Ohio is a vital swing state - both in terms of actual electoral results and as a bellwether - due to its geographical, political, and demographic status as a crossroads, being a microcosmic blend of urban, rural, and suburban; physically and psychologically at the borders of the Midwest and the East; and containing a relatively fluid and non-dogmatic blend of Republicans, Democrats and independents.

The Ohio delegates at the RNC are enjoying being courted:

As Ohioans here at the Republican National Convention are fond of pointing out — and they do it about twice per conversation — no president since 1900 has won the White House without winning Ohio. Now, that's not strictly true, of course. Ohio picked the right guy only 24 out of 26 times. But that doesn't matter; it's the conventional wisdom that counts. In the primary season, tiny Iowa may wield a ridiculously outsized influence on the race for the White House. In the fall, Ohio is Iowa on steroids.

How can you tell that Ohio is important? The signs are everywhere.

First, the Ohio delegation is staying in the very fortified, very centrally located Marriott Marquis hotel on Times Square, mere blocks from Midtown's Madison Square Garden, where the convention is taking place. (Not that they're complaining, but Guam and Hawaii, with zero and four electoral votes respectively, were assigned to hotels at the southern end of Manhattan.)

Second, the Ohio delegation has the best seats on the convention floor, front and center. "I've told the delegates to bring napkins with them," said Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk, "so they can wipe the spit off their faces."

Third, requests for interviews with delegates have poured in from all kinds of news organizations — CNN has profiled some of them, CBS' "The Early Show" did a makeover with another. The attention has been so intense that some stories are focusing just on the media attention Ohio is getting.

"When they see we're from Ohio," said delegate Janet Voinovich, wife of the state's junior United States senator, "their eyes light up. One woman said, 'Oh, you're Florida this year!' "

Here's how else you can tell Ohio matters: Each morning, at their hotel breakfast meetings, delegates are fired up with rousing speeches before heading over to the convention hall. When the Republican National Committee offered the Ohio delegation a speaker named Dan Senor, who was the civilian spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, the Ohio delegation's response was, basically: Are you joking? Don't you know who we are?

But there is such thing as TOO much attention: the candidates and their surrogates are swarming like locusts and getting stuck in your shorts and whatnot:

In an attempt to replicate the Democrats' ground game, Republicans have revamped their voter registration efforts. They've signed up nearly 60,000 volunteers and say they have made 1 million phone calls. They have created a 20-member team working full time on one assignment: the get-out-the-vote plan for the campaign's final 72 hours.
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