This summer, everyone from home told me how lucky I was to be going to Georgetown during an election year. I looked forward to getting caught up in the wave of political fervor that was sure to sweep the city. But now I realize that if I really wanted a front row seat for the election, I should have stayed in my home state of Ohio. Once the heart of American manufacturing, Ohio has been largely ignored in recent years at the expense of more happening states like California and New York. Finally Ohio is back on the map because the political pundits don’t know whether to color it red or blue. If you ask me, Kerry should actually play up his flip-flopping in the swing states: “Can’t make up your mind? Me neither! I’m just like one of you. John Kerry, the true candidate of the undecided voter!”
Both the Kerry and Bush campaigns are well-aware that they can’t afford to ignore Ohio. In fact, an Ohio victory for Gore, which he lost by 165,000 votes in 2000, would have rendered Florida’s chads irrelevant. The state has voted for the winning candidate in every election since 1960. That is some serious political prescience.
In this closely contested election, Ohio is the political Promised Land. To political junkies, I am Moses. Automatically assuming that I am one of those poor confused voters in Ohio who can’t make up her mind, it becomes their mission to influence my vote. If they can hook me, they can rest easy with the knowledge that they made a small contribution to the victory of their candidate of choice. I decided on which candidate I will vote for a long time ago, but I smile and listen quietly as they plug their man.
The two campaigns could learn a lot from the Cleveland chapter of the Red Cross, which recently rewarded blood donors with free beer vouchers. The blood drive, not surprisingly, collected a record number of pints of blood. Free beer as a voting incentive would go over especially well with one of Bush’s target demographics: insecure men with a redneck brand of masculinity. After all, as the movie Heathers so wisely counseled, “This is Ohio: If you aren’t holding a brewski, you might as well be wearing a dress.” Free beer probably wouldn’t hurt the coveted youth vote either, although that might carry certain negative ethical implications.
As for Ohio’s residents, they should try to milk this national attention for all it’s worth. One man from Parma, Ohio had the right idea when he tried to auction off his vote on eBay last summer. Although a district court declared the sale illegal, apparently citing something called “the principles of democracy,” I think the idea could work with a little tweaking.
Perhaps the fate of Ohio’s electoral votes will swing on the 670,000 unemployed workers in the state. Unlike most Ohioans, I have actually benefited from our state’s sorry economy. During the Vice Presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University, John Edwards mentioned that Cleveland now has the highest poverty rate among big cities and that one in two children there grows up poor. A non-Ohioan friend turned to me with a concerned look on her face and said, “You don’t have to pay me back that $10 … You might, um, need it.”
Ohio is neither a brazen Texas nor a wanton Massachusetts, but a demure lady. And she just won’t give up her 20 electoral votes without some proper courting first, thank you very much. No one knows what dress she’ll wear on Election Day. She could don a red gown and dance in the aisles of Kerry’s funeral or send Bush home with a case of the blues. Either way, Ohio is back in the limelight. It’s about time.
Noreen Malone is a sophomore in the College. Tin soldiers and Bush is coming.
