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Journal Opinion
"Found: The Vanishing Voter"The Vanishing Voter" has returned, so it would seem, if pre-Election Day political traffic were an indication, here in the Mahoning Valley all along.Last month Harvard professor and author Thomas E. Patterson, who coined the phrase, told an audience at Youngstown State University's Freshman Readers' Symposium that this year's presidential campaign was seen as "one of the most important elections of our lifetimes," that he expected it to spur a turnout not seen in decades. As the list of contested states nationwide narrowed, the handful of states where the campaigns ran neck-and-neck emerged as the battlegrounds, including Ohio. Typically getting only token appearances during presidential campaigns, both campaigns paid the Mahoning Valley special attention this year. Last week, President Bush made his second trip to the area this year, a speech at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.The president's first visit, last summer, was billed as an official visit, a distinction most observers found hard to discern -- and it occurred just before Youngstown Mayor George McKelvey was invited to dinner at the White House.At press time, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts was scheduled to make his third trip to the Valley in October, a rally the Saturday night before Election Day at Warren's Courthouse Square. There also have been the visits to the Mahoning Valley by various surrogates and other interested parties, including U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., and more recently film maker Michael Moore.If the unending barrage of television ads and election coverage was wearying to the public (and more than a few local reporters on the political beat have confessed to election fatigue), the national focus and courtship of the candidates has been good for the Mahoning Valley. At the very least, it's better than when the national spotlight focused only on area mob ties, the Rust Belt image or the antics of a colorful -- and later convicted -- congressman. McKelvey, who announced his support for Bush's re-election, made the national media rounds and introduced the president at several campaign stops. The mayor was even spotted signing autographs and posing for pictures with the president's supporters who requested them at the Vienna stop. (We leave it to the reader to assess whether McKelvey's Howard Dean moments -- at a late October stop in Canton, for example, or his Jim Traficant moments on national talk radio -- did much to improve how the rest of the country views the Mahoning Valley.)As with any courtship, it's always nice when the suitor brings flowers, opens the door and pulls out the chair. But before long, such attention is taken for granted. We hope that whoever the victor on Election Day, he won't forget the voters -- unvanished and otherwise -- he saw when he was here, that he remembers the problems this region faces as he crafts policies to shape the nation's future."