THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

With nearly half of Tuesday’s Mahoning County primary voters having cast Republican ballots, the elephant has awakened from a long slumber here.

The massive crossover of Democrats and independents to the Republican primary election represented the first major shift away from decades of nearly complete Democratic Party dominance of Mahoning County politics, said Mark Munroe, county Republican chairman, and Paul Sracic, professor and chairman of the politics department at Youngstown State University.

Going into the primary, the county had 40,958 registered Democrats and 14,663 registered Republicans.

On Tuesday, 36,060 Democratic ballots were cast, and 34,503 Republican ballots were cast, meaning about 51 percent of the ballots cast were Democratic and about 49 percent were Republican. Total voter turnout here was 44 percent.

Elections officials scrambled Tuesday to print some 6,000 additional Republican ballots to keep pace with voter demand.

Contrast with 2008

The primary experience this year contrasted sharply with that of 2008, which was the last year both Republicans and Democrats had a presidential primary contest.

“In 2008, it was overwhelmingly Democrats,” Sracic observed.

In that primary, 81,558 Democratic ballots were cast, compared to 13,234 Republican ballots, meaning about 86 percent of the ballots cast were Democratic and about 14 percent were Republican, according to Mahoning County Board of Elections records. Total voter turnout here for that primary was nearly 56 percent.

The meaning of Tuesday’s groundswell of crossovers to the Republican primary and how long most of these crossover voters will stay with the Republican Party are matters of conjecture among political leaders and experts.

“It’s going to take a while to sort through this,” Munroe said after the election, adding that voters likely crossed over for many different reasons.

“They’re just not a monolithic bloc of voters,” Munroe said.

“Some of those Democrats crossed over strictly because they wanted to support Donald Trump, and they may not, in fact, be committed Republican voters,” said Munroe, an alternate delegate for Gov. John Kasich for president.

There also were many crossover voters “interested in supporting Gov. Kasich,” he added.

In addition, Munroe said: “There were many of those voters who’d simply had it with the Democratic Party.”

Long-term Democrats have “become disillusioned with the Democratic Party, and you hear them say things like: ‘The Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of my grandfather,’” he observed.

“I don’t think that that’s realistic to think that the Republican Party and their policies will hold onto those voters,” who crossed over to it, said David Betras, Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman.

no ideological conversion

Most of the Democratic and independent crossover voters who cast Republican ballots Tuesday did so because they wanted to support Trump or Kasich, not because they had been converted to Republican principles and ideology, Betras added.

“Most of them crossed over to vote for Donald Trump,” Betras said.

“I don’t think those are true Republicans,” he said of the crossovers.

“I don’t think they were converted to Republican principles and ideology,” Sracic said of most of the crossover voters, but he added that the lack of exit polls makes it impossible to verify this assumption.

The crossover movement is positive for the local Republican Party because that party has a chance of retaining those voters, Sracic said.

Sracic asked, however: “Is it just Donald Trump, or is it a movement actually toward the Republican Party? We’ve got a long way to go before we figure that out.”

Democratic majority prevails

“The Republican Party doesn’t represent the values of the people in the Mahoning Valley,” Betras said.

“We still are the dominant party, and nothing’s going to change that right now,” Betras said of his party.

“They haven’t lost their dominance. They’re still the majority party” in Mahoning County, Munroe said of the Democratic Party.

“The only strategy that has ever made sense is for political parties to do the best job they can to find quality candidates to run for political office,” Munroe said.

“That’s been our strategy in the past. That’s going to be our strategy going forward,” he added.

Thomas McCabe, deputy director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, said the party status of Tuesday’s voters will stay the same on board of elections records until the next primary, which could be next year in cities and would be in 2018 in the townships.

“I’ve got no doubt that some of those crossover voters will be back in the Democratic camp in two years, but, on the other hand, I think it’s quite likely that we will see an actual permanent increase in Republican registration in Mahoning County,” Munroe said.

Youngs-town Mayor John A. McNally, a Democrat who said he hopes to run for re-election, said he believes some crossover voters in his city, who cast a Republican ballot Tuesday, will cast a Democratic primary ballot next year to participate in the mayoral election.

“If you want to participate in a mayor’s election in Youngstown, you need to be in the Democratic primary because the winner of that primary is almost always going to be elected the mayor,” Sracic said.

trump motivates voters

Most of this year’s crossover voters in Mahoning County crossed over to vote for Trump for president, Sracic said.

“Donald Trump is motivating people,” Sracic said. “He shows up here the night before the primary” at a Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport rally, Sracic observed.

“Trump’s message that’s attracting people in this area, I think, is the trade message,” of protecting American businesses and jobs and opposing international trade agreements that Trump says threaten America’s economy.

Sracic equated Trump’s popularity here with that of the late U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., who espoused the same agenda of American economic protectionism.

“It’s a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in some ways. Trump talks some of the Republican talk, but, overall, he’s kind of invaded the party,” Sracic observed.

TRADITIONAL PARTY

“The Mahoning County Republican Party is a traditional Republican organization. They (Trump’s backers) could theoretically take over the party because there may be more of them than the traditional Republicans,” Sracic said.

If Trump wins the Republican nomination, but loses in November, Sracic said he didn’t know what the Republican message would be to retain the crossover voters.

“It’s really a challenge. Mark Munroe has a really difficult job,” Sracic said. “People around here think of themselves as Democrats.”

Sracic said the presidential candidates at the top of the ticket drive a presidential year primary voter turnout, and that he does not believe there would have been fewer crossovers from the Democratic to the Republican Party here if the Democrats had had more contested local races on their Tuesday ballot.