Bellwether in A Storm $ Ohio's Montgomery County, where the candidates are running neck and neck, is an American microcosm

By JON D. HULL DAYTON

DOWNTOWN DAYTON MAY NOT BE quite dead yet, but by dusk Ohio's sixth largest city is pretty much out cold for the night. With office vacancies at 22%, the evening rush hour is largely a function of urgency rather than congestion: nobody wants to be caught downtown after dark. By 6 Elder-Beerman, the last big department store since Lazarus closed its doors in January, is nearly empty. Outside a few remaining stragglers hurry to catch buses for the outlying suburbs and strip malls, leaving behind an uneasy mix of panhandlers, police and security guards. The only other substantial signs of life on a recent Monday night -- besides a few business travelers huddled in hotel bars -- are the homeless hanging around outside the St. Vincent de Paul shelter and the dozens of agitated voters gathered just across the street at the local Democratic headquarters to blow off some steam.

Pass out a few torches, and the crowd just might march on the nearest castle. "I've never seen things so bad in Dayton," says Garry Smith, 43, an unemployed autoworker and former Bush supporter. "Clinton makes me nervous, but I feel desperate, and I'm about willing to try anything." Gail Seman, 51, a temporary office worker and registered Republican for 26 years, was first shaken by Anita Hill's treatment during the Clarence Thomas hearings. Then she watched the Republican Convention on TV last month. "They showed someone from the Kansas delegation wearing a T shirt that had Clinton smoking dope with two babes and Hillary hustling cookies," she says contemptuously. "Well, that did it. That really did it." Like many small-town Midwesterners, Seman is so polite she seems awkward when angry. "Look how upset I am," she says, visibly quaking. Catching her breath, she fires one last salvo: "Bush had four years, and now he talks about change? Hah! Just how dumb does he think I am?"

M.K. Maue, head Clinton volunteer for Montgomery County, stands before a faded, gold-framed picture of F.D.R. and addresses her newly inducted shock troops. "There are 125,000 unregistered voters in this county that we need to reach," she says solemnly. The crowd cheers as she introduces a young volunteer who has already registered 200 voters at his booth in front of a Wal-Mart store. Maue asks, "Did anyone go to the German Festival?" Embarrassed silence. "Too bad. That would have been a good place to wear your buttons and T shirts."

Not exactly a rousing call to arms, but the battle is critical nonetheless. Enough of those Bill and Al T shirts among the 97,000 registered Democrats, 66,000 Republicans and 136,000 independents scattered across this swatch of gently rolling southwestern Ohio, and Clinton may get his hands on those White House curtains after all. When it comes to choosing Presidents, Montgomery County (pop. 574,000) tends to pick a winner. Only once since 1968 has the region failed to vote for the victorious candidate. In 1988 it gave Bush a 57% majority. Now both the Bush and Clinton campaigns are targeting Montgomery as a critical swing county in a critical state -- and the latest TIME poll shows both candidates in a virtual dead heat, with Clinton ahead of Bush 41% to 40%.

Though unemployment stands at 6.8%, almost a full point below the national average, voters have grappled with an eroding industrial base since the 1970s, when NCR Corp. -- the town's main employer for nearly a century -- shed 14,000 workers. Subsequently, Dayton Tire and Rubber Co., Frigidaire and Dayton Press all pulled out or closed down. "Dayton just got knocked on its butt," says Steve Sidlo, managing editor of the Dayton Daily News (circ. 182,000). "We were losing 2,000 jobs here, 4,000 there and 5,000 there. It was just bang, bang, bang, one body blow after another."

The beating hasn't stopped. Last December the Department of Energy announced the closure of the EG&G Mound Applied Technologies nuclear-weapons facility in Miamisburg (pop. 18,000), which employs 1,600 and pumps millions into the community. In January USAir closed most of its hub at Dayton International Airport. Heavy dependence on the auto industry gives residents the jitters: with eight plants employing about 20,000 workers, Montgomery County has the largest concentration of domestic GM jobs outside Michigan.

Last month autoworkers got their first good news in years, when GM announced plans to build a $155 million paint facility at its Moraine assembly plant. But the real key to Montgomery's economic endurance is the nearby Wright- Patterson Air Force Base, the largest in the nation, with 28,000 employees and a payroll of $968 million a year. As part of its post-cold war consolidation, the Pentagon in July officially merged the Air Force Systems Command and the Logistics Command into a new Air Force Material Command, headquartered at Wright-Patterson.

Straddling the intersection between the Great Miami, the Mad and the Stillwater rivers, Dayton is the kind of town where locals still thank travelers for visiting and really mean it. "We're so white bread," chuckles Sidlo, referring to the regional temperament rather than skin color. Though modest, residents are still demonstrably jealous of the fact that Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, gets all the glory for the first Wright brothers flight, even though the inventors lived and worked in Dayton. "Hell, we deserve the credit," says Thomas Heine, president of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce. But he admits that name recognition is not one of Dayton's greater assets: "If you ask most people about Dayton, they won't say yuck, and they won't say yeah! They'll say, 'Huh?' "

The city's population has plummeted 30% since 1960, largely because of white flight that reached supersonic speeds in 1976, when the public schools started court-ordered busing. The county's black population has held steady at about 18%, but Montgomery County remains so segregated that activists hold annual rallies at the "peace bridge" that spans the Great Miami River, which runs like a racial moat between very black West Dayton and very white East Dayton. Where blacks and whites do coexist, it's often a case of what Dayton Mayor Richard Dixon calls "temporary integration" -- meaning that whites simply haven't had time to pack their bags yet.

