For months, the national media has spoon-fed us this wisdom: Ohio is a make-or-break state for the Kerry campaign.
Why Ohio, and what are the issues there? That’s the question Carl Weiser of Gannett’s Washington bureau tackled yesterday. Answer: “It’s the mini-America,” with Bush and Kerry running neck-and-neck.
While Weiser’s assessment is nowhere near as in-depth as Sunday’s profile of Ohio voters published by The New York Times Magazine, he offers a fascinating political primer of the Buckeye State, which has 15 battleground counties, locales where the margin of victory for either candidate in 2000 was less than five percentage points. Although George Bush carried the state that year with 50 percent of the vote (compared to Al Gore’s 46 percent), current polls show Bush and Kerry tied.
In such a tight race, what exactly do the Democrats have going for themselves in Ohio? Weiser’s answer: Mainly, the vanishing of some 270,000 jobs in Ohio during the past four years, and the massive infusion of anti-Bush issue ads currently blanketing the state, designed to woo the undecided.
Next-door West Virginia is another critical state for the Kerry campaign, but the job-loss issue there is a double-edged sword. Like Ohio and neighboring Pennsylvania (which Kerry also will visit briefly), the Mountain State’s major industries — steel and coal — are in trouble. Which could create a headache for Kerry: How will Kerry’s strong environmental record play in these states, where for decades jobs have been equated with pollution? That’s an issue that has gotten short shrift thus far, lost amid the sweeping descriptions of swing states and political battlegrounds.
Commentator Robert Novak for one predicts that Kerry is dead in the water in both Ohio and the Mountain State because of his “anti-coal” environmental and energy policies. The Intelligencer of Wheeling today claimed Kerry had nothing to offer either state but “hollow promises.” For his part, the Massachusetts senator arrived in Wheeling this morning, carriying the fresh endorsement of the United Mine Workers.
It’s refreshing to see a couple of articles that ask a question that used to be considered basic: How might a candidate’s stand on particular issues affect how the electorate treats him?
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.