Billie Jo Reese works full time, is raising two children alone and is trying to go back to school. Her wage at a nursing home is $8.25 an hour, putting her family near the poverty line. She can't afford health insurance and isn't sure she'll have enough money for heat all winter.
While Washington is aflame with corruption and sex scandals and the Iraq war, in heartland America voters like Reese are more preoccupied with the struggle to get by.
Ohio pushed President George W. Bush's reelection over the top in 2004, but in congressional elections next month economic hardship in the rust belt could turn the tide against incumbents from Bush's Republican Party. "It's getting worse," said Reese. "My mother used to help me a lot, but now that she doesn't have her job we just get by as best we can."
Reese, 31, has neither time nor money to spare, but on a cold October night she came out to confront politicians here and pay a small fee to join a liberal lobby group for working families.
She and her mother, Donna, 50, a locked-out autoworker whose unemployment benefits are about to expire, fired questions about health insurance and job security at Zack Space, a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives, and a representative of Senate Democratic hopeful Sherrod Brown.
Reese said Democrats care more than Republicans about working families, and she wants change at the midterm elections on November 7, when control of Congress is at stake. Three weeks before the ballot, both Space and Brown were leading incumbent Republicans in opinion polls.
Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six Senate seats to win majorities in November. They hope to gain four House seats and a Senate position in Ohio. Even in this sprawling rural district whose Republican congressman, Bob Ney, has pleaded guilty to accepting illegal gifts from disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Space said voters care more about their pocketbooks than sex or corruption.
"The interests of the middle class, the interest of working families, are not being addressed," Space told reporters after the forum. "People are outraged." With the economy strong in the rest of the country, such attacks have caught Republicans off guard.
Some 3.5 million jobs have been created in the last six years, the stock market, home ownership and corporate profits are all near record highs, and a long period of low interest rates created a housing boom that has just begun to cool. But the manufacturing heartland is still feeling the lingering effects of a recession in 2001 and reeling from the loss of thousands of jobs to factories in China, India and Mexico.
While the nation's unemployment rate is at a five-year-low of 4.6 percent, joblessness is 5.7 percent in Ohio, 7.1 percent in Michigan and 5.3 percent in Indiana. Together, the three states have lost nearly half a million jobs in six years.
The losses have spurred populist campaigns by Democrats across much of the US Midwest and South, regions where gains will be critical if the Democrats hope to win back the presidency in 2008. "Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan -- these are all places where the Democrats have to be competitive, and this economic populism issue is a good one for them in these areas," said Alexander Lamis, a political analyst at Case Western Reserve University.
Brown's effort to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Mike DeWine is the highest-profile campaign to target the working class since Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards took the same approach in 2004.
Brown's campaign ads feature him in front of a chain link fence surrounding a closed Ohio factory, and he rails against free trade deals that he says hurt Americans.
"Mike DeWine has taken more than a million dollars in campaign contributions from large corporations that outsource jobs and has turned his back on the middle class and betrayed the values that we hold dear in this country -- that if you work hard and play by the rules you have the opportunity to get ahead," Brown said in an interview.
The attack infuriates DeWine, a mild-mannered moderate who believes free trade helps Ohio companies compete by opening up new markets for their products, and he argues the president's tax cuts helped millions of middle class and poor Americans.
"I understand what is needed to keep jobs. It's one of the reasons I supported the tax cuts," DeWine told employees at the Mike-sell's potato chip plant in Dayton before touring the facility this week.
DeWine's pro-business stance won him the endorsement of the US Chamber of Commerce and praise from the National Association of Manufacturers and Mike-sell's chief executive, David Ray. "He's a supporter of business in general, which is key if we're going to survive in today's environment," Ray said.
Rising costs for transportation, energy and health care have prevented Mike-sell's from adding staff, Ray said, but at least they haven't had to lay off any of their 250 employees. Still, while DeWine has won the support of the plant's owners, the workers were less impressed. John Gordon, 54, is a 10-year veteran at the plant who makes $16.58 an hour. He voted for Bush in 2004, but now he wants change.
The 25 cent raise he got last year didn't keep up with inflation, he said. His health insurance premiums have doubled in recent years, while coverage has shrunk.
"I just got a bill for $300, and our plan pays $72," he said. "George Bush wants to do away with overtime compensation, while everyone else, big oil, gets their handout."
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