O-H-I-O Created DEVO-- Will The State Be Trump's Political Crypt?

In 2008, Obama's message of "Hope and Change" resonated in Ohio and he took the state, 51.5% to 46.9%. Four years later it was a little closer-- 50.7% to 47.7%-- but Buckeyes were still looking for the change Obama was promising. In 2016, the candidate promising change was Trump, while Hillary represented the status quo of an establishment the Midwest was sick of. Ohio-- like other Midwestern states that had backed Obama-- peeled off and gave Trump the presidency. Hillary took just 43.24% of the vote, a shockingly low number for a swing state. In fact, after Ohio slammed the door so loudly on her campaign, overnight "everyone" decided Ohio was no longer a swing state.

True, Ohio has the worst and least effective Democratic Party of any large state in the country-- even worse than Florida's. Although Democrat Sherrod Brown managed to hold onto his U.S. Senate seat-- he has his own organization and doesn't depend on the state party-- Republicans have come to dominate state elections. All six statewide constitutional elected leaders-- from governor to auditor-- are Republicans. The General Assembly is no longer competitive with Republicans holding 24 state Senate seats (to the Democrats' 9) and 61 state House seats to the Democrats 38. The gerrymandered districts are horrific for the congressional map and today Democrats hold just a pathetic 4 of Ohio's 16 seats, with no obvious changes in sight even if Trump loses in a November wave election. Recruitment, grassroots organizing and party support guarantee that Ohio could stay red even if Trump loses the state. Will he though?

The Associated Press piece, Trump's trouble in suburbs key to suddenly competitive Ohio by Thomas Beaumont and Dan Sewell, was picked up by the NY Times over the weekend. They wrote that "less than four months until this November's election, Trump is facing an unexpectedly competitive landscape in Ohio because he has lost ground in metropolitan and suburban areas, threatening the overwhelming advantages he has in rural areas, state data show. Trump's campaign has budgeted $18.4 million in television advertising in Ohio for this fall, second only to Florida, according to campaign advertising tracking data."

That's lot of money that would otherwise be spent in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states that-- even if the Trump campaign won't acknowledge it-- are all but lost already, making Ohio a do-or-die state, more likely a do-or-die-really-badly state. Trump has turned Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona, Iowa and even Texas into swing states. Not Biden, Trump. Biden hasn't even booked air time in Ohio and isn't counting on its 18 electoral votes as part of its path to victory.

Although Beaumont and Sewell made a half-assed attempt to mislead their readers into thinking Ohio experienced "a series of midterm" wins by Democrats in 2018, the Ohio Democratic Party didn't even put up a convincing fight anywhere, let alone win a single congressional seat in the midst of the anti-red wave.

This year the Democrats have weak, old-news candidates offering nothing different from more of what got Hillary rejected in the few districts that should be winnable. OH-01-- Cincinnati-- should be a blue seat but the Democrats have a typical DCCC yawn for a candidate, Kate Schroder. At least she's financially competitive, unlike the other Democratic candidates:

• OH-1 (Cincinnati- R+5)-- Steve Chabot (R)- $1,974,536, Kate Schroder (D)- $1,431,582
• OH-02 (southern Ohio- R+9)- Brad Wenstrup (R)- $1,212,781, Jaime Castle (D)- $124,641
• OH-04 (central and western Ohio- R+14)- Gym Jordan (R)- $9,114,164, Shannon Freshour (D)- $712,180
• OH-05 (Toledo- R+11)- Bob Latta (R)- $1,150,153, Nick Rubando (D)- $142,363
• OH-06 (Ohio River Valley- R+16)- Bill Johnson (R)- $1,408,761, Shawna Roberts (D)- $262
• OH-07 (Canton and Cleveland suburbs- R+12)- Bob Gibbs (R)- $579,047, Quentin Potter (D)- nothing as of June 30
• OH-08 (North Central Ohio- R+17)- Warren Davidson (R)- $737,880, Vanessa Enoch (D)- $15,729
• OH-10 (Dayton- R+4)- Michael Turner (R)- $1,107,654, Desiree Tims (D)- $596,527
• OH-12 (Columbus suburbs- R+7) Troy Balderson (R)- $1,333,727, Alaina Shearer (D)- $450,941
• OH-14 (Cleveland and Akron suburbs- R+5)- David Joyce (R)- $2,221,238, Hillary O'Connor Mueri (D)- $354,665
• OH-15 (Columbus suburbs- R+7)- Steve Stivers (R)- $2,192,653, Joel Newby (D)- $13,373
• OH-16 (northern Ohio suburbs- R+8)- Anthony Gonzalez (R)- $1,684,672, Aaron Godfrey (D)- $15,189

Beaumont and Sewell wrote that "Republican presidential candidates have been steadily losing support in Ohio's once reliably GOP suburbs around Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. But Trump's fall was particularly sharp, according to state voting data and census records compiled by Mike Dawson, a public policy consultant and creator of ohioelectionresults.com. For instance, in the affluent northern Columbus-area suburb of Upper Arlington, Republican George H. W. Bush won by 34 percentage points in 1992. Twenty years later, Republican Mitt Romney's winning margin there was 8 percentage points. In 2016, Trump lost Upper Arlington to Hillary Clinton by 16 percentage points. A similar picture emerged in the 10 wealthiest suburbs outside Cleveland in Cuyahoga County. In Franklin County outside Columbus, Trump lost nine of the 10 most affluent suburbs, a sharp decline from other Republicans over the past 24 years. The trend was worst in suburban Hamilton County outside Cincinnati, where Trump's losing margin in the 10 richest suburbs was at least 50% of Republicans' total decline since 1992." And yet... none of the Democratic candidates look like any of those suburbs are going turn to them, even as they turn against Trump. Disgust with Trump could throw the election to a worthless Democrat like Biden, but that isn't going to do the track for the kinds of congressional candidates running against GOP incumbents.

