Vice President Jo Biden campaigned for President Obama in Marion County, which voted for Republican John McCain in 2008.

Biden portrayed Republican challenger Mitt Romney as a rich man who doesn’t understand average middle-class people. The Vice president charged that Romney’s proposal for a continued federal income tax cut would be a bonanza for the wealthy.

Of that additional $1 trillion in tax cuts, $500,000,000 goes to 120,000 families.

“The math is the little guys gets crushed and the big guy gets the break,” Biden shouted while pounding on the podium.

Click here for a longer reporter from Ohio Public Radio’s Bill Cohen.

Meanwhile Mitt Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, spoke to hundreds of supporters in the Democratic stronghold of Cleveland.

The Wisconsin Congressman’s “Civil Society Speech”, had a formal, largely academic tone. But Ryan scored a standing ovation when he brought up the Affordable Care Act’s mandate for contraceptive coverage without co-payments…which he says is an affront to religious organizations, including Catholic hospitals and clinics.

“This mandate isn’t just a threat to religious charities,” Ryan said.

It’s a threat to all those who turn to them in times of need. In the name of strengthening our safety net, this mandate and others will weaken it. The good news? When Mitt Romney is president, this mandate will be gone.

The Obama Administration has said religiously-affiliated organizations like Catholic schools, clinics, and hospitals are exempt, but their insurance providers must still provide coverage at no further cost. As for religious groups that self-insure, the White House says it will work out an accommodation.

Click here to hear why Paul Ryan thinks Mitt Romney is uniquely qualified to lead the country’s economic recovery.

But none of the clinics report patients with symptoms.

The state Department of Health says one elderly Ohio man was sickened after receiving the shot that’s been linked to at least nine deaths and sickened more than 100 in nine states. The Marion Pain Clinic declined comment, but employees at Marion’s BKC Pain Specialists, Cincinnati Pain Management, and the Ortho-Spine Rehab Center in Dublin say no patients have come forward.

Nancy Childers says her Dublin office is sending letters to all of its patients.

“Just to make them feel secure because the particular contaminated medication is only used for certain procedures,” Childers says.

Anyone who received a steroid shot at the four Ohio clinics is being urged to contact the state Department of Health.

All drugs manufactured by Massachusetts-based New England Compounding have been recalled.

A statewide prison restructuring calls for the Marion facility to merge with a now-vacant juvenile facility next door and be run by Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America.

State prisons spokesman Carlo Loparo insists privatization will not mean a dropoff in security or prisoner care.

“The employees of the private facilities train along side public employees. Their operations and procedures are identical to the state facilities, as well as their programming of inmates,” Loparo says.

The transfer from state-to-private care happens Saturday night at 10 o’clock.

Plans also call for privatization of a prison in Ashtabula county, and another now privately-run facility in Lorraine county will return to state control.

Prisons officials say the plan will save about $13 million a year and no state employees will be laid off.

Murphy was set to die next month for slashing the throat of 72-year-old neighbor Ruth Predmore while robbing her home in Marion in 1987. His lawyers argued that he was borderline retarded, and a victim of a poverty-stricken and brutal childhood at the hands of an alcoholic father and an ineffective mother; as an example, they noted when he was six his father had traded him for a bottle of moonshine to a man who raped him.

Kasich wrote in a statement that Murphy’s crime was heinous and disturbing, and that the abuse he suffered doesn’t excuse his crime. But he also wrote he agrees with Chief Justice Tom Moyer that Murphy was destined for disaster, and that the death penalty is not appropriate in this case. Fellow justice Herbert Brown had testified for clemency for Murphy at his parole hearing, and members of Predmore’s family had also said they didn’t support his execution for her murder.

“If you take it to em, if you don’t make mistakes, and you keep takin’ it to em, hell, there’s no question who’ll win.”

Coach Woody Hayes built an OSU football dynasty on the ground game. Now presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain are using aggressive ground games to get their supporters to the polls on November 4th.

In a huge third floor office in downtown Columbus telephones are packed rows upon row. GOP staffer Jason Levine says it’s called the Franklin County Victory Center, one of 45 McCain campaign offices across Ohio.

“And this is where all our volunteers come together to make phone calls and speak to other voters and talk to their neighbors,” Levine says. “And make sure that they get out to vote and that they’re supporting Sen. McCain and Sarah Palin.”

“Steve this is Sheila. I’m a volunteer calling on behalf of the Ohio Republican Party. Can I take a few minutes of your time and ask you five survey questions please? Thank you very much.”

Sheila Oxsher is a McCain volunteer:

“Are you planning to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin this November? Okay, you’re undecided “

To use the football metaphor political rallies are like long bombs: they make the highlight reels but what often makes the difference is work done in the trenches.

“There’s a lot of data that we collect through knocking on people’s doors, through making these phone calls,” Levine says. “But all of it comes together to help us make an informed judgment about who is going to vote for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin. And we’re looking for those people to motivate them to get out to the polls and vote early by absentee and also to bring their friends and neighbors and family to do the same thing.”

“It’s called peer-to-peer contact. And it helped George Bush win reelection four years ago. The Democrats are using the technique, too.

The Obama headquarters in Marion is one of 70 local Ohio offices. It’s located in a county that has been a long-time Republican stronghold. So local Obama campaign staff and volunteers are working hard, running their own phone bank, distributing campaign literature and holding voter registration drives. It’s all part of the Democrats’ strategy to reverse Ohio failures in 2000 and 2004.

“I believe we have a great game plan,” says Mike Clark, a local Obama campaign intern. “We’ve had really positive response from the people here and I feel really good about Sen. Obama’s chances in Ohio.”

Clark says that when volunteers go door to door and encounter McCain supporters they politely move on.

“The people that we’re targeting are mostly undecided voters because they’re a very large chunk of voters in this area and around the state of Ohio that are undecided,” Clark says.

Other Obama supporters believe that even hardcore Republicans can be persuaded to think about voting Democratic. Last week songwriter Carole King visited a Worthington coffee shop to help press the Obama campaign’s initiative called Neighbor to Neighbor.

“If you’re committed to the Obama campaign, first of all, vote early, and second of all please, please come in and volunteer, please,” Kind said.

Friends can influence friends and neighbors, King said. And she ended her presentation with one of her songs:

Winter, spring, summer or fall All you got to do is call And I’ll be there, yes I will You’ve got a friend.

McCain and Obama workers hope they have a lot of Ohio friends who will be there on Election Day.

Twenty-nine-year-old Brandy Winfield was in his overturned cruiser and was pronounced dead at Marion General Hospital.

The sheriff’s office says two people are being questioned and a third possible suspect is in the emergency room at Marion General Hospital.

Winfield responded to the 4:00am report of a disabled white van, but radio traffic from him stopped shortly after he reported seeing the two men walking along state Route 423 near Waldo, about 30 miles north of Columbus.

Winfield was on the force six years, and his father and brother are Marion police officers. He is survived by a wife and two children.