AP - Strickland, Brown press for change

(The Associated Press)

Strickland, Brown press for change Brown Strickland

Clermont County- In a county that proudly paints itself political red, where about 70 percent of voters backed President Bush in 2004, Nathan Estruth showed up at a park Saturday morning to hear the blue people.

In particular, he wanted to listen to Ted Strickland, the Democratic candidate for governor who, with U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, was headlining a three-day bus tour promoting the party's statewide ticket in some of Ohio's most Republican counties.

Estruth, a father of four who typically votes Republican, milled in the back of a partisan crowd of about 100, one of just a handful of people not wearing a shirt promoting a Democratic candidate. At the urging of a friend, he came to give the Democrats, who have been out of power in Ohio for more than a decade, a chance to win his vote.

"It's just common sense that we need change," Estruth said at Veterans Memorial Park in Union Township. "Frankly, it's about change for change's sake."

The Democrats are trying to seize that feeling by blaming Republicans for Ohio's job losses, high cost of education and skyrocketing expense of health care, among other problems. And they are tying their opponents to Bush, whose popularity has lagged for some time, and to his controversial adviser Karl Rove, indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and Republican Gov. Bob Taft, who was found guilty last year of failing to report gifts from fund-raisers.

When Strickland spoke to the crowd, he yelled, "Year after year, we have suffered under this incompetent, corrupt and sometimes illegal leadership."

Brown struck a similar note, frequently referring to his opponent, incumbent Republican Mike DeWine, as a member of "that gang in Washington" that has "betrayed the middle class."

"Help us turn Ohio blue," he implored.