I would want an urban setting.

My wife and I want to get a condo somewhere warm and become snow birds. At our age and the way inflation is headed, not sure if that is going to be realistic or not. Student loan forgiveness would've been nice...lol.

I think the Sandusky area along the coast would be where we want to settle down in Ohio.

Summers on Lake Erie are very underrated.

That's perhaps because the state took in too many immigrants from West Virginia and Kentucky over the years and now the state votes just like our neighbors south of the Ohio.

And look to the north, because of that great football rivalry between Ohio and Meechigan there is now a political rivalry of total Red vs total Blue too!

Perhaps for retirement many who are looking for a new home should adjust Horace Greeley's quote to, "Go North, Old Man!" There you will find plenty of Blue for your heart's content.

Ohio is not a battleground state any longer. I wonder how long it'll take the pundits to recognize that.

Only anecdotal findings. 30 years ago the democrats had the backwards "C" firewall. They could win in a near solid continuum from Toledo/Lucas eastward to Lorain/Elyria to Cuyahoga County then along the lake all the way to Ashtabula then down through Mahoning/Trimble through Steubenville, and along the Ohio to near Cincinnati then up to Dayton completing the "C". Cincinnati then was a Republican bastion with the only big gap for the Democrats in the "C".

The "C" has been destroyed. Gaps between Toledo and Cleveland, big gaps in Geauga, Lake and Ashtabula Counties. Warren/Youngstown not the stronghold it once was. Steubenville and all the Ohio River counties now strong Red counties and the only improvement in the "C" is Cincinnati where the Democrat beat the incumbent Republican, Chabot.

It has been at least since 2011 that a Democrat other than Sherrod Brown has won a statewide election.

While candidate Obama did win twice, two things come to mind. The country was tired of Bush and so was Ohio, there was little enthusiasm for four more and McCain was probably the weakest Presidential candidate since Dukakis. Looking at President Obama's margins of victory, he won big in 08 but his margin slipped in 12 though he was the incumbent--that may have been the sign of things to come. To put it into perspective, Trump in 16 had a bigger margin than Obama's biggest but then in 2020 Trump's margin went up and recall that incumbent President Obama's went down in his second go in Ohio.

My county, Medina, went 100% Red this cycle knocking out a popular and effective Auditor. Several cycles before that the County Prosecutor got tossed who I thought was a lock for as long as he wanted the job. Medina County had strong Democrat voter bases in Brunswick and lesser in Wadsworth. Now those two places are about 50/50 and everything other than the City of Medina is heavy Red.

I know the population centers vote heavy Democrat and it takes a bunch of rural counties to catch up but it is amazing to see the counties along the Indiana boarder south of Defiance probably cannot even field a full slate of Democratic candidates and went 75-80% Trump both times.

As JSF pointed out in an earlier post in this thread, Ohio is no longer a battleground state. It may not have been since 2010.

 

 

 

I think that this map explains a lot about Ohio voting patterns if you look at it closely.  The size of the circle indicates the size of the vote in that county in absolute numbers.  While Ohio's biggest cities are tending to go Democratic, Ohio's medium and small cities and rural areas are going Republican.  Ohio has more medium-sized cities than almost any other state.  Therefore, our "rural areas" are more populated than rural areas in most other states.  This makes the non-metropolitian voting block in Ohio a great deal more significant than in most other states.  

Gotta love that little blue dot island in a sea of red in the southeast corner of the state.

Interesting discussion. Granted city council, at least in Athens, isn't much of partisan entity. Yes, all 7 members are registered as Democrats, but rarely do we have a vote that could be characterized as along party lines.

As it relates to this thread, when I ran in 2021, I stressed three things (besides knocking on over 600 doors). First and foremost, people wanted to know what was going on so communication with constituents was very important. Second, most people realize that they can't get everything they want but they at least want to be involved in the conversation early on, not after the train has left the station or as often happens around here, after the conductor has already punched the tickets. And three, that I would bring a sense of fiscal conservatism or at least review to the budgeting process.

The results - I beat a 6 term far left incumbent two to one in the primary and had no opposition in the general. My point? If the Democratic Party wants to reclaim Ohio they need to move a bit closer to the center and engage all people, not just the reliable base.

Yes, exactly.

Republicans have moved further right than Democrats have moved to the left. That the Right Wing Media Bubble has convinced people otherwise doesn't make it true, and there are demonstrable ways to show this.

Ohio is a good example of why. Extreme gerrymandering means there are fewer competitive general elections, which means primaries are the only election that matters. When you couple that with geographic sorting -- truly diverse pockets of America are rarer and rarer -- you end up with primary elections playing an outsized role. As Alan mentioned, he ran unopposed in the general. That's not uncommon.


One big problem with this is that primary turnout is low and leans heavily towards the most extreme voters who are driven by special interests. That means that to win elections, elected officials often only have to appease small segments of the population who have the most extreme views. It's why GOP policy on abortion is so out of line with national/state sentiment; it's why GOP policy on guns is so out of line with national/state sentiment. It's also why so many politicians on the Right continue to push the ridiculous narrative that the last election was stolen.

The same happens in liberal districts. It's why you end up with DAs in San Francisco that are so thoroughly disconnected from the electorate. It's how you end up with things like gifted and talented programs being removed in New York. It's because elections are won in the primaries, and the voters who show up to vote in primaries often have views that are outliers from the broader population.

I think it really depends what you mean by centrist. The GOP keeps moving further and further right, and all of the data suggests they've moved further right than the Democrats have moved to the left. Since they're moving so far right, the "center" is technically further to the right, as well.

I think there's a feeling that the Democrats have moved far to the left, but where's that reflected in policy? From a policy standpoint, there more or less centrist as is, and pretty milquetoast.

Getting back to the original question, these are three things that could push Athens into another category of attractiveness:

1) An 18 hole golf course
2) Affordable quality senior housing
3) An expanded public transportation system.

I could add several more but when this town goes empty from May 1 to August 15, it's tough for independent restaurants and shops to make it. Real tough.

I think access to healthcare's such a key driver of retirement decisions that it seems hard to imagine Athens becoming a retirement destination. O'Bleness just doesn't cut it and Columbus is too far.

They have their own hospital. It's a University of Florida Medical Center hospital. Can't speak to the quality.