Federal issues key for voters

COLUMBUS

I was waiting for my son’s soccer practice to end one evening last week when one of the other dads came over and sat down next to me.

We had talked before, and he knew I was a newspaper reporter, covering the Statehouse.

“Your life should get a lot less hectic come next week,” he said (or something close to it — I didn’t have a notebook with me at the time).

“That may be true,” I replied, “depending on how things turn out and whether there’s any urgency to do anything during lame duck.”

I like these types of conversations with regular, everyday people out on the street.

Spending my days among politicians and lobbyists and people in expensive suits who drive Lexuses and BMWs, it’s easy to lose touch with what’s happening out in the real world. Out where people are struggling to make ends meet, trying to scrape together enough change to put food on the table until their next paycheck.

But back to the soccer dad: I was expecting to launch into a conversation about the election and political trends at the state level. Instead, he started asking questions about Nancy Pelosi and federal health care reform and Social Security and federal election fraud.

Unfortunately, that’s the norm that I find when talking to people outside of the corridors of state government. People are very well versed on Washington, D.C., and President Barack Obama and the stances of Ohio’s congressional candidates.

Statewide candidates?

But they don’t seem to know much of anything about their statewide candidates. They don’t know Jon Husted from Josh Mandel or Maryellen O’Shaughnessy from Mary Jane Trapp.

The people I run into are focused on the national headlines that are getting attention on cable news programs. They’re paying a lot less attention to what’s going on stateside.

My 73-year-old father, a recent Ohio transplant from Texas, mailed in his absentee ballot a few weeks back.

Like any good journalist son, I asked him about his choices in the state races. He told me. I asked him why. And he launched into a diatribe about Social Security and federal bailouts of banks and the national debt.

Pressed for details, he admitted he knew little about the candidates seeking public office in Ohio. His votes were in reaction to what was going on the federal level.

I think that’s a pretty common approach to these things. And I also think that’s a shame.

Ohioans are poised to select candidates who will tackle a potential $8 billion-plus budget gap.

They’ll draw new legislative district lines that will affect who controls the Statehouse for the next decade.

And they’re going to be dealing with potential tax and fee increases and other policy issues that are going to hit everyone’s checking account.

It’s too bad voters aren’t taking the time to understand the full implications of their state candidate selections.

Marc Kovac is The Vindicator’s Statehouse correspondent. E-mail him at mkovac@dixcom.com or on Twitter at OhioCapitalBlog.