Obama faces Ohio hearts and minds
Steve Hammons
February 28, 2008
The recent controversial remarks from Cincinnati radio personality Bill Cunningham about Barack Obama at a McCain rally can be instructive about the Cincinnati region and Ohio.
I was born and raised in the Cincinnati area, was given the mandatory Ohio history classes in school and later went to college in southern Ohio at nearby Ohio University in Athens, a couple of hours east of Cincinnati.
The Cincinnati and southern Ohio region has a unique history that may be relevant in the run-up to the Democratic primary and the 2008 elections. This history and current flavor of the whole state might also be of interest.
We know that Ohio has been in the news during recent elections. Concerns about questionable election processes in Ohio have been part of this.
After Cunningham made his comments at the McCain rally, another Ohio politician followed him to address the crowd ... former Congressman Rob Portman who represented the Cincinnati area.
Portman has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential running mate with McCain, and a possible presidential candidate in 2012.
SPECIAL ELECTION
Portman left his congressional seat in 2005 to take a position in the George W. Bush administration as U.S. trade representative, which carries the rank of ambassador.
From 2006 to 2007, he took another position in the Bush administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He currently is working at a law firm in Cincinnati.
What is interesting is that when a special election was held for Portman's congressional seat in 2005, the solidly Republican-voting area almost elected another attorney and Marine Corps Reserve major who had served in Iraq, and was running as a centrist Democrat.
That person was Paul Hackett, and during the campaign he said that he had opposed the Iraq war, yet felt it was his duty to volunteer to serve there.
In the congressional race in August 2005, Hackett, who notably opposed gun control, gained attention by referring to George W. Bush as a "chicken hawk" for avoiding combat service in Vietnam during that war.
Hackett also said Bush made "stupid" remarks such as "bring it on," challenging insurgents in Iraq to attack U.S. troops there.
Hackett reportedly bluntly stated about Bush, "I've said I don't like the S.O.B."
Hackett's opponent, Jean Schmidt, strongly supported Bush and the Iraq war.
Hackett lost by about 3,500 votes, getting about 48 percent of the vote in a district that routinely elected the previous Republican congressman there by about 70 percent.
This was a very surprising development in southwestern Ohio.
Obama's stance on the invasion and occupation of Iraq may resonate in Ohio, where many active duty and reserve Army and National Guard personnel have been killed and wounded. Active duty Marines and Marine reservists from Ohio have also been killed and injured in high numbers in Iraq.
GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHICS
The hilly country of southwestern Ohio around Cincinnati is very much like southern Indiana next door and northern Kentucky, just south across the Ohio River.
If you go further east, the southern neighbor becomes West Virginia and southeastern Ohio is considered part of the Appalachian region, as the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains start there. There is coal mining in this region.
Many people in southern Ohio speak with a slightly or markedly southern-type accent.
An ancient glacier that flattened central and northern Ohio stopped just short of the still-hilly southern part of the state.
In that flat central Ohio area, there are plenty of farms, small and medium-size towns with the state capitol of Columbus right in the middle.
Northern Ohio has a lot of the industrial areas around Lake Erie that have had historical links with Detroit and other centers of the old "rust belt" regions.
Many people here speak with a somewhat northern type of accent.
There are many good union people in Ohio. Sometimes their social and political views are centrist and they might find positions and candidates of either major party to be valid.
Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions and have a middle class or even upper middle class economic status are educated enough to know that the struggles of the union and labor movements over the decades resulted in the benefits they have now.
Some realize that the social, economic and political forces in America that supported or opposed working people and the unions were associated in certain patterns with the two major political parties. Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions may not fully understand this history.
Obama's efforts and results in Ohio will be related to many of these these factors.
OHIO HISTORY AND ETHNICITY
Will Obama's mixed-ethnicity be a factor? Probably. There are not too many Ohioans who had a father from Kenya, Africa.
Although Ohio is not as diverse as Hawaii, where Obama mostly grew up, raised by his grandparents from Kansas, there is some interesting ethnic and historical background.
Today, you can find people of virtually every ethnic background living in Ohio.
Italian-Americans in northern Ohio, German-Americans in southwestern Ohio, you name it. People from Eastern Europe often came to work in Ohio's steel mills and mines.
In the early 1800s, Germans were a dominant ethnicity that settled early Cincinnati.
There reportedly were German or even Nazi sympathizers there before and during U.S. entry into World War II.
At the same time, some local German-Americans, including some distant relatives of mine, thought about changing their very German names to avoid problems during the war years, such as being thought of as "the enemy."
It could be that some German-Americans in Cincinnati then went overboard the other way, feeling that being a "super American patriot" required certain political and social positions.
Going further back in history, during slavery, for a period of time, laws provided that escaping slaves who crossed north of the Ohio River into southern Ohio could not be returned to slave owners and were, as a practical matter, free.
Subsequent laws required escaping slaves to reach Canada to be free from slave catchers.
