Former president will campaign in states where Democrats are hoping for gains against Republican incumbents

Barack Obama is set to dive back into the front line of politics this weekend, hitting the campaign trail in the hopes of giving Democrats a high-profile boost in November’s midterm elections.

Obama plans to campaign for candidates in California and Ohio, two major states where the party is hoping for crucial gains against Republican incumbents, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

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The former president has been largely absent from the campaign trail since leaving office, though he has weighed in on several hot button issues and issued a list of endorsements in August.

He’s set to kick off his campaigning in the current election cycle with a rally in Orange County, California, on Saturday. He’ll be joined by seven Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives who are gunning for seats currently held by Republicans in districts that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Then Obama will campaign in Cleveland, Ohio, next Thursday for Richard Cordray, the Democratic nominee for governor, who directed the consumer financial protection bureau in the Obama administration.

Cordray is looking to succeed Governor John Kasich, a moderate Republican who ran for the nomination for president in 2016 but lost to Donald Trump.

The events will likely be just the beginning of a fall campaign swing for Obama as Democrats try to encourage a “blue wave” of voting in order to take back control of at least one tier of Congress.

The former president plans to campaign aggressively in congressional contests and “local, down-ballot races to build the Democratic party’s bench” and to argue “that this moment in our country is too perilous for Democratic voters to sit out”, his spokeswoman, Katie Hill, told the Times.

Besides California and Ohio, Obama plans to appear later this month in Pennsylvania and Illinois, which have key contests for governor and Congress, an adviser said. He’ll also hold a fundraiser in New York for a group called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which is focused on fighting the gerrymandering of districts in a way that favors Republicans.



