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Cleveland
Plain Dealer...
The
jobless vote in Ross County, Ohio,
predicts the nation’s president
By Thomas Suddes
November 21, 2011
Feature
this: Barack Obama may lose
Ohio in 2012 if Republican Gov. John Kasich can’t find “jobs-jobs-jobs”
for Ohioans.
But if Kasich succeeds, so may Obama.
As
Brookings Institution scholar
William A. Galston recently wrote in a study The Washington Post
reported,
“Barack Obama’s path to reelection runs through Ohio and the Midwest. .
. . And
that means taking seriously the concerns of the voters throughout the
region
who deserted Democrats in droves last year.”
Ohioans’
cardinal concern is the
family catastrophe of unemployment. In 2008, just before Obama won the
White
House, Ohio’s unemployment rate was 7.3 percent. This October’s rate --
announced Friday -- was 9 percent.
In
2010, just before Ohioans replaced
Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland with Kasich, the unemployment rate was
9.7
percent.
That’s
the paradox. Over roughly the
last year, with Kasich governor for most of it, Ohio’s unemployment
fell. But
if you go back roughly three years, to just before Obama took office,
and
compare the Ohio unemployment rate of that time to today, it’s climbed
--
steeply.
Likewise,
as voters replaced Jimmy
Carter with Ronald Reagan in 1980, unemployment in Ohio -- a state that
in 1976
had made Carter president -- was 9.5 percent. In 1982, Ohioans decided
to give
Lakewood Democrat Richard F. Celeste the governorship rather than leave
it with
Republicans; Ohio’s unemployment rate was 13.5 percent. That is, high
unemployment is bad for the incumbent party.
Partisans
can bray all they want about
how this member of Congress, or that state legislator, is the real
problem. But
the man or woman who heads a state or national government is the
lightning rod.
So,
if John Kasich’s JobsOhio
brainstorm does indeed induce investors to bring jobs to Ohio, or to
keep or
add jobs in Ohio, that’s a plus for the president, too. If, however,
JobsOhio
is more sizzle than steak, Ohio may be tough for Obama in 2012.
And
things are plenty tough already.
According to Galston, “The Midwest is home to large numbers of white
working-class voters, who accounted for nearly 40 percent of all voters
nationwide in 2008. Obama has never done very well with this group,
losing them
by 2-to-1 to Hillary Clinton in the primaries and by 58 [percent] to 40
percent to McCain in the general
election. And they turned against Democratic candidates in the vast
majority of
2010 House and Senate races.”
Clinton’s
2008 Ohio showing is
emblematic of Galston’s perspective on the president’s weakness with
working-class voters. Statewide, Clinton drew 54 percent of Ohio’s
Democratic
presidential primary vote to Obama’s 44 percent.
Glance
toward Ross County
(Chillicothe). Only four times since 1908 (in 1948, 1976, 1992 and,
tellingly,
2008) has Ross failed to back Ohio’s presidential winner. In the March
2008
Democratic presidential primary, Clinton won 70 percent of Ross
County’s
Democratic vote; Obama, 28 percent.
At
the 2008 general election, Ross
gave Obama 14,455 votes -- but gave Republican John McCain 16,759.
(Obama
carried Ohio by 262,000 votes.)
Two
months ago, September -- latest
month available -- Ross County’s unemployment rate was 9.7 percent. Its
September 2008 unemployment rate -- just before Ross backed McCain --
was 8
percent.
Political
lore is (and elections
suggest) that in an Ohio presidential squeaker, such as Jimmy Carter’s
1976
defeat of Gerald R. Ford, Appalachian Ohio can be Ohio’s decider. Last
week,
Plain Dealer political writer Henry J. Gomez reported that “President
Barack
Obama’s re-election campaign [has] opened its first Ohio field office
in -- you
guessed it -- Chillicothe.”
Given
the political geography, and job
numbers, Obama has his work cut out for him in Ohio -- work that may
succeed
only if Ohio’s Republican governor does. If that isn’t irony, there’s
no such
thing.
Read
this and other articles at
Cleveland Plain Dealer
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