As Ohio Goes

Middle-class voters are looking for big ideas. The candidate who provides them will win the White House

Joshua Lott / Getty

Voters listen during a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio

Carl Hughes is a banker in Marion, Ohio, the sort of guy who takes the pillar-of-the-community part of the program seriously. Last spring, he attended a meeting for people in town with health-insurance problems, called by Ohio's Democratic governor, Ted Strickland. "It was very emotional," Hughes remembered, "very upsetting." And so Hughes decided to pay for the insurance of the three families who seemed most desperate. "You want to see this problem fixed on the national level, but sometimes immediate action is needed," Hughes told me during a Sunday-morning visit to a pancake house in Marion with Governor Strickland...

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