captioning sponsored by wnet >> sreenivasan: on this edition for october 17: with less than three weeks to go before election day, president trump and former vice president joe biden hit the campaign trail with a focus on swing states. and in our "roads to election 2020" series, we visit the battleground state of ohio next on pbs newshour weekend. >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. barbara hope zuckerberg. the leonard and norma klorfine

foundation. charles rosenblum. we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. additional support has been provided by: consumer cellular. and by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers le you. thank you. >> sreenivasan: good evening and thank you for joining us. this weekend, as part of our roads to election 2020 series, we are reporting from ohio-- a battleground state where early voting is already underway. in just 17 days the united states will have its traditional election day on the first tuesday in november. but this year, in the midst of a

global pandemic, americans are exercising their right to vote much earlier and in record numbers. we will get the latest news and perspective on ohio'political scene from those who know the state best, and we'll bring you a two part report on how the cities of dayton and lancaster are coping as congress remains stalled on providing more covid- 19 relief funding. our ohio reporting is coming up right after the news summary. americans are voting---iperson where early voting is underway and with mail-in or dropoff ballots in many states. on the campaign trail, both presidential candidates are focused on key battleground states. >> we will have a red wave, the likes of which they've never seen before. and that includes four years ago ( cheering ) >> sreenivasan: president trump campaigned in florida and georgia yesterday. vice president biden held two events in michigan, including a drive-in rally in detroit.

>> detroit, there's no better, no more appropriate place to hold a drive-in rally than in motor city, u.s.a. ( honking ) >> sreenivasan: tomorrow former vice president biden will head to north carolina. president trump is holding rallies and fundraising events in michigan, wisconsin, nevada, and california this weekend. >> sreenivasan: with political campaigns in high gear, the u.s. continues to have a new resurgence in coronavirus case according to the "new york times," there were more than 70,000 new cases reported nationwide yesterday. the average number of new cases per day in the past week increased 29% over the average two wes earlier. the virus is also resurging in many european countries. germany reported a record number of new cases today. chancellor angela merkel told the country "difficult months are ahead," and urged people to reduce contacts and limit travel >> ( translated ): we have to do everything to prevent the virus from spreading out of control. every day counts. >> sreenivasan: in england more

than hf of the population is now under tighter coronavirus restrictions. in london last night, diners and pub-goers were out before e capital was put on the second- highest alert level which bans people from different households meeting indoors starting today. but there was some good news in australia, where the state of victoria, which includes the city of melbourne, recorded only one new case of vid-19 and no deaths in the past 24 hours. residents there may see restrictions lifted this weekend. current restrictions in melbourne include mandatory face masks for everyone when they leavhome. >>ew zealand has shown the laur party its greatest support in at least 50 years. ( cheers and applause ) >> sreenivasan: in new zealand, prime minister jacinda ardern won landslide victory today, securing her second term. with most votes tallied, ardern's center-left labour party was winning 49% of the vote, compared to its challenger at 27%. polls opened today at 9:00am local time, but a recordumber of voters had already cast early

ballots. many see ardern's win as a reward for her successful pandemic response. her "go hard, go early" approach to fighting covid-19 eliminated community spread of the virus in the nation of five million. for her next term, ardern has pledged to implement climate friendly policies and raise taxes on the country's top earners. for more election coverage and the latest national and international news visit www.pbs.org/newshour. >> sreenivasan: it has been more than six months since the cares act was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and signed into law by president trump. the law included nearly $140 billion to help state and local governments cover costs related to the coronavirus pandemic. whether or not they need more is now one of the biggest sticking points in reaching an agreement on a new covid-19 relief package. with less than three weeks until the election, it seems less and less likely that any deal will

be reached. tonight, we begin a series of two reports from two different cities here in ohio. we look at how they were affected by the crisis, and how they're approaching the uncertainty of funding their cities amid falling revenues. we began in dayton. earlier this week, a few dozen volunteers gathere clean up the area around the side of the future gem city market. it's a nearly-16,000 square foot food coop and retail space being built on dayton's west side; a food desert that has only one grocery store serving more than 40,000 people. kenya baker is the community engagement director for the gem city market. >> and we'll have about six residential-style cooking stations with appliances. and we'll have members from the commity that come in and actually teach how to make a lot of the produce that we haven't had access to. >> sreenivasan: this nearly $6 million project is scheduled to open early next year. it's a bright spot in a rust belt city that was still

