Erie County

Barack H. Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008.  President Obama was re-elected to a second term on November 6, 2012.  The President's Inauguration Celebration is set for Monday, January 21, 2013, in Washington D.C.

His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.  He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree.  After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.  He returned to Chicago and worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Mr. Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. In October 2009, President Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

As president, Mr. Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act in 2010. Other domestic policy initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act and the Budget Control Act of 2011. In foreign policy, he gradually withdrew combat troops from Iraq and announced that all troops would be home by the end of 2011, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered enforcement of the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya, and ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. In April 2011, President Obama declared his intention to seek re-election in the 2012 presidential election.

President Obama and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10.

The Incredible Barack Obama Victory Speech

There's a lot to be proud of -
Take a look back on the 2012 journey with this interactive timeline:
Our-Journey

Now take a look back at the campaign in numbers.
Check out this blog post for some incredible numbers on the work
YOU did in the field!
THANK YOU!

The video below explains why we worked day in and day out to win this election.
When the hours were long and the fight was hard,
we were doing what was right that makes a REAL difference in people's lives.
Watch this video

Obama's Top 50 Accomplishments - The Washington Monthly
Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu collaborated on this article.
Glastris is the editor in chief of the Washington Monthly.
Cooper and Hu are interns at the magazine.

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
202-456-1414

 
Senator Sherrod Brown was re-elected to his second term as U.S. Senator on November 6, 2012.  Senator Brown's term will begin January 3, 2013.

Senator Sherrod Brown was raised in Mansfield, Ohio, and attended local public schools. His father was a small-town doctor who made house calls and treated everyone regardless of their ability to pay. His mother taught her son to fight for what was right. Sherrod has never forgotten where he comes from.

As a Congressman from Ohio's 13th District for 14 years, he earned a reputation as an independent voice for ordinary Ohioans and middle-class families - a man of principle who has made a career of standing up to special interests that have too much influence in Washington.

In 2006, Ohio voters elected Sherrod to the United States Senate with one of the largest margins over an incumbent in U.S. history. He joined committees that are key to Ohio's future: Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; and Veterans' Affairs. In 2009, Majority Leader Harry Reid asked him to sit on the Select Committee on Ethics as well.

Since his election, he has been working on behalf of Ohioans to stop the erosion of jobs in Ohio due to the wrong-headed trade and economic policies of the past.

While many in Washington have simply gone along with corporate-backed free trade deals that have devastated Ohio's manufacturing sector and sent good-paying American jobs overseas, Sherrod has been a tireless advocate for policies that help workers and their families. Because he understands that representing people is more important than partisan politics, he stood up to both Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican President George W. Bush to fight against the North American and Central American free trade agreements.

The author of a respected book, Myths of Free Trade, Sherrod has outlined a new plan for truly fair trade that protects workers' rights, labor standards, food safety, and the environment while also supporting businesses and family farmers. He is now working to ensure that efforts to create clean-energy jobs and combat climate change, not simply shift carbon pollution overseas.

In his first two years in office, he played a key role in rewriting our nation's farm and nutrition laws. He authored innovative new programs to encourage local food production and dampen wild swings in the market for farmers - and even saved taxpayers' money in the process. For his legislative efforts, the Ohio and National Corn Growers Association named him their Legislator of the Year. And as chairman of a Senate Nutrition subcommittee, he is working to ensure that our nation's children do not go to bed hungry at night.

On the Banking Committee, he was an early proponent for coming to grips with the crisis in our housing markets that began by devastating neighborhoods throughout Ohio and ended up causing a meltdown throughout the world's credit markets. He is fighting to ensure that efforts to rebuild the economy focus on Main Street as well as Wall Street, and that the federal government gives as much attention to manufacturing as it does to finance.

Sherrod was a leader on health care issues in the House, and he is helping lead efforts in the Senate to bring real health care reform to our country. Americans should not live just one illness or pink slip away from bankruptcy because of out-of-control health care costs and insurance policy loopholes. When the Senate Health Committee was writing its version of health care reform, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. Chris Dodd tapped Sherrod to co-author the public option.

Since then, he has been a tireless advocate for a strong public option. On the floor of the Senate and in numerous public appearances, he has been a leading voice in the call for a public option to provide competition to the quasi-monopolies now enjoyed by the big insurance companies. Taxpayers and consumers will benefit from a public option.

Sherrod doesn't just talk the talk. As a matter of principle, he has refused to accept the congressional health care plan until affordable health insurance is available to every Ohioan. At the same time, he continues to fight insurance company and pharmaceutical company lobbyists in order to make health care more affordable for seniors, workers, and small businesses. He is fighting within the health care reform debate to bring generic drugs to market faster, to save patients - and all of us - tens of thousands of dollars on so-called "biologic" drugs.

Sherrod opposed the war in Iraq from Day One, voting against the war authorization while working to make sure our troops get the body armor they need and the health care they deserve. He has worked to improve port security and homeland security, authoring tough new legislation that says national security must be the most important consideration in any trade agreement.

