Walter Shapiro, Salon
- The rest of the political world may be obsessed with Sarah Palin, but the four-letter word that comes up most often in conversations with Ohio political insiders has nothing to do with the overhyped vice-presidential nominee.
What shapes campaign discussions — both on- and off-the-record with leading Democrats and Republicans alike in this tightly knotted industrial state — is uncertainty over the electoral impact of Barack Obama’s race. No one has the hubris to try to quantify the racial factor (unlike amateur political mavens who exude ill-informed certainty) and no one dismisses the chances of Obama winning Ohio’s 20 electoral votes. But with early voting scheduled to begin here Sept. 30 (another first for Ohio), there is an undercurrent of nervousness among Democrats about the party’s great experiment in nominating Obama.
“I know there is a real concern out there that some people who normally would be voting Democratic might not vote for an African-American,” said Tim Burke, the Democratic chairman of Hamilton County (Cincinnati and its suburbs). “Gov. [Ted] Strickland has spoken openly about this.” Campaigning for Obama in Jackson County in the Appalachian southeastern corner of the state earlier this month, Strickland declared, “I’m going to talk about the elephant in the room — and I’m not talking about any Republican. The elephant in the room is what everybody’s thinking but nobody willing to talk about … it’s race.”
