Economic woe spurs Democrats in US heartland

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio, Oct 19 (Reuters) Billie Jo Reese works full time, is raising two children alone and is trying to go back to school.

Her wage at a nursing home is 8.25 dollar an hour, putting her family near the poverty line. She can't afford health insurance and isn't sure she'll have enough money for heat all winter.

While Washington is aflame with corruption and sex scandals and the Iraq war, in heartland America voters like Reese are more preoccupied with the struggle to get by.

Ohio pushed President George W Bush's reelection over the top in 2004, but in congressional elections next month economic hardship in the rust belt could turn the tide against incumbents from Bush's Republican Party.

''It's getting worse,'' said Reese. ''My mother used to help me a lot, but now that she doesn't have her job we just get by as best we can.'' Reese, 31, has neither time nor money to spare, but on a cold October night she came out to confront politicians here and pay a small fee to join a liberal lobby group for working families.

She and her mother, Donna, 50, a locked-out autoworker whose unemployment benefits are about to expire, fired questions about health insurance and job security at Zack Space, a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives, and a representative of Senate Democratic hopeful Sherrod Brown.

Reese said Democrats care more than Republicans about working families, and she wants change at the midterm elections on November 7, when control of Congress is at stake.

Three weeks before the ballot, both Space and Brown were leading incumbent Republicans in opinion polls.

Democrats need to gain 15 seats in the House of Representatives and six Senate seats to win majorities in November. They hope to gain four House seats and a Senate position in Ohio.

Even in this sprawling rural district whose Republican congressman, Bob Ney, has pleaded guilty to accepting illegal gifts from disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Space said voters care more about their pocketbooks than sex or corruption.

''The interests of the middle class, the interest of working families, are not being addressed,'' Space told reporters after the forum. ''People are outraged.'' With the economy strong in the rest of the country, such attacks have caught Republicans off guard.

Some 3.5 million jobs have been created in the last six years, the stock market, home ownership and corporate profits are all near record highs, and a long period of low interest rates created a housing boom that has just begun to cool.

But the manufacturing heartland is still feeling the lingering effects of a recession in 2001 and reeling from the loss of thousands of jobs to factories in China, India and Mexico.

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