Analysis: Closeness of race a surprise
Few expected Hackett's performance in GOP-heavy district
By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005
news.cincinnati.com
The apparent win by Republican Jean Schmidt in Tuesday's 2nd Congressional District election was in no way shocking, but the fact that Democrat Paul Hackett made it a very close election is nothing short of astounding.
Seven weeks ago, when Schmidt won an 11-candidate primary, few on either side believed that, in a district where President Bush won 64 percent of the vote last fall and no Democrat had come close to winning the House seat in decades, this would be much of a contest at all.
But Hackett, the Indian Hill lawyer trying to become the first Iraq war veteran elected to Congress, had won the vote in Brown, Adams, Pike and Scioto counties and came close to pulling off a monumental political upset.
Hackett supporters who gathered Tuesday night at the Aronoff Center were heartened by early returns, but by the time Hamilton County results came in and gave Schmidt a slim lead, it became apparent that the Clermont County results would likely bury any chances for a Hackett victory.
Either way the voters of the 2nd District went, they were bound to make history Tuesday. Electing Schmidt would make her the first woman to represent southern Ohio on Capitol Hill, and electing Hackett, a major in the Marine Corps Reserves, would have put the first Iraq war veteran in Congress.
The ongoing war in Iraq and Afghanistan was a central issue in the race, with Hackett criticizing the Bush administration for invading Iraq in the first place and urging a swift training of Iraqi security forces and a speedy withdrawal of U.S. forces, while Schmidt steadfastly supported the Bush administration in all aspects of the war on terrorism.
It was a particularly potent issue in the 2nd Congressional District, where military service is honored and where five families have seen loved ones killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
...Hackett's campaign tried to convince 2nd District voters - two-thirds of whom voted for President Bush last fall - that Schmidt would go to Congress and be a "rubber stamp'' for the Bush administration not only on the war, but a host of other issues.
Schmidt insisted she would support the president's agenda when she agreed and oppose it when she disagreed.
"I am the candidate who is in tune with the people of the 2nd District,'' Schmidt said in an Adams County debate last week. "My opponent is a liberal Democrat who is out of step with the district.''
But, for both candidates, the key to Tuesday's election - an election that everyone knew would have relatively low turnout - was to identify supporters and cajole them into turning out for an election when school is out, many families are on vacations, and the heat was insufferable.
Turnout Tuesday in the western, most populous part of the district appeared to be light, ranging from 10 to 20 percent by late afternoon on a day where 95 degrees temperatures and high humidity may have been as much of a factor as lack of motivation.
But in some areas, like the heavily Republican suburb of Madeira, turnout was over 30 percent by late afternoon, with nearly three hours of voting time left.
One of the oldest saws of politics is that high turnouts favor Democrats, but many Democrats believed this election may be the exception to the rule.
"I don't now what low turnout means in this case,'' said Tim Burke, Hamilton County Democratic chairman. "It may be good for us, if our voters are more motivated to get out and vote.''
...This is, and has been for decades, one of the most reliably Republican districts in the country; and a district where GOP voters turned out in droves last fall to vote overwhelmingly for President Bush. The southern Ohio district played a major role in giving Bush the 118,601 margin he needed to win Ohio, and thus, a second term in the White House.
And it is a district that has been held by Republicans for over 30 years. Rob Portman won the seat in a special congressional election 12 years ago and never got less than 70 percent in his six re-election campaigns.
After Schmidt won an 11-candidate GOP primary on June 14, there was a feeling on both sides that the special election campaign would not be much of a contest.
That feeling turned out to be wrong.
By the middle of last week - with cable network news crews tailing the Iraq war veteran candidate along the highways and byways of the 2nd District, and internal polls indicating Hackett was a real threat - the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) landed in southern Ohio with both feet, pouring more than a half-million dollars into TV advertising claiming Hackett wanted to raise taxes.
Hackett also got the attention of the Ohio Republican Party, which sent its entire field staff to the 2nd District to set up phone bank operations in all seven counties of the district.
Carl Forti, a spokesman for the NRCC, said last Thursday that the party had decided to "bury'' Hackett because of a quote that day in USA Today in which Hackett said he was willing to go to Iraq and serve for "the son of a bi - - - in the White House."
But by that time, the NRCC attack ad had been produced, and air time was bought on all Cincinnati TV stations.
It did not take long for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to respond.
Within 24 hours of the Republican attack ads, the DCCC responded with a TV ad campaign linking Schmidt to Ohio's unpopular governor, Bob Taft, saying she willingly supported tax increases proposed by Taft and, like the governor, was the subject of ethical questions - in her case, her acceptance of a free dinner and Bengals tickets from a Columbus lobbyist. Schmidt later reimbursed the lobbyist for the gifts.
Copyright 2005, The Enquirer |
