CLEVELAND — Donald Trump is at war with the state party, started organizing late, and his support in traditional Republican enclaves here is shaky.

But the GOP nominee still has a good shot at winning Ohio, where five of the past eight public polls show him in a dead heat with Hillary Clinton. The reason, political operatives on both sides acknowledge, is that his message is resonating in some traditionally Democratic strongholds.


“He’s doing well because he’s in Democratic areas,” said Bob Clegg, a veteran Ohio Republican operative, referring to visits like his recent event in Toledo. “He’s getting more than the normal votes for a Republican in very Democratic areas. I think that’s what’s doing it.”

“The question we have is to make sure we don’t have people that drift into what historically might be referred to as Reagan Democrats,” said Stuart Garson, chairman of the Cleveland-based Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. “Make sure they understand who really has their best interests at heart.”

In typical Trump fashion, however, there is a catch. He continues to alienate GOP state party leadership, making his chances ever more reliant on the risky bet that enough disillusioned white Democrats and independents will back him to compensate for his underperformance with more centrist Republicans, as well as for Clinton’s advantages in field organization.

Given the Trump campaign’s open feud with the Ohio GOP, which unfolded two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention — his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, accused popular GOP Gov. John Kasich of “embarrassing his state” for skipping Trump’s Cleveland convention and withholding an endorsement — veteran operatives say much of Trump’s current strength in Ohio comes from people who would typically never pull the Republican lever.

Trump has so far shown some promise in the eastern and southeastern portions of Ohio, home to blue-collar towns and coal-mining hubs considered part of Appalachia, where Clinton’s pledge to put coal miners “out of business” still stings. (She quickly apologized for the remark, noting that she meant that she wanted to create more sustainable jobs in the region, but Republicans are using it as a wedge.)

“He does bring Democrats over; those are some of the counties in the state that have been historically blue and have been turning redder over the years,” said Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges, in an interview before Manafort blasted Kasich. “[Mitt] Romney carried many of them; I expect Trump to carry many more of them, especially given Hillary Clinton’s position. What she’s said about coal miners and putting coal companies out of business, it’s going to be challenging for her to overcome.”

“Then … up into the Mahoning Valley, eastern, working-class Ohio,” he continued, “he’s going to do very, very well there too, in a traditional Democratic stronghold.”

After the Manafort flap, Borges warned that the campaign’s “divisive” approach was jeopardizing Trump’s chances in the state: Of Manafort, Borges said, “he’ll need to do better if we’re going to carry Ohio in the fall.”

But Mark Munroe, the GOP chairman of Mahoning County, home to heavily white, economically struggling — and traditionally Democratic — Youngstown, said Republican voter registration has “more than doubled” in the county, which gave Trump more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary. The Democratic voter registration advantage over Republican registration in the county has shrunk to only about 6,000, he said, a figure county election officials confirmed.

“Those Democratic voters and unaffiliated voters who made a point to cross over for Trump [in the primary], yeah, I think they’ll be there in the general election,” he said. “If they would go to the trouble to change party registration, get involved, I’ve got to think they’re going to be likely supporters in the fall.”

Republicans are now openly predicting that Mahoning County, which gave President Barack Obama 63 percent of the vote in 2012, will flip this year for Trump, saying his tough anti-trade talk resonates in a part of the state that has seen factories close and jobs relocate.

“The fact that a Republican would win one of the most Democratic counties in the state is an indication that some of the normal voting patterns in Ohio are flipping,” said Mark Weaver, a former deputy attorney general of Ohio and now a GOP consultant who expects Mahoning to turn red.

But if they are leaning in Trump’s favor in coal country and blue-collar towns, patterns in other, more vote-rich parts of the state — where Kasich, Trump’s former presidential rival, cleaned up in the primary — are working against Trump.

Take the cluster of counties around Cincinnati, in southwestern Ohio, which constitute a crucial Republican counterweight. Trump needs to run up large margins there to offset Clinton’s built-in advantages in the cities of Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Warren County, Ohio, hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. A typical Republican nominee is expected to notch 70 percent of the vote there.

This year, however, there is a prominent Never Trump movement in Warren, and the county’s Republican chairman, Jeff Monroe, indicated that that dynamic could cut into what are typically strong turnout numbers for the GOP nominee.

“We anticipate our folks will certainly turn out for a Trump campaign,” he said. “Whether or not they turn out in the numbers we want is another question, and that’s yet to be answered.”

Winning the bulk of the rank and file — which Trump currently looks poised to do — isn’t enough.

“If we don’t get Republicans to turn out in Warren County, it is extremely difficult for the Trump campaign to win Ohio,” Monroe said, adding that an underperformance of even 2 percent there could make a difference in a state that Obama won by only about 100,000 votes in 2012 — and it would also signal an enthusiasm gap in a critical region for Republicans.

