By John Byczkowski
Enquirer staff writer
Donald Evans, the U.S. secretary of commerce, spent Monday in a Lockheed turboprop, flying at 8,000 feet into the eye of Hurricane Ivan over the Caribbean Sea. The rain was so hard in that monstrous storm, said the secretary - whose duties include overseeing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - that "it was like flying through a river."
His trip Tuesday morning to Cincinnati was a lot smoother.
Evans, on a campaign stop for President Bush, spoke to a friendly crowd of about 200 members of the Ohio Association of Realtors in a meeting room at the Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center.
Evans told the crowd of his long friendship with the president. Both are from Midland, Texas.
"Washington's a lot different than Midland," he said.
When people ask if he has friends in Washington, Evans says, "I got one, and he's busy."
Evans painted a rosy picture of the economy, pointing at low interest rates, low inflation, high productivity, rising homeownership and growing numbers of working Americans.
"We were handed a recession when we came into office," he said, though the recession didn't start until March 2001, two months after the president was sworn in. "We're in the early stages of Bush prosperity."
The secretary never mentioned the president's Democratic challenger, U.S. Sen. John Kerry.
Nor did he mention rising federal budget deficits, high gasoline prices or rising health care costs. "There are some in Washington who don't see the future quite so bright," he said. "That's not how the president thinks."
Though Evans received much applause and two standing ovations, the audience wasn't totally in his camp. During a question-and-answer period, one Realtor questioned his economic statistics. Another, who identified himself as a former firefighter, told the secretary that local safety departments are stressed by the added pressure of the war on terror, but without new funding.
One Realtor took the opportunity to try to help her hometown. Columbiana County in eastern Ohio has seen two fierce storms in two weeks, one Aug. 28 that resulted in 7 inches of rain in five hours and another last week, the remnants of Hurricane Florence. The flooding washed out bridges and damaged homes. And though Ohio Gov. Bob Taft has declared the county a disaster area, the federal government hasn't responded to requests for aid.
Sue Drotleff, president-elect of the Beaver Creek Area Association of Realtors in Columbiana County, buttonholed the secretary to ask when federal aid might be coming. Evans told her this wasn't under his department, but he'd look into it.
"I figured, he was here," Drotleff said. "Sometimes the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease."
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E-mail johnb@enquirer.com
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