Democrats aren’t waiting until the GOP ultimately selects its nominee to start getting their campaign into full gear. On Thursday — right in City Hall — Mayor Michael Nutter, along with other Philadelphia government officials, unveiled the local branch of Obama’s Truth Team for the 2012 campaign.

In the mayor’s words, the goal of the Truth Team is to “make sure people know the truth about what the president has done while in office and to respond to and anticipate the Republican attacks.”

Nutter used the spotlight to begin to rebut Republican attacks, attacking Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum specifically. He reminded Pennsylvanians they had unequivocally rejected Santorum when he ran for re-election as state senator in 2006.

This is not the first time Nutter has played an early and local role in Obama’s 2012 campaign. Just last semester, he was one of the speakers at the national launch of Students for Barack Obama, which was hosted right on Penn’s campus, in the Hall of Flags.

Nor should it be surprising that Nutter is stepping up his role in aiding the incumbent president’s campaign. Sure, he’s a Democrat himself, but moreover, he’s the mayor of a city with over four times as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

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