The struggling middle-class voters of swing-state Ohio are suddenly in demand, writes CARL O'BRIENin Cleveland
BIG AL’S diner is a neighbourhood cafe on the east side of Cleveland that serves extra-large portions of corned-beef hash and fried green tomatoes at reasonable prices.
It’s an unassuming place with small wooden tables and leatherette seats where regulars come in before work or after finishing a shift.
For more than 20 years, it’s been serving up fried breakfast, lunch and dinner to the local community.
And it’s the kind of place where Barack Obama and Mitt Romney hope their differing versions of a restored American dream will resonate.
For all the vast swathes of the country, the presidential election race ultimately comes down to a few crucial battleground states, and none is more important than Ohio.
No Republican candidate in the modern era has been elected president without winning the state’s 18 electoral college votes. As a result, Romney’s campaign is targeting the more conservative south and the well-off suburbs of cities to the north.
For Obama, winning Ohio means hoovering up votes in the north, where there is a swath of rusting manufacturing cities such as Cleveland, Toledo and Youngstown with large minority populations and lots of union households. His campaign hopes the glimmer of a resurgence in the rust belt will help to position Obama as a defender of American manufacturing jobs and the middle class.
Despite the ferocity of the contest, both candidates’ messages are strikingly similar. Both argue that they will do best for the middle class, lifting the tax burden and offering them a route to future prosperity. Both insist the other guy will end up hurting the middle class more.
At Big Al’s diner, the customers are suddenly in demand. Not only are they based in Ohio, but their county, Cuyahoga, is the most populous in the state, encompassing the city of Cleveland and its suburbs. On a grey Monday morning, talk in the diner is about how to avoid the robo-calls from both campaigns and wishing the tsunami of negative advertising would subside.
The Rownd family, sharing pancakes and omelettes, capture some of the divisions of the wider region. They are a middle-class family who have sacrificed a lot to put their children through college. They haven’t had a holiday for several years to help pay tuition fees, and their dreams of one day owning a holiday home have faded over the years.
Jim Rownd (52), who works in legal services, describes himself as a “fiscal conservative” who leans Republican. He’s worried at the scale of the debt racked up under Obama, and is concerned that tax increases will be an inevitable consequence. “I worry that there’s a day of reckoning coming. And if we don’t address it, it will become unsustainable,” he says.
His wife, Paula (50), a school librarian, is a committed Democrat, and feels the country is on the road to recovery. She’s worried at widening divisions between both political parties.
“Politically, things are so split. There’s no middle ground any more. We hope things will improve. I really do. But we need people to work together to do that.”
Nowhere has that hope been tested more than in Cleveland. As you make your way down the wind-swept streets of downtown, there are sad reminders of a more prosperous era. Giant, empty art-deco shopping arcades and shuttered theatres were once the hub of a bustling city centre. In the outer city, there is block after block of boarded-up houses and abandoned apartment complexes.
Back in the 1950s, the city was thriving, driven by a vibrant steel industry. “The best location is the nation”, was the slogan dreamt up by the marketers. Within two decades, following a collapse in steel prices, it was nicknamed “the mistake on the lake”.
The city’s decline followed that of other rust-belt areas, caught in a death spiral of depopulation, urban decline and social unrest. In the 1970s, the heavily-polluted Cuyahoga river caught fire, providing an iconic and disturbing image of a city on the precipice.
By the 1980s, it had lost a third of its population. Even once-great sports teams were breaking the hearts of fans and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. An infamous last-minute fumble by a Cleveland Browns player in a vital NFL championship game in 1988 seemed the perfect metaphor for a city whose future had slipped through its fingers.
These days, it’s no longer the mistake on the lake. The manufacturing industries are gone, never to return, but healthcare and high-tech industries are beginning to take their place. Life is returning to the downtown area and demand for apartments are on the rise, though huge challenges remain. The population is half of what it was in the 1950s and thousands of houses remain empty or abandoned.
“The whole attitude and spirit of Cleveland is significantly different than it was just a few years ago,” says Frank George Jackson, the city’s Democrat mayor and a steadfast Obama supporter. “People see a brighter future.”
In this election year, the politicians say the American dream is still possible. But at Big Al’s diner, progress for many is more about holding on to what you have and hoping for the best.
Dale Gordon (59), an African-American, is taking a break from work with his brother Patrick (68). “I don’t think so much about the future, it’s more a case of day to day,” says Dale Gordon, who describes himself as an entrepreneur. “As long as I have enough to pay the bills.”
“This is a country built on hopes and dreams,” adds his brother, a retired social worker. “You’ve got to believe and hope things will improve. We keep hearing we’re the richest country in the world – who’d bet against us?”