By Doug Oplinger
I did a series of stories in 2000 called “Electing not to vote,” in which people discussed their disgust with politics. It all came back to me recently.
At a Kent State University forum on Donald Trump and the Mahoning Valley economy, three outstanding KSU students sat on stage at the Trumbull County campus to discuss their feelings about the election.
Clearly, they said, nothing has worked for the Youngstown-Warren area after three decades of economic decline. Voting for four more years of the same wasn’t an option.
One male student said his dad works in a steel mill and worries every five years as they negotiate a new union contract whether he’ll go on strike and lose wages, or worse, the plant will close and he’ll have no job. Someone has to turn the tide, if you will, on the Mahoning River.
A young man was loaded with stunning data. I had some of my own. In Trumbull County since 2000, the median household income had declined $11,000 inflation-adjusted dollars. For a family with household income of about $50,000 in 2000, imagine having $11,000 less every year.
Yet with the stakes so high, a young woman who said she was old enough for the first time to vote in a presidential election couldn’t bring herself to vote.
Her reasons: She didn’t like Clinton, and couldn’t bring herself to vote for a man whose attitude about women was unacceptable to her. Moreover, she said, her family was so divided by the election, the family reunion didn’t happen. The tension was unbearable.
Back to those stories in 2000, I remember driving past my son’s elementary school in Green, Ohio, where the sign out front said, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” I had just covered the 2000 elections for the Akron Beacon Journal, and most of Ohio was reeling from what it considered possibly the dirtiest campaign season ever.
How can we raise young people to respect others, but when it comes to election time, adults fail at that most basic admonition, universal in all discussions of religion and ethics.
She wasn’t alone in 2016.
Doug Oplinger is a former reporter and editor for the Akron Beacon Journal, now working with the Your Voice Ohio statewide media collaborative.
