Buckeye voters set table for 2012 election

By Henry J.GOMEZ

The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND

Even in an off year, Ohio couldn’t escape the burning spotlight from national media hungry for a juicy election story.

And Tuesday’s repeal of Senate Bill 5 was merely an appetizer.

By resoundingly rejecting the Republican-backed push to rewrite labor rules for public employees, Buckeye State voters helped set the table for the 2012 presidential election.

Without question the results will be viewed as a momentum-builder for Democrats nationwide and should encourage President Barack Obama. He carried Ohio by four points in his 2008 Electoral College landslide, but the GOP won control of every state office and the legislature last fall.

Understandably, before Tuesday, Obama probably saw easier paths to victory in other swing states he won three years ago — notably Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico.

Now, despite his low approval ratings, Obama can compete for Ohio’s 18 electoral votes by taking advantage of a grass-roots organization that has had months to gel. As appealing as the other states might appear on paper, none offers the head start Democrats have here.

“There is an organizational benefit,” said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “Unions and their allies have done a lot of things transferable to next year. In some respects, the campaign was a trial run for the presidential.”

The repeal also could fortify U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. The Avon Democrat has better numbers than Obama and has a labor-friendly record that will appeal to those who united against SB 5. Brown faces a re-election challenge from Republican State Treasurer Josh Mandel.

Republicans, meanwhile, don’t have much time to lick their wounds. If there is any comfort for them today, it is the reminder that their political fortunes can change rather quickly here.

“Looking at 2012, one way or the other, it’s not going to be about Senate Bill 5,” Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine said in an interview last week. “It’s going to be about Barack Obama and Sherrod Brown and the failed economic policies that Barack Obama has brought to bear.”

Indeed, a tactical edge might not be enough for Obama and the Democrats if the nation remains in an economic funk and if Ohio’s unemployment rate remains around 9 percent.

The SB 5 vote “isn’t a harbinger for 2012 because it’s a year away,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said last week when asked how the issue might affect Obama. “Obviously it will be a boost to labor. You get people charged up. But all of these issues are tangential to jobs. If you don’t have a job, you don’t worry about bargaining rights.”

Talk from Democrats has ranged from cautious optimism to outright swagger. Given how quickly tables turned on overconfident Republicans, the former is probably more prudent.

“Like chicken soup, it may not help,” Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman Stuart Garson said of the SB 5 failure. “But it doesn’t hurt. This has animated the base and gotten people engaged much sooner than they would have been otherwise. The challenge now is to keep that enthusiasm.”