Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist
Ohio: The real battleground

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES Local Republicans in Xenia, Ohio, leave a cow barn yesterday after a rally led by Vice President Dick Cheney. Republicans and Democrats are pouring time and money into Ohio, hoping a win in the state will pave the way to the White House.

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Cars explode. Masked men tote machine guns. People recount horrific events, such as beheadings.

I'm not talking about on the streets, of course. It's in the barrage of political ads playing nightly on television screens across Ohio, a state that, along with Florida, has become ground zero in an intense and concentrated campaign.

I am back in my home state this week to see what's happening in the presidential race. They say Ohio is so crucial that voters here essentially get to pick the president.

"Whoever wins here wins it all," said Mark Cain, 58, a real-estate agent who came to this small town yesterday to see Vice President Dick Cheney hold a pep rally in a cow barn.

	JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES Sen. John Kerry speaks at a campaign rally yesterday in Dayton. Ohio is on his schedule again today.

I don't know if Ohio is really that important.

But the candidates and their advisers and all the special-interest groups seem to believe it. And so they have shrunk a national election to the point that much of the political arsenal in the United States is raining down on unassuming places such as Xenia, a town of 24,000 that's known best as the tornado capital of the state.

In one evening watching television near here, I saw more presidential ads than I'd see in a month in Seattle.

Maybe because there are so many ads — four of the nation's top 10 markets for political advertising are in Ohio — the ads are not subtle. The exploding car, for instance, is in a John Kerry ad saying that Iraq has degenerated into chaos. The masked men with guns are in an ad by an independent, pro-President Bush group saying Kerry doesn't have the guts to fight terrorism.

Another ad asks: "Is George W. Bush too close to the Saudi royal family?"

And then there's the eighth ad in a series from the notorious Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. I've seen this 60-second spot about 10 times in the three days I've been in Ohio, with gray-haired vets listing all the ways Kerry has supposedly fibbed about his days in Vietnam. As these ads never aired in Seattle, I thought the Swift Boat guys had faded away last August.

The sheer volume and audacity of the ads have annoyed voters.

	THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ohio's state flag hangs inside a livestock barn at a rally held by Vice President Dick Cheney in Xenia yesterday.

"We are being inundated, just pounded with these ads," said Steve Hirsch, an apple grower in Chillicothe — not far from Xenia — who says he's probably voting for Bush. "You know what the ads have done? They have made people not like either one of them."

At the same time, the candidates are barnstorming through the rolling cornfields of southwestern Ohio like they're running for county commissioner. Take Xenia — this GOP-leaning town has had visits this fall from Bush, Kerry and, yesterday, Cheney.

Bush and Kerry also keep coming back to Dayton, eight miles away. Kerry was here again yesterday for a rally in a baseball stadium.

In all, Ohio has been visited 37 times by Bush and Kerry since March — more than any other state. In contrast, the candidates have been to Washington state only twice each in that time, and some states in the interior West have been ignored entirely.

The visits have given a whistle-stop-era feel to this part of Ohio. Last weekend, people dotted the country roads between Xenia and Chillicothe to wave or jeer at Kerry's bus caravan.

Yesterday in Xenia, people shouted "Give 'em hell, Dick!" as Cheney skewered Kerry and then glad-handed his way into the crowd of 2,200 Republicans.

Ohioans seem to like the personal attention — although some say they long ago tired of being called at home by the campaigns and outside groups.

David Patterson, a retired prison guard in Chillicothe, says Bush himself once phoned — a recorded version, anyway.

"It's strange to pick up the phone and have the president on the line," he said. "I knew it was a recording because I told him I didn't like him but he just kept right on talking."

A British newspaper, The Guardian, is sending letters this week from its overseas readers to 14,000 voters in Springfield, 20 miles from Xenia. The paper supports Kerry and has asked its readers to tell Ohioans "how important the election is to people outside the United States."

This British foray into American politics has been received here about as well as it was 230 years ago. Wrote one reader of the Springfield News-Sun: "We Ohioans are an ornery sort and don't take meddling well. In my town of Springfield, some consider people from the nearby cities of Columbus or Dayton as 'foreigners,' let alone someone from outside our country."

I don't know about ornery. I've been impressed so far at how engaged Ohioans remain in the campaign, and how open they are to the give and take of debate, even amid all this cacophony. They are registered to vote in unprecedented numbers — some counties are up more than 25 percent since 2000 — and seem energized to turn out on Nov. 2.

Still, I'm not sure this is any way to pick a president. It's as if the election campaign isn't happening in most of the country, including Seattle.

The good news is that despite all the fawning and courting, the Ohio voters I've met don't seem that easily swayed. Which maybe helps explain why this sprawling state of 11.4 million spread across cities and farms and Appalachian foothills appears to be precisely, exactly tied when it comes to choosing between Bush and Kerry.

Said Henry Cawley, a 54-year-old logger I met in a diner outside Chillicothe:

"We know enough to know that win, lose or draw, we won't be seeing either one of these guys back here again. Until 2008, anyway."

Times columnist and Ohio native Danny Westneat, who grew up in Yellow Springs, eight miles from Xenia, returned home this week to watch how the final, frenetic days of the presidential campaign are playing out in a real battleground state. He can be reached at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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