Prior to serving in Congress, Sherrod served two terms as Ohio's Secretary of State and, in the early 1990s, he taught democracy and government in Poland as that nation was making the transition from Cold War communism to thriving democracy. He's also taught in Ohio's public schools and at Ohio State University.

Sherrod currently resides in Avon, Ohio with his wife Connie Schultz, a nationally syndicated columnist and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Sherrod and Connie have three daughters, a son, both a daughter and son-in-law, and a grandson.

Senator Sherrod Brown
713 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington D.C. 20510
205 West 20th Street, Suite M280 Lorain, OH 44052
202-224-2315 (WashDC office); 440-242-4100 (Lorain office); 440-242-4108 (fax); 1-888/896-OHIO (6446 - Toll Free

KAPTUR IS RANKING DEMOCRAT MEMBER
ON APPROPRIATIONS ENERGY AND WATER SUBCOMMITTEE 

1.17.13 - Congresswoman Kaptur has secured the ranking member position on the Energy and Water Subcommittee of House Appropriations.  Among other areas, the subcommittee has jurisdiction over:

• renewable energy initiatives nationally
• dredging activities at the nation's ports, including Lake Erie
• university research through the Department of Energy

The subcommittee appropriates funding for:

• U.S. Department of Energy;
• Civil activities of the Department of Defense;
• Army Corps of Engineers (dredging at sites along Ohio's Lake Erie coastline);
• Department of the Interior; and,
• Agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Kaptur retains her spot on the powerful Appropriations Defense Subcommittee and also landed a spot on the Financial Services subcommittee.  Congresswoman Kaptur will not serve on the Budget Committee during this Congress.

To read the entire article, please click below:
Kaptur Wins Ranking Member Position On Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee

BIOGRAPHY

U.S. Representative Marcy Kaptur was re-elected to represent Ohio's 9th Congressional District on November 6, 2012.   Congresswoman Kaptur's term begins January 3, 2013.

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who represents Northern Ohio's Ninth Congressional District, is currently serving her fifteenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the senior-most woman in the 112th Congress.

Congresswoman Kaptur, of Polish-American heritage with humble, working class roots, mirrors the bootstrap nature of her district. Her family operated a small grocery where her mother worked after serving on the original organizing committee of an auto trade union at the Champion Spark Plug Company. Congresswoman Kaptur became the first member of her family to attend college, receiving a scholarship for her undergraduate work. Trained as a city and regional planner, she practiced 15 years in Toledo and throughout the country. Appointed as an urban advisor to the Carter White House, she helped maneuver 17 housing and neighborhood revitalization bills through the Congress during those years.

Subsequently, while pursuing a doctorate in urban planning and development finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the local Democratic Party recruited her to run for the U.S. House seat in 1982. Kaptur had been a well-known party activist and volunteer since age 13. Although she was outspent by a 3-to-1 margin, she parlayed her deep roots in the blue-collar neighborhoods of Toledo and the rural areas of the district to pull the national upset of 1982.

Congresswoman Kaptur fought vigorously to win a seat on the House Appropriations Committee . She has risen in seniority and now serves as the senior Democratic woman on the committee. She has secured appointments to three important subcommittees: Agriculture, the leading industry in her state; Transportation/Housing and Urban Development (HUD); and Defense. Congresswoman Kaptur was also appointed by party leadership to serve on the prestigious House Budget Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for the 112th Congress. Kaptur is the first Democratic woman to serve on the Defense subcommittee. During her legislative career, she has also served on the banking and veterans affairs committees.

Congresswoman Kaptur has focused strong efforts on rebuilding the economic might of her district such as improvements in bridge, road, rail and port facilities, including the New Maumee River Crossing - the largest bridge project in Ohio's history; expansion of Toledo's Farmers' Market; development of the Maumee River Heritage Corridor between Ohio and Indiana, which includes passage of legislation and funds to acquire the Fallen Timbers battlefield site as a national affiliate of the U.S. Park Service; clean-up of the waterways adjacent to Lake Erie; development of initiatives to enhance the earnings potential of Northwest Ohio crops; shipping of federal cargos on the Great Lakes; acquisition of wildlife refuges and shoreline recreation; and expansion of university-related research.

Kaptur also directed federal support to acquire Quarry Pond as the centerpiece for a new conservation and lands legacy endowment for northwest Ohio. Lucas County-based 180th Tactical Fighter Squadron underwent a F-16 modernization attributable to her efforts. Current and former Defense Department and other private-sector workers who were exposed to and suffer from beryllium were the beneficiaries of a major piece of legislation Kaptur guided to passage. She was awarded the Veterans of Foreign Wars Americanism Award, in part for introducing the legislation authorizing the National World War II Memorial in Washington in 1987, as well as for her longstanding commitment to America's veterans. She also received the Prisoner of War "Barbed Wire" Award for her commitment to veterans' affairs.

