Ohio county provides microcosm of US race
CANTON, Ohio -- In a county and state with a knack for picking the winner, an unprecedented political ground war is already underway. Fully five months before presidential ballots are cast, the partisan armies are mobilizing across this most critical of battleground states.
The effort will be duplicated to some degree in other states that may determine the outcome of the November election, but the early intensity here reflects the importance of Ohio, where polls show a tight race.
On weekends, Republican volunteers have been hitting the streets, local foot soldiers in a statewide grassroots effort that the campaign says is the most extensive ever by the GOP in the Buckeye State. One reason is that no Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio's electoral votes. Four years ago President Bush beat Al Gore, who had abandoned the state in the campaign's final weeks, by less than 3.6 percent of the vote.
Arrayed against the Republican volunteers are paid canvassers bearing hand-held computers who go door-to-door almost daily for America Coming Together, a controversial new political entity that the Republican Party tried unsuccessfully to have ruled illegal. Though ACT is technically independent, the organization to date has served as a proxy field organization for Senator John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee. Known as a "527" -- the section of the tax code under which these advocacy groups exist -- ACT intends to spend $95 million, donated mostly by millionaire activists, to turn out anti-Bush voters in Ohio and 16 other swing states.
"It will be the most sophisticated voter mobilization effort in history by either party," said Sarah Leonard, a spokeswoman for ACT.
In the past few weeks, the Kerry campaign has deployed a dozen staff members in Ohio to begin its own organizational effort, but ACT opened for business in Ohio last September, about four months before a single caucus or primary vote was cast for the Democratic nomination.
The Canton office, one of 15 in the state, was up and running by late January, ACT Ohio spokesman Jess Goode said.
In some parts of the state, the emphasis is on registering new voters. Around Canton, however, it's all about the declining steel industry and its effect on the local economy.
During the Bush administration, Ohio has lost 167,800 jobs in manufacturing, an economic underpinning of this industrial state. The unemployment rate is 5.8 percent, slightly higher than the 5.6 percent national figure, but many urban industrial regions are at or near double digits.
For April, the state estimated unemployment in the city of Canton at 9.9 percent. The region was jolted on May 14 when the
In the heat of a presidential campaign, the announcement assumed political significance because during an April 2003 visit to Timken's research facility in North Canton, Bush promoted his $550 billion tax cut plan and extolled the success and bright future of the company, one of whose top executives is a major Bush-Cheney fund-raiser.
Within days of the Timken plant-closing announcement, Kerry irked Bush partisans by calling on the president to intervene and urge the company and United Steelworkers of America to accept federal mediation to "prevent the economic and personal devastation . . . on thousands of families in that community."
The company maintains that benefit costs of employees in the bearing plants puts it at a disadvantage with domestic, unionized competitors. About 80 percent of the Canton production will be transferred to Timken's 33 other bearing facilities in the United States, company spokesman Jason Saragian said. Some of the rest may be shifted to Timken plants overseas.
Curt Braden, chairman of the Republican Party in the county, said Kerry is trying to score political points. "I call him 'Bad News John,' " said Braden, a local businessman. "He's always looking for bad news to talk about."
Canton Mayor Janet W. Creighton, a Republican and Bush-Cheney chairwoman in seven counties, insisted Timken "is not a political issue; it's a company and a union that need to talk."
Representative Ralph S. Regula, a Republican who has represented the Canton area in Congress for 30 years, said Kerry's comments were ill-informed and premature. The company and union aren't eligible for mediation because they are not yet in formal negotiations, said Regula, who owns a farm outside Canton. He acknowledged, however, that the Timken flap "is certainly not a positive" for the Bush campaign.
The Timken dispute echoes one that threatened the layoff-plagued Hoover Co. vacuum cleaner plant in North Canton. After vowing to shut down its Ohio operation,
Not all of the economic news is bad in Stark County. State and local officials say there is evidence of an upturn. In the city of Alliance, a shuttered casting plant that made rail car parts has reopened, creating 420 jobs, according to Vince Marion, the city's director of planning and development. Another Alliance company is working to develop fuel cell technology, a renewable energy source initiative that is receiving heavy financial backing from state government.
But in Canton, there is a sense of alarm about the economic future. Last Monday, the front page of The Repository, Canton's daily newspaper, was dominated by a story headlined "Employees lash out at Timken." Below that was a story about 45 layoffs at a smaller steel facility that is seeking $24 million in tax relief from the city of Louisville.
That night, Dave Leasure, a steelworker for 25 years until a plant closing in nearby Massillon left him jobless 17 months ago, and Sean McDonald, a carpet installer, knocked on doors for ACT in northeast Canton, a racially mixed, working class neighborhood. They carried Palm Pilot hand-held computers that contained voter registration information and streamed a brief video message that blames Bush economic policies for the loss of Ohio steel jobs.
"I made $20 an hour as a steelworker," said Leasure, wearing a brightly-colored ACT T-shirt and cap. "Now I make $10 and I don't work a 40-hour week."
In his travels, he said he finds many Stark County residents who say they will support Bush to avoid changing presidents during a time of war. But this evening, Leasure and McDonald visit a series of residents who seem to reflect the Democratic base. They are worried about the economy, angry at Bush, and eager for change. If they have an opinion of Kerry, they don't express it.
"I know who I didn't vote for last time, and I damn sure won't vote for him this time around," said Tara Johnson, referring to Bush. An adult day care worker, mother of two, and daughter of a retired Timken steelworker, she said jobs and the price of gasoline are major concerns. A friend's husband will be among the unemployed if the Timken plants close, she said.
A few doors away, Jerrel Shipman, a 72-year-old great-grandmother and retired cook, said she is concerned about a son-in-lawwho works at Timken. "There are a lot of people without jobs . . . I hope they get Bush out," she said. "Since Bush has been in, it's been nothing but problems."
Republican partisans often hear these sentiments, but counter them by saying that the economy is improving and that Bush is a steady leader on national security. In a state with a Republican legacy as deep as Ohio's, Bush has an established base of support. But at each level of Ohio politics -- city, county, and state -- the competition for votes over the next five months will be intense.
This 576-square-mile patch of Middle America stretches from struggling urban steel centers, through suburban sprawl, to quiet pasturelands. Because of a confluence of demographic, social, and economic factors, Stark County almost resembles in miniature the country as a whole.
"We're really like a microcosm of the country," said Regula, the congressman-cattle farmer.
And important enough in presidential elections that news like plant closings will be magnified by the campaigns in the coming months.
Stark has voted for the winner in nine of the past 10 presidential elections.
