Sunday, November 27, 2016
Donald J. Trump did not win the presidency because he was the nominee of the Republican Party. Trump, the New York City billionaire businessman, could have run as the standard bearer of the Bloviators Of America Party and still would have defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.
It wasn’t his conservative political ideology (which is suspect, at best) that energized millions of voters, but his populist message. His ability to tug at the heartstrings of economically disaffected Americans, especially those in old industrial regions like the Mahoning Valley, and his overall “anti” message – anti … global trade, immigrants, Muslims, women, minorities, LGBTs – struck a chord.
To be sure, the sea of “Red” – the color that signifies the GOP – in a large swath of Middle America and the South has Democrats doing a lot of political soul-searching. The number of their “Blue” states seems to be dwindling.
And yet, while Trump won the electoral vote, Clinton won the popular count by 2 million votes.
Indeed, the notion that Republicans made huge gains on Nov. 8 in heavily Democratic regions is negated by what occurred in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
In Trumbull, Trump garnered 48,152 votes to 42,130 for Clinton.
By contrast, Congressman Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, garnered 56,633 votes, while Republican Richard Morckel received 26,433 votes.
Ryan has drawn national attention with his challenge of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The Valley congressman contends that Trump’s victory shows that the national Democratic Party has lost its traditional base of support – working-class voters – and that a new leadership team is needed to get the party back on track.
Wednesday’s vote
His challenge of Pelosi will play out on Wednesday when House Democrats meet to select their leader.
But while Ryan’s concerns about the future of the party reflect the political state of affairs nationally, the reality in the heavily Democratic Mahoning and Trumbull counties is that “Blue” is still the color of choice.
It is true that in addition to Trump, Trumbull County voters supported Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, who was challenged by Democrat Ted Strickland, former governor of Ohio, but the rest of the state legislative and local races reflected a sweep for the Democratic Party.
Indeed, if there were one contest the Republicans should have won, it was for the county commission seat held by Daniel Polivka, chairman of the county Democratic Party.
During the weeks leading up to the election, Polivka was accused by fellow Democratic Commissioner Frank Fuda of using his position to influence the hiring of county employees.
Polivka denied the charges and contended that it was Fuda who maintained a long list of potential hirees.
The Vindicator endorsed Polivka but made it clear he would have to resign if an investigation found that he had pressured department and agency heads to hire political allies and friends.
The commissioner was challenged in the general election by Republican Mary E. Williams, a member of the Lakeview Board of Education. But despite the controversy, Polivka garnered 44,893 votes; Williams received 39,035.
Republicans were even less effective in Mahoning County, where the voting population was tailor-made for a Trump revolution.
The issues the billionaire real estate developer focused on – reviving the steel industry, shelving global trade agreements, deporting illegal immigrants and securing the U.S.-Mexico border – were those that made the late Congressman James A. Traficant Jr. one of the most popular politicians in the history of this region.
Traficant served in Congress for 17 years, and even after spending time in the federal penitentiary on government corruption charges, remained a folk hero of sorts.
Trump should have carried Mahoning County with no problem – but he didn’t.
On Nov. 8, Clinton, a former U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, received 56,188 votes, to 52,808 for Trump.
Of course, that 49 percent that Clinton received is viewed as a loss, given that a Democratic candidate for president needs to come out of Mahoning with at least 60 percent of the vote in order to have a realistic chance of carrying Ohio.
Indeed, Clinton’s failure to secure the necessary margin of victory in Mahoning County was cited by state party officials as one of the main reasons she lost in Ohio.
David Betras, chairman of the county Democratic Party, vehemently rejects the attempt by state party Chairman David Pepper and Clinton campaign operatives to point the finger of blame at him.
Betras counters that individuals not from this area ran Clinton’s campaign in the Valley and that they largely ignored his recommendation to aggressively court blue-collar voters.
It’s true that Clinton barely defeated Trump in Mahoning County, and that Republican Sen. Portman edged out Democrat Strickland, who ran a shoe-string campaign statewide because the national party withdrew its financial support.
However, the results of the other races in the county reveal a strong performance by Democratic candidates.
The Republican Party had tied its political fortunes to Trump carrying the county. After all, he had won the primaries in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties over Republican Gov. John Kasich, who carried the state in his ill-fated bid for the presidential nomination.
But Mark Munroe, chairman of the county GOP, misread the Trump political phenomenon. The billionaire had hijacked the GOP and, in fact, had run against the party establishment.
Republican candidates for state legislative and local offices failed to turn the county “Red.” The party was even unsuccessful in holding on to the Mahoning County judgeship occupied by Republican Shirley Christian.
Christian was handed a major defeat at the polls, with Democratic challenger Anthony M. D’Apolito, administrator of the county juvenile court, securing 61 percent of the vote.
But the most glaring failure of the county Republican Party was in the race for county treasurer, in which the Democratic incumbent, Daniel Yemma, was challenged by Republican Christine Lucarell Oliver.
Oliver, with the support of GOP Chairman Munroe, sought to show that Yemma was unfit to hold public office because he used a county email address and a county computer to exchange emails of a sexual nature with another public employee.
Oliver also sought to make an issue of a drunken driving conviction in Pennsylvania of Yemma.
In the end, however, the county treasurer received 65,712 votes, to 40,618 for Oliver.
As for Congressman Ryan, whose district includes most of Mahoning and Trumbull counties and parts of Summit, Portage and Stark counties, 60,780 voters in Mahoning County supported his re-election, compared with 21,913 for Morckel.
The results of the election in the two counties leave little doubt that the region remains Democratic Blue.