A swing through Ohio: The home of Joe the Plumber (Independent / UK)

[struggle4progress]

... Rupert Cornwell ... from Canton, Ohio
Sunday, 19 October 2008

... Like the rest of the US, Ohio is living in fear, but not of tax increases for would-be plumbing entrepreneurs making over $250,000 (£145,000) a year ...

A better symbol of Canton is the empty red-brick Hoover factory six miles north of the city centre. Once it was the headquarters of one of the marque names of American business. A year ago the place shut down for good, with the loss of the last 750 jobs. In front, a US flag still flies defiantly above a tended lawn. But all around are vast parking lots eerily empty, with weeds sprouting through cracks in the tarmac ...

... Once upon a time, in 1896, a Canton native named William McKinley could become America's 25th President with a now legendary "front porch" campaign, staying in his house on Market Street and having the voters (an estimated 750,000 in all) come to him. This time one or other presidential or vice-presidential nominee is stumping in Ohio almost daily.

But when they are not, Mr Obama's far superior financial resources mean he is hands-down winner of the even more ubiquitous television and radio ad wars. "Barack Obama is running his campaign like a Republican," a local strategist joked last week. "He's better organised, his people are smarter and he's outspending the opposition" ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/race-for-whitehouse/a-swing-through-ohio-the-home-of-joe-the-plumber-966258.html