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McCain recognizes importance of the area
Those who brush off the visits of U.S. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, to the Mahoning Valley as a waste of his time are being short-sighted.
McCain isn’t going to win Mahoning and Trumbull, two of the state’s most Democratic larger counties in the November general election.
But it’s hard to believe those who say U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presumptive presidential candidate, is going to crush him and get 70 percent of the Valley’s vote in November. That’s what the John Kerry presidential campaign believed in 2004, and we saw how well that strategy worked.
There are signs that point to the Obama-McCain race being significantly closer in the Valley than the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.
President George W. Bush received 36 percent and 37 percent of the Valley’s vote in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Bush stopped in the area once in 2000 and twice four years later.
Bush won the 2000 general election by 3.5 percent in Ohio and by 2.1 percent in 2004.
McCain’s been to the Valley four times since 2005, including twice in the past few months.
McCain is targeting this area while Bush essentially ignored it during his two presidential runs. Who doesn’t love a little attention, particularly from a major political party presidential candidate?
McCain’s supporters would be thrilled with 40 percent of the Valley vote. Bush did next to nothing in the Valley and came close to 40 percent against Kerry, who received a lukewarm reception here.
It’s reasonable to believe McCain could hit 40 percent, or more, against Obama, a candidate shunned by Democratic voters in the March primary.
It was only four months ago that Valley Democrats soundly rejected Obama at the polls.
Obama received only 31 percent of the Democratic primary vote against U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Trumbull County. He received 35 percent of the vote in Mahoning County.
Also, in Columbiana County, Obama received 27 percent of the vote, an embarrassingly low amount.
When the data in Mahoning County is examined deeper, Obama lost every precincts outside of Youngstown except for one each in Boardman and Campbell.
Obama’s only success was in the predominately black areas of Youngstown.
Traditionally, those who vote in a primary support that political party’s presidential candidate in the general election. That would mean Clinton supporters would largely vote for Obama in November.
I wouldn’t disagree with that as a general rule. But the historic Democratic primary that saw a black defeat a woman throws tradition out the window.
McCain is seeking support from those in the Valley who voted for Clinton. He’ll get some of them. The question is how many?
When McCain came to Youngstown on April 22 he made a strategic error by talking too much about his support of the North American Free Trade Agreement. To some in this area, NAFTA is everything evil in the world neatly packaged in five capital letters.
Also, McCain went on for far too long during a town-hall meeting at Youngstown State University boring some in the crowd.
When he came back last week for a visit to the General Motors complex in Lordstown (and a private fundraiser at a Howland home that raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign), McCain didn’t talk too much about his NAFTA support.
There’s been talk that Ohio won’t play a huge factor in deciding the next president. While anything is possible, it’s highly unlikely Obama and McCain will surrender the state to the other.
Obama hasn’t returned to the Valley since he lost Ohio.
He’ll definitely be back. He needs to be here.
For now, his campaign strategy in Ohio ¬≠— considered a battleground state in the presidential race — is to garner support in rural areas of the state. Obama did as poorly in Appalachia in the Democratic primary as he did in the Valley. In some cases, he did even worse in Appalachia.
His campaign believes he’ll have an easier time winning over the voters of heavily Democratic areas of the state, such as the Valley, so he can wait to campaign here. He probably shouldn’t wait too much longer.
Obama needs to do well here and there’s no doubt he and his surrogates will spend a lot of time campaigning in the Mahoning Valley. The campaign will lean heavily on Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, all extremely popular in the area, to stump for Obama in the Valley.
With McCain seeing a chance to succeed here we should expect to see him and his surrogates in the area as well.