller lead over Romney.

In North Carolina, the pro-Romney side ran more ads than the pro-Obama side, 4,142 to 3,496, during the 14-day period. North Carolina, which has 15 electoral votes at stake, is a must-win for Romney, who’s trying to flip a state that backed Obama by three-tenths of one percentage point four years ago.

In Wisconsin, the home state of vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the pro-Romney side ran 5,210 ads to 4,353 from the pro-Obama side, the 14-day CMAG figures show. Wisconsin backed Obama by 14 percentage points in 2008, though it was the closest state in the 2004 election and the third-closest in 2000. Obama will campaign tomorrow in Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes.

Original post is Obama Tops Romney in TV Ads — New Hampshire in Particular by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Siner/The Charlotte Observer/AP Photo

Vice President Joe Biden on Oct. 2, 2012 in Charlotte, N.C.

“I’m supposedly an expert on foreign policy,” Vice President Joe Biden said today. “As all of you know, an expert is a guy from out of town with a briefcase.”

That was in Asheville, North Carolina.

Earlier today, in Charlotte, Biden was speaking like the sort of expert that Mitt Romney’s campaign loves to hear.

Biden criticized Romney for proposing policies that Biden said would cut taxes for millionaires and raise them for the middle class.

Biden asked how Republicans “can justify raising taxes on a middle class that as been buried the last four years?”

“We agree,” Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, said while campaigning in Burlington, Iowa. “That means we need to stop digging by electing Mitt Romney the next president of the United States.”

On a Romney campaign conference call, former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu welcomed Biden’s remarks as a set-up for the first of the presidential debates tomorrow night.

“Thank you Vice President Biden, for the first time in a long, long time, you’re right,” Sununu told reporters. “We have an economy in crisis. We have a president in denial.”

Obama’s campaign maintained that Romney’s team is taking the remarks out of context:

“As the vice president has been saying all year and again in his remarks today, the middle class was punished by the failed Bush policies that crashed our economy — and a vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is a return to those failed policies,” said campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith.

 Julianna Goldman contributed.

Original post is Biden: Middle Class `Buried’ 4 Years by Political Capital.

He is accepting his nomination for re-election tonight in a state whose voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. It already was illegal under North Carolina law. The amendment enshrined the ban in the state’s Constitution. The vote, on May 8, was 1.3 million to 840,000.

Tonight, the Democratic Party is showing a video at the party’s convention in Charlotte featuring Obama’s commitment to equal rights for gay and lesbians.

“I could not be prouder of the work that we’ve done on behalf of the LGBT,” Obama says in an appearance taped at the Human Rights Campaign. “It’s no secret that progress has been incredibly difficult.”

“It’s about our common humanity, and our willingness to walk in someone else’s shoes,” Obama says. “We still have a long way to go, but we will get there.”

While Obama has pushed for equal property, employment, insurance and other rights for gays and lesbians, it was only late in his term that he disclosed that his views about same-sex marriage had evolved to that of support. Polls show younger Americans, in particular, support him in this.

“My expectation,” Obama says in the video his party is viewing tonight in the state that prohibits same-sex marriage, “is that when you look back on these years you will see a time in which we have put to stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians.”

Another convention video touts the president’s repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that forced declared gay and lesbian service members to leave the military:

Original post is Obama: Ending Gay Discrimination by Political Capital.