Amish and Quakers are found throughout areas of Ohio. The Underground Railroad was very active in southern Ohio during the slavery era. Some Quaker relatives of mine, according to stories and rumors, were involved in the Underground Railroad in the rural areas of southwestern Ohio.
There is a problematic element here. Next door in southern and central Indiana, the KKK is quite strong and active. This is also an aspect of the region in general.
My grandfather told a story about a relative of ours who, decades earlier, had run for sheriff in Kentucky. One night the KKK came to visit him, white robes and all. They told him if he was not on board with the KKK, he would not get elected.
He apparently told them he was not on their side … and he did not get elected sheriff.
Many people entering southern Ohio in the 1800s and 1900s were migrating from the Appalachian Mountain regions in Kentucky, such as some relatives of mine, and from elsewhere in the Appalachian region.
In more recent decades, many Appalachians chose to escape the poverty, oppression and violence of the coal-mining regions. Cincinnati was a center for these escapees too.
Among these migrating groups were people who were mixed-ethnicity European and Native American Indians such as the Cherokee whose native lands were in the Appalachian region.
Many early explorers in the 1700s had intermarried with the Cherokee and generations of mixed English-Scottish and Cherokee families lived in the region.
In the years before the 1839 "Trail of Tears" forced march west, and the confiscation of Cherokee lands and homes, many mixed-ethnicity families blended into the mainstream society, with only a few family stories or suspicions remaining about the Indian connections in the family tree, such as my own family.
Another interesting aspect of Ohio is that after the American Revolution, many Revolutionary War veterans and their families moved over the mountains to settle in eastern Ohio. Today, in the cemeteries of southeastern Ohio, you can find the gravestones of many who fought in the American Revolution.
Ohio University, where I went to college, was founded by Revolutionary War veterans.
I am happy to say that I had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and were associates and relatives of George Washington and the other American leaders of that period.
How do all of these and many other cultural, ethnic, geographic and historical elements fit together in our current political landscape as we approach the Democratic primary and then the general election?
We will soon be finding out.
Obama will probably have significant support in Ohio from a wide variety of people.
I bet that many Ohioans will be thinking long and hard about Obama, about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, about the direction our country has been going in for the last few years and about themselves and their core beliefs, deep down inside.
NOTE TO READERS: Readers interested in this article may also want to read the Jan. 28 piece: "Obama's Iraq position, mixed ethnicity are key factors." By clicking the link in the author background box at top right, readers can see Hammons' many articles on unconventional and conventional areas. Please visit his Joint Recon Study Group blog.
I was born and raised in the Cincinnati area, was given the mandatory Ohio history classes in school and later went to college in southern Ohio at nearby Ohio University in Athens, a couple of hours east of Cincinnati.
The Cincinnati and southern Ohio region has a unique history that may be relevant in the run-up to the Democratic primary and the 2008 elections. This history and current flavor of the whole state might also be of interest.
We know that Ohio has been in the news during recent elections. Concerns about questionable election processes in Ohio have been part of this.
After Cunningham made his comments at the McCain rally, another Ohio politician followed him to address the crowd ... former Congressman Rob Portman who represented the Cincinnati area.
Portman has been mentioned as a possible vice-presidential running mate with McCain, and a possible presidential candidate in 2012.
SPECIAL ELECTION
Portman left his congressional seat in 2005 to take a position in the George W. Bush administration as U.S. trade representative, which carries the rank of ambassador.
From 2006 to 2007, he took another position in the Bush administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget. He currently is working at a law firm in Cincinnati.
What is interesting is that when a special election was held for Portman's congressional seat in 2005, the solidly Republican-voting area almost elected another attorney and Marine Corps Reserve major who had served in Iraq, and was running as a centrist Democrat.
That person was Paul Hackett, and during the campaign he said that he had opposed the Iraq war, yet felt it was his duty to volunteer to serve there.
In the congressional race in August 2005, Hackett, who notably opposed gun control, gained attention by referring to George W. Bush as a "chicken hawk" for avoiding combat service in Vietnam during that war.
Hackett also said Bush made "stupid" remarks such as "bring it on," challenging insurgents in Iraq to attack U.S. troops there.
Hackett reportedly bluntly stated about Bush, "I've said I don't like the S.O.B."
Hackett's opponent, Jean Schmidt, strongly supported Bush and the Iraq war.
Hackett lost by about 3,500 votes, getting about 48 percent of the vote in a district that routinely elected the previous Republican congressman there by about 70 percent.
This was a very surprising development in southwestern Ohio.
Obama's stance on the invasion and occupation of Iraq may resonate in Ohio, where many active duty and reserve Army and National Guard personnel have been killed and wounded. Active duty Marines and Marine reservists from Ohio have also been killed and injured in high numbers in Iraq.
GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHICS
The hilly country of southwestern Ohio around Cincinnati is very much like southern Indiana next door and northern Kentucky, just south across the Ohio River.
