How Ohio Began To Slip Away From Mitt Romney
With each recent poll, Ohio has begun to look less like a swing state and more like a road map back to the private sector for Mitt Romney.
A series of miscues on important Ohio issues and a successful effort by President Barack Obama’s campaign to define the Republican challenger have made Romney’s odds look increasingly long in the Rust Belt bellwether. Eight of the 12 public polls conducted after the Democratic National Convention have shown Romney with at least a 4-point deficit and one on Wednesday showed him down by 10. No Republican candidate has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.
Doug Usher, managing partner of research at the bipartisan polling firm Purple Strategies, said the reasons why Romney has lagged behind start with the automotive industry, which figures so prominently in both the state’s economy and the Obama campaign’s pitch to Ohio voters.
Democrats there have jumped at the chance to highlight Romney’s opposition to the restructuring of the U.S. auto industry, epitomized by his 2008 New York Times op-ed with the now-infamous title, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” But those attacks against Romney are of a piece. The Obama campaign has also hammered the former Massachusetts governor’s career at the private equity firm Bain Capital, as well as the murky nature of his tax returns. Meanwhile, Romney’s surreptitiously recorded remarks made at a swanky fundraiser earlier this year gave substance to the caricature Obama and Democrats have drawn of the Republican nominee.
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