KEY POINTS:
COLUMBUS, Ohio - For once the hottest tickets here in these parts are not for the Buckeyes, the all-conquering Ohio State University college football team.
They belong to a temporary performer at OSU - Jon Stewart, cult-figure host of the Daily Show, the smash satirical spoof on the Comedy Channel which often seems far closer to the national political pulse than its equivalents in the conventional media.
All this week, as America's ferocious mid-term election campaign moves towards its climax next Wednesday, Stewart has been hosting his show from the OSU campus. "We're going to Ohio because it was the prettiest girl at the ball in the 2004 election. The debutante that everyone wanted to seduce and we would like to see if the boy ever called again," he said. "We're going out there to find out what happened to this swing state ... and to the people who were massaged by Democrats and Republicans alike."
If possible, Ohio, which has long enjoyed a quasi-mythical status as America's supreme political bellwether, is even more the crucible of the contest this time around.
It was the state that finally handed the White House to George W. Bush in 2004. But long before that, Ohio was famous for voting with the winner in almost every Presidential election - Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 and John F. Kennedy have been the only exceptions in the last century.
It is partly rural, partly rust belt industrial, part rich agricultural, and part high-tech - a microcosm of America, right down to its propensity for fast food.
But Ohio has also largely missed out on the last five years of recovery. Unemployment runs above the national average. In 2004, lost jobs, outsourcing and high corporate profits and top executive pay were issues that almost carried John Kerry to victory.
These elections are a heaven-sent opportunity after a series of eye-popping scandals at state level, abuses that have grown out of years of unchallenged Republican rule.
As Herb Asher, political scientist at OSU, tartly noted, "It's hard to blame the Democrats for anything here, because there are no Democrats in power here.
"Everything is still going the Democrats' way.
"They're running away with the governorship, and could gain other top state Government offices. They'll almost certainly win Mike DeWine's Senate seat, and could pick up a couple, maybe three, Congressional seats."
This time it will be harder than usual for Republicans. Their problems start at the top, in the statehouse in Columbus. Bob Taft, the outgoing Governor, is scion of one of Ohio's greatest political dynasties, a family that produced William Howard Taft, the 27th President, senators, ambassadors and jurists.
This Taft, alas, will be remembered only for scandals, culminating in his own conviction last August for ethics violations. His approval rating fell to 6.5 per cent - possibly the lowest ever by any American politician.
Even then Taft refused to resign.
If that was bad enough, the "Coingate" may prove an even greater debacle.
Thomas Noe, once a top Republican lobbyist and a Bush-Cheney campaign chairman in Ohio, has already been convicted of money laundering. He is currently on trial on charges of embezzling up to US$50 million ($74.5 million) of state funds invested in a rare coin fund he ran. If convicted, he could be jailed for 10 years. All took place on the very benign watch of Taft.
Unsurprisingly it has been an uphill battle for Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican candidate to succeed him. He trails Ted Strickland, his Democratic opponent, by up to 20 per cent in some polls.
More surprising have been the travails of DeWine, Ohio's senior Senator. DeWine, who is seeking a third term, is one of those moderate Republicans whom Ohioans warm to.
Yet it is assumed he will be soundly defeated by his Democratic opponent Sherrod Brown, one of the most left-wing Congressmen in Washington. Nowhere near as well funded as DeWine, he is heading to a double-digit victory according to the polls.
That backlash has only been intensified by the downfall of Bob Ney, still the Republican representative for Ohio's 18th district, despite becoming the first sitting Congressman to be convicted in the bribes-for-political favours scandal surrounding the disgraced former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Like Noe, Ney could face up to a decade behind bars. His district now seems certain to be taken over by Democrat Zack Space, a hitherto little known chief legal officer.
At the opposite end of Ohio, Democrats are hoping for a second gain, in the stately old river city of Cincinnati where the conservative Steve Chabot is seeking a seventh term.
But the most perfect political storm of all is in the capital Columbus, at the state's geographic dead centre, where the separate demons of the Iraq war, Bush's unpopularity, scandal and economic woes have coalesced to turn what was a routine Republican win into a cliff-hanger - and some would say, the most emblematic Congressional race in the country.
The struggle in the Ohio's 15th district pits Deborah Pryce, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, against Mary Jo Kilroy, a local government official.
Kilroy is serious, sensible and plainly very competent. But normally she would have little chance against a seven-term incumbent regularly re-elected with 60 per cent or more of the vote. But not in this noxious Republican year of 2006.
At a Halloween night rally at a steel workers' union assembly hall just north of downtown Columbus, suitably adorned with Republican hobgoblins, you could sense the excitement generated by a candidacy whose hour may just have come.
"Next Tuesday, lets make Ohio-15 the 15th gain for the Democrats, that gives us control of the House," Kilroy told her rapturous audience.
Then she recited a litany of Pryce's failings - "wrong on Iraq, wrong on the deficit, wrong on the minimum wage, wrong on social security, wrong on health care" - before drawing attention to Pryce's unwavering support for the scariest seasonal ghoul of them all, Bush.
- INDEPENDENT
