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Fairfield Co. GOP Predicts Big County Win Due To Candidate Visits
By: Taylor Mirfendereski, Tom Hodson
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UPDATE 11:51 PM Fairfield County Republican Chairman Kyle Farmer said Tuesday he would be disappointed if he didn’t get a 60 percent vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket after they visited his county in early October. He didn’t get the vote he wanted.
In 2012, Romney garnered 58.21 percent while President Barack Obama received 39.96 percent. The margin of a GOP victory is essentially the same as in 2008. It is less than the margin for President George W. Bush over Sen. John Kerry in 2004. That year the GOP trounced the Democrats by 26 points.
Fairfield County traditionally votes Republican, but Gov. Mitt Romney and Cong. Paul Ryan's visit to Lancaster in October may inflate the GOP’s numbers in the county and be a boon to the Romney-Ryan ticket this election day in Ohio.
That is the hope of Kyle Farmer, the chairperson of the Fairfield County Republican Party.
Farmer says the county visits from the top two members of his ticket is an indication that the campaign is engaged with and cares about his community.
"The single most valuable resource in a presidential campaign is the candidate’s time. To have the candidate invest time in your community is something that is pretty special and folks understand that,” he said.
Farmer said he expects his party to win by a larger margin this year in Fairfield County than in the last presidential election.
“For us to win the election, we’ll have to have a significantly better result than we did in 2008. I will be disappointed if we are not around 60 percent at the end of the night tonight for Gov. Romney,” he said.
In 2008, Sen. John McCain out-polled Barack Obama in the county by nearly 18 points (59 percent to 41 percent.) In 2004, Pres. George W. Bush trounced Sen. John Kerry, 63 percent to 37 percent.
In fact, the only time Fairfield County voted Democratic for president in the last nearly 50 years was in 1964 when Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson defeated arch-conservative Sen. Berry Goldwater.
Farmer said he believes that the Romney-Ryan event gave a boost to the enthusiasm he saw with his volunteer base in Fairfield County.
“Obviously, having both candidates together was unusual, and to draw nealy 10,000 people to the event was something pretty special for us. We were very excited to have them and really saw a boost in people participating in the campaign after that happened. So, I think it was very valuable for us,” Farmer noted.
He said that it helped the early GOP voting efforts in the county and gave a major push to the Republican get-out-the-vote operation.
“This has been the best that we’ve had since 2004. I think the biggest thing is that our volunteers and our voters are much more enthusiastic this time around,” Farmer said.
Although, Vice-President Joe Biden visited Fairfield County this past weekend, Farmer thinks it was too late.
“I think the Vice President’s visit was so late in the campaign that it didn’t have a chance to boost their volunteers' enthusiasm, and therefore, translate into additional voter contact,” Farmer cited.
He claims that Fairfield County Republicans are much more excited this time around. He said that they believe that the President’s policies have hurt middle class residents, and that creates much more enthusiasm to win this election.
Later tonight, we will see if Farmer’s predictions are accurate and whether the Romney-Ryan visit trumped that of the Vice President.