THE sales of Stetsons have tanked at Rose Mallory’s shop on the country road to Oxford, where Michelle Obama is rousing the Democrat Party faithful in this corner of the “battlefield of battlefields”.
Her shop, Country Corner, offers “western wear for the entire family”, from dress boots to toy horses.
“Business has been terrible in the last few years, before they said we were in a recession,” she said. “We used to sell expensive Stetson hats, $100-150. I don’t even carry them any more. Now if you can sell them for $25 you are doing good.”
Ohio, in the heart of the Mid-west, is not the first home of the Stetson hat. But Ms Mallory’s comments reflected those of many people here who worry most about jobs and the economy – but show little enthusiasm for either President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.
“I’m not that excited about either,” she said. The “negativity of the advertisements” put out by both sides has taken its toll. In the last election, she was at least a fan of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin – a big supporter of western style.
The story is the same from Bill Wharf, 62, in Cincinatti, who was laid off by BAE Systems from his job armour-plating Humvees three years ago and now works as a shuttle-bus driver.
“I lost my job under Obama, but I don’t like Romney’s 47 per cent,” he said, talking of the candidate’s private briefing to backers when he seemed to write off half the US population as non-contributors.
“Obama inherited it from George Bush. Bush was the same thing as Romney. I don’t like either one.”
For months now, Ohio voters have been barraged by wall-to-wall television adverts, constant “robo-calls” and sometimes more than one house visit in a day. They are told constantly how vital they are, but are perhaps growing a little tired of the attention.
A radio slot urges that Mr Romney “will stand up for the auto industry, not China”, after the Republicans claimed that Mr Obama’s bail-out of the car companies had actually sent Jeep jobs to China. By the side of urban freeways, giant electronic billboards blaze out to “stop Obama killing coal”, still a big industry in southern Ohio.
In the course of 48 hours in just the south-western area around Cincinatti, Mitt Romney appeared with a line-up of Republican big names. Michelle Obama made her case, and Mr Obama himself was appearing in a stadium rally yesterday. The place has the feel of a critical by-election in Britain, with the concentration of political clout.
The mid-western state has a population of ten million and 18 electoral college votes of the 270 needed to win. It is also seen as a microcosm of America, ranging from its industrial and more liberal north-eastern cities of Columbus and Cleveland to the typically conservative southern city of Cincinatti, in a region bordering West Virginia and Kentucky.
George Bush carried Ohio, by huge margins in its most conservative areas, in a swing said to have given him the White House. Four years ago, Republican John McCain lost the state.
Mrs Obama is speaking to student supporters at Miami University in Oxford, a public university of stately brick buildings founded in 1809 and named for the local Miami Indians, in a town dominated by the college.
The Glee Club and the Miami University Marching Band have turned out in the old gymnasium, chosen by the US Secret Service as an enclosed space they can better protect, with bomb-sniffing dogs circling arriving cars. Gun control does not even get a mention on the hustings here, from either side.
In an impassioned and powerful speech – the kind that Obama supporters might wish to hear from him – the First Lady portrays her husband as the man who saved the car industry, who is there for women’s rights, who won’t deport long-term immigrants.
But the student body is sharply divided. The Republican vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, spent four formative years here, developing his knowledge of conservative economic theory. “Obama is a communist,” yells a group of five young white men, all first-year students, out to irritate the Democrat crowd.
In a long, snaking, red-clad queue of Republican faithful, Tom Kantwell, of the “Citizens for Community Values Action”, was handing out leaflets promising $15 an hour for door-to-door campaigners.
Waiting in the line are Jim Shank, a bar owner in Cincinatti, with his partner, Lauren Pellecchia, a teacher. They are used to the barrage of campaigning. “We are the girl that everybody wants to dance with,” they say.