Ohio Is Still Purple

Or, I should say, a patchwork of red and blue. And those red parts have been knit into some pretty safe Republican districts. Gerrymandering works, doesn't it. And for the working families of the 5th District, the lack of a champion in Washington continues.

It was a very good thing that the Democratic Party played offense in a very Republican district, and that the Republican Party was compelled to expend extraordinary resources to retain the seat. I am hoping that the impressive exertions by the AFL/CIO and the Weirauch campaign will have a lasting positive effect in that area, leading to future gains.

Here are some things are probably obvious but deserve mention:

* Weirauch campaigned hard and well, showing a lot of improvement over the course of her three campaigns. She did not win, but she deserves some acknowledgment of that. And big thanks to her, to Bruce Weirauch, and to all of the campaign workers and volunteers and contributors who put so much into this race.

* Gov. Ted Strickland is very popular all across the state, but his support is not a silver bullet in hostile territory. Helpful, perhaps necessary, but not sufficient by itself.

* I don't know if Bob Latta's fear-mongering about illegal aliens won the race for him, but since it didn't clearly backfire I imagine that we are in for a wave of Tancredoism from GOP candidates across the board.

* Turnout was higher than I expected or that anecdotal reports suggested, although still low compared to regular elections. The GOTV was good on both sides, and Weirauch needed for it to be much better on her side than on the other.

* A couple of things were major obstacles to Weirauch, one that couldn't be avoided and the other that might have been. The first was the unfortunate fact that her opponent was from the county with the most Democratic voters. Weirauch needed to win Wood County, and that was a big challenge considering that her opponent has a long history of getting elected from there. The second was that the DCCC ad attacking Latta was too harsh. It is my impression that voters were as turned off by it as they were by the nasty negative ads in the GOP primary and the nasty ads against Weirauch.

* During my trips to the 5th District I witnessed some of the pain endured by working families from misplaced government priorities and bad policies. As Democrats we must not give up the fight in that part of the state. They need and deserve better representation than they are getting.