Sen. Barack Obama waits to be introduced at his final campaign event in Scranton before the state's April 22 Democratic primary. (Michael R. Sisak/The Citizens' Voice)
Ohio, Pennsylvania and the people and issues that could decide the presidential election
By Michael R. Sisak / The Citizens' Voice
LANCASTER, Ohio — Sen. John McCain peered out from a stage built against the disparate pastiche of a quaint, covered bridge and a fresh, bold “Victory in Ohio” banner, and reminded his thousands of sign-waving supporters here of the potential weight of their vote and their state.
"Friends, I know my political history and it’s been a long time since somebody didn’t win Ohio and became president of the United States,” McCain said last Sunday in this Republican stronghold, 30 miles southeast of Columbus. “I’m going to win Ohio and become president of the United States.”
McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, shared a similar sentiment about Pennsylvania last Monday at Martz Hall in Pottsville.
“Let's start out with a message tonight: We need to win Pennsylvania,” McCain said. “I need your votes so we can bring real change to Washington, D.C.”
If state-by-state polling and electoral map projections are accurate, McCain will need to win Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The neighboring states — battlegrounds in the parlance of political pundits — account for 41 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election and are home to a dichotomy of voters in an mélange of environs — from the urban and educational centers of Philadelphia and Columbus and the post-industrial cities of Pittsburgh and Cleveland, to the more conservative-minded small communities of Ithaca in Western Ohio and Plains Township in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where economic concerns and religious values transcend party affiliation.
McCain, and his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama — and their wives, running mates and surrogates — have campaigned heavily in both states in the days before election, courting undecided voters and reminding those already decided that they must vote no matter the weather conditions, long lines or lopsided polling projections.
“It has been 22 months, four days to go, the polls look good, you can almost reach out and touch it,” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, an Obama supporter, told a crowd of about 100 at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre last Friday. “The only thing that can kill us in Pennsylvania is if we’re complacent, if we’re lazy, if we don’t work, if we let up on the reigns, if we slow down with the finish line in sight.”
Ohio has voted for the winner of every presidential election since 1960, when Republican Richard Nixon won the state by a margin of more than six percent but John F. Kennedy, won the White House.
Pennsylvania has sided with the Democratic loser in the last two elections, choosing Sen. John F. Kerry over President George W. Bush in 2004 and former Vice President Al Gore over Bush in 2000.
A Republican has not won in Pennsylvania since 1988, when Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, edged former Mass. Gov. Michael Dukakis by 100,000 votes.
Economic indicators
McCain, 72, started the final full week of the campaign with rallies last Sunday in Zanesville, Ohio, 55 miles east of Columbus, and here in Lancaster, where a crowd of more than 4,500 partisans waited nearly four hours for 17 minutes with the candidate, his wife, Cindy, and best friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Jack Barnes, a 67-year-old retired telephone technician from rural Hocking County, Ohio, already had his choice made and his ballot cast as he listened to McCain’s frenetic pep talk on the Ohio University satellite campus here.
Barnes, a Republican and pro-life Catholic, said he voted for McCain during the early voting period that began in Ohio on Sept. 30, in part because he believes McCain has the experience and wherewithal to lead the nation through crisis, including the current economic downturn that has diminished Barnes’ 401(k) by 40 percent.
“I’m not in a position to wait until that comes back up,” Barnes said. “If I were 30 years old, you might not have a worry, but when you’re 67 and your portfolio goes down that far, that’s a big hit.”
Jack Matchko, a 54-year-old union laborer from Plains Township, said the economic crisis has slowed construction in the region, leaving him out of a steady job and his retirement in limbo.
“This election is serious stuff, it’s very serious,” Matchko said. “The market has crashed, I want to retire in a few years, what am I going to do? I’ve been out of work for a few months now, the best years I had in construction were in the Clinton years. For eight years the work was prevalent.”
Matchko has been a member of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Laborers Local 130 for 36 years, was raised a Democrat and will vote Tuesday for Obama.
“I’ve always voted Democrat because I was raised with my dad saying, ‘the Democrats will always put meat and potatoes on the table,’” Matchko said. “The Democrats always had the entitlement programs and the Republicans are cutting the entitlements.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, signed Social Security into law in 1935 and Lyndon B. Johnson, also a Democrat, enacted Medicare, the government insurance program for persons 65 and older, in 1965, Matchko said. Under the current system, retirees born between 1943 and 1955 must be 66 to be eligible to collect full Social Security benefits and 67 if born after 1960.
“McCain is talking about a later retirement age,” Matchko said. “What I do for a living, it’s not getting any easier. You don’t want to do this work in the snow and heat and cold when you’re 62 years old.”
Mike Prueter, a 33-year-old construction worker from Lancaster, Ohio who attended the McCain event, said he has survived the economic crisis thus far, but fears a lay off from his job at McKnight Development — a Grove City, Ohio company that designs and builds churches.
