ELKHART — Nobody denies Elkhart County’s economy is doing better than the last time President Barack Obama visited in 2009.
Unemployment eventually peaked locally at 19.6 percent that year and nationally at 10 percent. The RV industry, which forms the bedrock of Elkhart County’s economy, was shedding jobs and struggling to stay afloat.
Fast forward seven years and Obama will be greeted by a completely revitalized economy, an RV industry seeing record growth and a county with the unemployment sitting at 4.1 percent when he visits the area Wednesday.
While Obama will highlight the economic turnaround and point to some of his policies as some of the reasons the county was able to improve, many Elkhart County leaders say he doesn’t deserve the full credit. Instead, they say that credit belongs to the people who lived through it.
Dale Stickel, the former head of the Elkhart County Republican Party, is not ready to praise Obama. The economy recovered despite Obama, not because of the president, Stickel said.
“It’s been the slowest recovery in history,” said Stickel, who remains active in local GOP politics here as precinct committeeman and in other roles. “I think he’s done more than any other president in history to slow the recovery.”