If you go further east, the southern neighbor becomes West Virginia and southeastern Ohio is considered part of the Appalachian region, as the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains start there. There is coal mining in this region.
Many people in southern Ohio speak with a slightly or markedly southern-type accent.
An ancient glacier that flattened central and northern Ohio stopped just short of the still-hilly southern part of the state.
In that flat central Ohio area, there are plenty of farms, small and medium-size towns with the state capitol of Columbus right in the middle.
Northern Ohio has a lot of the industrial areas around Lake Erie that have had historical links with Detroit and other centers of the old "rust belt" regions.
Many people here speak with a somewhat northern type of accent.
There are many good union people in Ohio. Sometimes their social and political views are centrist and they might find positions and candidates of either major party to be valid.
Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions and have a middle class or even upper middle class economic status are educated enough to know that the struggles of the union and labor movements over the decades resulted in the benefits they have now.
Some realize that the social, economic and political forces in America that supported or opposed working people and the unions were associated in certain patterns with the two major political parties. Some Ohioans who have benefited from unions may not fully understand this history.
Obama's efforts and results in Ohio will be related to many of these these factors.
OHIO HISTORY AND ETHNICITY
Will Obama's mixed-ethnicity be a factor? Probably. There are not too many Ohioans who had a father from Kenya, Africa.
Although Ohio is not as diverse as Hawaii, where Obama mostly grew up, raised by his grandparents from Kansas, there is some interesting ethnic and historical background.
Today, you can find people of virtually every ethnic background living in Ohio.
Italian-Americans in northern Ohio, German-Americans in southwestern Ohio, you name it. People from Eastern Europe often came to work in Ohio's steel mills and mines.
In the early 1800s, Germans were a dominant ethnicity that settled early Cincinnati.
There reportedly were German or even Nazi sympathizers there before and during U.S. entry into World War II.
At the same time, some local German-Americans, including some distant relatives of mine, thought about changing their very German names to avoid problems during the war years, such as being thought of as "the enemy."
It could be that some German-Americans in Cincinnati then went overboard the other way, feeling that being a "super American patriot" required certain political and social positions.
Going further back in history, during slavery, for a period of time, laws provided that escaping slaves who crossed north of the Ohio River into southern Ohio could not be returned to slave owners and were, as a practical matter, free.
Subsequent laws required escaping slaves to reach Canada to be free from slave catchers.
Amish and Quakers are found throughout areas of Ohio. The Underground Railroad was very active in southern Ohio during the slavery era. Some Quaker relatives of mine, according to stories and rumors, were involved in the Underground Railroad in the rural areas of southwestern Ohio.
There is a problematic element here. Next door in southern and central Indiana, the KKK is quite strong and active. This is also an aspect of the region in general.
My grandfather told a story about a relative of ours who, decades earlier, had run for sheriff in Kentucky. One night the KKK came to visit him, white robes and all. They told him if he was not on board with the KKK, he would not get elected.
He apparently told them he was not on their side … and he did not get elected sheriff.
Many people entering southern Ohio in the 1800s and 1900s were migrating from the Appalachian Mountain regions in Kentucky, such as some relatives of mine, and from elsewhere in the Appalachian region.
In more recent decades, many Appalachians chose to escape the poverty, oppression and violence of the coal-mining regions. Cincinnati was a center for these escapees too.
Among these migrating groups were people who were mixed-ethnicity European and Native American Indians such as the Cherokee whose native lands were in the Appalachian region.
Many early explorers in the 1700s had intermarried with the Cherokee and generations of mixed English-Scottish and Cherokee families lived in the region.
In the years before the 1839 "Trail of Tears" forced march west, and the confiscation of Cherokee lands and homes, many mixed-ethnicity families blended into the mainstream society, with only a few family stories or suspicions remaining about the Indian connections in the family tree, such as my own family.
Another interesting aspect of Ohio is that after the American Revolution, many Revolutionary War veterans and their families moved over the mountains to settle in eastern Ohio. Today, in the cemeteries of southeastern Ohio, you can find the gravestones of many who fought in the American Revolution.
Ohio University, where I went to college, was founded by Revolutionary War veterans.
I am happy to say that I had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and were associates and relatives of George Washington and the other American leaders of that period.
How do all of these and many other cultural, ethnic, geographic and historical elements fit together in our current political landscape as we approach the Democratic primary and then the general election?
We will soon be finding out.
Obama will probably have significant support in Ohio from a wide variety of people.
I bet that many Ohioans will be thinking long and hard about Obama, about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, about the direction our country has been going in for the last few years and about themselves and their core beliefs, deep down inside.
NOTE TO READERS: Readers interested in this article may also want to read the Jan. 28 piece: "Obama's Iraq position, mixed ethnicity are key factors." By clicking the link in the author background box at top right, readers can see Hammons' many articles on unconventional and conventional areas. Please visit his Joint Recon Study Group blog.
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