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.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS