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Romney to visit Valley on eve of Super Tuesday
YOUNGSTOWN
Mitt Romney, one of the front-runners for the Republican presidential bid, will be the first of the GOP candidates to campaign in the Mahoning Valley.
The day before Super Tuesday, Romney will have a town-hall forum about noon Monday at Taylor-Winfield Technologies, a metalworking-machinery company at 3200 Innovation Place in Youngstown’s Salt Springs Industrial Park, off Meridian Road.
The event is free and open to the public. Those attending are asked to arrive around 11:30 a.m.
“Valley Republicans are anxious to hear Gov. Romney’s message,” said Mahoning County Republican Party Chairman Mark Munroe, who is Romney’s campaign chairman in the county. “We’re appreciative he’s coming here the day before the all- important Super Tuesday in the all-important state of Ohio. To come to the Mahoning Valley speaks volumes about the importance of this region to the Romney campaign.”
Ohio is seen as one of, if not the most important, states among the 10 having primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday.
But until Saturday’s announcement of Romney’s Monday visit, the Valley had been ignored by the GOP presidential candidates.
Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum campaigned in Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, Dayton, Wilmington, Perrysburg, Steubenville, Bowling Green, Beavercreek, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Lima, Toledo, Bexley and Willoughby.
Ron Paul hasn’t come to Ohio recently.
Romney will campaign Monday in a Democratic-dominated county that Barack Obama won in 2008 by 26.61 percent over U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate.
“This is clearly a strong Democratic area,” said Paul Sracic, chairman of Youngstown State University’s political science department, who has appeared on several national news shows and been quoted in numerous publications about politics. “If there were a Democratic primary, the Democratic candidates would be here. Republicans don’t spend a lot of time here before the primary.”
Previous presidential election years prove Sracic correct and how unusual it is for Romney to campaign in the area the day before Tuesday’s primary.
The only GOP presidential candidate to visit the area before the March 2008 primary was former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Nov. 27, 2007, for a private fundraiser in Vienna. But Giuliani withdrew from the race Jan. 30, 2008, more than a month before the Ohio primary.
McCain didn’t come to the Valley for that campaign until April 22, 2008.
President George W. Bush didn’t campaign in the area before the Ohio primary in 2004.
It was different on the Democratic side in 2004 and 2008.
In the month before the 2008 primary, Barack Obama made a campaign stop and had four surrogates — his wife, Michelle; then-U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy; Caroline Kennedy and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick — come here.
During that same time frame, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who won the Ohio Democratic presidential primary, visited the Valley three times and had three out-of-state surrogates — her daughter, Chelsea; former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and actress Alfre Woodard — campaign in the area on her behalf. Also, then-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland came to the area at least eight times in the month before the primary.
Another likely reason for the Republicans — except now, for Romney — to skip the Valley, Sracic said, is because of a problem with Santorum’s campaign. Santorum failed to find any delegates willing to support him for the party’s nomination in three Ohio congressional districts: the new 6th, which will include all of Columbiana County and southern Mahoning County; the new 13th, which will include most of Mahoning and Trumbull counties; and the new 9th, which stretches from Cleveland to Toledo along Lake Erie.
That means even if Santorum wins the majority vote in any or all of those three congressional districts, he isn’t eligible to receive the three delegates in any of those districts. Should Santorum be the winner in any of those districts, the Ohio Republican Party would have to determine which candidate would get those delegates.
There also are reports that his campaign failed to find six other delegates in four other Ohio congressional districts.
If that’s the case, Santorum can’t pick up 15 of Ohio’s 66 GOP delegates.
Even so, Santorum campaigned last month in Steubenville, a Democratic city in the 6th District. More peculiar, Santorum is holding his Super Tuesday election-night event in Steubenville.
Just because the GOP presidential candidates aren’t active in the Mahoning Valley doesn’t mean the region isn’t important to the party’s efforts to win Ohio, said local business leaders and Republican officials.
Also, it’s a given the Republican Party’s nominee will campaign here before the November general election, they said.
“Before the primary, they go to the bigger population areas and more Republican areas,” said Dave Johnson, Columbiana County Republican Party chairman and chief executive officer of Summitville Tiles. “Youngstown is not exactly ground zero for Republicans [in the primary]. Ohio is a critical swing state. This area matters to Republicans. [The nominee] will be here during the campaign.”
Columbiana County should be friendly ground for Republicans. In 2008, McCain beat Obama there by 7.64 percent.
Once the Republicans select a nominee, “the gloves are off, and [the nominee and Obama] will be all over the state,” said Thomas Humphries, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s president and chief executive officer. “I really believe we are important in the presidential election.”
After the March 2008 primary, but before the November general election that year, Obama came to the Valley three times and McCain campaigned here twice. Also, numerous surrogates, most notably Vice President Joe Biden, campaigned on Obama’s behalf.
Prominent local businessman Bruce Zoldan — who’s sponsored fundraisers for Obama, Clinton, other Democrats and Republicans — said, “I expect to see the presidential candidates in this area after the primary. We’re going to be on the radar screen. I expect to get a phone call from the president, and I’d be shocked if I didn’t hear from Romney as well to come here after the primary.”
Ohio will once again be an important state in the presidential election, and “I expect the Mahoning Valley to be a key area once again,” Zoldan said.
“Ohio is clearly a key state and [the Mahoning Valley is] absolutely important,” Munroe said. “Despite the Democratic majority, the Mahoning Valley is a large area with Republican voters.”
Obama definitely will campaign in the area, said Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman David Betras.
As president, Obama visited the Lordstown General Motors complex in 2009 and V&M Star in Youngstown in 2010. A sitting president visiting this area two times hasn’t occurred in at least a century, according to Vindicator files.
“The Mahoning Valley has an important role to play in Ohio politics,” Betras said.
Sracic said he expects Obama and plenty of his surrogates, particularly Strickland, to campaign in the Valley, and if Santorum is the Republican nominee, “I’d expect him to be here often.”
If Romney is the nominee, Sracic said this isn’t a good place for him to campaign.
“He’s the wrong candidate for this area,” he said. “He’s a wealthy business owner. He hasn’t shown the ability to connect with labor unions.”
Romney will be able to gauge Valley reaction to his candidacy Monday, and Valley voters will gauge him at the ballot box the next day.