Whole mythologies have sprung up about southern Ohio. Either we are racists, bumkins, or just plain dumb. Many argue that Obama should neglect the region and concentrate on more "fertile" ground in Montana or old Virginia. They overlook that southern Ohio boasts a heritage as the organizing center of the Underground Railroad movement, that the population in substantial measure descends from a mix that included fugitive slaves and recalcitrant Indians, and that the oldest interracial churches west of the Alleghanies are here, some still in operation.
How soon we forget such south Ohio bumkins as Branch Rickey (who integrated major league baseball by sheer force of will), Ambrose Bierce, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Ok so why has Barack Obama done so poorly in southern Ohio, in the primaries and in recent polls? Why the pandemic bad advice that he ditch the region for more tolerant terrain? And why is it so important that the Obama campaign ditch this advice and send the candidate to the south-central Ohio corridor?
Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics has published an excellent analysis of Ohio election patterns based on historic results:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
As Cost notes, presidential election results follow stable patterns of geographic distribution in Ohio, based on partisanship levels, and he provides eight maps showing various idealized result patterns based on county partisanship.
Some of Cost's modeling is already out of date, and will become more dated by this election. For example, OH-02 in the southwest -- one of the most reliably Republican districts in the past and now reigned by mean Jean Schmidt -- has already flipped to majority Democrat as a result of party-switching in the 2008 primary. How much of that switching reflects pro-Obama enthusiasm, and how much reflects anti-Obama sabotage remains to be seen.
That is, in all the rural and suburban counties, Clinton was the beneficiary of the overwhelming majority of new Democrats in OH-02, as the percentage of crossovers closely matched the Clinton margin of victory (urban Hamilton being the exception). It remains unclear, and perhaps undetermined, how those Clinton voters will break for McCain or Obama.
I'd like to point out certain features and warning signs in the south-central part of the state, based on Cost's analysis.
First, note that Pike County is that island of Democratic loyalty in the south, one of the nine most heavily Democratic of Ohio's 88 counties. In all of southern Ohio, Pike is second only to Athens in Democratic loyalty, but the Athens anomaly is explained by the presence of Ohio University, a leftist bastion. Pike, on the other hand, has one of the lowest educational levels in the state. Party affiliation in the state closely follows poverty rate, not education. Athens County has the highest poverty rate in Ohio. Scioto, just south of Pike, is second and Pike is fourth. The relatively wealthy counties of Clermont and Warren, on the Appalachian fringe, are also the most staunchly Republican.
One reason for the blue corridor in the central south is legacy. This was the central Underground Railroad route in the nation, following the ancient Scioto Trail. The 1850 census counted Pike as the only rural county in Ohio with more than 500 Negroes -- virtually all of them escaped slaves. Many never left, their descendants now counted as "white" Appalachians. One old book on Ohio history records that in this region, "the people are a picturesque mingling of Shawnee Indians, whose ancestors escaped the reservations and sought refuge here; of Negroes whose forefathers fled from slavery across the Ohio to these isolated hollows; and of poor whites, many with jail records, who have found refuge in the hills."
Sounds like Obama country to me.
Pike is not only a Democratic bastion, but it pulls the strings of the surrounding counties. Scioto is the third most Democratic county in the south (after Athens and Pike), and Jackson, bordering Pike to the east, is fourth, with Ross, bordering Pike to the north, following. That's especially important because Scioto and Ross are the most reliable bellwethers in the state. Ohio votes the way those two counties vote, and the nation votes the way Ohio votes.
The reason that Pike leads the surrounding counties (and not vice versa) is not apparent from the data. Simply put, the Democratic machine in southern Ohio has been based in Pike County since party boss Robert Lucas, from Pike, became governor in 1832. (Lucas, a warmonger who actually declared war on Michigan, also chaired the very first Democratic National Convention.)
Ever since Lucas, from George B. Nye of the 1920s to his son George D. Nye of the 40s and 50s to Vern Riffe of the 70s and 80s, the statewide Democratic Party has relied on the Pike-based machine to swing southern Ohio into line. The Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative (SODI) is a 4-county development corporation (Pike, Ross, Scioto, Jackson) controlled by the Pike County Democratic machine. Governor Ted Strickland hails from a town in Scioto County near the Pike County line -- non-coincidentally, the town is Lucasville.
The other reason that poor Pike County leads is the presence of the expansive federal nuclear reservation near Piketon. From 1952, when construction began, to 2001, when production stopped, the uranium enrichment plant near Piketon was the major employer, by far, for the seven-county region of Pike and all its neighbors. The economy of that whole region depended on Pike, and workers throughout the region commuted to Pike every day. While still a large employer during clean-up operations, employment at Piketon is less than half historic levels, and the only thing produced at Piketon now are vague false hopes for a nuclear revival. Hopes that John McCain has been all to happy to feed.
