Packing a comely 20 electoral college ballots and offering a flirtatious swing of its polarized vote, the state of Ohio is driving Republicans and Democrats to distraction in this year's US presidential election.
The tighter the race between President George W. Bush and his challenger Senator John Kerry becomes, the brighter the spotlight on Ohio shines, and voters here are enjoying the attention.
Both men rolled their campaign buses through the state this weekend, Bush for the sixth time, while Kerry was making his twelfth visit.
"It's exciting, but it's exhausting," said Susan Galman, a volunteer for the Kerry campaign in Zanesville. "We're working our tails off and there's going to be no let off before November."
No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio, while no Democrat, in today's electoral vote arithmetic, can be sure of winning without it.
In the 2000 election, with polls showing Ohio leaning towards Bush, Democrat Al Gore abandoned the state several weeks before polling day to concentrate his efforts elsewhere.
In the end, Bush carried the state by a mere 165,000 votes -- 50 percent to 46.5 percent. With hindsight, Democratic strategists said Ohio was winnable and Gore's decision may have cost him the election.
The Kerry campaign, currently enjoying a slim lead in the state, is determined not to make the same mistake.
Democratic and Republican strategists have identified around 18 "swing states" as being key to the Nov. 2 election, and Ohio is right up there at the top of the list.
The issue of national security may be dominating this year's election, but in Ohio, which has been hard hit by the economic downturn of recent years, the Democrats believe they can win on a platform of employment opportunity and affordable health care.
In June, unemployment rose in Ohio for the eighth time in 10 months. The state has lost more than 200,000 jobs since March 2001.
"We're going to fight for your jobs as hard as we fight for ours," Kerry told a rally he held in Zanesville Saturday with his vice presidential running mate John Edwards.
Hammering home a running campaign theme, Kerry pledged to close tax loopholes for US companies who outsource jobs overseas.
"Never again will American workers have to subsidise the loss of their own jobs while we're in charge," he said.
Ohio trails only California, three times as large, in manufacturing jobs, yet it has 400,000 fewer of them than it did in 1970, and its population and income have been increasing at less than the national average.
Reflecting Ohio's strategic importance, the state delegation to last week's Democratic national convention in Boston received VIP treatment, with front row seats at the event venue, alongside the home state of Massachusetts.
And while the hapless Democratic delegates from Texas -- Bush's home state and a Republican lock come November -- had to battle their way into town every day from Logan International Airport, the Ohioans were sitting pretty in the convention nerve center, the Boston Sheraton.
Bush held a rally Saturday in Canton, Ohio where, on a visit in April last year, he told workers at the Timken international steel company that his tax cuts would create jobs.
But in May, Timken announced it would close three facilities around Canton over the next two years, costing some 1,300 jobs. The company is owned by a major Bush fundraiser, Tim Timken.
A group of the affected workers spoke to the Democratic convention, where their plight was used to symbolize the loss of factory jobs around the country.
On his way to Canton, Bush brought 10 Timken workers on board his bus.
"They're concerned. I am too," Bush said at the rally.
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