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KLMNO ELECTION 2010 Democrats may lose a foothold as Rust Belt gets rustier rust belt from A1
central battleground of American politics for the past three de- cades, theMidwest has played an outsize role in determining the shape and direction of the federal government—andwhosits in the Oval Office. Voters here are demanding,
and they are not always loyal. As the region has seen its fortunes decline, theRust Belt has lurched between Democrats and Republi- cans. The term “Reagan Demo- crat” was born here. Then, the Midwest lined up solidly behind Bill Clinton in 1992, only to see Ohio and Missouri help give GeorgeW.Bushtwonarrowvicto- ries in 2000 and 2004. In 2008, the Midwest came together to back Obama. Missouri was the only state in the region that went for Sen. JohnMcCain (R-Ariz.). It isn’t hard to see why Demo-
cratsnowfear another turn of the wheel as voters, weary after de- cades of decline,may try yet again to find newhope in newleaders. Midwestern Democrats could
lose enough seats to flip the House and possibly the Senate to Republicans. Democrats are also at risk of losing the governorships of three major I-70 states — Illi- nois, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Be- cause governors will have great influence in the coming battles over the redrawing of congressio- nal districts based on the 2010 Census, a wave of new Republi- can governors could have a last- ing effect on the way power flows in Washington, and on Obama’s chances of reelection in 2012. SinceWorldWar II, whichever presidential candidate has won three or more of the five I-70 states — Pennsylvania, Ohio, In- diana, Illinois and Missouri — also won the WhiteHouse. Recognizing the region’s im-
portance, Obama and Vice Presi- dent Biden made one last stop in Ohio on Sunday, urging voters in Cleveland to come out in support of Gov. Ted Strickland, whose reelection race against John Ka- sich, a former GOP congressman, has now become the single big- gest race in theMidwest for Dem-
Between Sept. 22, the first day
of classes atOhio State, andOct. 4, when voter registration in Ohio closed, campus Democrats regis- tered 2,721 voters — about twice the 2006 total. Volunteers knocked on over 1,100 doors each of thepast twoweekendsandwere reaching 500 students a night by phone.AnObama rallyoncampus two weeks ago drew 35,000 peo- ple, an organizing featworthy of a presidential race. Senior Matt Caffrey, the club’s
president, has practically lived at the office, logging call after call to students.He left once lastweek, to take hismidterms. Caffrey was still a Dayton-area
high school student in 2006, but he became a fixture at the Greene County Democratic office, work- ing for local candidates. In 2007, his freshmanyearatOhioState,he became a Democratic dorm cap- tain and campus spokesman for Obama. Irritable students on the other
end of the line don’t phase him. “I try to stay bright-eyed and bushy- tailed about things,” Caffrey said. “There hasn’t been an election yet that I cared about that I’ve lost.” Caffrey’s got help fromamotley
MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST
Aboat plies the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh.Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) blames his party for failing to clarify the benefits of the stimulus bill. ocrats.
A changed landscape The contrast to four years ago
couldnotbe sharper.Then,Brown won his race by a comfortable 500,000-votemarginintheDemo- cratic wave of 2006, and Strick- land became Ohio’s first Demo- cratic governor in 20 years by an even larger margin. Democrats’ dominanceacross the fivestatesof the I-70 corridor provided them with two additional Senate seats, inMissouri andPennsylvania, and a third of the party’s 2006net gain of 31House seats. Those gains in 2006 foretold,
almost exactly, Obama’s sweep across the region two years later. Democrats won six of the seven races for governor andU.S. Senate in 2006 along the five I-70 battle-
ground states. This year there are eight races for governor and Sen- ate in these states; Democrats have already conceded defeat in threeof themandtrail intheother five. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell
(D) blameshis party for squander- ing the connection it made with industrial Midwest voters. He lambastes “the Obama adminis- tration’s failuretowinthecommu- nication war” by allowing Repub- licans to argue that legislation such as the massive stimulus bill wasafailurewhenitaccountedfor more than 22,500 jobs lastmonth in Pennsylvania alone. Brown, who is furiously raising
moneyforhis2012reelectioncam- paign, said the drift from Demo- crats is an expression of economic despair.
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Candidates and their support-
ers launched their last round of ads, door knocks, calls and pleas over the weekend, as Republicans made their final push to take over Congress and Democrats did all they could to try to hang on to it. The Democratical National
Committee announced Sunday that it would send $3 million to state parties around the country, largely to try to sway a number of too-close-to-call Senate races that could determine the balance of power in that chamber. Much of thatmoney was aimed
at defending Democratic turf, in- cluding $100,000 that went to Massachusetts, where Republi- cans are trying to gain twoHouse seats and the governor’s mansion in Tuesday’s midterm elections. But in a sign of how volatile
races remain in the final hours, Democrats also started airing ads over the weekend in Alaska. Party leaders there think Scott McAd- ams could win the Senate race overGOPnominee JoeMiller and incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who is running a write-in campaign after losing in the GOP primary. Organizing for America, the
Democratic grass-roots group formed after the 2008 campaign to keep Barack Obama support- ers active in politics, said it planned to make more than 10 million contacts on the phone or in person with voters in the week before the election. Republican Party efforts were
bolstered by groups affiliated with the conservative tea party movement, whose supporters from across the country called into states with tight races to try to rally votes. For Democrats, turnout isn’t
just important: It could be the only way to save themselves from a rout. Experts say the Democrat- ic turnout operation cannot just match what the GOP does; it will probably have to exceed it. Many Republicans, angry about Obama and Democrats in Congress, are fired up to vote, regardless of whether they are called and en- couraged to do so by GOP volun- teers. Many Democrats, meanwhile,
“Times are so bad for so many
people, and progress has not been made quickly enough,” he said, suggesting that voters tuned out any idea that the $814 billion stim- ulus helped at all. “People weren’t listening to that, because they feel betrayed by their government.”