recovering from the housing crisis more than a decade ago, when covid-19 hit. >> it's pretty heartbreaking timing, frankly. january and february before covid were two of the best months the state has ever seen economically since the great recession. >> sreenivasan: democrat nan whaley has been dayton's mayor since 2014. when the country came to a screeching halt this spring, whaley, like many mayors around the country, was facing a daunting public health crisis, and a budget crisis. >> people didn't know what the budget was going to hold, so, i remember, like late march, akron did a furlough, and so, we followed that furlough, both for safety measures to keep people distanced in our workforce, but also to save some money, frankly. >> sreenivasan: dayton initially furloughed 480 people, almost a quarter of all of the city's workers. the temporary layoffs affected every department except for fire and police. once ohio started to ease restrictions in may, the city called about three-quarters of those workers back, but seeing a big drop in tax revenue, dayton offered cash payments for

employees to retire quit. >> we started taking, i think, decisions that are going to be helpful for us in '21, but are painful for the community, right? i mean, we had to, you know, to communicate to the citizens of dayton, like, "look, we're not-- we're not going to have as much staff, we're not going to be able to get to you as quickly, and that's just the way it's going to be." and th's not a message a mayor likes to give, but you know, there's only so much money, and, you know, we aren't in a place that can, you know, budget into the red, like the federal government. and so, that becomes very difficult messaging, and just difficult for the community as a whole. >> sreenivasan: it was also a burden on the city's workfce. sean harbor and yolanda sanders both work for dayton and are officers at afscme local 101, the union which represents city workers. sanders works as an administrative assistant at dayton's airport, which lost dozens of workers to voluntary separations, while many others had pay cuts. >> the employees are still doing their job, you know. they may not be happy with it, but they're still-- everybody is

still doing their job. >> iused to be, i could-- i could tell you, you know-- you know, if you-- if you worked hard, and did what you were supposed to, this was a-- you know, a job you could retire from. and i couldn't tell anody with a straight face that anymore. >> sreenivasan: harbor is a park and maintenance crew leader, and has worked for dayton off and on for more than 30 years. he says city workers are already being asked to do more with less, and the pandemic is no exception. >> we know right now that we've had a hiring freeze, where we don't have the supplies or money to do certain projects that might have been on the planning books for this year. and, maybe not even next year. so it's been a real struggle ying to figure out how to cope with what in the future may or may not happen. >> sreenivasan: dayton has received about $15 million in federal cares act funding so far, going towards first responders, covid-related community assistance for small business and arts organizations, and supplies like p.p.e.

but by law, that cares act money has to be spent this year, and mayor whaley says, without additional federal or state aid, nothing is off the table in 2021. >> we're looking at kicking back both police and fire recruit classes, which will put less police and fire on the ground. we're looking at recreation, youth services going completely away these are the kind of decisions that we're having to make. >> sreenivasan: but some residents on the west side of the great miami river say the city's decisions, even before the pandemic, have often left them behind. daj'za demings was one of the volunteers at the gem ty market event this week. she's a life-long daytonian, and the leader of a group she co-founded called the dayton young black professionals, and she took us on a tour of west dayton. about a mile from the site of gem city market is the wright-dunbar historic district. it's the site of the wright brothers bicycle shop, now part of a national historic park, and the birthplace of african american poet paul laurence dunbar. right on third street is the entrepreneurs shop, which sells

products made by local vendors. owner tae winston was just in the process of opening the store when the covid-19 shutdown hit. >> i literally ate ham sandwiches every day. and everything-- everything i had, i just put it in here. like, i'm not playing. >> sreenivasan: winston said that since she was a new business, she did not qualify for the federal paycheck protection program, or city funding for struggling businesses. she's had to dig into her own savings to keep her store open. >> anything that they offer dayton, they never include wright-dunbar or up this way. it's all put for downtown. >> sreenivasan: deming says the west side of the city, which is predominantly black, has suffered from chronic under-investment, especially compared to the city's downtown. >> there's never been a time where west dayton has, like, "hey, let'just do it, let's go make sure west dayton is okay." that's never the case. that's never been the case. and the more that things are going on with the pandemic and we're still asking for things, shows that even more. >> sreenivasan: mayor whaley acknowledges that the city has

long struggled with inequality, but says the pandemic, and protests this summer over systemic racism, has exposed many to the need to make the city more just. >> we still have a lot of work to do, particularly with dealing with inequities, and you know, we're trying to do that through this year as well. but i mean, yeah, the investment into west dayton has been ignored for 100 years, you know, so this isn't something that's going to change overnight. >> sreenivasan: like many mayors around the country, whaley is urging the federal government to provide moreid to help cities like hers recover. but as lawmakers in washington continue to debate aew relief bill, aid for cities like dayton has become an obstacle. >> the democrats, they want-- real, they want bailout money for cities that have been badly run. >> sreenivasan: and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell has called the aid "blue state bailouts." >> it just shows just how they just really don't want to support people on the ground. i think they've become completely out of touch on this.

