Swinging until my ears bleed

By Claudia Smyczek Raleigh
Special contributor to 210 West Magazine

At first we found the attention flattering. Visits, phone calls, emails. Then our suitors even sent us messages on TV and radio! Now, however, it’s a little bit stalker-ish. OK, a lot stalker-ish. Seventy visits in two months? If not John or George, it’s their veep candidates, their wives, their children, their veep candidates’ wives and children. Enough is enough!

In case you missed one of the, oh, hundred thousand or so news stories that announced it this year, Ohio is the swing state to end all swing states. A “must-have” for the Bush campaign. A “can’t win without it” for the Kerry campaign. Along with Pennsylvania and Florida, one of the Holy Trinity of states that could go with their 20 or more electoral votes for either candidate in this election. Ohio hasn’t had this much attention since the Kirtland cult murders in the late 80s. And that only lasted a few weeks. This has been going on for a year and a half.

Just what is it about Ohio politics that make it a “swing state”?

Well, the political climate here is representative of the nation as a whole. Ohio’s population breaks down by race almost exactly the same as that of the United States. We also have a mix of urban, suburban and rural that is analogous to the whole country. We have farming, manufacturing, and info and service related jobs in almost the same numbers as the national average. We have an almost equal portion of self-identified Democrats, Republican and independents as the entire US. We have every religious group, and every so-called special interest group, such as large corporations, agribusiness, gun owners, GLBT, feminists, environmentalists, et al. We have slightly more union members than in other states.

In a nutshell, Ohio is the focus of so much political attention because we are a microcosm of the United States of America. We have had a hard four years, losing over 200,000 jobs, many of them well-paid jobs in manufacturing.

The Bush twins, P Diddy, Mary J. Blige, Bruce Springsteen and Leonardo DiCaprio have all been to Ohio this week to campaign, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is on his way. Apparently Martin Sheen, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgewick all did some fundraiser thing with a group called BOB (Bring Ohio Back) lately. Um, hello? Has no one bothered to tell them Ohio’s not cool? That we’re more known for bowling and pierogies than our hip celebrity scene? That in fact we don’t have a hip celebrity scene? The two most famous people to come out of Ohio in recent decades are Drew Carey and Marilyn Manson. Marilyn Manson is not considered hip in very many circles these days.

But no. In the last year Ohio has turned from the ugly duckling to the beautiful swan. The girl all the boys want to take to the prom. The one that Al Gore gave up on, to his and the Democratic Party’s eternal regret, in 2000. No one is making that mistake again, and so now we have this situation. The one where I can’t turn on the radio or TV or look at the newspaper without being bombarded with campaign ads, polls, and the latest stories of the candidates’ appearances.

The appearances are causing traffic problems on a daily basis. I get distracted driving around town by the thousands of yard signs. My heart practically goes into palpitations every time I see one of those “Protect Marriage” yard signs, urging me to vote for the amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would ban gay marriage. (Gay marriage, by the way, is already banned by not one but two laws on Ohio books. But I digress.) I avoid political conversations with anyone from the opposing side, because I am sick to death of arguing the candidate’s merits. We all made up our minds long ago.

So why, oh why, do the two campaigns linger? Why won’t they just leave us alone? You may assume, from my comments, that I’m not a political person. That I avoid politics all the time and it has been forced upon me in an election year. In fact the opposite is
true. I love politics and government and international relations and history. I follow it closely, in fact in 2000 I worked on a campaign. I have just had enough. I’m all about citizen participation, and I’m thrilled at all the new voter registrations and the high turnout expected this year. I just don’t want to hear about it any more.