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Despite hard times, voters like Scott Neal in Phoebus are sticking with Obama. His drywall business has had to get by with renovation work. "New houses aren't going up because there's this surplus of all these empty houses that have been foreclosed on," he said. "So I'm just doing what I've got to do." There are signs that among some voters, Obama's attacks on Romney and his history as a wealthy businessman who ran a private equity firm are taking hold. Beth Bailey, a 37-year-old mother of two and a school district data technician in Virginia Beach, said Romney hasn't connected with her. "I feel like he came from a different class than us," she said at an Obama rally. "I feel he's working more for the upper class than us." Incumbency has given Obama advantages, too. The budget he released earlier this year did not include money to transfer an aircraft carrier from Virginia to Florida, a move that Virginia lawmakers had argued would have hurt the Hampton Roads economy Obama campaigned with Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and former Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who is running for the Senate, in a calculated display of unity with two moderate politicians. Obama ended the day in Roanoke, a city in the state's typically Republican southwest where Obama critics stood along his route holding protest signs. He spoke to more than 3,000 supporters, about 20 of whom swooned and had to be treated after waiting for him in the heat. He was the first sitting president to hold an event in town in 35 years.
[Associated
Press;
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