ON MAIN STREET
Neal Locke, 49, worries about his marriage and the prospects of the company he works for. Yet his story isn't as typical as it sounds. Like many a native of Stark County, Ohio, he went to work for Timken Steel in Canton. But Locke was gay--and deeply closeted in a city that produced a gunboat diplomat, William McKinley, and the National Football League. Working his way up the ranks, Locke became a supervisor, and came out. On a trip to Florida, he met and fell in love with Dario Nunez. Late last month they decided to try to get married--in Stark County. "I wanted people to know that gays live in this community, too," he said. He called the local newspaper, The Repository, to give them a heads-up. The editors put the story on the front page. A media horde accompanied the couple when they tried--and failed--to get a marriage license. Nonetheless, Locke doesn't see gay rights as a big issue in the presidential campaign. He expresses far deeper concern about Timken, a state-of-the-art company that--like so many other manufacturing plants in Ohio--has cut its payroll in the face of global competition. "Morale at the company is way down," Locke says. "The economy here is the issue."
Stark County is, in many ways, the political epicenter--a bellwether county in a bellwether state. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio, and Stark County votes the way Ohio does. It's as good a place as any to assess the impact of the war over gay marriage on the re-election chances of George W. Bush. And while gay marriage and the wider "culture war" are big news, the more profound concerns are economic in a county with a rich tradition of industrial inventiveness. "I frankly don't care about what goes on in anybody's bedroom," says Canton's Republican mayor, Janet Creighton, surveying the city from her glass-walled office on the eighth floor of city hall. "What we need to focus on is economic progress in this city."
As practiced in Washington, politics has devolved into an us vs. them battle of Red and Blue. But Stark County remains Full Purple: a place where party labels do not count for much, and where voters--many of them independents--chose leaders based on their character. "Everything here is still defined by football," says Daryl Revoldt, an economic- development official. "Who's got the guts to lead the team?" The president's campaign ads, which begin airing later this week, are designed to portray him as such a stand-up guy.
Bush strategists won't say it out loud, but they view the gay-marriage issue as a way for the president to demonstrate the character and values that will win swing votes in places such as Stark County. With polls showing that voters oppose gay marriage by a 2-1 margin, Republicans clearly hoped to benefit from the ensuing cultural controversy. "Anyone voting for president wants someone sharing their values," said a Bush campaign official. "It comes down to who the public trusts."
But the issue could backfire on Bush if he comes to be viewed as deliberately divisive. Stark County is deeply religious, but the churches remain largely apolitical. "In a close race--and this looks like it's going to be a close race--the gay-marriage issue could help Bush," said the University of Akron's John C. Green, an expert on religion and politics. "But he has to be careful."
Democrats suspect that he's just trying to distract attention from a sluggish recovery. "It's obvious that Bush wants to talk about anything but the economy," says Johnny Maier, Stark County's Democratic chairman. Last year, Maier notes, Bush visited Timken to tout his recovery plan. The company laid off hundreds soon after. Locke wasn't one of them. For now, at least, his job is secure. Indeed, he's taking a few days off this week. He and Dario are flying to San Francisco--to get married.
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