For whom the bellwether tolls: Is Ohio an omen?

Getty Images photo of voters in line.

Ohio a few years ago was stripped by political scientists of the title “bellwether state.” 

That was a perilous mistake. It assumes that elections and politics are what matter — not Ohio. There is something darker at play: Ohio remains the bellwether for America’s mood, the mood is anxiety, and left unchecked anxiety can abandon democracy — or even smash it.

Ohio is well down that road, and there is reason to believe that there are equally anxious pockets growing across the country.

The failure to recognize this angst, and respect it, is no different from racism, or sexism. The highly educated, comfortably paid academics, political scientists and pundits — the self-actualized who pay homage to diversity, equity and inclusion for race, gender, heritage and disabilities — fail to respect a diagnosable mental health issue, anxiety. 

Even Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, who says he is perplexed by America’s seemingly irrational economic perspective, posed the question, “What’s the matter with Ohio?” in a recent New York Times column. He checked off facts and logic to try to understand the reasons Ohioans vote and act as they do, but he did it without one critical step, which is to listen to people talk.

Talk, in Ohio, oozes anxiety.

But first, let’s back up. What’s a bellwether? It’s the predictor. From 1896 to 2016, the majority of Ohioans voted for the presidential winner on all but two occasions. Thus, the old saying was, “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.” 

So for decades, political writers parachuted into the state at election time, visiting this and that Ohio diner in search of “real people” who would talk honestly about their feelings — because Ohioans mattered. There was statistical evidence to back it up. Ohio, until a few years ago, was basically average. The state reflected America on many quality-of-life measures, like income, education and life expectancy. 

But then came Donald Trump’s 2020 national loss despite his resounding 8-point victory in Ohio. Curious political analysts reviewed Ohio’s quality-of-life statistics and declared that 2020 was not a blip. The state’s household income had fallen 16 percent below the national rate, life expectancy declined while nationally it grew, Ohio routinely ranked in the top five for the opioid-overdose death rate and the state had fallen behind in college education. 

It was only days after the election that political scientists and journalists yanked the bellwether title. 

However, Ohio’s slide into economic and mental despair is a caricature for islands of anxiety in such places as Newark, Waterloo, Buffalo, Birmingham, St. Louis, and Los Angeles.

An understanding of Ohio can shed light on Donald Trump’s continued resonance as he beats a drum for retribution and autocracy.

Consider the life of manufacturing workers across America. They can identify with Ohio’s once robust auto, steel, tire and glass plants where American Dream jobs were displaced by automation. There are places in the South and Northeast and even the Pacific Coast that resemble the vast stretches of Ohio’s Mahoning, Cuyahoga and Miami valleys, where Google Earth imagery reveals the ghosts of abandoned railroad yards and footprints of dismantled factories. 

Nearly one of every three Ohio goods-producing jobs has been lost since 2000 — the backbone of the state’s century of success. Ohio’s median household income peaked in 2000. Some major urban counties, already economically ravaged at the turn of the century, lost in excess of 15% in yearly income since then. Economic and social depression followed, accompanied by an overdose crisis so deadly that Ohio’s life expectancy declined while the nation improved. 

Now comes the second shoe. 

At two recent community conversations in an upscale Cleveland suburb, where the discussion topic was trust, and who to trust, the threat of AI swept the room. There were real stories of AI taking jobs from young journalists, veteran lawyers, civil engineers, logistical experts and more. 

And if that weren’t enough, they feared the power of AI to deceive people who already are distressed. 

As an Ohio journalist for five decades who has relied on focus groups, community conversations and citizen juries, I can attest that these are raw feelings of people who increasingly feel unheard and disrespected. Hearing their reasons helps explain what’s happening in Ohio — not “what’s the matter with Ohio.”

Anxiety is a disorder that can come from trauma — like loss of financial security and health benefits. Anxiety can manifest itself in panic, phobias and diminished capacity to act in one’s best interest. In fact, Krugman raised that very question: Why do Ohioans seemingly vote and act against their best interests? 

