Clinton, Trump navigate Ohio’s political landscape differently

By Mark Niquette and Jennifer Jacobs

Bloomberg News (TNS)

YOUNGSTOWN

The fight for Ohio in the 2016 election is a showcase for how Republicans and Democrats are navigating a deeply divided electorate.

The presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton descended on Thursday, giving a glimpse of their approaches in one of just a few of the states that will be decisive in the presidential race and which party controls the Senate.

Vice President Joe Biden gave speeches at union halls in the Democrat-rich Youngstown and Cleveland areas for Clinton and walked door-to-door in a Youngstown neighborhood, greeting and hugging residents after visiting a county fair. He acknowledged Clinton’s unpopularity among working-class voters but tried to blunt Trump’s appeal by questioning whether he understands their plight because of remarks the Republican candidate has made about wages.

Trump spoke at the American Legion’s national convention in Cincinnati a day after Clinton addressed the group, and he also had a rally in Wilmington, in southwest Ohio, where he hammered the former secretary of State over her use of private emails and her family’s foundation. He said that she doesn’t offer the kind of change in Washington that he would bring.

“We are going to win Ohio, no doubt about that,” Trump said.

Ohio is one of the most competitive battleground states, voting twice for Republican George W. Bush and twice for Barack Obama. No Republican has won the presidency without carrying the Buckeye State and it has sided with the winning candidate in every election since 1964.

Clinton has a lead of 3.8 percentage points over Trump in Ohio, according to an average of recent polls compiled by RealClearPolitics.

Trump is counting on appealing to enough white, working-class voters and disaffected Democrats to carry Ohio. He’s promising to bring back manufacturing jobs and to renegotiate trade deals that he blames for work leaving the U.S.

During the past decade, Ohio has lost 115,400 manufacturing jobs, the third-most in the U.S. during that time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Biden sought to shore up the Democratic base in Trumbull and Mahoning counties, which were among the 32 of 88 that Trump carried in the March 15 Republican primary won by home-state Gov. John Kasich. Some Democrats said they took Republican ballots to vote for Trump.

The UAW and other unions that endorsed Clinton say they are telling their members that Trump is a “fraud” on trade because while he talks about the loss of jobs and companies moving to Mexico or overseas, he has clothing and other products made outside the U.S.

“We’ve got to call B.S. on you, Donald Trump,” U.S. Rep.Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, said while helping to introduce Biden near Lordstown.

Biden touted the Obama administration’s 2009 federal bailout of the auto industry, which the president emphasized in Ohio during his re-election campaign in 2012. It helped him carry the state and win because Republican nominee Mitt Romney struggled to explain his opposition to it.

Tim O’Hara, vice president of UAW Local 1112 at Lordstown, estimated that about 20 percent to 25 percent of his members will support Trump, and that it’s probably not worth Democrats trying to turn around die-hard Trump supporters. Rather, the key is getting those supporting Clinton to vote, he said.

“Even if they personally don’t like Hillary, they should still look at the fact that what party saved the auto industry,” O’Hara said.

Kasich, who has refused to endorse Trump and wouldn’t participate in the party’s convention in Cleveland, has said Trump will do well in parts of the state. The question will be what happens in the urban areas and whether Clinton can generate excitement there, he said.

“If she can, she’ll win,” Kasich said in an August 26 interview on CNN. “If she can’t, she won’t win. But it’s really, frankly, still too early to know.”

At his campaign rally in Wilmington, Trump did his best to sour any excitement for Clinton. He said contributors to the Clinton Foundation got favorable treatment from the State Department under Clinton, which her campaign denies.

Clinton has a decided advantage in field operations and get-out-the-vote machinery in Ohio, building on the successful campaigns that Obama ran in the state in 2008 and 2012 with some of the same personnel.

Clinton’s campaign has been active in Ohio for months and said it has more than three dozen field offices across the state with more to come, compared with the 16 regional office locations that Trump’s campaign announced opening on Aug. 12.

Bob Paduchik, Trump’s state director who ran both of George W. Bush’s successful campaigns in Ohio and Sen. Rob Portman’s winning 2010 Senate campaign, promised “a very sophisticated ground game” in the state.

Still, the Ohio Republican Party is loyal to Kasich and mobilized to help him win the state’s Republican primary. It’s unclear how much the party will do to help Trump beyond efforts by the Republican National Committee and Trump’s campaign.

“It’s definitely going to have an impact on this race that Donald Trump doesn’t have Kasich people on board,” said Jai Chabria, a former senior adviser to the governor.