Monday, February 28, 2000
GOP voters to candidates: Convince us
GOP hotbeds slow to make final decisions
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
TROY, Ohio — Presidential campaigns spend a lot of money on “focus groups,” where they hot-wire a sampling of the electorate and gauge their nervous system reactions to political buzz words and video images.
They could probably save their money.
If the campaign consultants want to know what rock-ribbed Republicans in Ohio are thinking about the GOP presidential primary that is only eight days away, all they would need is a visit to the “Liars' Table” at Dudley's Pastry Kitchen across from the Miami County Courthouse in Troy, about 75 miles north of Cincinnati.
“Politics is all these guys talk about,” said Bob Clawson, a 76-year-old farmer and insurance agent, who 10 years ago ended a quarter-century run as a Miami County commissioner. “Well, not all they talk about. But a lot.”
The Pastry Kitchen, sitting on Main Street in this city of about 20,000, is smack in the middle of a western tier of Ohio counties that are dependably Republican in local, state and national elections. From towns like St. Marys, Wapakoneta, Piqua and Troy, to the mushrooming housing developments of West Chester and the rock-ribbed townships of Hamilton County, the Republican Party depends on these people to win elections.
Now, with the Ohio primary only eight days away, the major contenders — George W. Bush and John McCain — are both tailoring their messages to these voters, who are always a target in Ohio GOP primaries.
Both candidates have TV ads beaming into family rooms in Ohio's Republican heartland that emphasize their conservative, tax-cutting, waste-fighting credentials — themes that usually strike a chord with voters here.
Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush, it seems, are trying to convince the fellows at the Liars' Table that they'll be the tightest with their tax bucks.
In Troy, on any weekday morning, from the crack of dawn until midmorning, a group of 10 or 12 gathers at the Liars' Table for a stream-of-consciousness conversation that can, in the space of time it takes to drain a 55-cent cup of coffee, run from Ken Griffey Jr. to farm tractors to the Troy Trojans football squad to the continuing Bush-McCain battle for the GOP nomination.
Democrats are welcome to join in, but nearly everyone who sits down at the Liars' Table is a Republican — not surprising in a west central Ohio county that is part of the bedrock Republican voting base that starts just south of Toledo and runs down I-75 to the Cincinnati suburbs.
If the GOP candidates came here to Troy, they would find a group of practical, hard-headed conservatives who would sit with their arms folded across their chests saying, “Convince me.”
“I want to hear more of what they have to say,” said Bus Allen, a retired factory worker who has been a regular at the Pastry Kitchen's morning bull session for decades. “I want to hear more before I make up my mind.”
Last Wednesday, the morning after Mr. McCain pulled out a victory in the Michigan primary, some of the regulars at the Pastry Kitchen were saying they were leaning toward Mr. Bush but were willing to give Mr. McCain a listen.
“There's two good candidates on the Republican side,” said Doug Trostle, an engineer and freshly-elected member of the Troy Board of Education.
“But no matter who wins, it's going to be a tough election; Al Gore will be hard to beat,” Mr. Trostle said.
“I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of the guys here go for McCain in the end,” said Mr. Clawson, who has five decades of Miami County Republican politics under his belt, saying the Arizona senator has a life story as a Navy pilot and prisoner of war that “a lot of these guys think is pretty impressive.”
“Republicans here are pretty independent,” Mr. Clawson said. “A lot of people are going to make up their minds when they walk into the voting booth.”
That same day, the show-meattitude was much in evidence also about 30 miles to the north in the Auglaize County town of St. Marys, hard on the eastern shore of Grand Lake St. Marys, Ohio's largest inland lake.
There, about 50 people — nearly all Republicans — gathered in the Rotary Club room of Matt's Restaurant for a Rotary meeting and a lunch of stuffed veal or meatloaf, with heaping mounds of mashed potatoes and chocolate cream pie.
