Gov. Bill Haslam/The Tennessean
Tennessee's Republican Gov. Bill Haslam spent Wednesday stumping for Mitt Romney in Western North Carolina.
His first stop was the Romney campaign office in Asheville and from there he attended a round-table on agriculture and small business roundtable at Apple Wedge Packers and Growers in Hendersonville, according to the Romney campaign.
His last stop was in Sylva at a campaign office.
He told supporters in Asheville that North Carolina is key to Romney's plan to win the White House. President Obama won the state in 2008 by just 14,000 votes.
"This race is obviously being contested in all 50 states but it doesn't take a whole lot to deduce that there are going to be several states that are going to be really close in what's going to be a close election and North Carolina is undoubtedly one of those states," he said.
The Republican Party in North Carolina would like to give Romney a win in North Carolina. Much of the strategy focuses on how voters feel about the economy in a state where unemployement is still around 8 percent. And it focuses, as Haslam told supporters, on getting people to the polls on Election Day.
"The main thing is I belive the current occupant of the White House, having no business experience, does not understand business," said Barnardsville resident Wally Lee. "His policies are definently not pro-business, the business community is afraid to invest and therefore they cannot create more jobs."
Obama blasted Mitt Romney's proposed new tax cuts on Wednesday, saying they will wind up costing the middle class more money.
"He's asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a tax cut," Obama told supporters in Mansfield, Ohio, the first of two campaign speeches today in a crucial swing state.
In addition to backing an extension of the George W. Bush tax cuts, Romney has also proposed new tax cuts of $5 trillion that will benefit mainly the wealthy, Obama told a friendly crowd.
"The bulk of this cut would go to the very top ... the wealthiest 1% of all households," Obama said. "Folks making more than $3 million a year -- the top one-tenth of one percent -- would get a quarter of a million dollars tax cut.''