Economy heats race in Ohio 'barometer' county
By DAN SEWELL
Associated Press
October 9, 2008
PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AP) -- Waiting to get lunch at the Dari Creme's walk-up window, Denise Leport wore an Ohio State Buckeyes sweat shirt along with a frown as she considered this year's presidential candidates.
"I'm not into either one, really," she said, adding that she is a Democrat who's not enthused about her party's nominee. "Not much," she replied, when asked what she thought about Barack Obama.
But the economy, particularly bleak in this Appalachian city on the Ohio River, is high on her mind, and she expects to vote Democratic in hope of a change for the better. That's the kind of opening Obama is trying capitalize on as he challenges Republican John McCain for Ohio -- the swing state that narrowly clinched President Bush's re-election. In fact, no Republican has reached the White House without carrying Ohio.
Recent polling indicates that Obama, who will campaign in Portsmouth for the first time Thursday, has forged ahead in the state in a tight race. The national economic crisis surfaces as a leading issue in statewide voter surveys and in interviews with folks in a region that's already seen many years of hard times.
Leport's husband spends four hours daily commuting to and from a shipping-and-receiving job in Columbus for lack of a good-paying job here in Scioto County. The county's unemployment rate is near 10 percent; four nearby counties in southeast Ohio have double-digit rates.
This area is whiter, poorer and less educated than the state as a whole, but it has been an electoral mirror of Ohio. Scioto, in the heart of southeast Ohio, keeps going with the winner, voting for Bush the last two presidential elections, and for Bill Clinton the previous two.
"It's a swing county among the swing counties," said Terry Johnson, a physician and Ohio National Guard colonel who heads the Scioto County GOP. "You can kind of use us as a barometer for how the others will go."
A few months ago, Appalachian Ohio didn't appear promising for Obama. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton trounced Obama across the region in the Democratic primary, taking more than 80 percent of the Scioto vote in March. While registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1 in the county, nearly half the 48,000 voters are independent.
Polls indicate Obama has big leads in Cleveland and other urban areas; McCain is way ahead in conservative strongholds such as the northern Cincinnati suburbs. That makes regions such as this one pivotal.
"Southeast Ohio could potentially make the difference in who wins Ohio, so it will be a very important campaign ground," said Eric Rademacher, co-director of the Ohio Poll at the University of Cincinnati. "I think right now there is a real question of just how the region is going to vote."
Obama seems more likely to attract voters who choose based on economic issues, he said. However, McCain could benefit from the region's many voters who are conservative on social issues such as abortion and admire his military experience and "country first" campaign theme.
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