Online NewsHour: Ohio Analysis

As Goes Ohio, So Goes the Nation
Tom Brazaitis
Washington Bureau Chief, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

The three rules of Republican presidential politics are as follows: Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. No Republican in this century has won the presidency without winning Ohio.
Naturally, it follows that the three rules of Democratic presidential politics are the same: Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. If the Democratic candidate can keep the Republican from winning Ohio, he's in.
No wonder then that in the fall campaign of 1992 Ohio was the state most visited by President George Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle and their rivals, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Since becoming president, Clinton has continued to visit Ohio more than any other state except California, and Bob Dole, the GOP standard bearer, already has danced the polka in the Slovenian Home on Cleveland's East Side. They both know that as Ohio goes, so goes the nation.
In the ‘92 election, Clinton narrowly defeated Bush in Ohio, 40% to 38%, with Ross Perot third at 21%, a result that closely paralleled the national outcome.
As Sen. John Glenn, the state's senior Democratic office holder, likes to say, Ohio is a microcosm for the nation. Unfortunately for Glenn, when he tried for the Democratic nomination in 1984, his campaign folded before reaching his home state.
Once the third largest state in the country when America was expanding westward, Ohio now ranks seventh in population (roughly 11.2 million) and has seen its votes in the electoral college shrink from 26 in 1970 to 21 today as the rust-belt states have yielded some of their clout to the sunbelt.
Even so, Ohio is a prize that presidential candidates covet because winning in Ohio is a measure of a candidate's across-the-board appeal. Ohio is a mix of big cities (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati), medium-sized cities (Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Youngstown), industrial regions in the north and rural acreage in the south.
It is instinctively a Republican state, claiming eight sons among the presidents, all of them Republicans, yet it has frequently given its blessings to Democrats. From 1976 to 1994, both Ohio's senators were Democrats. Glenn's "sensible center" ideology is a natural fit for the state, but the election and re-election of Howard Metzenbaum, a traditional liberal, was the exception that proved the rule that Ohio is unpredictable.
Democrats, in fact, controlled almost all the important state offices until the Republican landslide of 1994, when Gov. George Voinovich and his fellow Republicans took them back along with a majority in both houses of the Ohio General Assembly, and in the state's congressional delegation. And Voinovich's former lieutenant governor, Mike DeWine, captured the Senate seat vacated by Metzenbaum's retirement.
With Republicans now a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, one-time back-benchers like Rep. John Kasich of Columbus, the Budget Committee chairman, and Rep. John Boehner of West Chester, the fourth-ranking GOP leader, suddenly have become players.
Rep. Louis Stokes, older brother of the late Carl Stokes, the first mayor of a major U.S. city, is the senior citizen in the Ohio delegation, having served 26 years in the House. His high-ranking position on the Appropriations Committee does not mean as much to his home city of Cleveland or the state now that the Democrats are the out party.
Ohio Democratic Chairman David Leland predicts that the party will regain some lost ground in this fall's elections. It's a safe prediction because the party was so thoroughly defeated in 1994, it has nowhere to go but up.
As one might expect in a microcosm state, polls show Clinton holding a lead over Dole and Perot as the campaign enters the final 60 days. Many of the state's best-known politicians will be watching the Nov. 5 results to gauge their own future prospects.
Glenn has yet to decide whether, at age 77, he will seek an unprecedented fifth Senate term in 1998. Voinovich, who by law cannot run for a third consecutive term as governor, already is raising money for a Senate race, no matter what Glenn decides.
Dick Celeste, who served two terms as governor ending in 1990, has hinted he may attempt a comeback. On the Republican side, Secretary of State Bob Taft, grandson of "Mr. Republican" Robert Taft, who unsuccessfully challenged Dwight D. Eisenhower for the GOP presidential nomination in 1952, is the leading contender for governor.
Metzenbaum's son-in-law Joel Hyatt, after losing badly to DeWine in the ‘94 Senate race, is in self-imposed exile in California, but may want to test the tradition in the state that says no one wins the first time around, but the second time is magic. It worked that way for Glenn, Metzenbaum, Celeste and DeWine, among others.
But for political aficionados, the race to watch this year is the one pitting two-term Rep. Martin Hoke, who represents the Cleveland area's 10th District, against former Cleveland Mayor Dennis J. Kucinich, whose reputation as the Dennis the Menace who bankrupted the city lives on, not just in Ohio but across the country.
Older now and, from all reports, wiser, Kucinich will test the conventional wisdom that Hoke is an accidental congressman because his first two opponents were an incumbent (Mary Rose Oakar) who was identified as one of the top abusers of no penalty check-writing privileges at the now defunct House Bank and a challenger (Frank Gaul) who was facing indictment on election day in 1994.
Kucinich was the only Democrat in the state and one of very few in the country to defeat a Republican incumbent when he won a seat in the Ohio Senate in 1994.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country will be seeing a lot of Ohio this year in TV news clips as Clinton and Gore, Dole and Jack Kemp and members of their families all but take up residence in the state, mindful of the Ohio, Ohio, Ohio rule.
There is, however, an asterisk. Whereas it is true that no Republican this century has won the presidency without winning Ohio, it is not always true that winning Ohio means the Republican is a sure thing. Only twice since 1900 has the Ohio winner not wound up in the White House: Tom Dewey in 1948 and Richard Nixon in 1960.
Oh, well, what fun is a rule if it can't be broken.

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