“The economy overrides everything right now,” Prueter said. “A lot of my friends, who are not where I am, they’re still in the construction industry, they’re losing their jobs left and right. I’ve been told it’s in the future for me to be laid off. I blame the economy.”
Prueter said his support of McCain grew out of a belief in the historical success of Republicans in handling the economy and a rejection of Obama policies that he defined as “socialist,” including a plan to tax people who make more than $250,000 per year at a higher rate while providing tax cuts and credits to those who make less than $200,000 or do not pay taxes.
As he spoke, Prueter’s wife, Mandi, christened him “Mike the Construction Worker,” a reference to the Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, the Toledo, Ohio man who gained fame as “Joe the Plumber,” after he confronted Obama last month about taxation on small businesses.
“People that have earned their way and made their mark on society, striking it rich so to speak, they’ve earned the right to keep it as far as I’m concerned,” Prueter said. “I just haven’t gotten there yet.”
Alex Collett, a 20-year-old freshman at Wilkes University, said she would be buried in student loans and other debt before ever getting a chance to strike it rich, let alone comfortably middle-class, as an adolescent psychologist.
Collett, of Plains Township, attends classes full-time, works 40 hours a week at Walmart, lives on her own and pays for rent, tuition, and other expenses with no help from her parents.
She voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. in the April 22 Democratic primary and said she will choose Obama on Tuesday, looking to him for solutions to the issues that hit her hardest — the economic crisis, the high cost of higher education and health insurance.
Obama has proposed a hybrid system of universal healthcare that would allow the uninsured to receive the same type of coverage as members of Congress. McCain plans reforms to reduce the cost of health insurance and has said he would provide a $2,500 tax credit for individuals and $5,000 for families to offset the cost of insurance.
“If I get sick, it’s Nyquil here I come,” Collett said, echoing the fret of more than 45 million uninsured Americans. “I’m 20 years old and I don’t get any healthcare. So what happens if I get sick? I could get hit by a car walking across the street, then what?”
Numbers crunch
Obama is projected to win at least 238 electoral votes from 20 states that have polled heavily in his favor, including California (54 electoral votes), New York (31) and his home state, Illinois (21), according to RealClearPolitics, an online aggregator of polling data.
McCain is projected to receive at least 127 electoral votes from 16 states where polls have shown him with a substantial lead, according to the Web site.
Eight states, with a combined 95 electoral votes — including McCain’s home state of Arizona (10), Republican-leaning North Carolina (15) and Florida (27), which decided the 2000 election — are considered by the website as tossups.
Four states — Nevada (5), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5) and the traditionally Republican-leaning Virginia (13) are listed by RealClearPolitics as leaning for Obama, along with Ohio (20) and Pennsylvania (21) — but polling in those states has shown the race tightening in the final full week before the election.
A win for Obama in either Ohio or Pennsylvania, added to the states where he is leading in the polls, would solidify his victory, Dr. David Sosar, a political science professor at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, said.
A win for McCain in both states and all the projected toss-ups would increase his electoral vote total to 268, closing the gap but still requiring a win in another state where Obama is projected to prevail.
“If you put them together, they’re critical,” Sosar said. “By themselves, watching the maps, Obama could lose one of them and still win the election.”
Polls released Sunday by The Columbus Dispatch and The Morning Call in Allentown showed Obama leading McCain by six points in Ohio and by seven points in Pennsylvania. Other polls have varied in the final week, with a Fox News/Rasmussen survey showing Obama ahead by as many as nine points in Ohio and four points in Pennsylvania and a Marist College poll indicating a 14-point lead for Obama in the Keystone State.
Polls released last Tuesday by NBC News and the polling firm Mason-Dixon indicated a two-point McCain edge in Ohio and a four-point Obama margin in Pennsylvania, with nine percent undecided.
“Here’s John McCain’s one saving grace, and this is not the Bradley Effect, I’m not talking about race, but there are a number of independents who, when they walk into the voting booth and are still hung up on ‘am I going to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama,’ they’re going to say, ‘John McCain is the one I know,’” Sosar said. “I don’t know if that’s going to be enough.”
The Bradley Effect, a term named after Tom Bradley, the first and only black mayor of Los Angeles, is used by political observers to describe campaigns where one candidate holds a lead in the polls but ultimately loses on election day, due to racism or social desirability bias. Bradley lost the 1982 California gubernatorial race to state Attorney General George Deukmejian, who was white, despite holding a lead in the pre-election polls.
Other factors could change the outlook for Obama and McCain, Sosar said, including foul weather, an underwhelming turnout by the youth and college-aged contingent that strongly favors Obama and the weight of single-issue voters, such as those passionate about gun rights or abortion.