Courting the youth vote One group that Democrats are
determined to keep within the fold: college students and those just starting out in their first jobs. Young people were critical to Obama’s election, and his party has triedto rekindle their enthusi- asmthis year. Here’s one example of why
Democrats are so eager to moti- vate young voters: An October DaytonDailyNews/OhioNewspa- per poll found Kasich, the Repub-
lican, leading Strickland 49 per- cent to45percentamongallvoters in the governor’s race. But voters 18 to 29 years old backed Strick- land 65 percent to 29 percent. That is, if they vote. Whether
young people will turn out has been one of the mysteries of this campaign. The same poll found that 75 percent of all voters were either “extremely” or “very” inter- ested in the election. Only 43 percent of voters under 30 said so. On the Ohio State campus, stu-
dents atDemocratic headquarters are trying to convince their class- mates to vote — and vote Demo- cratic. The place is festoonedwith Obama campaign posters, an American flag and yard signs for every Democrat on the 2010 bal- lot; the office is a throwback to the optimistic days of 2008.
crew of fellow students. Joey Longley, a 19-year-old sophomore, showed up on campus as an evan- gelical Republican. But five of the seven young men in his Bible group were Democrats, and he found that hisDemocratic friends shared his socially conservative, fiscally progressive views. “It wasn’t that my values
changed,” Longley said. “It was that I began to seeDemocrats in a differentway.” He embraced his new party
with the fervor of a convert. In July, when Longley and Caffrey drove to a national meeting of college Democrats in North Caro- lina, they listened to the recorded version of the president’s second book, “TheAudacity ofHope,” and played “Name That Obama Cabi- net Secretary.” For Democrats in a grueling
year, enthusiasm like that has been hard to find.
murrays@washpost.com kanep@washpost.com
As elections near, voter outreach intensifies
Democrats focus on close Senate races in effort to keep majority
lack the enthusiasm of the 2008 elections, according to polls. “The question is whether [Re- publican] motivation is going to win the day or the Democratic mobilization,” said Michael Mc- Donald, a government professor at George Mason University who studies voting patterns. Beyond the bad economy and apparent unpopularity of Demo- crats in Congress, Democrats face one other major challenge: Peo- ple who vote in midterm elec- tions are more likely to be white and are generally older than the electorate in presidential elec- tions. This is a particular concern for the Democrats in the Obama era, as the party’s victories in 2008 were aided by strong turn- out among blacks, Latinos and voters under age 30.
Early voting is key Democrats are confident that
their efforts will get Obama sup- porters to the polls on Tuesday, and they cite the results of early voting in states such as Nevada, which have shown voter turnout for Democrats equal or higher than that of theGOP. Early voting efforts and absentee ballots could be a major factor, as an estimated 40 percent of voters will vote before Tuesday. Democrats are relying on their
Washington-led party operations, along with labor unions, who have long aided Democrats. The AFL-CIO is planning to send more than 10 million pieces of mail to voters this week and to knock on the doors of 4 million voters. Party officials are taking steps
to reach young and minority vot- ers, such as having the rapper Common perform at the Obama rally Saturday in Chicago. “We have the built the largest
ground game the DNC has ever participated in” for a midterm election, said Jennifer O’Malley, executive director of the Demo- cratic National Committee. Democrats have released
streams of detailed data about their voter contacts, but not the national GOP. Party officials say the Republican National Com- mittee has made 36 million con- tacts of voters over the last year but have not offered many other details.
Plagued by the mistakes of
party Chairman Michael S. Steele, the RNC has struggled to raise money. Party officials shut
down a program that funded staffers from Capitol Hill spend- ing the last week before Election Day in states helping local cam- paigns, although they said the decision had more to do with the political climate than a lack of funds.
Outside groups play role
“In the 2010 election, being a congressional staffer or a lobbyist and saying ‘I’mfromWashington and I’m here to help’ is not a winning message,” said RNC spokesman DougHeye. Major GOP figures such as
Mississippi Gov. Haley R. Bar- bour, a former RNC chairman, have suggested the committee has not reserved enough money for get-out-the-vote programs. To fill that void, a number of
conservative groups have emerged. American Crossroads, the conservative group that lists Karl Rove among its advisers and has run television commercials all over the country, is spending at least $10 million on voter mobilization. The Republican Governors As-
sociation, run by Barbour, is also spending millions on get-out-the- vote operations in states with key gubernatorial races, such as Flor- ida. Those efforts have the poten- tial to boost the GOP vote in congressional races as well. Republicans say even if Demo-
crats are slightly better at getting out their voters, it won’t matter. “Whenanelection is even, then
the [party] which excels at turn- out will win,” said Curt Anderson, aGOPconsultant. “You aren’t in a neutral environment here; there is a big wind blowing and that tends to be more important than mechanics. The mechanics won’t save you from an avalanche.” Officials from both parties say
a strong turnout operation can make a difference of two to four percentage points in a race. “With turnout, you can do it on
the margins,” said Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University. “The Democrats could lose six seats, rather than eight or nine seats in the Senate. But you’re not talking about anything that could radi- cally shape the election different- ly than it is.”
baconp@washpost.com
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2010
NVA-10-1101-BS-QPG
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