Ohio’s job growth doesn’t guarantee an Obama win

CHARLES BABINGTON

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The nation’s unem­ploy­ment rate of 8.2 per­cent may sink Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s re-election bid, but one detail bright­ens his hopes. About 10 bat­tle­ground states will decide the elec­tion, and seven of them have employ­ment lev­els that beat the U.S. average.

That doesn’t guar­an­tee a sec­ond term, of course. But it’s a reminder that the national rate, from a purely polit­i­cal stand­point, is not nec­es­sar­ily the be-all, end-all statistic.

Most of the states are led by Repub­li­can gov­er­nors eager to high­light their progress in cre­at­ing jobs. That com­pli­cates GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Romney’s claim that the econ­omy has been so mis­man­aged that Obama deserves to be ousted.

In addi­tion, a chief Rom­ney crit­i­cism, that Obama is hin­der­ing energy pro­duc­tion, is under­mined by robust drilling for nat­ural gas that’s cre­at­ing jobs and some wealthy landown­ers in two impor­tant states, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In Ohio, the quin­tes­sen­tial toss-up state and prac­ti­cally a must-win for Rom­ney, Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich tries to finesse the polit­i­cal dilemma by say­ing jobs have increased despite Obama’s policies.

“We fight like crazy to out­per­form the fed­eral gov­ern­ment,” he told reporters last week in the State­house in Colum­bus. “We have. We’re down to 7.4 per­cent unemployment.”

But Ohio can’t con­tin­u­ally buck the national trend, Kasich said, and he warned of a likely drop in job growth soon, largely due to grid­lock and uncer­tainty in Wash­ing­ton. “Rome is on fire and it’s singe­ing places like Ohio,” he said. “We’ll go our own way, but the head­winds are kick­ing up again.”

Some of the most polit­i­cally con­tested states are strug­gling more than others.

Florida’s unem­ploy­ment rate has dropped steadily for nearly a year, but at 8.7 per­cent still tops the national aver­age. North Carolina’s rate is even worse, and Nevada has the high­est, 11.7 percent.

If Obama were to carry all the com­pet­i­tive states where the employ­ment rate is brighter than the national aver­age — New Hamp­shire, Iowa, Vir­ginia, Wis­con­sin, Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia and Col­orado — he would win re-election hand­ily. But if he loses the bat­tle­ground states where the rate now exceeds 7 per­cent, an oft-cited thresh­old that may mean noth­ing, Rom­ney would pre­vail because he would take Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia and Col­orado, plus Florida, North Car­olina and Nevada.

Rom­ney cam­paign also must cope with boasts, often by Repub­li­cans and busi­ness lead­ers, that things are much bet­ter at the local level than in other regions.

“Mid­west has econ­omy on right track,” said an op-ed head­line last week in The Colum­bus Dis­patch. Stephen D. Steinour, pres­i­dent of Hunt­ing­ton Banc­shares, wrote: “The Mid­west is not only resur­gent, it is lead­ing the national eco­nomic recovery.”

Ohio’s unem­ploy­ment rate has fallen nine months in a row. That trend encour­ages Obama’s sup­port­ers, but it might have scant influ­ence on the Nov. 6 election.

Sev­eral polit­i­cal sci­en­tists’ stud­ies have con­cluded that vot­ers are less influ­enced by local and state eco­nomic trends than by national sta­tis­tics. Also, U.S. unem­ploy­ment climbed so sharply, start­ing in mid-2008, that even a steady decline over the past year still leaves mil­lions with­out jobs.

Politi­cians use such sta­tis­tics to por­tray their records in the best pos­si­ble light, and their oppo­nents in the worst. In Ohio, Democ­rats are seiz­ing on two giants of the indus­trial sec­tor, energy and auto­mo­bile pro­duc­tion, to try to under­cut Romney.

Repub­li­cans often accuse Obama of thwart­ing energy pro­duc­tion. But he largely has encour­aged the dra­matic growth in nat­ural gas extrac­tion tak­ing place in Penn­syl­va­nia, Ohio and a few other states. In a process known as hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “frack­ing,” pres­sur­ized water and chem­i­cals are injected into under­ground shale, extract­ing oil, nat­ural gas and other prof­itable gasses.

Thou­sands of wells have been drilled in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, help­ing the state lower its unem­ploy­ment rate from 8.1 per­cent last August to 7.4 per­cent this spring.

Ohio trails Penn­syl­va­nia in gas well pro­duc­tion. But frack­ing has boosted Ohio’s sag­ging steel indus­try through its need for spe­cial­ized pipes.

Hulk­ing, largely silent steel plants in Youngstown, Can­ton, Lorain and other towns are adding work­ers and pro­duc­tion lines. The revived U.S. auto indus­try also is demand­ing more steel, and there, too, Ohio Democ­rats see a point to raise against Romney.

Rom­ney opposed fed­eral sub­si­dies that propped up Chrysler and Gen­eral Motors as they approached bank­ruptcy in early 2009. Rom­ney said pri­vate invest­ments should have been used, but offi­cials over­see­ing the process said no such funds were avail­able and the com­pa­nies would have collapsed.

“The res­cue of the auto indus­try was the great­est con­trib­u­tor” to Ohio’s recent eco­nomic growth, said for­mer Gov. Ted Strick­land, a Demo­c­rat ousted by Kasich in 2010. When Rom­ney called it an unwar­ranted pay­off to labor unions, Strick­land said, he showed “a lack of under­stand­ing of this industry.”

If Ohio’s man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor is show­ing new signs of life, many res­i­dents have yet to see it. The impact on the pres­i­den­tial race is hard to predict.

In Elyria, west of Cleve­land and not far from Lorain, college-educated peo­ple who once made $60,000 a year are beg­ging for jobs as cooks mak­ing $9.50 an hour at Applebee’s, said the restaurant’s man­ager, Tony Tenorio.

“We get tons and tons of appli­ca­tions,” said Teno­rio, 30. “We can be really picky.”

Across the street are empty build­ings that once housed a T.G.I. Friday’s, Long­horn Steak­house and the Eat’n Park cafe. “It’s pretty tough,” Teno­rio said, adding that Applebee’s less-expensive entrees are popular.

He said Obama may strug­gle to win Ohio again this year. “Talk­ing with peo­ple, I don’t think the work­ing class has his back,” Teno­rio said. Vot­ers may be will­ing to give Rom­ney a chance, he said.

“The Amer­i­can peo­ple are pulling at straws,” Teno­rio said. “If this straw doesn’t work, maybe another one will.”

At a nearby food court, Dave Moore, 68, was hav­ing cof­fee and a snack with some fel­low retirees. Moore once had a union­ized cus­to­dial job at a gro­cery chain. He retired in 2003, then found it impos­si­ble to land another job when he sought work a few years later.

“I can’t use a com­puter,” Moore said glumly.

Moore, a Demo­c­rat, said he will vote for Obama, albeit with lit­tle enthu­si­asm. “Rom­ney scares me,” he said. “He’s big busi­ness. Does he think of us, the lit­tle guy?”

“Obama does a lit­tle more for us,” Moore said, nib­bling a cookie. “It’s bet­ter than nothing.”

Posted by AP News on Jun 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.