“Warren County is important because it provides a net gain for Republicans to offset where Republicans are disadvantaged,” he continued, pointing to the major urban areas. “If we don’t show up to vote, it does two things: One, it tells us we can’t have the net gain, and second, it’s likely indicative of what we’re seeing elsewhere, which means their Republican vote would also be down.”

That worry is playing out in suburban and exurban areas across the state, in counties like Delaware and Licking (outside Columbus) and in Lake County (near Cleveland), Weaver said.

In those places, “Donald Trump has many people on the sidelines wondering whether to vote Republican this year. These are folks who voted for Romney last time, John McCain the time before that. One of Trump’s biggest challenges is to convince these Republican-leaning voters that it’s OK to vote Republican this year.”

Trump’s acrimonious relationship with the Kasich-aligned Ohio GOP throws into question the nominee’s ability to organize convincing get-out-the-vote efforts, given the extent to which his campaign is relying on the state Republican Party to do the heavy lifting. And while Clinton has had staff on the ground, and a state director in place, for months, Trump didn’t even reach out to the state GOP until late May and didn’t hire a state director until late June.

Bob Paduchik, who ultimately landed that role, served as Sen. Rob Portman’s former campaign manager, ran George W. Bush’s Ohio operation and is deeply respected in Ohio Republican circles. He has sought to tap into the Ohio GOP’s robust infrastructure, as well as that of the Republican National Committee’s, though POLITICO and other outlets have reported that there are fewer RNC staffers on the ground than had been expected.

The Clinton campaign, with its more established campaign apparatus on the ground, is aiming to out-organize Trump, with the goal of running up turnout numbers in the big cities and persuading moderates in the suburbs to back Clinton — and she has a largely unified party establishment behind her.

“We think we can compete in places in ’16 that we didn’t in ’08 and ’12,” said Ohio Democratic Chairman David Pepper, noting Clinton’s foreign policy experience as secretary of state and suggesting that she has stronger commander-in-chief credentials, which should appeal to Republicans. “Step one is to reunify a very diverse electorate. Step two is going out and winning votes all over the state, including, particularly, suburban women.”

The message: On social issues and on national security, Trump can’t be trusted, and his rhetoric toward women and other minorities — including disabled people — is disqualifying. Both Clinton and Priorities USA, a supportive super PAC, are running ads to that effect.

Clinton has plenty of challenges of her own, including high unfavorable ratings that complicate her goal of replicating the enthusiastic Obama coalition that twice propelled him to victory in the state, especially among progressives who also backed Bernie Sanders in the primary. She’ll need to overcome that dynamic to notch the same kinds of turnout numbers that pushed Obama over the top, banking on the support of African Americans, women, Latinos in some areas, and organized labor.

“There’s no Democrat that can win statewide without putting up big numbers here in Cuyahoga,” said Garson, the county party chairman. “That’s the game.”

He said that notching a winning margin anywhere north of 260,000 Democratic votes in Cuyahoga County would essentially guarantee a Clinton win in Ohio, “unless there’s just a collapse somewhere else in the state.”

Obama beat Romney by a margin of 256,000 votes in Cuyahoga County and also romped in Columbus.

But Democrats acknowledge Trump’s potential to appeal to a slice of the electorate that traditionally has backed their candidates.

Tim Burke, the Democratic chairman in Cincinnati’s Hamilton County, noted that “labor leadership is solidly behind Hillary,” but he allowed that there are some in the “labor community” who find elements of Trump’s message appealing, specifically his pro-gun and hard-line anti-illegal-immigration positions.

“Maybe that’s causing some of them to be tempted by Trump, but I’m hopeful that the leadership of organized labor is going to be able to draw those folks back into the labor fold,” he said.

The Clinton campaign believes that even if Trump makes historic gains with Democrats and independents in the southeastern part of the state, her strength in the cities and among some demographics in the suburbs — particularly women — will offset those inroads.

A recent poll from Marist and The Wall Street Journal found that zero percent of African-Americans in Ohio are supporting Trump, and 88 percent are supporting Clinton, a sign of just how big Trump’s challenge is in the heavily African-American cities and surrounding counties.

“You better do well in the big counties, even if you don’t carry it; you better get the base out, get the crossover votes,” said Doug Preisse, the Republican chair of populous Franklin County, a Democratic-leaning area that includes Columbus, but one that also contributes a substantial Republican vote total. “You can win the vast majority of counties and still lose the state.”

That was the case in 2012 for Romney, who won all but 16 of Ohio’s 88 counties and still lost the state.

“It’s pretty clear that a lot of people are still trying to make up their minds or watch what Mr. Trump and his campaign … do and say,” Preisse said of Republicans in Franklin County. “See if they can accommodate themselves to it.”

