The Three Cs of Mitt Romney

If Mitt Romney wants to become President of the United States, he must meet the challenge of the three Cs: Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Popular in rural areas, Mitt Romney must make a breakthrough in the three major cities of Ohio, which together make up more than half of the 11.5 million residents of the state. In 2008, Cleveland voted 69 percent for Barack Obama, Columbus 60 percent and Cincinnati 53 percent.

Up until the first debate, the situation was dark for the Romney team, behind up to nine points in the Ohio polls. Since the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney came up to an almost equal footing with Barack Obama. In Ohio, the president’s lead varies between one percent and four percent, the margin of his victory in 2008.

The more the gap shrinks, the more the battle of the will becomes crucial. Four years ago, Barack Obama entered the presidency by courting the student vote — and no university in the country would have played such a major role as Ohio State, which welcomes 60,000 students, the vast majority of whom are of voting age.

Lucas Denney, 20 years old, has every intention of helping Mitt Romney win the electoral battle on campus. Vice president of the campus Republicans at Ohio State, he is a moderate Republican who speaks excellent French — his minor —, has traveled in Québec as well as France and who has a strong interest in Canadian politics. He currently spends 50 hours going door-to-door each week for the presidential campaign.

The polls that have him [Romney] losing in Ohio do not temper his passion: After Tuesday, Lucas Denney will skip his classes and work for a Republican member of the Ohio Senate to elect Mitt Romney, whom he met earlier during the campaign. “The polls are sometimes wrong,” he says. “Barack Obama seems like a nice guy that I’d like to have a beer with, but he does not know how to manage an economy.”