Conditions in Ohio Point to Kerry, but Bush Runs Strong

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/politics/campaign/12ohio.html

Conditions in Ohio Point to Kerry, but Bush Runs Strong
By R. W. APPLE Jr.

Published: September 12, 2004


OLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 10 - It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Everything seemed to be in place for a powerful run by Senator John Kerry in Ohio in the stretch drive after Labor Day. Al Gore lost the state by 175,000 votes in 2000, despite having pulled all his advertising early in October. Ohio has shed 250,000 jobs since George W. Bush became president. Rocked by scandals and an unpopular tax increase, the statehouse Republicans, from Gov. Bob Taft down the line, have been in unaccustomed disarray for weeks.

At the end of last month, the Census Bureau reported that Cleveland, with a poverty rate of 31.3 percent, led the country in that most dubious category, and this month American deaths in Iraq topped 1,000. Both developments might have given a leg up in the campaign to Mr. Kerry, a critic of Mr. Bush's economic policy and his conduct of the war. Yet Mr. Kerry seems to be falling back.

Ahead by six percentage points in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in mid-July, Mr. Kerry trailed by nine points in a similar survey taken Sept. 3 through Sept. 7, immediately after the Republican convention. Kerry aides said the second poll had been taken too soon after the convention to be meaningful, but its results mirrored the impression of many savvy Ohio political figures.

"With all he's got going for him, it's hard to believe Kerry is stumbling so badly here," said William P. Blair III, a Canton lawyer and lobbyist, a former Democrat and nominal Republican who now describes himself as an independent of sorts.

Democratic professionals have begun to criticize Mr. Kerry's efforts - privately and, in a few cases, publicly. Gerald Austin of Cleveland, a leading Ohio campaign consultant for more than 30 years, said that former President Bill Clinton could run a better campaign than Mr. Kerry's "even when he was under ether." Mr. Austin said that Mr. Kerry had been too slow to respond to Republican attacks on his military record.<snip>