Religious influence
The Most Rev. Joseph F. Martino, the Bishop of Scranton, resurrected abortion as an unavoidable issue for Northeastern Pennsylvania Catholic voters last month, when he authored a letter imploring parishioners to vote only for candidates who oppose abortion rights.
“Health care, education, economic security, immigration, and taxes are very important concerns. Neglect of any one of them has dire consequences as the recent financial crisis demonstrates,” Martino said in the letter, which priests read in place of a homily at Masses on Oct. 5, the day deemed “Respect Life Sunday” by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
“ However, the solutions to problems in these areas do not usually involve a rejection of the sanctity of human life in the way that abortion does,” Martino said. “Being ‘right’ on taxes, education, health care, immigration, and the economy fails to make up for the error of disregarding the value of a human life.”
In September, Martino said he strongly supported refusing Holy Communion for politicians who campaigned or voted in favor of abortion rights, including Obama’s running mate Sen. Joe Biden, a Catholic and native of Scranton.
Under U.S. tax code, religious organizations are not permitted to endorse candidates, but they can offer guidance on issues through the prism of Biblical interpretation and church policy. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established a program called Faithful Citizenship, which includes prayers and homilies for a nine-day cycle before the election and summaries of the church’s position on issues like abortion, euthanasia, racism, torture and genocide.
The Ohio Christian Alliance in Akron published a voter guide listing McCain’s and Obama’s positions on issues ranging from the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (McCain supports, Obama opposes) and “overturning Roe v. Wade” (McCain supports, Obama opposes) to the “taxpayer funding of abortion” (Obama supports, McCain opposes) and the “adoption of children by homosexuals” (Obama supports, McCain opposes).
The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference produced a similar guide, with paragraphs detailing the candidates’ positions on immigration, international justice, marriage and stem cell research.
Three Sundays before the election, Rev. Edward P. Burke’s sermon at the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia pointedly criticized the liberal “laws of Caesar” that have promoted abortion, prostitution, homosexuality and gay unions.
“We as Catholics have great respect for the holiness and dignity of every human life from natural conception to natural death,” Burke said. “This is only going to take place when we as a nation are as religious as our founding fathers were. God was at the center of their lives and at the center of the principles they established.”
Ron Pizzuti, a 68-year-old pro-life Catholic from Columbus, said he put concerns about the economic and leadership ahead of personal and religious beliefs.
“I am definitely pro-life, but I could never vote for Sarah Palin,” Pizzuti said, referring to the Alaska governor who is McCain’s vice presidential running mate. “It’s scares the willies out of me to think she could be a heartbeat away from being the most powerful person in the world.”
Pizzuti, a commercial real estate executive, cast his early ballot for Obama.
“The biggest issue is not abortion, I don’t think it should be a political issue,” Pizzuti said, as he stood outside St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus after Mass last Sunday. “The biggest issue is the economy, there’s no question. We’ve got ourselves in a terrible mess and we’ve caused the rest of the world to join us.”
Barnes, the retired telephone technician who embraced McCain’s economic plan, said he also agreed with the Republican candidate’s pro-life stance — more from a personal perspective than a religious ideology.
Barnes has seven children and twenty-four grandchildren.
“I don’t feel being pro-life is a religious thing,” Barnes said. “Even if a person was an atheist, aborting a child is getting rid of a human life. A lot of people say it’s a religious thing, it’s a humane thing.”
Demographic divide
McCain continued campaigning in Ohio last Thursday, embarking on a two-day, 10-city bus tour that ended Friday with a rally in Columbus, the state capital and home to the main campus of The Ohio State University.
Obama’s wife, Michelle, visited Columbus on Oct. 24, the day before the No. 3-ranked Penn State football team defeated No. 9 Ohio State there, 13-6.
The city is located near the geographic center of the state in Franklin County, where Democratic registrations outnumber Republicans by 12 percent, 101,322 to 80,291, according to the Ohio Secretary of State.
Obama visited Canton, Ohio, 60 miles south of Cleveland in heavily Democratic Stark County, before going to Pittsburgh, last Monday, and Chester, outside Philadelphia, last Tuesday.
McCain stopped in Wallingford, near Philadelphia, and Scranton, on Sunday, and was scheduled to speak in Moon Township, near Pittsburgh, today.
Democrats outnumber Republicans in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, by a more than two-to-one margin, and by an eight-to-one spread in Philadelphia. In Luzerne County, Democrats account for 60 percent of the total registered voters and in Lackawanna County, they total 65 percent.
Luzerne and Lackawanna counties both went for Clinton by a three-to-one margin in the primary, and McCain supporters have attempted to steer those voters away from Obama.
Sosar projects the central and northern sections of the state will go for McCain, with the urban and suburban zones of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia going for Obama and the northeastern region, from Allentown and Easton to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton as a potential wildcard.
