Ohio

Having lived here most of half a century, and having been politically attentive since I helped my dad deliver signs for the Carter campaign ...

Let me preface this by saying Ohio was the test case for the Republican gerrymandering that's been ratfucking rust belt states since the late '80s/early '90s. Right wing dark money groups started all the way back then targeting elected democrats to ensure there were Republicans in the governor's office during redistricting elections (decade censuses). That way, even if the legislatures leaned Dem, the governor could refuse to accept them and get involved in the process. Once they'd done that a couple of times, the legislature was guaranteed to be Republican every single time with gerrymanders.

Add to that Ohio is very white, POC are concentrated in urban areas, and it's easy to gerrymander around them and colleges (which, at least in Ohio, also are generally in urban areas).

Also, look at your local media - FOX, Sinclair, IHeartMedia radio stations. It's a captive market for right-wing media. Most of the AM radio stations are overwhelmingly conservative talk, the FM stations are all owned by IHeartMedia (do yourself a favor, if you haven't, and go look it up - it started out as Jacor in the '70s in Cincinnati and became a right-wing media empire). What else are they going to know? Those who are susceptible to those messages certainly aren't going to look anywhere else, and that news feeds them a pabulum of messages that are designed to make them like (or at least accept) the ideology of the right.

And nobody will ever convince me most of the white evangelical churches in Ohio don't at least make an effort to shill for the GOP. They may never have crossed the line of endangering their tax status, but I grew up going to one of these churches, and I can tell you - they know how to get it across.

Last, the school funding setup in Ohio is a load of crap. Of course, kids now get civics information online. It used to be taught starting in junior high.

I don't know that there's much that can be done about it. I was of the opinion we should have run a woman for governor this time - I think Cordray's lieutenant governor would have been a good candidate. The block-walkers in my neighborhood said they got good responses from the women they talked to about other things, Betty might have been more appealing. Unfortunately, in Ohio, we run people who would make excellent elected officials who start out as shitty candidates. Kucinich would have been no better than Cordray, on that score.

Solutions? Hell, I ain't got any. We're keeping our fingers crossed democracy survives until we can retire to New Mexico.