Democrats see opportunity in typically GOP Delaware County

At first blush Delaware County looks like a strange place for Hillary Clinton to campaign for Barack Obama.

The county has voted Republican for president for more than 20 years and gave President Bush 66 percent of its vote in 2004.

But, Clinton, the Democratic senator from New York, will be at Buckeye Valley Local High School today trying to get more votes for her rival in the presidential primary.

Much has changed in four years. Democrats now feel they can bring Delaware into the win column.

In 2006 Ted Strickland won 50 percent of the county’s vote, although Republican U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine won 58 percent there. In March, Delaware County was one of five counties – and the only rural county – to give a majority of votes to Obama in the Democratic primary. The big result from the primary, however, was an increase of registered Democrats who now outnumber registered Republicans, according to the Delaware County Democratic Party’s chair Ed Helvey.

“We gained 17,000 new Democrats,” Helvey said. “Despite the rumors that people were just crossing over to raise havoc and so forth, on the Republican ballot in the primary, they had several contested races.”

Helvey is cautiously optimistic about Democrats’ chances in the historically Republican county.

“At this point if you would put a hypothetical in front of me, regardless of which way it would go, I’d have to agree with it because I just flat-out don’t know,” he said.

Helvey said the county party and Obama campaign have dropped 60,000 mail pieces before early voting started on Sept. 30 and is aggressively targeting Obama supporters to vote before Election Day.