The road heavily traveled

You might think of Interstate 75 as a lousy, potholed asphalt ribbon that alternates between being a drag racing strip and parking lot, depending on the time of day, but Republican politicians in Ohio have a different view of it.

For them, it is a road that leads straight to the Statehouse.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, front-runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, is hauling his newly-named running mate, State Rep. Tom Raga of Mason, up and down I-75 Monday, with stops in Toledo, Dayton and Cincinnati.

The choice of these three media markets is no accident. From the 1-275 beltway here to the Ohio Turnpike just south of downtown Toledo, I-75 cuts through a stretch of suburbs, exurbs, small towns and rural counties that Blackwell sees as the key to winning not only the May 2 GOP primary, but the general election as well.

That stretch of real estate has twice made George W. Bush president; it has the potential to make Blackwell a governor.

Blackwell has gone to school on the late Republican Gov. James Rhodes, who had a formula for winning statewide elections that included ceding northeast Ohio to the Democrats, rolling up big numbers in southern and western Ohio and doing no worse than breaking even in central Ohio.

Blackwell has to play a bit of a modified Rhodes game this year. His likely Democratic opponent, Ted Strickland, has, at one time or another, represented all of southern and eastern Ohio from Warren County to the south suburbs of Youngstown. He's likely to be a very strong candidate in the southeast Ohio counties where Rhodes made his living.

So, watch for the Blackwell to focus on the I-75 corridor; and the especially the suburban counties that ring the I-275 loop - Butler, Warren and Clermont.

In 2004, those three counties gave Bush 69 percent of their votes, in an election where Bush won Ohio (and, thus, a second term), by only 118,599 votes out of about 5.6 million cast.

Take Butler, Warren and Clermont out of the equation, and Kerry would have won the state by about 14,000 votes and Bush would have plenty of time to clear the brush on the Crawford ranch.