Ohio is the epicentre of a titanic struggle – with the winner there likely to occupy the White House for the next four years. CARL O'BRIENreports from Dayton
YOU MIGHT expect that Gary Leitzell, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, would be enamoured of all the attention his city is getting.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m sick of it,” says Leitzell, an Independent mayor, who wears an earring and an open-necked shirt. “The mailings, the commercials, the phone calls. So much money is being wasted . . . Any time a candidate comes to the city it’s costing the taxpayer. We have to put extra police on patrol. We don’t see that money back.”
The reason for all the attention is that Dayton, like other cities in Ohio, is at the centre of one of the epic struggles in US presidential politics.
Ohio has played a central role in presidential campaigns for many years. But rarely has its significance been as great as this year. Most days, it seems as if the entire presidential campaign is being waged in this complex and sprawling state.
President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney are engaged in a high- stakes battle for the state’s 18 electoral votes. If Obama can win here, the 270 electoral votes needed by Romney to win the presidency become an almost insurmountable obstacle.
Just over a month ago it seemed as if the president couldn’t lose. Following Romney’s “47 per cent” comments, Obama’s lead rose by between eight and 10 percentage points, according to several polls.
But ever since the first television debate Romney’s campaign has been infused with fresh vitality. Latest data shows the president has the most slender of advantages, well within the margin of error of most polls.
He’s also drawing big crowds to events, with 12,000 appearing at his latest campaign stop in Defiance, Ohio.
A handful of other states remain up for grabs. Florida, for example, is the biggest of the battlegrounds, with 29 electoral votes. It is a must-win for Romney. Both campaigns expect Virginia will go down to the wire. Colorado and New Hampshire are also too close to call.
Still, because of its importance in the electoral-college calculations, Ohio draws the most focus and intensity, with the battle being waged at all times and on all fronts. Barely a day passes without Obama and Romney, or their running mates, vice- president Joe Biden and Republican candidate Paul Ryan, visiting the state – often on the same day.
Romney has held about 30 events here in the last month, drawing bigger and bigger crowds, while his running mate has done about 20 campaign stops.
Obama has held about 10 events here – and is due to spend much of the next three days campaigning furiously right across the state. Yesterday former president Bill Clinton held three events in a single day, crisscrossing much of state.
The campaign stops reveal much about where votes are expected to be won and lost on both sides.
So far Obama’s campaign has focused mostly on the Democratic heartland of the north – Cleveland, Toledo and Youngstown – where the car industry is the biggest employer, as well blue-leaning cities in the middle of the state such as Columbus.
Romney, by contrast, has focused on the wealthier, red-leaning suburbs of the main cities, as well as the south which is rock-solid Republican and part of “coal country”.
Electoral strategies have differed on both sides. Democrats regard Ohio as the “tip of the spear”, as some of its campaign T-shirts say, and have focused on early voting, which tends to benefit Democrats.
Poorer voters are less likely to vote on a single day, so the logic goes, while many African American churches have organised transport for churchgoers to get to the polls in advance of election day.
This year, Republicans unsuccessfully tried to prevent early voting through a court action, though it too is now pushing early voting.
Most polling has indicated that early voters in Ohio have favoured Obama by a wide margin, and Democrats have been pushing the practice especially aggressively. Nearly one in four voters in Ohio said they had already cast their ballots, and nearly 60 per cent said it was for the president, compared with just over 30 per cent for Romney. This advantage is likely to shrink dramatically on polling day.
While the Republican candidate’s momentum surged following the first debate, most observers say it has slowed in more recent times. While popular in the suburbs and the south, he has struggled to win over blue-collar votes in the north.
This week, Romney unleashed a new and risky strategy. It involved television and radio ads suggesting car manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler were adding jobs in China at the expense of workers in the midwestern swing state.
However, senior executives at the firms have criticised the ads as misleading.
In fact, Chrysler says it is adding 1,100 jobs to its plant in Toledo. It’s also adding production facilities in China as demand for cars there grows. Because of trade rules, it says, it’s easier for companies to build cars for the Chinese market in China.
The Republican ticket hasn’t backed down from the commercial. Paul Ryan said in a statement that “American taxpayers are on track to lose $25 billion as a result of president Obama’s handling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas.” Just how all this partisan sniping will play out is another story.
John Penick (62) is exactly the kind of voter that both Democrats and Republicans are targeting in the “buckeye” state, which is now becoming the bull’s-eye state.
He hasn’t voted yet, which makes him a prized target in a state where both presidential candidates are locked in a dead heat. To date, though, their methods – the relentless ad wars that carpet-bomb television screens and the endless unsolicited phone calls – have left him cold.
“I’m a student of language: I read between the lines and listen to all the misleading words that create images in your head that have little to do with reality,” says Penick, who runs a coffee shop in Dayton. “And as for the phone calls? Well, I just unplug the phone these days.”