Ohio: Sixth District

Rep. Charlie Wilson (D)

Charlie Wilson (D) Elected 2006, 1st term up
Born:	01-18-1943, Martins Ferry
Home:	St. Clairsville
Education:	Cincinnati Col. of Mortuary Science, 1967, OH U., B.A. 1980
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	divorced
Elected  Office:	OH House of Reps., 1996-2004; OH Senate, 2004-06.
Professional Career:	Welder, painter, assembly-line worker, 1963-64; Owner, Wilson Funeral and Furniture Co., 1966-2006; Owner, Wilson Realty Co., 1978-2006.
DC Office	226 CHOB, 20515 202-225-5705 Fax: 202-225-5907 Website: charliewilson.house.gov
State Offices	Bridgeport:740-633-5705; Canfield:330-533-7250; Marietta:740-376-0868;
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In the years after the American Revolution, the Ohio River was one of the great highways west. From Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela meet and form the Ohio, the river led south and west toward the Mississippi and the great port of New Orleans. Shipping goods downriver by raft was cheaper than sending them over the Appalachian chains, and so the Ohio became a great highway of commerce. For hundreds of miles, the Ohio twisted this way and that through rounded-off mountains and rolling hills, land that marked the boundary between post-Revolutionary Virginia and the Northwest Territory, between slaveholding territory and soil that the Confederation Congress decided in 1787 should be free. Across this boundary settlers made their way in those years—Yankees in 1788 to Marietta, Ohio’s first town, and, in larger numbers, Virginians from those parts of Virginia that became Kentucky in 1792 and West Virginia in 1863. By the late 19th century the Ohio was an industrial river; coal was nearby, barge transportation was available and railroads were built in the narrow valleys between the hills, steel mills went up on the riverfront. This produced prosperity for a while, but it also produced pollution—Steubenville on the Ohio River once had the nation’s dirtiest air—and after the old-line steel industry fell on hard times, the Ohio River was lined with some of the least prosperous parts of America. Even with mandates from the Clean Air Act, the pollution in much of this area from coal-fired power plants remains so bad that many residents have considered moving.

The 6th Congressional District of Ohio is made up of a string of counties running 325 miles along the Ohio River plus part of the Mahoning Valley, named after a narrow tributary of the Ohio. In the north it includes the Youngstown suburbs of Boardman, Canfield and part of Poland in Mahoning County, and East Liverpool and Steubenville on the Ohio. It curves along the lightly populated stretch of the river south from Marietta, the old industrial town of Ironton and it extends to the city limits of Portsmouth, not quite in the Cincinnati metropolitan area, where the Scioto River empties into the Ohio. Much of this area is part of poverty-ridden Appalachia. Historically, the northern part of the district was Republican and the southern part Democratic, but that was a long time ago. The steel and coal areas in the north became Democratic during the 1930s and the southern counties started trending Republican in the 1960s. This mix makes for a Democratic-leaning district but the cultural conservatism of this region, much like that of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky across the river, put it narrowly in George W. Bush’s column, by 49%-47% in 2000 and 51%-49% in 2004.

The new congressman from the 6th District is Charlie Wilson, elected in 2006, just the fifth person to reach Congress by running a write-in campaign. Wilson was born in Martins Ferry, across the Ohio River from Wheeling, West Virginia; he worked as a UAW welder, painter and assembly line worker before earning his mortician’s license from Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in 1967. He started the Wilson Funeral and Furniture Company in 1967 and the Wilson Realty Company in 1979 and, as a 37-year-old businessman, got his bachelor's degree from Ohio University. In 1996, Wilson won the first of four terms in the Ohio House, where he served as Democratic whip and assistant leader. In 2004, he was term-limited in the House and won a seat in the state Senate. Wilson worked in the legislature to improve health care, spur job creation and promote economic development in the Ohio Valley. When Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland announced he would run for governor, Democrats touted Wilson as their top candidate to run for the seat.

But Wilson, despite a decade in the legislature, made a classic rookie mistake that nearly cost him his chance to win this seat. He failed to file the nominal 50 valid signatures to register his candidacy. His son, acting as campaign manager, submitted 96 signatures collected from Belmont and Scioto Counties. The problem was that not all of the signatures came from within the district and, as it turned out, only 46 were valid. The campaign discovered the mistake before candidate filing closed, but state law prevented Wilson from updating his original filing. The bungled filing was an enormous embarrassment and it stunned national Democrats, who figured that a proven vote-getter like Wilson was their best chance of holding the seat. Two other little-known Democrats made the primary ballot, but they would be at a disadvantage against the likely and eventual Republican nominee, Chuck Blasdel, the speaker pro tempore of the Ohio State House.

Wilson had two options available to him at that point. He could run as an independent in November, or mount a write-in campaign for the Democratic nomination; he chose the latter. A write-in candidacy is an uphill endeavor, but Republicans recognized that if Wilson failed to win the nomination this seat was a potential pick-up; the National Republican Congressional Committee spent $500,000 to run attack ads that accused Wilson of allowing raw sewage to flow into the Ohio River and covering it up while he served as chairman of the Eastern Ohio Regional Wastewater Authority in the mid-1990s. “Wilson demanded it be kept secret because it would hurt his career,” the NRCC ad said. “Charlie Wilson. Dirty secrets. We just can’t trust him to do what’s right.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also understood the high stakes in the primary and insisted on installing a professional manager in Wilson’s campaign. The DCCC backed the write-in effort with radio and television ads while the Ohio AFL-CIO mobilized the district’s union members by making 120,000 phone calls and putting 300 volunteers in the field. Wilson knocked on 40,000 doors and wrote 4,000 personal letters. The field work paid off—Wilson won with an astounding 66%, with 43,687 write-in votes. That was 4,500 more votes than were cast for the four candidates in the Republican primary. Blasdel won a lackluster 47% in the Republican primary, and by the fall the district had fallen off the Republicans’ list of targeted Democratic seats. Wilson defeated Blasdel 62%-38% in the general election.

Committees

• Financial Services (29th of 37 D)
  Housing & Community Opportunity; Financial Institutions & Consumer Credit.
• Science & Technology (23d of 24 D)
  Technology & Innovation.

Presidential Vote

District Demographics (More Info)

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D + 0
• Area size: 5,236 square miles
• Urban Population: 50.0%
• Rural Population: 50.0%
• Population 2000: 630,730
• Population 2005 (est): 616,878
• Median Income: $32,888
• Poverty Status: 14.0%
• Military Veterans: 14.5%
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 95.2% White; 2.4% Black; 0.5% Asian; 0.2% Native Am.; 0.0% Hawaiian; 0.8% Two+ races; 0.1% Other; 0.8% Hispanic Origin;
• Ancestry: 15.2% German%; 9.9% Irish%; 8.4% USA%;
• Occupation: Blue collar 31.3%; White collar 51.7%; Gray collar 17.0%;