CHILLICOTHE, OHIO — A town of roughly 21,000 people is hosting the President of the United States on Wednesday evening for the third time this month, a scheduling feat the residents say they have handled about as calmly as a high school hosting its own alumni.
The rally, at the Shoemaker Center on the Ohio University Chillicothe campus, is listed on the Republican National Committee calendar at 7 p.m., with Senator Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy joining the President, in what the campaign itself has counted as his third Ohio appearance of the midterms. Ross County, for the record, has never once voted against him. The gym is expected to hold about 2,400 people. The town holds about ten times that, and the rest of them say they are watching from home like normal people with homework.
Running the building is where the real statesmanship lives. Rhonda Keeler, who books events for the university’s athletic department and has now coordinated load-in for three presidential visits in four weeks, described the transformation as mostly a matter of floor tape.
“The Secret Service walks the rafters before lunch, and by two o’clock it’s the free world’s most secure volleyball tournament,” Keeler said. “We’ve gotten very good at the acoustics. The President’s voice bounces right off the scoreboard. It’s excellent.”
The politeness extends off campus. A Waffle House on US-23, which does not have a menu item named for any national figure, reported its best Wednesday traffic of the year anyway. A diner regular named Gary Foss, 71, offered the town’s consensus between hash browns.
“They came three times. It’s flattering, honestly,” Foss said. “Wouldn’t you come back to a place that keeps voting for you?”
Ohio has spent the stretch run of these midterms functioning as the republic’s shared front yard. The President arrived in early October for a rally outside Dayton in which he asked the crowd to indulge a small technicality: his name was not on the ballot. “If you don’t mind, please pretend that I’m on the ballot,” he told them, and the crowd, being Ohioans, pretended with their whole hearts. He told the state it was booming. He then drove home.
The arrangement has its critics, mostly columnists who live in states the motorcade skipped. But the arithmetic is hard to argue with. In the single election where the President’s name actually appeared on Chillicothe’s ballots, this county returned him by more than twenty points — a turnout rate no visiting senator has matched with a single bus.
Local businesses have adjusted with the quiet professionalism of a town that hosts the county fair. The Shoemaker Center’s employee entrance was repainted. A bed-and-breakfast on Main Street started printing its lobby schedule in two columns: check-in times, motorcade windows.
Asked whether a fourth visit was possible before the November 3 election, Keeler said the calendar still had two open weekends and that the pancake breakfast was not going anywhere.
The gymnasium closes to the public at 10 p.m.