Consider what Ohioans have done in recent years:

• Ohioans are significantly over-represented in the list of people charged or convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, ranking fourth among the states for arrests as a percent of population.

• A meeting of paramilitary groups, including some who would later be charged in the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, was held in an upscale suburb of Ohio’s capital city.

• The White male supremacist in the Charlottesville Unite the Right event who drove through a crowd killing and injuring counter protestors was from Ohio.

• The only violence following the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home was an armed Ohio man who attempted to enter FBI offices in Cincinnati, ending in a shoot-out.

• And in religion, the split in the United Methodist Church was profound in Ohio, which had the highest number of defections in the Midwest. According to a Methodist study, the secessionist congregations opposed the “big-tent” welcoming policy of leadership and leaned into Christian nationalism.

Smashing government and institutions is now in Ohio’s water. Elected officials are freed to dismantle democracy:

• In exchange for $61 million in bribes, a gaggle of Republican and corporate leaders orchestrated a $1.3 billion utility-rate increase in 2019 — on people already struggling economically. Though the House Speaker and former party chief are in prison, two of the accused committed suicide and two others await trial, state leaders have not changed course. Ohioans still pay an estimated $500,000 daily in higher electric rates due to gross public corruption.

• The state withheld critical information that could have saved hundreds from opioid overdoses. Amidst rumors that overdose deaths were increasing in 2021, Gov. Mike DeWine shut down access to death data as he prepared for his 2022 reelection campaign. Those numbers had been used for several years by journalists to explore efficacy of intervention programs in their communities, but for DeWine’s 2022 reelection bid, no one knew whether the overdose epidemic was under control. It wasn’t. The overall deaths increased by 300 in 2021. Open government was gone.

• Then there was the outright disregard for the rule of law. DeWine and the supermajority Republican legislature gave themselves less than two months in 2021 to redraw legislative districts in compliance with a new anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment passed overwhelmingly by Ohioans. The state supreme court determined that the hastily drawn maps were in violation of the constitution. DeWine and the redistricting commission defied the court and did not draw compliant districts. 

• To no one’s surprise, then, Ohioans in 2022 elected another legislative GOP supermajority from egregiously gerrymandered and unconstitutional districts — and reelected a governor who was withholding death records.

• Next was the dismantling of public education. In 2023, the unconstitutionally gerrymandered super-majority stripped the elected state board of education of its power and transferred the state’s biggest function — public education — into DeWine’s office. This was in direct opposition to a long-ago state referendum that established an independent department of education overseen by an elected state board.  

• As for the state supreme court, which had ruled that the legislative districts were unconstitutional, DeWine and the GOP had a plan for retribution. They changed the judicial election process from nonpartisan to partisan and then poured money into the Republican ticket, and won. The new court — which includes DeWine’s son — approved the latest legislative maps.

• And, Ohio is the home of U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, who would have overthrown the 2020 election, Congressman Jim Jordan, who participated in a key White House meeting with Trump in the lead-up to Jan. 6, and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who said he would have changed the 2020 election process — on Jan. 6, 2021.

If an authoritarian government isn’t enough, there are a few statistics about violence that add to the gloom: In the last 20 years, Ohio’s homicide rate more than doubled. In 2000, it ranked 27th among the states and the homicide rate was lower than the nation’s. By 2021, Ohio was 16th and homicides per 100,000 people were 37% higher than the U.S. rate.

In 2019, Ohio ranked 10th in the nation for hate crimes per million people. In 2021, it rose to seventh. And despite decades of scientific evidence, Ohioans are more likely to smoke and less likely to eat their vegetables.  

Not much is working for Ohioans. And just like everything else in America, the squad of national pundits — college-educated and employed and reliant on facts — is deaf to the entirely different and equally important set of facts that explain anxiety. 

So, they still conjecture that the next criminal case against Trump will make a difference — or maybe it won’t because his supporters are in a cult. Or maybe this is a rural problem. Or a white male problem. 