we're talking about police officers, we're talking about firefighters, we're talking about picking up your trash. i an, these are not fancy things that we're doing. and the whole idea that they don't want to support local control just shows how far away they've gotten from conservative values. >> sreenivasan: montgomery county, which includes dayton, voted narrowly for donald trump in 2016, marking the first time in 28 years it went republican. and in a state that remains competitive this election, whaley says whether daon will get more federal help is just one more issue weighing on local voters. tomorrow, we'll continue our reporting from the city of lancaster, ohio where voters will decide if a tax increase can help offset a decade of lost revenue. >> sreenivasan: in addition to the presidential contest, ohio voters are facing numerous

choices on their ballots this year, including all 16 congressional seats. there hasn't been a competitive race for the last two elections, in part because of how district maps are drawn. for more on the state of play here in ohio, i spoke with karen kasler, ohio state house bureau chief for ohio public radio and television. right now, there is so much attention being paid to voting irregularities, especially considering so many people are already voting. what are some things in ohio that people are concerned about? >> ohioans have been early voting since 2006. so, this is not new to ohioans. it's not a brand new experiment. but this year, 2.1 million ohioans havesked for absentee ballots by mail, and that is much bigger than the previous record of two million back in 2012. so this is a huge number. and they've been flooding boards of elections with these absentee ballot requests. and now, with early voting in-person underway, they've also been coming to the early vote center in each county. right now, we have triple the number of people who came in the first week.

193,000 ohioans cast ballots in person the first week. that's triple the number that cast ballots in 2016 in the first week. so these are huge numbers that are coming in. most of them are unaffiliated voters, because they haven't voted in primaries. and the number of people who are affiliated with the democratic party has really been much larger than the number of voters who've said they're going to vote early from the republican party. and it's interesting to watch those numbers-- not that there's an assumption that a democratic-affiliated voter will vote for a democrat, it's just interesting to watch that partisan breakdown. >> sreenivasan: what are some of the issues that are actually driving people to the polls here? >> well, i think the economy is always aissue. ohio is typically a state that goes into recession first, comes out recession last. there are certainly some issues with lordstown, and losing that plant up in youngstown. there's been a lingering effect of the opioid crisis in ohio. 13 people were dying a day, at one point. so these issues were existing before the pandemic. then you had the pandemic. now you've got, you know, huge numbers of people who have filed

for unemployment claims. 61% of ohio's restaurants and bars say that they're not going to come back after this. the state had to build a whole system to try to pay out those feral benefits to those people. and-- and there's a real struggle for people to find what's happening next. ohio is one of the fir states to shut down. shut down early. ohio was the first state to shut down schools, for instance. and so, all of these things have contributed to people deciding, i think this time, that they are going to cast a ballot, and we have eight million registered voters right now in ohio. at's the largest number we've had sie 2008. and it will be interesting to see what the percentage of that eight million that actually turns out to vote. >> sreenivasan: are there particular races that we should be paying attention to are there particular precincts or anything that we should be looking for on election night? >> well, in 2016, donald trump won ohio by eight points. since then, the republicans have had some losses. democrats have had some gains. we didn't have a blue wave in ohio in 2018. we had blue tornadoes, or blue

storms, ki of. because the five executive offices-- governor, secretary of state, auditor, treasurer and attorney general-- went to republicans. but democrats were able to flip five seats in the ohio house in total, and they were in suburbs. three of them wereround columbus, one was around the akron area, and one was around cincinnati. and those are the races that, they kind of go along with the races that we're looking at now for election night. i think, in the first district, steve chabot is running against kate schroeder. we have, in the 10th district, mike turner running against desiree tims. and then in the district right above columbus, in the 12th district, we have troy balderson running against alaina shearer. what's interesting about all those races is, those were areas that started to see some blue creeping in, in 2018. those are three well-known congress members, all men, running against women. and the women have been out-raising the men. and this is really making those races something to watch.

we haven't seen a congressional race in ohio flip since 2012. the map was drawn very deliberately to make sure that there are 12 republicans and four democrats. and so, to see that there might be a flip here would be really extraordinary. >> sreenivasan: an evaluation of u.s. census data by the brookings institution found that, in 2019, millennials and younger generations, all born before 1980, now make up more than half of the population for the first time. they also represent a significant share of eligible voters. traditionally, youth turnout in previous elections has been low, but this has not been a traditional year, with record numbers of young people organizing against climate change, police brutality and civil injustice. one organization here in ohio is helping to develop the youth electorate.

