Ohio shapes up to be key battleground

Plain Dealer

Washington, D.C.

A swing electorate and a harsh economy will make Ohio a key battleground again this year in the tug of war for control of Congress.

In their quest to regain control of the House of Representatives, Republicans itch to recover three Ohio seats they lost in 2008 and make further gains in the state by painting an ugly picture of health-care reform bills and job-creation efforts adopted by Democrats.

“The American people are scared to death that the future for their kids and grandkids is going to look very different than the country they grew up in,” said House GOP Leader John Boehner of southwest Ohio, who is in line to be House speaker if Republicans win Congress. “And they really want something done about it, and they want something done about it now.”

Democrats will tout their efforts to jump-start the economy and reform the nation’s health-care system as they strive to cement the majority that permits President Barack Obama to enact his agenda.

“Quite frankly, the focus for this congressional race will be on the economy,” says freshman Rep. John Boccieri of Alliance, who has no May primary opponent this year but four Republicans vying for the chance to take him on. “We are working hard to get folks back to work and get credit out to small businesses so they can expand and grow.”

The state’s biggest general-election fights will occur in formerly Republican congressional turf now held by Boccieri, Mary Jo Kilroy of Columbus and Steve Driehaus of the Cincinnati area. Freshmen Kilroy and Driehaus are likely to face rematches against Republicans they narrowly defeated in 2008, a year that independent voters sided with Democrats. The Cook Political Report rates the two replay races as Ohio’s most competitive.

Republicans believe independents will be on their side this year in a backlash against changes wrought by Obama and Democrats in Congress. They also cite the longtime historic pattern of a president’s party losing seats during his first term, as occurred in 1994 when Republicans won congressional control while Bill Clinton was president.

“Republicans have no leg to stand on when they talk about fiscal responsibility, because they are the ones who turned the surplus of the late 1990s into record deficits,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman Gabby Adler. “Nobody wants to throw the bums back in.”

“We are going to remind folks who drove us into this ditch and remind them that to drive out of this ditch, we have to put the car in D, not in R,” Boccieri said. “You don’t want to reverse back to the policies that led us into this situation that existed when I took office.”

Dissatisfaction with GOP handling of the economy helped Democrats triumph in the state in 2008, but the economy probably will hurt Democrats this year, said Peter Brown, who oversees Ohio polls conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Although Democratic leaders in Congress and Obama say the economy has improved on their watch, Brown said voters don’t share that view.

“The economy is still Issue 1, Issue 2 and Issue 3,” said Brown. “The question is not whether the voters are going to take the economy out on incumbents, it is how much they will take it out on incumbents.”