Reply #70: From Cincinnati Enquirer -- sorry if already posted [View All]

[Bumblebee]

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Tuesday, August 2, 2005

2nd district voters head to polls

By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer

Voters from the east side of Cincinnati to Portsmouth were heading to the polls Tuesday to choose a new member of Congress.

Two months ago, the special election race in the 2nd Congressional District, which stretches across seven southern Ohio counties, was expected to be a low-key affair, a near-automatic win for whichever republican candidate emerged from the June 14 GOP primary. After all, the previous congressman, Republican Rob Portman, routinely won the district with more than 70 percent of the vote.

But Democrat Paul Hackett, a lawyer and Iraq war veteran from Indian Hill, managed to defy the odds and turn his battle with Republican Jean Schmidt, a former state representative from Clermont County, into a hotly-contested race, attracting national media attention and hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars flowing into the district from both national political parties.

In Hamilton County, the turnout appeared to be light-to-moderate, according to election officials. But hundreds of campaign volunteers on both sides were working feverishly to get voters to the polls, and both campaigns had extensive phone bank operations.

At the Hamilton County Board of Elections, election officials said their biggest problem Tuesday was fielding scores of calls from voters who live in the 1st Congressional District, complaining that they went to their regular polling places and found them closed.