Those experts, the pundits, need to do more than visit a diner or consult the data. They need to be in dialogue, over time, with groups of people who share stories. See that a growing number of Americans — even the employed and college educated — are fearful for themselves and their children. They’re tired of hearing bad news, fearful of AI, losing hope, and if no one is going to respect their feelings, let alone help, then, well maybe smashing it all provides an opportunity for a fresh start.

Listening was an attribute of my former employer, the Akron Beacon Journal. A Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper, we utilized a variety of community engagement events to inform our coverage. 

In 25 years of our dialogues designed by Alice Rodgers, a preeminent social researcher, a question was always posed at the end of a long discussion: What can you do to cause positive change? Participants invariably said they should express their thoughts to elected representatives on the local city council, in the state legislature and Congress.

But something noteworthy happened when she asked the question in 2007. Ohio already was in steep decline ahead of the nation’s Great Recession. Focus-group participants expressed deep concern about the financial security of their families. One highly educated executive was visibly shaken as he talked about how his self-worth was at stake. 

And when they were asked the closing question, “What might you do?” they said they probably should contact elected representatives to express their concerns, then wondered aloud: “Does that work anymore?”

The turning point came after the Great Recession. In 2012, in 25 unique Beacon Journal focus groups exploring growing incivility and outright anger, participants invariably concluded at the end of each session that contacting elected representatives was of no value. Politicians don’t care, don’t listen, and instead manipulate. Moreover, in a statewide poll and in the focus groups, Ohioans blamed the news media for creating the R-vs-D tension, failure to represent community complexity, and failing to respect the real-life despair across the region.

So in 2016, after Hillary Clinton pilloried Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables,” signs appeared in front yards across Ohio: “Deplorable and proud of it.” Ohio voted overwhelmingly against Clinton and overwhelmingly for an opponent who wanted to lock her up, punch a few people and was pointing to news media as the enemy. He validated their anxiety.

Nearly eight years later, Ohio’s and America’s anxiety level grows. As politicians and journalists visit the nation’s diners, the anxiety is manipulated or extracted rather than respected. Resentment turns into a blind fury and a willingness to dismantle constitutional democracy. 

Historian Yuval Noah Harari a few years ago used a disturbing title for a new class of people that would emerge perhaps by 2033: “The useless class.” The people who already fall into that category are the workers displaced by automation. Soon, the long-relegated will be joined by the educated white-collar workers whose jobs are eliminated by artificial intelligence. 

The newspaper dialogues showed emerging concern in 2007, and conversations today show AI to be a looming threat to once-happy homes in nice suburbs. 

Many Ohioans are willing to overlook Trump’s sexual assault of a woman and description of World War II soldiers killed in action as “suckers” and “losers.” They’re okay with tyranny and retribution. Emerson College polls of Ohioans in November, February and March suggest that the state is leaning even more heavily to Trump than in 2020. 

Is Ohio an anomaly, or a bellwether? The New York Times recently documented growth of registered Republican voters across the country — but not registered Democrats — suggesting that the anxiety and anger is spreading. 

Is America doomed to violent revenge? 

There is a hopeful answer. Something good always came out of those community dialogues: People found common ground and actionable solutions, and journalists often observed, “I didn’t know people could get along so well.”

In the Your Voice Ohio media collaborative across the state in 2015-2020, there was an interesting finding. In Warren and Dayton — Ohio cities that have been in economic decline the longest — people were more likely to conclude that no one was coming to help. From that conclusion arose an idea that they should redefine happiness and create their own sustainability — not by tearing down, but by finding new ways to build each other up.

Moreover, when leaders and journalists sat as equals with citizens in earnest dialogue, what followed were long-term solutions, high-fives, hugs and a little hope. Imagine that in the parking lot of a diner in Ohio. 

Doug Oplinger is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist who worked at the Akron Beacon Journal for 46 years, serving the last 10 as managing editor. He managed newsroom collaboratives in the Your Voice Ohio project, was a Kettering Foundation fellow, and now works with a variety of organizations convening community-journalist conversations across the country. He can be reached at oplingerdoug@gmail.com

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