Murder/Suicide by Nancy Ohanian

“College educated suburbanites in Ohio, particularly college educated women, were not as supportive of the president in 2016 as they’ve traditionally been of Republican presidential nominees, and that will continue in 2020," said Karl Rove, senior adviser to President George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2004, when the Republican won election in part by narrowly carrying Ohio. “Trump has a problem with them.”

...Rove said that Trump maintains a clear path to carrying Ohio: “It’s to repeat his 2016 performance in 2020."

That includes matching and, in some instances, exceeding his overwhelming margins in the GOP-heavy counties along the Indiana border and the struggling industrial Mahoning River Valley corridor and along the Ohio River to the south.

But Rove said Trump must also “do what he did in 2016 in suburban Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland and Columbus."

History suggests that's going to be hard, some Ohio Republicans say.

“Can the electoral leakage for Republicans in these first- and second-ring suburbs continue to be offset by running up the score along the Ohio River?” said former state Republican Party Chair Kevin DeWine, a former state representative and second cousin to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. “We have to be honest as Republicans and say we are dangerously close to that tipping point.”

During an August 2018 special election, Danny O'Connor came within 1,700 votes out of more than 200,000 of becoming the first Democrat in 36 years to win Ohio's 12th Congressional District, which includes once solidly Republican Delaware County. Trump came to campaign for O'Connor's opponent, Rep. Troy Balderson, and helped pull him to victory.

Democrats continued making inroads in 2018, picking up six suburban state legislative seats.

That November, Erik Yassenoff, in losing his bid for a northern Columbus-area district, became the first Republican candidate for Ohio General Assembly to lose Upper Arlington.

“I think you’re seeing people in the suburbs align more with the urban populations," Yassenoff said.

Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper has watched as younger, educated and often more racially and ethnically diverse families have sought the top schools and other comforts of Ohio's booming suburbs since the mid-2000s.

The trend was especially clear last year as Democrats scored victories in local suburban elections.

"This is where the fundamental shift has happened, what used to be the base of the Republican Party, these larger, generally white-collar suburbs around Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland and Akron," Pepper said.

In Yassenoff's Upper Arlington, voters elected their first Democrats to its City Council. In nearby Hilliard, Democrats won their first seat on the City Council in three decades. There were similar Democratic municipal gains in Republican-leaning suburbs around Toledo and Dayton, as well as in communities outside Cleveland.

Perhaps most telling, southeast of Columbus in the old Republican suburb of Reynoldsburg, Democrats swept the municipal elections and elected three Black female council members, a first for the city.

“What it tells us is that more people are becoming engaged and involved," said Meredith Lawson-Rowe, among the new Reynoldsburg council members.

Even as Trump’s standing began to fall after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Ohio was not seen as a concern, campaign officials said. But polls in other states showing close races in Iowa, Georgia and even Texas have also now shaken the firm grip on Ohio.

Ohio started off well in the pandemic. Gov. DeWine was one of the most pragmatic and science-oriented governors in the country. The Republicans in the legislature and Trump destroyed all his work and now Ohio is spiking out of control. On Friday, Ohio reported 1,720 new cases and yesterday another 1,537, bringing the state's total to 73,858-- 6,319 cases per million Buckeyes, a little better the Spain (6,573 cases per million), a lot worse than Italy Italy (4,039 cases per million). Ten counties are pandemic hotspots (total confirmed cases) + 2016 Trump percentage:

• Franklin- 13,778 (34.7%)
• Cuyahoga- 10,438 (30.8%)
• Hamilton- 7,703 (43.0%)
• Lucas- 3,387 (38.7%)
• Montgomery- 2,939 (48.4%)
• Marion- 2,774 (64.6%)
• Summit- 2,570 (43.8%)
• Pickaway- 2,263 (69.2%)
• Butler- 2,091 (62.0%)
• Mahoning- 2,073 (46.8%)

Trump's response to his problem with college-educated voters in the suburbs is simple-- to beat loudly and incoherently on his racism drum while claiming that Biden-- or a nonsensical caricature of Biden that Trump's campaign team is trying to create-- and the Democrats want to abolish the suburbs. "Trump has launched a slash-and-burn campaign against an exaggerated caricature of his Democratic opponent," wrote Josh Dawsey in the Washington Post, casting former vice president Joe Biden as a destroyer of basic freedoms and a threat to voter’s safety who would 'let terrorists roam free' and 'abolish the American way of life.' His new dystopian vision, with militant and extreme language not typical in American politics, marks a sharp departure from Trump’s previous effort to cast Biden as 'Sleepy Joe,' an establishment politician with deteriorating mental abilities. It marks the latest effort, orchestrated by the Trump’s advisers, to shift the conversation from rising coronavirus infections and deteriorating public support for the president’s pandemic response. In new advertising, tweets and public statements that began to appear earlier this month, Trump has argued that the presumptive Democratic nominee is a harbinger of chaos and destruction, depicting a fantastical scarecrow largely divorced from reality."