The draw at the St. Marys Rotary this day was not presidential politics, but a debate between the two Republican candidates for the 12th Ohio Senate District seat. Republican Robert Cupp, the popular incumbent from Lima, is term-limited out; and two state representatives — Jim Buchy of Greenville and James Jordan of Urbana — are locked in an expensive and ferocious primary battle for the GOP nomination, which, in this district, means near-automatic election.
Ask the Rotarians here about the presidential primary and they will almost invariably talk first about the Buchy-Jordan fight — an inescapable, very local battle that is more real to them than a presidential race played out mostly on TV news reports.
“It's a shame we have to go through this,” said Jeffrey Squire, a St. Marys lawyer. “We've got a good state senator who we would re-elect if we could and two good state representatives running and one of them will lose. Term limits stink.”
“The presidential race really hasn't kicked in here,” Mr. Squire said. “But I suspect it will real soon.”
Andrea Schroyer of nearby Celina, sitting next to Mr. Squire at one of the lunch tables before the debate, is a Bush supporter and said she thinks he will win the area. But, like most Republicans here, she has nothing bad to say about Mr. McCain.
“They're both good candidates,” said Ms. Schroyer, who is county recorder in Mercer County. “But this is Bush country.”
People here like President Bush, Ms. Schroyer said, and the feeling extends to his eldest son.
It certainly was for the elder Mr. Bush and it may well be for his son, George W. Eight years ago, when Bill Clinton won Ohio's electoral votes with 40 percent to 38 percent for then-President Bush, the 4th Congressional District, which includes Auglaize County, gave Mr. Bush 46 percent, compared with only 30 percent for Mr. Clinton.
In the 8th Congressional District, which takes in Miami County and stretches west and southward to take in Butler County, the 1992 vote was 47 percent for Mr. Bush and 29 percent for Mr. Clinton.
“This is good solid, Republican country,” said Pat Cogan, the Rotary Club president and a St. Marys insurance agent. “Whoever wins the nomination is going to do very well in places like St. Marys.”
To the south of smaller cities like Troy and St. Marys, down in the Cincinnati metropolitan area where there is a mother lode of votes for Republican candidates, Republicans seem to have chosen sides in the GOP presidential battle much sooner than their counterparts to the north.
Last week, at the Butler County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bush-for-president stickers were much in evidence among the 800 guests.
“McCain's got my ear a bit, but I'm backing Bush,” said Scott Owens, a mortgage manager from West Chester.
Julie Makowski, a 21-year-old Miami University student who is from Aurora, Ohio, said she will vote for Mr. Bush in the primary, but more because she is anti-McCain than pro-Bush.
“I just don't agree with him on campaign finance reform,” said Ms. Makowski, the president of the Miami University College Republicans Club.
Mr. Bush, she said, appeals to her for his interest in education issues.
Republicans like Mr. Owens and Ms. Makowski say they do not want to see a Republican nominee who was chosen by independents and Democrats. Those cross-over voters were the source of Mr. McCain's primary victories in New Hampshire and Michigan and Bush supporters in Ohio fear they could help Mr. McCain win here, too.
But, last Tuesday night, when 60 Cincinnati-area McCain volunteers gathered at Wille's Bar and Grill in Kenwood to cheer their candidate as the Michigan results came in, most of the crowd was Republican. But many were the kind of Republicans who vote that way in elections, but don't ordinarily go out and work in campaigns.
“This is the very first campaign I've volunteered in,” said Virginia Louise, a retiree and Republican voter from Hyde Park.
Ms. Louise and the other McCain volunteers got packets with lists of area voters they are supposed to call between now and the election to spread the McCain message.
“I like him because he's the one candidate who is the exact opposite of Bill Clinton,” Ms. Louise said. “Courage. Integrity. Intelligence. He is going to bring dignity to the White House.”
The McCain supporters at Willie's cheered when, on the giant TV screen, CNN projected Mr. McCain as the winner of the Michigan primary. Ms. Louise said she was glad she finally got involved.
“I wouldn't have wanted to miss this,” she said. “The next two weeks are going to be fun.”
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