CLEVELAND, Ohio — On Tuesday, both presidential candidates will be in Cleveland for the first debate ahead of the 2020 election.
Spectrum News 1 spoke with an expert about how President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden’s economic platforms could appeal to voters in out state.
The COVID-19 crisis has crushed economies nationwide.
“Like everybody else, things have fallen off a fairly substantial cliff at the start of the COVID-19 crisis and then has modestly rebounded,” is how Mark Votruba describes Ohio’s current economic state.
Votruba is the department chair of economics at Case Western Reserve University.
He says major Ohio cities like Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland where higher education and healthcare systems reside, are feeling the pinch.
“If you’re a rural area, you perhaps don’t care if the next round of federal assistance is going to big universities or is saving cities that have had their budgets get smashed by the COVID crisis,” said Votruba.
According to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the latest figures show that since mid-March, 1,715,790 Ohioans have filed jobless claims. That’s more than the combined total of those filed during the last four years.
Generating economic prosperity amid the pandemic is an important campaign promise for both candidates.
However, Votruba argues this election is more about people’s impressions of President Trump.
Votruba says President Trump is touting perceived economic success pre-pandemic with the hopes of gaining re-election, whereas former Vice President Joe Biden is laying out a plan to jump-start the economy that’s focused on helping business owners and raising the minimum wage.
“Trump is more here’s what I’ve done in the past and you should expect more of these kinds of things in the future, whereas Biden has to be more clear like what are we doing for manufacturing what are we doing for farmers,” said Votruba.
“In my first three years, we lifted 6.6 million people out of poverty, the largest poverty reduction of any president in the history of our country,” said President Trump at last week’s “Great American Comeback” rally in Swanton.
“But I promise you, I guarantee you, if I’m elected you’ll get both the PPE, you’ll get also the money to be able to open and the additional money, not only to maintain your employees,” said Biden at last week’s campaign stop in Charlotte, North Carolina for a “Black Economic Summit.”
Tuesday – Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic are hosting the first presidential debate.
One of the six topics moderator Chris Wallace is set to ask about is the economy.
“The idea that the president is turning on and turning off the economy in very short order with specific things the president does it’s a fallacy that the voters believe in because we like to think the president controls everything,” said Votruba.
Spectrum News will bring you full coverage of the presidential debate on air, online, and on our Spectrum News 1 Ohio app.
