Battleground Ohio: Romney hopes to ride 2010 wave

LORAIN (AP) — The office of Chase Rite­nauer, the Demo­c­ra­tic mayor of this north-central Ohio city, over­looks peace­fully moored sail­boats on Lake Erie — and a sewage treat­ment plant. So it goes for Ohio Democ­rats this elec­tion year: Some things look a lot bet­ter than others.

Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney, they admit, has a real chance of putting the state back into the GOP col­umn after Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s hard-fought win in 2008.

Still, after a dis­as­trous 2010 midterm elec­tion, Ohio Democ­rats and many inde­pen­dents ral­lied last year to defeat a Republican-backed labor union law. The big ques­tion this fall, Rite­nauer says, is “whether they come out in full force for Pres­i­dent Obama.”

Ohio again is earn­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as the ulti­mate toss-up state. The proof is in the spend­ing. Last week, the two cam­paigns and their allies poured more money into TV ads in Ohio — about $1.3 mil­lion each — than in any other state, includ­ing Florida.

Both Obama and Rom­ney are cam­paign­ing in Ohio on Thurs­day, which marks Obama’s 22nd visit as pres­i­dent. And Rom­ney will make an all-day, three-town trip through Ohio on Sun­day, part of a five-day bus tour.

As every cam­paign strate­gist knows, no Repub­li­can has won the pres­i­dency with­out car­ry­ing Ohio. Obama won it by 5 per­cent­age points. Repub­li­cans hope 2010 is the best pre­dic­tor of this year’s con­test. Democ­rats hope it’s 2011.

No state saw a more sweep­ing GOP vic­tory in the 2010 elec­tions than Ohio. Repub­li­cans ousted the Demo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nor, enjoyed a land­slide U.S. Sen­ate win, replaced five Demo­c­ra­tic U.S. House mem­bers and regained con­trol of the Ohio House to take full com­mand of the state government.

As big vic­to­ries some­times do, how­ever, it led to what many say was over­reach. The new gov­er­nor, John Kasich, backed leg­is­la­tion to sharply reduce pub­lic unions’ bar­gain­ing rights.

The move infu­ri­ated mil­lions in a state largely built upon the union­ized steel and auto­mo­bile indus­tries. Ohio vot­ers over­whelm­ingly rejected the law in a ref­er­en­dum last Novem­ber, forc­ing Kasich to strike a more con­cil­ia­tory tone.

The strug­gle in some ways mir­rored Wisconsin’s fight that ended this month when GOP Gov. Scott Walker sur­vived a recall vote. Ohioans set­tled their dis­pute more quickly and less dras­ti­cally, how­ever. Unions and Democ­rats pre­vailed in Ohio, but lost in Wisconsin.

Kasich is prov­ing to be a some­what prob­lem­atic ally for Rom­ney. The governor’s approval rat­ing, while ris­ing, remains well below 50 percent.

Kasich strikes a more bipar­ti­san tone than Rom­ney, and he repeat­edly notes that Ohio’s unem­ploy­ment rate is nearly a full per­cent­age point below the national aver­age. That detail clashes with Romney’s mes­sage that Obama has badly mis­man­aged the economy.

Speak­ing to reporters last week in Colum­bus, Kasich called for more coop­er­a­tion between the White House and Con­gress. Repub­li­cans, he said, “yell and scream about Obama. Look, at the end of the day, the biggest prob­lems that we have in the coun­try will not be solved by just one party.”

Ohio Demo­c­ra­tic Party Chair­man Chris Red­fern says Democ­rats suf­fered in 2010 because they did a poor job of explain­ing Obama’s health care law in the face of fierce oppo­si­tion from a newly ascen­dant tea party move­ment. Democ­rats are doing a bet­ter job now, he said, and he’s pleased with Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Sher­rod Brown’s solid-looking re-election campaign.

Scott Jen­nings, Romney’s state direc­tor, says vot­ers over­whelm­ingly oppose the health law, no mat­ter how well it is explained. The Obama cam­paign will open more offices in the state, he said, “but you can’t paper over a lack of enthu­si­asm” with paid staff and office space.

“We’re going to match these guys vol­un­teer for vol­un­teer,” Jen­nings said.

In the most recent weekly tally of cam­paign broad­cast spend­ing, Romney’s forces nearly matched Obama’s dol­lar for dol­lar in Ohio. Rom­ney and the super Pac that backs him focused mainly on urban areas. They heav­ily out­spent their rivals in GOP-leaning Cincin­nati, and slightly out­spent them in Colum­bus and Democratic-leaning Cleve­land. Obama’s cam­paign bought air time in smaller mar­kets that Rom­ney skipped: Zanesville, Steubenville and two West Vir­ginia towns whose TV broad­casts reach south­east Ohio.

Colum­bus — Ohio’s cap­i­tal, biggest city and home to Ohio State Uni­ver­sity — is a com­pet­i­tive region that Obama won com­fort­ably in 2008 but George W. Bush nar­rowly car­ried four years ear­lier. Both cam­paigns will fight hard for its swing voters.

Strate­gists say Rom­ney hopes to run up big mar­gins in rural areas and the Cincin­nati sub­urbs. Obama’s cam­paign will need big turnouts from Cleveland’s black and lib­eral vot­ers, and it hopes union house­holds in the strug­gling coal and steel regions won’t aban­don Democrats.

Ohio Democ­rats say they will force Rom­ney to explain his 2008–2009 oppo­si­tion to a fed­eral bailout of the fast-falling U.S. auto indus­try, which Obama now calls a huge suc­cess. The revi­tal­ized car indus­try has been cru­cial to Ohio’s steady job growth, and Romney’s com­plex expla­na­tion of his stance on the 2009 bank­ruptcy restruc­tur­ing is uncon­vinc­ing, said for­mer Gov. Ted Strick­land, whom Kasich defeated in 2010.

“I’m very impressed with the orga­ni­za­tion the Obama folks are putting in place,” Strick­land said. “It’s going to be a very close race, but I think the pres­i­dent has a very good chance of car­ry­ing Ohio again.”

If so, Obama must inspire demor­al­ized Democ­rats such as Tony Soto of Lorain, a retired Ford auto worker who ate lunch recently at the Three Star Restau­rant on hard-pressed 28th Street. Eco­nom­i­cally diver­si­fied cities such as Colum­bus are thriv­ing these days, but old indus­trial towns like Lorain feel overlooked.

“The econ­omy is so bad here, peo­ple just up and leave,” said Soto, 56, look­ing across the road at huge, shut­tered steel plants. He said he would like to join his son in Ari­zona, but he can’t sell his house in Lorain.

Soto said he prob­a­bly will vote for Obama, but he showed no enthusiasm.

“No mat­ter who gets in, it’s all promises,” he said, dab­bing an onion ring in brown gravy. “A lot of peo­ple say this is going to be a ghost town pretty soon. I believe it.”

Rite­nauer, Loran’s 27-year-old mayor, is bat­tling that view. He says he wishes he had the money to tear down 1,100 aban­doned build­ings in this city of 64,000, most of them houses beyond repair. He also is look­ing for ways to relo­cate the sewage treat­ment plant and high-power lines that mar the view of the town marina, on Lake Erie.

As for Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers try­ing to bounce back from their 2010 dis­as­ter, the mayor makes no bold predictions.

“They’re going to put on an impres­sive cam­paign, as they always do,” Rite­nauer said. “And we’ll see where it goes.”

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jun 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.