Lima stands for “Lost in Middle America”, Rochelle Twinnings, chairwoman of the local Democrats, tells me. I know what she means. This midsized Ohio town of 35,000 people is surrounded in every direction by corn and soya bean fields. There is a Ford engine manufacturer and a US army tank plant here, but not nearly as much industry as there used to be.
Looming over the fields in one of Lima’s residential neighbourhoods, American Township, a controversial $500m (£372m) Google data centre spanning nearly 400 acres is under construction. Yes, this really is the name of the small, rural district powering the AI revolution. I feel I’ve landed in the middle of nowhere and everywhere all at once.
Welcome to Ohio, where the dirtiest campaign of the midterm elections is unfolding. I’ve come to this state because its mix of farmland and factories has made it a bellwether for the nation. It’s also my “home” state – my American mother grew up on the shores of Lake Erie in the rustbelt city of Cleveland, a Democratic stronghold since the Great Depression.
The rest of Ohio, however, is up for grabs. Donald Trump won the presidential elections in this state three times, winning by more than 11 per cent in 2024. At this point, people stopped counting Ohio as a swing state and started regarding it as solid Maga territory. JD Vance’s Appalachian “hillbilly” family moved to Ohio from Kentucky and he has a home in the suburbs of Cincinnati. He became senator for Ohio before being plucked for the vice-presidency.
If the polls are right, the state is back in play. A veteran Democrat retread, Sherrod Brown, has nosed ahead of the Republican incumbent Jon Husted in the race for Senate by two-five points. He needs to flip Ohio blue if the Democrats are to have a chance of winning control of the upper house.
Trump has visited the state four times during the midterms, determined to squeeze out every last Republican vote. The President memorably appeared to lust after Husted, a former college American football star, at a rally in Youngstown last week.
“I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs,” Trump said. “I said, ‘His ass, s***, it’s like a pile of muscle.” This led gay CNN presenter Anderson Cooper to present an arch video montage of the “assman-in-chief’s” most lascivious remarks about men.
Republican volunteers at the local Republican party headquarters in Lima, Ohio (Photo: Sarah Baxter)However, this isn’t the nastiest or most revealing midterm race – not by a long chalk. That prize goes to the contest for Ohio governor between wealthy Republican entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been swanning around the state on his private jet, and Democrat Dr Amy Acton, Ohio’s former health director during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ramaswamy, who briefly served with Elon Musk at Doge (the Department for Government Efficiency) offended many fellow Republicans, including Husted, by sponsoring a blistering attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur. “It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem,” Arthur said. “She is a liar. She lies about her past.”
What the ad didn’t say is that Acton was allegedly sexually abused by her stepfather when she was between the ages of nine and 12. Acton’s late stepfather, Cledith, was charged with raping her in July 1978. He pleaded not guilty before fleeing the state with Acton’s mother, who lost custody of her children.
Trump and Vance have defended Ramaswamy’s decision to air the ad. Trump described Acton’s mother as a “smart woman” and said Acton was “fair game”. If the plutocratic Ramaswamy loses the governorship, the ad will be blamed, though my Cleveland cousins are convinced that his Indian heritage could also weigh on voters’ minds.
“A lot of Maga bigots will stay home rather than vote for him,” they told me. That’s not something voters will own up to willingly, though I did speak to a couple of Trump supporters who pursed their lips and told me they didn’t “know enough” about Ramaswamy to support him. He currently trails Acton by three to four points.
Twinnings told me she felt disgusted by the ad. “The first thing I thought of was the [Jeffrey] Epstein files. It’s like the Republicans have a national mindset not to believe women,” she said. “Amy’s story is very sad but also very provable. I think it will hurt Republicans rather than help them.”
Rochelle Twinnings, chairwoman of the local Democrats, described opposition to data centres as ‘the biggest issue’ of the campaignI met Twinnings and her husband, Rick, a retired toolmaker, at their home on the outskirts of Lima. We could hear a neighbour shooting his firearms down the road. He pops them off every day, including an AR-15 style assault weapon. “There’s nothing we can do about it, it’s fully legal,” Rick said, shaking his head.