“That’s why McCain has spent as much time in this area as he has,” Sosar said. “He’s trying to court those voters as much as he can.”
An Ohio Newspaper Poll released last Sunday showed Obama leading in the northwest and northeast regions of the state — where Toledo and Cleveland are located — and McCain ahead in central, southwest and southeast Ohio.
Megan Morrice, a 26-year-old financial advisor from Columbus, said she fears Republican operatives are attempting to steer younger voters and minority voters in that city and other urban areas away from voting, as they did in 2004.
Morrice moved back to Columbus months before the 2004 election, between President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, and saw first-hand as lines at polling places stretched for blocks, the hours of waiting pressing would-be voters to decide between exercising democracy and returning to their minimum-wage jobs or picking their children up from childcare.
“It was pretty heart wrenching to drive around to areas with heavy youth populations or heavy minority populations waiting five-plus hours in line to vote,” Morrice, an Obama supporter, said. “A lot of younger voters and minority voters, they just couldn’t vote. There has been a lot of election disenfranchisement.”
A mailer sent to minorities in Columbus during the Ohio early voting period said voting would expose them to arrest for unpaid parking tickets or criminal warrants. Similar fliers were posted on college campuses in Philadelphia.
Dana Clark, a 45-year-old mother of two grown children, experienced a milder form of voter intimidation last month, the day after the final presidential debate between Obama and McCain at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.
Clark lives in Ithaca, in the Western Ohio county of Darke, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 10 percent.
“You see a lot of Republican signs in people’s yards and you think, ‘what has a Republican actually ever done for them?’” Clark said.
“The older people are just diehard Republicans no matter what,” Clark, a Democrat who will vote for Obama, said. “I think they’re narrow-minded, they don’t ever really get out. If they ever went into the city, a bunch of them would think it was the sin city of America.”
Clark has been the only person in her village — population 102 — with Obama’s campaign signs in her yard.
After the debate, they disappeared.
The next day, Clark picked up a set of new signs from a local Democratic Party office, restoring democracy to her yard and saving her from another option.
“I would have just gotten my big piece of plywood out of the garage, put it up and put Obama on there,” Clark said.
End game
Bush won Darke County over Kerry by 28 percentage points in 2004 and 30 percentage points over Gore in 2004.
Republican candidates have won Muskingum County, Ohio, where McCain campaigned in Zanesville last Sunday, in the last 10 elections by an average of 16 percentage points and Fairfield County, Ohio, where Lancaster is located, by an average of 29 percentage points in the same span.
"In case you haven't noticed, the pundits have declared this race over and Obama's measuring the drapes,” McCain said as he spoke in this community of sprawling farms, white-washed homes and a quaint, brick-faced downtown — where his placards outnumber Obama's by a 5-to-1 margin.
“They forgot one thing: they forgot to let you decide. You're going to decide and we're going to win,” McCain said.
“America is worth fighting for, never give up. God bless you, God Bless America. We need Ohio.”
msisak@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2061
How they voted
Ohio has voted for the winner 23 times in the 25 presidential elections held over the last 100 years, only choosing the Republican Richard Nixon instead of the Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Republican Thomas E. Dewey over Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944. In the same timeframe, Pennsylvania has sided with the winner 19 times. Here are the races and the century of results from both states.
Year Pa. Ohio Winner
2004 Kerry, D G.W. Bush, R G.W. Bush
2000 Gore, D G.W. Bush, R G.W. Bush
1996 Clinton, D Clinton, D Clinton
1992 Clinton, D Clinton, D Clinton
1988 Bush, R Bush, R Bush
1984 Reagan, R Reagan, R Reagan
1980 Reagan, R Reagan, R Reagan
1976 Carter, D Carter, D Carter
1972 Nixon, R Nixon, R Nixon
1968 Humphrey, D Nixon, R Nixon
1964 Johnson, D Johnson, D Johnson
1960 Kennedy, D Nixon, R Kennedy
1956 Eisenhower, R Eisenhower, R Eisenhower
1952 Eisenhower, R Eisenhower, R Eisenhower
1948 Dewey, R Truman, D Truman
1944 Roosevelt, D Dewey, R Roosevelt
1940 Roosevelt, D Roosevelt, D Roosevelt
1936 Roosevelt, D Roosevelt, D Roosevelt
1932 Hoover, R Roosevelt, D Roosevelt
1928 Hoover, R Hoover, R Hoover
1924 Coolidge, R Coolidge, R Coolidge
1920 Harding, R Harding, R Harding
1916 Hughes, R Wilson, D Wilson
1912 Wilson, D Wilson, D Wilson
1908 Taft, R Taft, R Taft
Sources: The Columbus Dispatch; Ohio Secretary of State; Prof. Harold Cox, Wilkes University
