The Hill News

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he's not surprised that President Obama and Democrats have heaped on him leading into this fall's elections.

The top House Republican, who will likely become speaker if Republicans win control of the House, said that the effort to elevate him as a negative figure for voters was an effort to distract voters from Democrats' records.

"I'm not surprised that they've picked me out as a target," Boehner said Monday evening on Fox News.

Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill had begun to bemoan Boehner as a symbol for House Republicans starting in late August as part of a bid to elevate the would-be speaker.

Still, polls suggest that efforts to popularize Boehner have fallen short of Democrats' hopes, and that Speaker! Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is still seen more negatively than is the Ohio Republican.

"They're desperate to make this election about anything other than themselves," Boehner said. "This election is going to be a referendum on their job-killing policies."

That still didn't mean that Boehner didn't take issue with the way Democrats have portrayed him, as a corporate-aligned lawmaker with close ties to lobbyist groups.

The Cincinnati-area congressman drew on his own background as the son of a large, bar-owning family -- an upbringing profiled often by local and national media outlets this fall -- to dispel the portrayal sought by the White House.

"They don't know who I ! am," Boehner asserted. "I'm a regular guy with a big job."