The Trail Less Traveled

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards may not have gotten very far with his “Two Americas” message in the 2004 presidential election, but there are two Ohios – and this is the wealthy one.

“We’re a great pocket of prosperity,” Franklin County Commissioner Paula Brooks said in an interview before introducing Hillary Rodham Clinton at a packed rally in the Westerville North High School gym Sunday morning. “Columbus is a beacon,” Brooks continued.

It is here, in the suburbs northeast of that beacon – far removed from the industrial decline of shrinking towns that dot much of the state – that Clinton and Barack Obama converged to compete nearly head-to-head for votes Sunday, improbably crossing within two miles of each other in a state that covers nearly 41,000 square miles.

Obama supporters jammed into Westerville Central’s gym, just two miles to the north, to get a glimpse of their candidate at a “town hall” meeting Sunday afternoon.

The stakes couldn’t be much higher for the rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. An Obama win in Ohio on Tuesday – or one in Texas the same day – could effectively end Clinton’s candidacy. But Obama losses in both states would catapult Clinton back into a race she has trailed since early last month.

Polls here, as well as for Tuesday’s other big race in Texas, show Obama and Clinton neck-and-neck.

In Ohio, the campaigns have focused on the economy and related issues of trade, health care, college affordability and the mortgage crisis. Many of those same issues were at the forefront of their personal appeal to voters here on Sunday.

But the harsh anti-trade rhetoric that has become a hallmark of their stump speeches and debate barbs was muted at Clinton’s rally Sunday in an area where the economy has thrived in the era of globalization.

Clinton spoke of her plans on trade and to deal with economic hardships related to it but noted that Columbus is growing in the face of layoffs and decay in places like Toledo and Youngstown.

“It’s time we looked around and saw what’s going on in the rest of Ohio and the rest of America,” she said.

Obama did little to tailor his economic message to the affluent audience, drawing on a standard line in his stump speech to tell the story of workers in Youngstown unbolting their machines and packing them up to send them to other countries.

“We’re going to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas,” he said to mild applause. The crowd was silent when he said of the North American Free Trade Agreement, “I think it was destructive.” In many Ohio towns, bashing NAFTA is cause for celebration.

Indeed, Westerville seems like an odd crossroads in a Democratic presidential primary in which the candidates have battled each other with populist-style economics appeals.

The conservative bedroom community, which banned alcohol sales until just a couple of years ago, had a median family income of $82,000 per year in 1999, according to the Census Bureau, a figure that was 60 percent higher than that of the whole state.

Westerville gave George W. Bush 60 percent of its votes in the 2004 election.

But Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland won 55 percent of the vote here in 2006, and many Democratic primary voters had a tough choice to make Sunday when political rallies conflicted with church.

For some, the pick of a presidential candidate is just as difficult.

Anne Rozic, a local elementary school teacher, said she can’t make up her mind.

“I’m wavering between Hillary and Obama, and it’s changing every hour,” she said. “Hillary – as of today.” Rozic said Clinton is “too aggressive” but her knowledge of the favor-trading system in Washington would help her accomplish her goals.

“She may get what she wants,” Rozic said.

Ethics

Rozic’s view appeared to be in the minority among the Obama faithful at Westerville Central.

In a state in which ethics scandals have cost the Republican party dearly, Obama won the full-throated backing of his audience when he targeted the influence industry, a theme he has pounded in television advertising here.

“I’m the only candidate who hasn’t taken a dime from Washington lobbyists,” he said to thunderous applause. “They don’t represent ordinary Americans, contrary to what Sen. Clinton says.” It is a message that is resonating with his Ohio supporters in both political parties.

“He hasn’t been in Congress long enough to do too much damage,” said Westerville resident Wayne Benson, an African-American Republican who said he favors Obama in the general election.

Paul Gregory, 55, said Clinton has relied too much on her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

“I was getting mixed messages,” Gregory said. “She talks about change, then she trots Bill out on stage.”

But Bryan Smith, 22, who went to Westerville North for Clinton, said it is Obama who has been hypocritical by calling for an end to the influence of Washington lobbyists while having taken their campaign contributions in the past and continuing to accept donations from people who lobby at other levels of government.

“There’s a lot of things that Obama is not telling America about himself,” Smith said. “There’s an element of hypocrisy in his campaign.”

The War

Obama pumped up his crowd by calling Clinton out on the Iraq war, playing off an introduction from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV to castigate his rival.

“Sen. Clinton got it wrong,” he said of her 2002 vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq. “She didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate.” It was one of several times during his stump speech and in the question-and-answer session that followed that Obama addressed his rival directly.

Clinton suggested repeatedly that Obama is not ready for the presidency.

“Who do you think can be the best commander in chief on Day One?” she asked her audience.

“This is a wartime election,” she said. “We have to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan.” Clinton promised her audience that she would begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq within 60 days of taking office, a standard campaign pledge.

Down To The Wire

“I like the idea that a woman could be president,” said Barbara Kennedy, 59. “I think women are more detailed.” But Obama won at least one convert this weekend.

Rocky Stroup, 23, who works at the Knight’s Inn in Westerville, said Saturday night he hadn’t yet focused on the contest. By Sunday morning, he was wearing an Obama button that had been dropped off by a volunteer and planned to go to the rally.

“He’s kind of reaching me,” Stroup said.