Ohio was Wrong Last Time: Let’s Do it Again!

By DON ROLLINS

For 60 years (1960-2020) pollsters looked to Ohio as the ultimate bellwether for presidential elections. It was a streak in keeping with the state’s political flexing, earning Ohio status as the quintessential swing state.

That luck-of-the-draw ended on Nov. 3, 2020, as the Buckeye State went for Donald Trump by more than eight percentage points. Thankfully, Ohio’s run as failsafe presidential oddsmaker was over. So too, the Trump presidency.

But while restoring my home state to its “predictive glory” is a common GOP hook line these days, statehouse MAGA Republicans really mean Ohio would get its groove back, and Trump would once again be off-script in the Rose Garden.

Given all major polls currently have Trump ahead by double digits in Ohio, many of those same Republican officials and luminaries appear oddly calm when interviewed. Ohio is now a presidential lock, and they know it. The resulting strategy out of Columbus seems focused: Turn out an already stoked base, and divert campaign resources elsewhere.

That elsewhere is the US Senate, where Ohio’s venerable Sherrod Brown is locked in a high-stakes matchup with Republican challenger (and Trump endorsee) Bernie Mareno. Brown has held steady with a 5-7- point lead, and benefits from a massive funding advantage created by Mareno’s bitter three-way primary race; but nothing can be taken for granted given the seat is essential if Democrats are to maintain control of the upper house.

Mareno, 57 and a Colombian-American from northeast Ohio, is proving to be a worthy adversary despite his earlier distancing from Trump. As with scores of other GOP candidates once disgusted with, but eventually kowtowing before the ex-president (including Ohio’s junior US senator, J.D. Vance) Mareno’s 2106 characterizations of Trump as a “lunatic” and “maniac” driving the country into a ditch are on the record.

Mareno has since reversed course, and political amnesia has set in. During his remarks celebrating his primary victory, he stated he now wears his Trump endorsement as “… a badge of honor.”

For Brown’s part, his liberal bona fides over three terms are stellar. Yet after years of outperforming in a state in which every other state office is now filled by a Republican, this time Brown is running down-ticket from a Democratic president with a 34% approval rating. Its a daunting task made more difficult by an equally vulnerable executive.

Brown and Democrats across the country are hoping Mareno’s MAGA extremism on the issues will be to their advantage. Mareno has already signaled he’d have no problem bypassing the pro-choice referendum adopted by Ohioans last fall, and give full-throated support to a near-total national ban. Likewise some of the most draconic,

inhumane southern border measures his party is yet to concoct; and further cuts to the social safety nets Brown and his Democratic colleagues have worked to preserve.

Clearly Ohio can’t deliver for Joe Biden in such an atmosphere. The state’s 17 electoral votes will be posted to the Trump column not long after the polls close. Still there is reason to trust enough level-headed Ohioans will realize the gravity of the moment, and spare their state and nation from yet another of Trump’s sycophants.

Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024

Populist.com