Midwestern swing states don’t typically conjure images of racial-justice demonstrations, the toppling of offensive monuments, or lawmakers calling for racism to be declared a public health emergency.
But that was before 2020, an intense year that has shaken up the nation with a viral pandemic and an explosion of political activism in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and scores of other unarmed African-Americans over the years.
In political lore, Ohio is known as the state with an unmatched record of not only backing the winning White House candidate, but mirroring their national margin of victory. But the trend sharply reversed in 2016 with the election of President Trump, who lost the national popular vote but easily won Ohio.
Since then, Ohio has developed a reputation as the place where disaffected white voters in rural and de-industrializing counties voted in droves for Mr. Trump, enough to cast doubt on whether it’s even still in play for Democrats.
But the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that cropped up along Main Streets in small towns underscore that Ohio’s electorate isn’t a monolith. And top African-American leaders, local activists, and young men and women of color say their movement shows no signs of slowing.
“We haven’t seen an end to the work and the push for racial equity and progress on dismantling racist systems,” said 34-year-old Ohio House Minority Leader Emilia Strong Sykes, one of the state’s top Democrats.
Last month, her caucus introduced a resolution to declare racism a public health emergency. It never gained traction in the overwhelmingly white and Republican Ohio House of Representatives.
The Akron Democrat said when politics is discussed in terms of Midwestern swing states, which are prized insofar as they expose the attitudes of middle-of-the-road white voters, black men and women are never part of the conversation.
“The conversation has been about the working-class community, and working class is code for ‘white men.’ And there’s no doubt about that. You can’t pretend that they’re talking about the working class of black and Latino communities, because they’re not. They’re talking about white men,” she said.
This applies also to the discussion of suburban voters, particularly women, a demographic that Democrats believe is winnable for their presumptive nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.
“There is no discussion about the fact that there are black women and black men who live in suburban areas,” Ms. Sykes said. “The failure to add all of these voices in the conversation is again a part of the structures that ignore the needs and desires of black people.”
Tina Maharath, the 29-year-old state lawmaker from Franklin County and the first Asian-American woman to serve in the Ohio Senate, is a Democratic National Convention delegate for Mr. Biden, but questions whether he’s doing enough to connect with black and brown voters.
“We’re getting women voters, but how on Earth are we going to try to get the vote of a black male, a Latino woman, and so on, which are the votes that have historically been disenfranchised?” said Ms. Maharath, who flipped a Republican district in 2018.
“Most of my supporters were moms who were so tired of having their kids’ voices be disenfranchised and so tired of having their futures being taken away because of the people who are representing them at the statehouse,” she said, adding that most of these supporters were independent voters who leaned Democrat.
Neither presidential campaign immediately offered to discuss how they’re reaching non-white voters in swing states.
Ohio’s first black elected statewide officeholder, Ken Blackwell, who served as treasurer and secretary of state and ran for the GOP nomination for governor, continues to be an informal adviser to Mr. Trump’s re-election effort.
In February, the campaign announced the opening of “Black Voices for Trump” community centers in Columbus and Cleveland. The campaign didn’t provide an update on their status.
Less than four months from the election, Mr. Biden holds a commanding lead in national polls. A survey this week from Quinnipiac University showed Mr. Biden winning among most all demographics except white voters without college educations, white men, and voters ages 50 to 64.
Mr. Biden is also up in most swing-state polls. In Ohio, a recent Quinnipiac poll revealed a virtual tie between the two candidates, with a majority indicating they trusted Mr. Biden more on race relations. Not unexpectedly, 81 percent of black voters surveyed said they would choose Mr. Biden, while 8 percent backed Mr. Trump.
Attitudes among white Ohio voters on supporting tenets of the racial justice movement were a mixed bag. Regarding how they viewed the Black Lives Matter movement, 50 percent of white respondents said they saw it favorably, versus 82 percent of black voters.
But only 35 percent of white voters said they would support redirecting some money from police budgets to social services, compared to a 69-percent majority of black respondents. There was also a racial divide on whether to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces: 75 percent of black voters said get rid of them, while only 41 percent of whites wanted the same.
2020 in Ohio has been a year of progress and setbacks for racial justice on the political front.
During an Ohio Senate hearing on whether to declare racism a public health crisis, Republican Dayton-area Sen. Steve Huffman, an emergency room doctor, was roundly condemned after asking a witness whether the “colored population” had been harder hit by coronavirus because they do not wash their hands well.
Mr. Huffman, who apologized, was fired from his job and the NAACP called on him to resign his Senate seat.
Erica Crawley, a 39-year-old Columbus Democrat serving her first term in the Ohio House, said she found it disheartening when a colleague, state Sen. Kristina Roegner (R., Hudson), defended Mr. Huffman and told everyone to “move on” from the episode.
“We’re at a pivotal time when you really could be a change-maker,” she said. “That’s the thing with ‘get over it.’ It’s dismissive and it doesn’t have value. We’ve been hearing that for decades.... You’re saying it doesn’t matter, but it absolutely does.”
Nationwide, black Americans are disproportionately affected by coronavirus because of systemic issues that make for worse health care outcomes, all experts agree. Statewide, black Ohioans account for 27 percent of reported cases and 19 percent of deaths despite only comprising 14 percent of the state’s population.
This disparity was highlighted at peaceful racial justice demonstrations that cropped up in all corners of the state, supported by a wide demographic of Ohioans. In Toledo and elsewhere, the protests ushered in a new generation of organizers who broached a dialogue with city officials and law enforcement about police reform.
And what state lawmakers could not do, many cities and counties did themselves when they declared racism a health crisis.
Reem Subei, the first Muslim woman to run for an Ohio Senate seat, narrowly lost her Democratic primary to Joel O’Dorisio in April but said the experience showed her that people in her northwest Ohio district are not fundamentally against backing a candidate they haven’t seen represented in politics.
“It’s easier for folks to gravitate to what’s familiar, what we’ve been conditioned to see in politics, which is men in their 40s and 50s,” said Ms. Subei, who’s 30 and a legal-aid lawyer. “It takes personal encounters and relationships to get us past that, and to get people to put their faith and support behind a younger woman.”
Local racial justice organizers said their foremost priority is continuing to hold police accountable for their actions and pushing for reform, even long after the public’s attention has shifted to the next crisis.
“What [the police] do when they come into contact with people — because of the color of his skin or after they run his name. Everybody has a past,” said Anthony Cowell, the 31-year-old founder of the New Generation Black Foundation, which is planning upcoming marches in Toledo.
“People change,” he said.
First Published July 19, 2020, 6:49 p.m.
