US midterm elections: All to play for in Ohio

On a white stage outside the Spread Eagle Tavern Ted Cruz is on a roll; lampooning the president, condemning the governing Democrats and urging the crowd to subscribe to his podcast.

The conservative Texas senator is in Hanoverton, Ohio to campaign with JD Vance, the Republican candidate for the US Senate. It is part traditional stump speech and part stand-up comedy routine.

Vance, author of the best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, grew up in poverty in Ohio but later had a successful career in the financial and tech sectors. He is strongly supported by Donald Trump. He and his Democrat rival Tim Ryan are neck-and-neck in the polls.

In a state Trump won handily, this was not a scenario Republican strategists had forecast. In an evenly divided US Senate, the party cannot afford to lose one of its existing seats.

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Hanoverton is farm country. Three tractors stand in line sporting Vance flags. One man watches while sitting on a horse.

And at the lunchtime rally, few it seems have a good word about Joe Biden. The crowd of 300-400 is predominantly middle-aged or older and almost universally white.

Before proceedings begin, members of a small group comment to each other on how the United States has gone to hell since Biden took over.

“Putin would not have opened his mouth if Trump was there”, says one.

“And rocket man is firing missiles again,” says another, echoing the nickname given by Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un before they became friends.

[ Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance on Barack Obama: ‘We dislike the things we envy’ ]

Green energy and the transition from fossil fuels are also highly contentious local issues. Columbiana county Republican chairman, David Johnson, tells The Irish Times that along with inflation, the economy and crime these are big issues.

“We do not believe in the climate BS that is being promoted by the liberals. They want to build a 2,000-acre solar farm about five miles from here. All the farmers that live around that property ... as far they can see are going to be rolling hills of solar panels.

“So what do the local people get? They get their property values diminished and the eye-pollution of looking out at this crap and we do not think that these solar projects even work.”

Johnson says this particular county in eastern Ohio is also sitting on “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas”. He maintains Ryan and the Democrats want to stop fracking as well as oil and gas development.

Vance gives a polished speech about being raised by his grandparents because his mother was an addict. He says his mother has been clean and sober for seven years but would never have had a second chance if the current fentanyl opioid epidemic had been raging at the time. He explicitly blames Biden and Ryan for allowing fentanyl to “pour over the southern border”.

[ Trump’s preferred candidate comes from behind to win primary in Ohio ]

Vance, the candidate, is the warm-up act. Cruz is the star. He quickly gets the crowd going with some gags:

“We have a president who shakes hands with the empty air – this is not normal.”

“Things have got so bad that Antifa [the anti-fascist group Trump blamed for inciting violence in cities] cannot afford bricks.”

Cruz, now in his stride, tells the crowd about left-wing Democrats and district attorneys releasing murderers from prison. He contends illegal immigration across the Mexican border has never been worse. He promises Republicans will shelve Biden’s plans to add 87,000 staff to the US tax service, the IRS, and instead suggests these personnel should be sent to guard the border. He proposes abolition of the IRS completely and the introduction of a flat tax system for everyone.

Abortion, the issue on which the right campaigned for years, is not mentioned, nor is the January 6th attack on the US capitol.

Like an old-time preacher Cruz proclaims “revival is coming”. He says people are realising it is a battle, not between conservatives and liberals but between “sanity and insanity.” He insists the “Democrats are the party of coastal elites, of Manhattan and San Francisco billionaires, sipping Chardonnay”.

He says the Republican Party is now the party of truck drivers, steel workers, farmers, firefighters and waitresses and “all the men and women who have callouses on the hands and who go to work”.

[ Mid-term elections should be a referendum on Trumpism ]

Cruz suggests, however, that conservatives cannot just live in the bubble of those who watch Fox News. “We also need to be speaking to young people, Hispanics, African-Americans and suburban moms.”

But, he tells the crowd, they need to have the necessary information for these conversations. He urges the crowd to take out their mobiles and text a specific number which triggers a link to invite subscriptions to Cruz’s podcast.

Cruz has been on a cross-country tour and a large bus is parked down the street. He urges the crowd to write their names on the sides of the vehicle. He and Vance stand for close to an hour as the faithful line up for photos.

Dream candidate

Just under an hour from Hanoverton is Youngstown, the political base of Ryan, who has been a congressman for the area for 20 years.

