Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Jill Miller Zimon Raises Good Point: Why Didn't PD Do Story on Ohio Trending Blue?

Jill Miller Zimon, who is the author and owner of Writes Like She Talks a blog that covers writing, education, children, and politics raised a really interesting point in a posting that appeared on www.cleveland.com on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 She asked the question why was the Dayton Daily News and not the Plain Dealer doing a story on exurban counties trending Democratic. One of the counties that was profiled by the Dayton Daily News is Medina County which, as Jill noted, is much closer to Cleveland than it is to Dayton. (She was also kind enough to mention our own MCDAC Blog, which was certainly nice of her and appreciated.)

Of course, part of the problem may be that Medina County is much better known to the Cleveland Plain Dealer than to the Dayton Daily News. As a result they may not have been as impressed by Senator Sherrod Brown carrying Medina County since PD reporters would know that Sherrod represented all or part of Medina County from 1992 to 2006 before being elected to the Senate. Consequently, they may not have thought that it represented a political trend.

All that is true, but it doesn't totally explain why every state-wide Democrat running for a partisan office carried Medina County except for Barbara Sykes, who ran for State Auditor. You can explain away Brown and Strickland by pointing out that Brown's connection to Medina County and Strickland having a wing-nut for an opponent. Explaining away the Cordray and Dann victories, however, is much harder.

All this is not to say that MCDAC expects Medina County to go Democrat in the presidential campaign next year. It is to say that we expect that Medina County will be competitive and could be carried by the right Democratic candidate.

1 comment:

Jill said...

Thanks for noting that post. Since I live in an area of Cuyahoga County that I hear others say is trending that way too, although it seems as though the Independents outnumber everyone, I'm very very interested in this whole topic of color changing. :)