Good luck and keep attacking Trump.
Getting Ohio Democrats who voted for President Donald Trump back into the fold was a theme Sunday as Democratic candidates for governor appeared before the public in Marysville.
The first official Democratic debate of 2018 isn’t until March 7 in Toledo, but gubernatorial candidates are sharpening their differences in the run-up to it.
The location of Sunday’s forum was an interesting choice for Democrats. It was in Union County, was one of only five counties in Ohio to go for conservative Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and which last went for a Democrat in 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt topped the ticket in the depths of the Great Depression, said Tony Eufinger, a local attorney.
But Bill Steele, chairman of the Union County Democratic Party, said it’s turning into the kind of place Democrats are targeting across the country. Steele said it’s now Ohio’s fastest-growing county and, going into the 2018 midterms, Democrats are especially targeting suburban and exurban women who have been turned off by Trump.
The candidates on the stage, however, also talked about how to win back blue-collar voters who traditionally have formed the backbone of the Ohio Democratic Party. All vowed vehemently to fight what they see as union-busting and other anti-labor measures emanating from the Republican-controlled legislature.
Ohio Sen. Joe Schiavoni, an amateur boxer from the Youngstown area, said he tries not to lead with his chin when talking to eastern Ohio voters.
“I’m from the Trump-crossover capital of the world,” he said, adding, “If Democrats keep running the same candidates with the same message, we’ll get our butts kicked again in November.”
He said it’s important to speak to voters’ needs.
“I don’t go into places and blow up Donald Trump immediately when I’m talking to students at the University of Akron because it splits the room immediately,” Schiavoni said.
Former congressman, Cleveland Mayor and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said he’d seek to reclaim the soul of the Democratic Party.
“The Democratic Party lost its soul when it made nice with corporate America and started taking corporate America’s money and the American people caught on because the trade agreements that were made under Democratic administrations said they were going to protect jobs, the environment, workers rights and none of those things happened,” he said.