Dedication of the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on May 29, 2004 culminated a 17-year legislative effort that started with an idea that sprang from the grassroots of her congressional district. In 1986, Roger Durbin, a rural letter carrier from Berkey, Ohio, asked Congresswoman Kaptur at a fish fry at a township hall to explain why there was no memorial to World War II in Washington. Kaptur helped make Roger Durbin's dream a reality by introducing legislation in Congress to create the memorial. There were stops and starts, but nothing could stop this powerful idea. Today, the World War II Memorial is one of the most popular tourist attractions in our nation's capital and a timeless salute to the men and women of the "Greatest Generation."

Dedicated to the principle that fiscal responsibility begins in "one's own backyard," Congresswoman Kaptur has consistently returned money to the federal Treasury. She refuses to accept Congressional pay raises and donates them to offset the federal deficit and charitable causes in her home community.

Demonstrating international leadership through diplomatic contributions to the Middle East Peace process, Congresswoman Kaptur directed the first surplus farm commodities in 1999 to support the Middle East peace process in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. As a result of the intifada, only the war torn region of Lebanon has progressed forward with more than 200 villages undertaking community development. She also remains dedicated to democratic institution-building across the globe and has spearheaded private charitable efforts for peoples of underdeveloped nations, including Ukraine and Vietnam. As Co-Chair of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, she has lead efforts to establish a Congressional-Rada exchange program. She is the key sponsor of regulatory changes that force accountability on Russian food aid relief, helping to insure $1 billion in U.S. resources go to people in need, not into the black market or pockets of government bureaucrats. As leader on issues related to international trade and human and labor rights, Kaptur will continue to assess the impact of North American Free Trade Agreement and actively engage upcoming trade negotiations on the side of workers.

Kaptur is a native of Toledo, Ohio, a member of Little Flower Roman Catholic Church, and a graduate of St. Ursula Academy. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Wisconsin (1968) and a master's in urban planning from the University of Michigan. In 1993, Congresswoman Kaptur was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Toledo in recognition of her "effective representation of the community." St. Ursula Academy named Kaptur Alumna of the Year in 1995. She is recipient of the Taubman College Distinguished Alumna award from the University of Michigan, making her the first woman so recognized and the first graduate of the Urban and Regional Planning Program to be so honored.

Kaptur received the Director's Award from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University for her commitment to increased understanding and appreciation of the peoples and cultures of Eurasia, Russia and East Europe. She was named the National Mental Health Association's "Legislator of the Year" for her championing mental health and received the 2002 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Kaptur is also the author of a book, Women in Congress: A Twentieth Century Odyssey, that was published by Congressional Quarterly in 1996.

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur
2186 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515
One Maritime Plaza - Sixth Floor, Toledo, OH 43604
202-225-4146 (WashDC); 419-259-7500 (Toledo Office); 1-800/964-4699 (Ohio Toll Free); 419-255-9623 (Fax)

2013 will be the first year when minorities and women are the majority of either party's caucus in the
U.S. House of Representatives.

ARIZONA

Ann Kirkpatrick
AZ-01





Kyrsten Sinema
AZ-09






CALIFORNIA

Jared Huffman
CA-02





Ami Bera
CA-07





Eric Swalwell
CA-15





Julia Brownley
CA-26





Tony Cardenas
CA-29






Gloria McLeod
CA-35





Raul Ruiz
CA-36





Mark Takano
CA-41





Alan Lowenthal
CA-47





Juan Vargas
CA-51





Scott Peters
CA-52






CONNECTICUT

Elizabeth Esty
CT-05






FLORIDA

Alan Grayson
FL-09





Patrick Murphy
FL-18





Lois Frankel
FL-22





Joe Garcia
FL-26






HAWAII

Tulsi Gabbard
HI-02






ILLINOIS

Tammy Duckworth
IL-08





Brad Schneider
IL-10





Bill Foster
IL-11





Bill Eynart
IL-12





Cheri Bustos
IL-17






MARYLAND

John Delaney
MD-06






MASSACHUSETTS

Joe Kennedy
MA-04






MICHIGAN

Dan Kildee
MI-05






MINNESOTA

Rick Nolan
MN-08






NEVADA

Dina Titus
NV-01





Steven Horsford
NV-04






NEW HAMPSHIRE

Carol Shea-Porter
NH-01





Annie Kuster
NH-02






NEW MEXICO

Michelle Lujan Grisham
NM-01






NEW JERSEY

Don Payne, Jr.
NJ-10






NEW YORK

Grace Meng
NY-06






Hakeem Jeffries
NY-08





Sean Patrick Maloney
NY-18





Dan Maffei
NY-24






OHIO

Joyce Beatty
OH-03






PENNSYLVANIA

Matt Cartwright
PA-17






TEXAS

Beto O'Rourke
TX-16





Joaquin Castro
TX-20





Pete Gallego
TX-23





Marc Veasey
TX-33

Filemon Vela
TX-34






WASHINGTON

Suzan DelBene
WA-01





Derek Kilmer
WA-26





Denny Heck
WA-10






WISCONSIN

Mark Pocan
WI-02

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (front row in middle in purple suit) gathered her Democratic women's caucus -- now 60 strong -- on the Capitol steps.   Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-9) is located in middle of photo and freshman Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-3) is located end of third row next to woman in black hat.