In a word, Piketon explains the seemingly bizarre recent pattern of local Democrats supporting national Republicans in south Ohio. The machine in Pike County is still staunchly Democratic. But that machine depends on federal funding (much of it in graft) that has come at the behest of Republicans in Congress and the White House (with Bill Clinton following the Republican pattern). Historically, too, area mayors and county commissioners have been "recruited" from the managerial ranks at the Piketon A-Plant. Thus, staunchly Democratic Pike County, leading its neighbors, voted twice for Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and then twice for GW Bush in 2000 and 2004.
It was the failure of the Kerry campaign to understand the turncoat politics of southern Ohio that primarily caused his loss of the 2004 election. (To put it simply, when Kerry went on his infamous duck-hunting tour of southern Ohio in October 2004, he didn't realize that he was being knifed in the back, if not shot in the face, by his hosts. The reason was that a Kerry Administration would have curtailed the financial ambitions of Piketon contractors.)
The Obama campaign is in a position that is at once far better and far worse. It's far better because Barack Obama does not need south-central Ohio, and he may not need Ohio at all. Obama is not going to don ridiculous hunting jackets to venture into the duck blinds with the good ol' boys, and he's not going to wave around shotguns at campaign rallies, as Kerry did, scaring the wits out of suburban soccer moms.
Perhaps Obama realizes that he's already lost the support of the southern Ohio machine. By opposing nuclear reprocessing as a proliferation threat, Obama has doused the dreams of SODI to place a reprocessing plant or a spent nuclear fuel storage facility at Piketon. Those red-dog Democrats are now so itching to vote for McCain, they need Lanacane to top off their Rogaine.
On the other hand, the Obama campaign has failed to comprehend the domino effect in southern Ohio. To write off the corridor between Portsmouth and Chillicothe is to write off the state of Ohio. Control of the vote is well-enshrined in this region, since 1832, and Ohio's Election-Stealing Hall of Fame is still the principal tourist attraction, outside the A-Plant, in Waverly, the Pike County seat. (Waverly does have a police force, it should be noted, but it is currently under investigation for dismissing hundreds of DUI perpetrators in exchange for $1,000 "contributions.")
In short, the Pike County boys tell the folks in Ross, Jackson and Scioto how to vote, and more importantly, how not to vote, and the ripples of influence emanate outward from there. Though the population of the seven core counties clustered around Pike is small, it's Ohio's historic homeland, the route by which most of the state was settled.. Voters throughout the state have their roots in the south-central corridor, if not living relatives, and people pay attention to how Ohio's homeland is treated, especially by politicians hoping to be President.
It's a political tradition for presidential candidates to travel the corridor by motorcade, from Portsmouth to Chillicothe, always south to north, recapitulating the route by which pioneer settlement invaded the state. Call it historical reenactment, it's uniquely Ohioan and it works. State media from as far away as Toledo and Cleveland cover the story, and expect to see it. If you don't do it, you're slapping the whole state in the face.
Abraham Lincoln traveled from Portsmouth to Piketon while a Congressman. Teddy Roosevelt made a special point of campaigning in Portsmouth. Bill Clinton has made Chillicothe a perennial stop. John Kerry held his largest south Ohio rally just outside of Piketon. Bush made such a production of his 2004 parade up Route 23, with Seceret Service helicopters leading, it almost pissed people off due to the traffic delays.
Not only has Barack Obama not done it, but he hasn't shown his face anywhere near the south-central corridor. He hasn't appeared in Portsmouth or Chillicothe or any point within about sixty miles of either, with no announced plans to do so. His recent trips to Zanesville, Dayton and Cincinnati have worsened the situation. Each was billed as a "southern Ohio" visit -- but none of those cities is in the proper part of Appalachian Ohio. It's like dipping your toe three times into a pool, then saying you dove in. To REAL southern Ohioans, it sounds like it's a lie.
This is highly problematic. The machine vote in the south corridor is already lost. But the anti-machine vote, and especially the potential anti-machine vote in the region is huge and winnable. The Ohioans most drastically affected by the Bush economy -- small farmers who can't pay for fuel, indigent Appalachians with no prospect of ever getting health insurance, union workers unemployed since the enrichment plant closed shop -- all these people are clustered in south-central Ohio. And if you offend them by not showing up, or showing up too late just to pander for their vote, or failing to answer the false arguments spread by the machine, then pure and simple, you lose the state of Ohio. Which maybe Barack Obama can endure, but maybe he can't.
Put it this way, if the Obama campaign writes off south-central Ohio because it knows the machine vote is gone, then the Democratic island in the south sinks, drawing down a whole region with it, and the state will go to McCain -- no urban upsurge will compensate.
But if Obama comes here and does the required corridor tour -- and that is what he must do, no ground game effort by paid staffers will substitute -- then he can mobilize the anti-machine vote and prevent a south-central blowout. That will win the state of Ohio, and secure the national election.
So put the historic mixed-race church in Pike County -- where two of the Jefferson-Hemings children are buried (can you beat that for symbolism?) -- on the agenda. Please.