The Twinnings live close to the perimeter of the giant Google data centre rising out of the corn and soya bean fields. It is just one of nearly 250 AI data centres in Ohio – making it the state with the fifth highest number of them. A poll by Ohio Northern University and Survey USA on 22 October found that 55 per cent of respondents were against their construction in their state, compared with 22 per cent who supported them.
Rochelle described opposition to data centres as “the biggest issue” of the campaign. “Ohio is particularly vulnerable to data centres because we have so much open land and they need acres and acres to build on.”
Randy Tooker, 57, a former maintenance engineer for Honda, lives on the other side of the outer perimeter. “We first started hearing rumours about the data centre a couple of years ago. It all happened under the table, very quietly. The public basically had no input into it,” he said. Google only acknowledged it was behind the development after the news emerged earlier this year.
Tooker worries about the data centre’s impact on water usage, electricity bills and noise pollution. “If they’re going to build one, it should be in an industrial park where there is already industry and factories instead of taking farmland where people live,” he said.
He drove me in his pick-up to the entrance of the construction site, where trucks rumbled past every few minutes. There was a sign saying, “Private Property. No Trespassing”. Drone photography was expressly prohibited. “I guess they don’t want people actually seeing what’s going on around here,” he added.
Shocked by the unpopularity of data centres, local Republicans have been backing away from the issue, but Trump remains bullish about their value. He claimed on Truth Social: “The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.”
Tooker voted for Trump in the last two elections, but he isn’t impressed by him. “I mean, I’m not a huge Trump fan. I think he’d be better off if he just shut up, kept his voice quiet.”
Randy Tooker at the construction site for Lima’s huge $500m (£372m) Google data centre (Photo: Sarah Baxter)He prefers Vance. “I like that he’s from Ohio. Sometimes you can see him distancing himself from some of Trump’s opinions,” he added, reflecting on the Iran war and its impact on fuel prices. “Something needed to be done about Iran, but the war has dragged on way too long. He’s dug himself into a hole and I don’t know what he does to get out of it.”
Tooker told me he was undecided but had been leaning Republican. “Amy Acton was part of when they shut Ohio down under Covid. I wasn’t happy with all that. I thought it was a mess.”
But he is reconsidering his vote for Ramaswamy after the attack ad aired. He said some lines should not be crossed and described the ad as “disgusting”. “I will probably not vote for him after such a horrible ad,” he said. “Are these candidates the best Ohio can offer?”
Tooker’s indecision points to a wider problem for the Democrats. They are tired and out of ideas. Brown, who served as Ohio senator for 18 years, is 73. He doesn’t represent a fresh start for the state, but rather a return to voters’ traditional comfort zones.
“I think there should be term limits,” Tooker told me. “We need new blood in there, new opinions.”
Age, race, money, sexual assault and AI; they’re all on the ballot box in Ohio. The big unknown is whether Trump can seal the deal for the Republicans in the frenetic closing days of the election campaign. The New York Times’s presidential approval rating tracker shows 37 per cent approve and 60 per cent disapprove of his performance in office. However, he still has a devoted fan base in Lima.
At the local Republican party HQ, campaign volunteer Amy Mullen said she was concerned about turn-out. “In presidential elections, everyone is gung ho for the president, especially President Trump. The midterm elections aren’t that important in people’s minds.”
Yet she still cherishes the day she met Trump at a campaign rally in 2019 at a local airport during his first term as president.
“It happened to be my birthday, so I say he came for my birthday,” she said, eyes shining. “My husband and I waited for four hours in a hangar and it was cold. The secret service was there. They wouldn’t let us have any food or drink and we were all in a bullpen. And I said, ‘President Trump, I want to thank you for coming for my birthday.’
“He said, ‘35?’ ‘No, 39,’ I laughed. And he went, ‘Yeah, right.’”
Trump will be hoping his star power and loyal Maga base will be enough to galvanise the vote for the Republicans, but if Ohio is anything to go by, it’s too close to call.
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