Once, many Youngstown, Ohio residents made steel, enjoyed middle class job security and prosperity and voted Democrat.
But over the past 40 years, those first two things have become less and less true for the city’s dwindling population, as well as for those in other Ohio cities that once served as hubs of high-paying industrial jobs. Now the third may also be up for grabs.
These forgotten spots across the state that once hosted steel mills, coal mines and large factories have become the focus of a pitched battle for one of Ohio’s two U.S. Senate seats being fought between incumbent U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican, and former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat.
Strickland, who grew up in southeast Ohio’s Scioto County, has touted that background as he makes the pitch that he’s uniquely suited to advocate for blue-collar workers, many of whom live in Ohio’s Appalachian region. In June, Scioto County had the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the state at 7.6 percent.
Strickland cut his political teeth running for and eventually winning in 1992 a U.S. House seat in Ohio’s 6th Congressional District, which represents much of the southeastern part of Ohio. He was briefly ousted in 1994, but regained the seat in 1996 and held it until 2006, when he was elected governor. Strickland held that office from 2007 until 2011, when he lost to current Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican.
“People who live in these communities, they work hard, many of them struggle, and they’re good, solid, honest, hard-working Americans,” Strickland said last month at a campaign stop in Lisbon, an eastern Ohio city that has relied heavily on the coal industry for jobs. “And I will never forget where I came from, and I will never forget who I’m obligated to stand up for.”
Portman, a Cincinnati native, on the other hand, has blasted Strickland’s record as governor, an office which he held during a time of pronounced economic decline in Ohio. Strickland’s tenure coincided with the Great Recession, which he says he helped Ohio navigate through.
But Portman says Strickland abandoned Ohio’s working class during his time as governor and afterward by supporting traditionally Democratic environmental regulations.
“Ted Strickland likes to remind people that he’s from southeast Ohio, but he has a record of turning his back on coal country,” Portman said in a recent statement.
The loss of America’s industrial might has become a hot-button political topic. Though there are a host of reasons for the decline, many, including both Senate candidates, have laid blame at the feet of free trade policies enacted since the 1990s. Republicans have also cited new environmental regulations they say are killing jobs, using support of those regulations by Democrats to woo working class voters.
The Great Recession lent a greater urgency to the state’s industrial fortunes, and now the candidacy of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has stirred the passions of working class voters — many white and male — who have been most affected.
Of course, the country’s industrial decline hasn’t just focused on Ohio. Adjusted for inflation, non-college-educated workers across the country now make a median wage $1.30 less than they did in 1980, according to economists.
White males with no BA had a median income of about $38k in 2014, down from $45k in 1975, according to Census data. Trump carries an incredible 74 percent of this group across recent generally reliable polls, and about 60 percent of both males and females with no degree.
That's no small segment of the electorate. Working class voters of both genders were about 44 percent of those who cast ballots in 2012.
In Youngstown, the shift away from industry greatly intensified on a single day — Sept. 19, 1977 — when Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced facility shutdowns and massive layoffs for thousands of workers. That was followed by more bad news from other companies like U.S. Steel and Republican Steel. In a few years, Youngstown lost tens of thousands of high-paying middle class jobs. It was a portent for coming years as Ohio’s industrial power drained from cities and towns like Youngstown.
Over the next four decades, Youngstown would lose half its population and most of its industrial jobs. Today, Youngstown’s Mahoning County’s unemployment rate is 5.9 percent, above the state’s rate of 5.2 percent, and its poverty rate is also higher. One-third of children in the county live in poverty, and overall poverty hovers around 20 percent. That’s a similar dynamic in many of Ohio’s industrial areas, especially those in the state’s southeastern region.
Portman has hit Strickland on his support of environmental regulations favored by both President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, which Republicans say are killing the kinds of jobs that kept workers in the middle class in places like Youngstown and Ohio’s coal country.
Those regulations, which seek to transition the nation away from dependence on fossil fuels toward more sustainable kinds of energy, have been hugely divisive in places like eastern Ohio, where the coal industry provides many jobs. Lisbon’s Columbiana County, for instance, produces about 100,000 tons of coal a year, according to the Ohio Coal Association, an industry lobbying and advocacy group. Its unemployment rate is well above the state’s rate at 6.3 percent.
“Even though coal is a proven source of relatively inexpensive energy that supports thousands of jobs across Ohio, and even though Ohio relies on coal for approximately 70 percent of our electricity, [Strickland] worked on behalf of a liberal special interest group in Washington that is dedicated to ending coal jobs,” Portman said.
Strickland led the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive group that boosts alternative energy and environmental efforts, for a year starting in 2014.
Strickland’s record on environmental regulation has cost him at least one big endorsement from the United Mine Workers of America. The union endorsed Portman in the race last month — a rare example of a union supporting a Republican candidate. UMWA officials cited Portman’s support of workers “in the difficult times the coal industry is facing today” in making their endorsement.
Earlier this month, the Ohio Conference of Teamsters, which represents 50,000 workers throughout the state, also put its backing behind Portman.
“Rob is fighting for middle-class jobs and higher wages for the people of Ohio, and he has fought with us to protect our pensions,” Pat Darrow, president of the Ohio Conference of Teamsters, said in a statement.
Portman has complicated baggage of his own when it comes to working class voters. He served as U.S. Trade Representative under President George W. Bush, where he helped broker so-called “free trade” deals like the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Before that, during his tenure in the House of Representatives in the 1990s, he voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
Those agreements are a major sore point for American working class voters, who feel they allow companies that make cars, steel and any number of other heavy industrial goods to easily move their production overseas.
Though he’s voted for free trade legislation as recently as last year, Portman has mostly reversed his stance on trade agreements, aligning himself with GOP presidential nominee Trump. Trump has made a more protectionist trade policy a signature piece of his campaign as he moves, so far successfully, to woo dissatisfied working class voters.
Strickland was also serving in the House during voting on NAFTA and opposed it. But the Democrat has to contend with current Democrat President Barack Obama’s administration, which is pushing a new free trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP would give fast-track status to trade deals with certain countries and is heavily unpopular with the industrial workers both Strickland and Portman are trying to win over.
Strickland opposes TPP, and Portman has recently reconsidered his stance on the legislation. That makes sense given the demographic Portman is reaching out to. A Pew research poll released this spring showed that 67 percent of Trump’s supporters see free trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP as negatives.
The battle between Portman and Strickland has intensified with the presidential race. Strickland last week joined Clinton and vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine as they campaigned through the state, stopping in Youngstown and Columbus.
Portman wasn’t far behind. His campaign dispatched a few dozen volunteers to stand outside the Clinton events, hoping to peel otherwise-Democratic voters away from Strickland by talking about Ohio’s economy.
But Strickland’s camp says they’re un-impressed. They point out that while Portman has won a few endorsements from organized labor, Strickland has backing from other big unions, including the United Auto Workers, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME. At a stop last weekend in Youngstown, Strickland shrugged off Portman’s Teamsters endorsement.
“That decision was made in Washington,” he said. “It wasn’t made in Ohio. It wasn’t made in the Mahoning Valley. So I depend on my friends in Ohio to support me.” ©