Youngstown is an old steel town which fell on hard times in the 1970s and 1980s when the manufacturing plants closed down.

Ryan’s campaign is about him being on the side of the ordinary worker.

Professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University Paul Beck says Ryan was a “dream candidate” for the Democrats.

“While he is a liberal Democrat and somebody who voted very much with the Democratic leadership, he has a lot of appeal in union circles and among white working-class Ohioans”.

Ryan says Youngstown had been devastated by the outsourcing of manufacturing and Ryan opposed international trade deals that would facilitate more jobs leaving north eastern Ohio. He says Ryan was strongly critical of Bill Clinton’s tariff-free accord between the US, Mexico and Canada.

“As he [Ryan] said in the campaign he had more in common with Trump than the Democrat leaders when it came to foreign trade and treaties”, says Beck.

Republicans have sought to paint Ryan as a closet socialist in cahoots with progressives while pretending to be a moderate. Vance cites his friend Donald Trump Jnr as saying, given Ryan’s TV ads, they should perhaps invite him to speak at one of Donald Trump’s rallies.

Ryan has very much run his own campaign, raising millions from grassroots supporters. Some commentators allege he has deliberately distanced himself from Biden.

Ryan himself, in an interview, forecast that if elected he would “be beholden to absolutely nobody” and “probably, a royal pain in the ass”.

[ Trump’s return to political stage poses conundrum for Republicans ]

Beck says that none “of the Democratic big wigs have been here to campaign for him and most Ryan rallies have featured entertainers”.

“What he is trying to do is say: Hey, I am not your usual Democrat, [I am] a Democrat standing up for working Americans, white and black.

“He is going after white voters who probably historically voted Democrat, labour union members, the working class without a college degree.”

Beck says this is why Republicans “have attacked him as being a phoney”.

He says that while Ryan’s funding has come from small-dollar backers, Vance’s campaign has received large sums from big donors including $15 million and $20 million from billionaire Peter Thiel.

Ryan’s fundraising appears to have been struggling recently. The campaign warned about missed financial targets and said it may have to pull some advertising. Shortly after registering for an event, The Irish Times received a general email from Mary L Trump, niece of the former president who is backing Ryan, urging supporters to contribute $25 or more.

“My uncle is obsessed with winning Ohio, folks – and that should tell you everything you need to know about how important it is that we defeat JD Vance and elect Tim Ryan.”

*****

On a cloudy Monday night in an outdoor amphitheatre in Columbus several thousand people are standing on the grass for a free concert by American singer Dave Matthews, organised by the Ryan campaign.

The crowd is much younger than in Hanoverton. The message is also very different.

Ryan is seeking votes from across the spectrum.

[ Hillbilly Elegy: The Black and White Minstrel Show was subtler in its stereotyping ]

A steelworker and lifelong Republican called Calvin Newman tells the crowd: “I was at an AFLCIO (trade union) conference about three weeks ago, and I listened to Tim Ryan – and he said we don’t have to follow party lines, we have to put people first and that was the first time I heard that and that’s why I am voting for him.”

Ryan’s message from the stage is one of unity not partisanship. “We want this campaign to be a part of the healing process of this country. We want to come together. I swear to God I don’t care if you are a republican I don’t care if you or a Democrat, we have to be Americans. We have got to fix this. We have got to come together.

“We want to leave the age of stupidity behind us.”

Predictions

Over lunch in Columbus, Ohio Republican Party chairman Bob Paduchik predicts a big win for his side.

He says traditionally Ohio has been a swing state but that there was a change in 2016 when Trump won on a “conservative working-class message”.

“Subsequent Republican candidates have kept that relationship with organised labour and working Ohioans and succeeded in 2018 and 2020.”

“Democrats made two mistakes – they bet the farm on abortion which is a galvanising issue [but] voters that care about that single issue already made up their mind to be either Republican or Democrats.

“Secondly, they doubled down on the policies that created inflation that devastated the economy.”

Aaron Pickrell, a Democratic political consultant who ran the successful Obama campaigns in Ohio in 2008 and 2012 says Ryan is not concentrating on culture war issues but rather is appealing directly to Ohio voters. “I think Tim Ryan is going to win. It is going to be close but his connectivity to the state and vision what he would do is what Ohioans are looking for.”