The day after his first televised debate with Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy was campaigning in Canton, Ohio.
During the fall he made stops in Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Elyria, Youngstown, Lorain, and Cleveland where crowds often numbered over 20,000.
Yet, on election night it was Nixon, not Kennedy, who carried the Buckeye State.
Kennedy, 43, became the youngest man and the first Catholic to be elected president, and he was the last person to lose Ohio and still win the presidency.
And he never really got over it.
“There is no city in the United States where I get a warmer welcome and less votes than Columbus, Ohio,” JFK told an audience to laughter and applause in 1962.
Kennedy had every intention of winning the state in 1964, but tragically was struck down by an assassins bullet in 1963.
That was a long time ago.
Only about a third of America’s current population was alive when Kennedy moved into the White House.
But if current polling is correct, a majority of Ohioans are about to vote for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who is trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
That means if Biden wins, and Ohio sticks with Trump, it will end Ohio’s sixty year streak of voting with the winning candidate.
And will leave many wondering if the Buckeye State is still a presidential battleground.
While Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012, Trump’s 8-point victory over Hillary Clinton showed how deeply red Ohio can be.
All major state offices are now held by Republicans, and they have a huge majority in the state legislature.
Still, Democrats have not given up all hope for a Biden upset.
Sen. Sherrod Brown stands as a lone progressive voice among the congressional delegation.
Brown pushed Biden’s campaign “for weeks and weeks and weeks,” about investing more in Ohio before Biden committed to holding more events — four since the Cleveland debate — and spending more money in the state.
“I think it’s three things,” Brown said when asked about what has made the race close. “We’re seeing a higher African American turnout. We’re seeing suburban women that voted for Trump in 2016 — so many of them just can’t stand him anymore. They see his chaos, they see his incompetence in combating the coronavirus and managing the economy. And we’re peeling off of a number of workers in the Mahoning Valley and places like that, where white working-class voters — Black working-class voters have been against Trump all along — are realizing he betrayed them.”
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found a statistical tie between the candidates in Ohio: Biden at 48%, Trump at 47%.
Other recent polls in the state have shown Biden tied or ahead with seniors and leading with other groups that favored Trump four years ago.
The official word from the Ohio Republican Party, and from many of the party’s 88 county chairs across the state, is that everything is fine: The polls are wrong, the 2016 magic never went away, and anyone who says otherwise is badly mistaken.
Our JimHeath.TV analysis of Ohio now predicts Trump has a 60 percent chance of winning the state, while Biden has nearly a 90 percent chance of winning the presidency.
If that’s the case, Trump may well be the first presidential loser since Nixon to win Ohio, but lose the White House.