newshour weekend's ivette feliciano spoke with prentiss haney, co-executive director of the ohio organizing collaborative. >> reporter: so, we know that in-person voting started in ohio this week, and we've seen reports about really long lines and hours-long wait times. what have you been seeing on the ground there? >> well, what i've mostly been seeing is excitement. you know, we've-- we've been waiting for this moment all year, and some people for the last couple years. we have a very diverse group of young people who are engaged in our elections. there's about 400,000-plus young people of color who are in ohio. even though the pandemic really slowed down some of our efforts in the field, we saw reported by the ohio voter contact center that 912,000 new people have registered to vote since 2016. and specifically, 250,000 of those folks are young people between 18 and 25. so there is a lot of excitement for young people to come out and

vote this year. >> reporter: what are you hearing from those young people about voting in the context of a pandemic, an economic recession, and also the national uprisings against racial injustices? >> the main thing that i'm hearing is that people understand that this is one of the most important elections in their lifetime. they have lived in a country that has almost had two different realities. one is like, you know, seeing yourself more reflected on television and culture and arts and, like, being able to tell diverse stories. and meanwhile, there is, like, crippling student debt andn economy that is not prepared for young people to enter into the workforce. and so, the young people, who, like, i think, you know, especially around-- around may, with george floyd, were, like, dealing with this sort of like two dual realities of, like, "i see myself as an agent of change; i see myself as someone who is fighting for, you know, changing the world, and i see

all these ings." and those young people turned that pain into power in the streets. and so now i think that this is the completion of that cycle. those same young people are saying, like, "not only am i showing up in the streets, but i'm going to show up today, election day, and every day that follows, to make sure that a democracy works for all of us." >> reporter: and you're th co-executive director of the ohio organizing collaborative. what's the mission there? and what have you and your team been doing to get the vote out? >> the ohio organizing collaborative is a statewide innovative community organizing group. we believe that every-day ohioans from all walks of life, students-- people of faith, students, young people, people who have been directly iacted by mass incarceration, women of color who work in the care economy-- arall people who are searching for and trying to find a way to be able to live out their values in the public arena. without traditional tactics, such as door-knocking, you know, being able to go to community events, because of covid, we have turned our eye toward what we call relation organizing,

which is simply just talking to your friends or family about why this electn is important to you and why you need to show up. when you talk to someone that you know, that you love, about something you care about, they're more likely to listen, to take serious the issue you care about, and to take action, because you asked them to do it. >> reporter: and as you're having these conversations with people, are they concerned about voter suppression in ohio? >> i think most people want to-- want to be able to trust that the plan that they have is a plan that they can execute. so, there is a lot of disinformation out about the election, about how to cast your ballot. and the person who in your life that you'll trust the most to help you get through that is probably someone you know. and so what we've been doing to combat some of the consion that folks may feel, and to keep them excited about showing up, is making sure that they're connecting and talking to friends that they know that they're amplifying on social media-- trusted sources-- about how you go out to vote and how do you cast your ballot. and i think that has really

changed some of the tides around people being a little nervous. evident in like some of the historic early vote we see-- we're seeing in oh. >> reporter: and you were a field organizer for the obama campaign in ohio. how does 2020 feel different? >> i think 2012 felt like-- felt like continuing change. and i think 2020 feels like a renewal. especially for new voters who are voting for the first time. they are making the commitment that people made in 2008. and then they're convincing other folks who made that commitment before to renew that commitment moving forward. the biggest turnout tool is the people on your phone, on your facebook page, in your d.m.s. and if you can harness the reason why you're showing up this year, and take that energy and have that courageous conversation with someone in your life, to get them to make a vote plan, you are just as important as every other voter, every person running for elected office. you can make that change. and so, that is the power that

we have this year, is that our relationships will make the difference. and i'm so excited about that. >> reporter: prentiss haney of the ohio organizing collaborative, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you all. >> sreenivasan: we'll have more on our "roads to election 2020" coverage from ohio on tomorrow's broadcast. this is a pretty conservative area. not many people are real psyched about the idea of more tax. >> nope, it is not a popular subject. >> sreenivasan: how do you change their mind? >> facts and data. >> sreenivasan: that's all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. for the latest news updates visit www.pbs.org/newshour. i'm hari sreenivasan. thanks for watching. stay healthy and have a good night. captioning sponsored by wnet

captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> pbs newshour weekend is made possible by: sue and edgar wachenheim iii. the anderson family fund. bernard and denise schwartz. the cheryl and philip milstein family. barbara hope zuckerberg. the leonard and norma klorfine foundation. charles rosenblum.

we try to live in the moment, to not miss what's right in front of us. at mutual of america, we believe taking care of tomorrow can help you make the most of today. mutual of america financial group, retirement services and investments. >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. we offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our u.s.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you. to learn more, visit www.consumercellular.tv. additional support has been provided by: and by the corporation for public broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the american people. and by conibutions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. you're watching pbs.

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