Obama's two Buckeye State playbooks

The elephant in the room
Still, although the importance of Ohio’s Democratic stars cannot be overstated, the parallels between their success and Obama’s potential battle plans are not perfect matches.

Strickland, a son of Appalachia with an A-rating from the NRA, was poised for success in the Southeastern region he represented in the U.S. House for a decade. Clinton’s Southern roots and aw-shucks golden touch lowered the hurdles for success in what Haas calls “the Southernmost Northern state or the Northernmost Southern state, depending on how you look at it.” 

But could a biracial candidate who hails from Hawaii and Hyde Park – and carries one of the Senate’s most liberal voting records – succeed in Strickland country? Some experts who say ‘yes’ point to a race decades before Bill Clinton’s meteoric rise.

In 1976, Ohioans elected Howard Metzenbaum, a Jewish liberal born to a wealthy Cleveland family. Metzenbaum, who served for nearly two decades as Ohio’s U.S. Senator, did not win the same rural swathes as his later Democratic successors, but he consistently tamped down Republican margins in low-population counties and outperformed GOP opponents in Ohio’s small cities.  In a state with a Jewish population of well under two percent, Metzenbaum was “in some ways as unlikely a candidate in Southeastern Ohio as Barack Obama,” notes Wilhelm.

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It was Metzenbaum’s fierce defense of the underdog that propelled him to two successful reelection campaigns. His championing of economic populism allowed him to transcend skepticism about his faith, says Dale Butland, who worked for both Metzenbaum and Ohio senator John Glenn. A similar message could catapult Obama over the hurdle of race. 

“If you can make people believe that you’re on their side, that you’ll fight for them, that you’re going to stand up to these big impersonal forces that are screwing them,” says Butland, “then that has the ability to overcome what might otherwise become religious prejudice, or racial prejudice, in Obama’s case.”

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High hurdles
Still, despite the threads of possible success sewn into Ohio’s political history, Obama faces a fierce battle in the state that dealt his presidential predecessor a fatal blow. His damaging loss to Hillary Clinton in the state’s March primary provides a roadmap for the McCain campaign, which has already opened Victory offices and tapped state GOP leaders to mobilize its grassroots effort. Republican party officials cite the Obama campaign’s series of theoretical electoral maps – not all of which rely on an Ohio win – as evidence of internal pessimism about Obama's chances there.

And the taste of Kerry’s candidacy still lingers in the mouths of many Ohioans. Republican strategist Mark Weaver recalls the 2004 nominee’s much-panned goose hunting expedition with a chuckle. “Most rural voters in Ohio saw that for what it was, which was a charade,” says Weaver. “Barack Obama is somebody who was similarly raised in an environment that is urban and elite.” 

But Obama backers are optimistic that their nominee, with the aid of strong local surrogates and coffers full enough to deploy a characteristic flood of ground troops, will make the necessary inroads into the patches pierced by the likes of Strickland, Brown, and Clinton.

“At the end of the day,” says Wilhelm, “Barack Obama doesn’t have to win in rural Ohio. He just has to do better than Senator Kerry. I think he can. I think he will.”

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