Life in Montgomery is still steeped in Midwestern tradition, but with much less optimism and much more fear. The entire county is like a huge Norman Rockwell painting dramatically retouched for the 1990s. During the Mountain Days Festival last month, the county celebrated the Appalachian roots of thousands of families lured to Dayton decades ago to work in the automobile factories. With a rapidly eroding industrial identity, rising crime, health- care fears and hoarse debates over abortion, Montgomery offers an uncanny reflection of the worried nation itself -- a miniature American theme park ready to be plunked down in the next World Expo.

Crack houses? Head due west just a few minutes from downtown Dayton. (And lock the car doors.) Says Mayor Dixon: "We have a tremendous crack problem and very few resources from the Federal Government." Which partly explains why the Montgomery County jail is undergoing a $20 million expansion despite a budget crunch.

Looking for country-club Republicans? Drive straight south from the city center to the enclave of Oakwood (pop. 9,000). "They call me the token Democrat," says James Sullivan, deputy director of the county board of elections and Oakwood resident. "When you die here, people don't say you won an Academy Award or whatever; they just say you lived in Oakwood."

Reagan Democrats? Head due east a few minutes from downtown, and pull over alongside the tidy, one-story wood and brick starter homes sporting American flags. White, patriotic and religious, East Dayton is the hinge that will determine whether Montgomery County swings left to Clinton or right to Bush. Politicians prowl these neighborhoods at their own risk. "I think we should throw them all out," growls Charles Balger, 66, a retired real estate agent and Navy vet. Balger remains bitterly undecided about how he'll vote in November. "I've always voted Republican, but Bush hasn't done anything," he says. "I would have voted for Perot just to put someone new in to shake things up."

Congressional challenger Pete Davis, a 36-year-old Republican running against incumbent Tony Hall, displays a map of Montgomery County in his office. East Dayton is highlighted in yellow. "Those are the people I need to win," he says confidently. Davis hopes to unseat Hall, a popular seven-term Congressman who has made his mark on hunger and human-rights issues, by riding the anti-incumbent bandwagon. At every campaign stop he bashes Hall for living in a nice "custom-built" house in Virginia rather than in the district, for spending too much time on foreign affairs and for voting against the Gulf War.

Hall is unrepentant. "Hell's bells," he says, reacting to his opponent's charges. "Look at my record. Look at what I've done for the district." He stands by his vote against the Gulf War resolution and explains his home in Virginia by saying, "I'm a family man. I work in Washington five days a week, and when I come home I want to eat with my family." (He travels to Dayton every other weekend, staying with his mother.) Davis has a tougher time attacking Hall on so-called family-value issues: Hall is a pro-life, born- again Christian. Nonetheless, Davis is loath to concede moral issues in a district as traditional as Montgomery County. After some thought he suggests that "Hall is anti-family because he is anti-choice in schools."

The Republicans are hoping their stress on family values will give them an edge in Montgomery County. "Family values play exceptionally well here," says Mayor Dixon, who is black. "Even the African Americans are somewhat conservative." Still, moral questions can be a two-edged sword, even for the Republicans. The Montgomery County Republican Party has had four chairmen in three years because of a struggle over abortion between religious conservatives and moderates. "Abortion is this generation's Vietnam," says Vicki Pegg, the pro-choice Republican county recorder. Pegg was harassed for her stance during an unsuccessful bid for county auditor two years ago. "I had some mail that would turn your stomach," she says.

For now, it is much easier to find Republicans for Clinton in Montgomery County than Democrats for Bush. Still, the more affluent suburbs remain heavily Republican. Among these Bush loyalists, fear of higher taxes carries far more weight than so-called family values. "What it gets down to here is which candidate is going to affect voters' pocketbooks the least," says Sherwin Eisman, the Republican mayor of the middle-class suburb of Huber Heights (pop. 40,000). Eisman is one of the few local politicians who enthusiastically endorse Bush. Pegg, one of the county's top elected Republicans, won't even comment on Bush or his record. Heine admits, "I'm hearing a lot of business people say they are disappointed with Bush but they just can't vote for a Democrat."

When the vote comes in, James Sullivan will help tally the results. A mechanical engineer by trade, he helped design parts for the P-51 Mustang fighter in Dayton during World War II. He won his first office in 1952, when he was elected ward committeeman, and he's been wrapped up in local politics ever since. But among Dayton's old-timers, Sullivan is best known for the ordeal he faced in 1973, when his 24-year-old son disappeared while hiking alone on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Though overweight, Sullivan hit the track, got in shape, journeyed to Africa and retrieved the body.

Now 65 and overweight again, Sullivan sits in his tiny green office at the board of elections, surrounded by mementos of his and Dayton's past. "The difference between now and then is that we had hope, and now people don't," he says. "You used to be able to get out of high school, get a job at GM and buy two cars and a boat. Now a lot of people are out on the street, jobless, and the courts are clogged with drug cases." He picks up a small model of a P-51 he keeps on display. "Boy, we could really build 'em back then," he says with a shake of his head. Unwilling to linger on nostalgia, he quickly returns to politics and the region's future. "Look, we got problems, but I'll tell you, people in this town are ready to go," he says. "It's like we're all dressed up and just waiting for the band to start." Only problem is, most voters in Montgomery haven't heard the sound of music in years.