All of us political junkies would come to find out that, as the time went on, that the bigger story would be that there was no story to report locally... at least not initially.

By 7:30PM, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) had won in Vermont, as did Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). At this very early point in the evening, Ohio was called for McCain at 55+%. Shortly after that, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern issued a statement: "During his brief primary campaign in Ohio, John McCain voiced his support for job-killing economic policies, told state manufacturing workers that their jobs were never coming back, then took the weekend off for a barbeque on his ranch," he said. "Is it just me, or have Ohioans seen this movie before?"

One thing Ohioans had seen before -- be it for an Iowa Skills Test, ACT or SAT -- was the optical scan card (pictured here) used in this year's Ohio elections. For all the planning ahead and hard work by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, there were more than a few stutters in the Buckeye State -- namely sleet and ice, power outages, ballot shortages. Some 10 Northeast Ohio precincts requested permission to move to another location; a few polling spots ran on generators due to power outages, and a judge ruled that Sandusky County polling stations would remain open until 9PM.

Then at 8:15PM, the Obama campaign asked for polls to remain open in Cuyahoga County due to ballot shortage and bad weather; as a result, 15 precincts in Cuyahoga County were to remain open until 9PM.

By 9PM, Texas had gone for McCain and he became the presumptive GOP nominee for President. Huckabee called McCain and addressed Texas with a concession -- paving the way for a Wednesday endorsement lunch in the White House Rose Garden with George W. Bush. But shortly after McCain locked up the GOP nod, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was declared the winner of Rhode Island... and according to an inside source, a problem reconciling ballots with declared record counts was causing some problems here in Ohio. I get another call shortly thereafter from George at BFD; it's going to be a long night for him and the blogging gang there at WKYC who are following the election... we'll have to postpone tomorrow's breakfast for another day.

At 10PM, McCain was thanking all four states for his nomination; other Ohio Democratic results were slowly trickling in. Clinton had a sizeable lead (a whopping 20 points) over Obama statewide with 20% reporting; yet, Franklin County was 54% Obama / 45% Clinton. ONN reported that Gov. Ted Strickland surely had a helping hand in Clinton's success outside of urban centers. Elsewhere, Howard Fineman of Newsweek (senior Washington Correspondent and columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington Bureau Chief) offered commentary that the Democratic nomination "fight is essentially tied," that there is "no joy" in the Clinton camp, and that there's a divided and "grim determination" amongst the politicos in her corner.

Meanwhile, unofficial local race results began to add up for Democratic and Republican races. MSNBC had, hours earlier, offered that Ohio's new voting system would debut under pressure. And after the polls closed, periodic posts on the site links here showed that, if anything, it was going to be a long, long night -- particularly for those of us in Cuyahoga County.

10:45PM: I'm starting to get a bit bleary. Still nothing substantive out of Cuyahoga County. MSNBC shows Clinton and Obama are virtually tied in Texas, with less than 600 votes separating them and with 24% of precincts reporting. I get a call from one of my old college friends, who asks if I'm keeping tabs on the Yahoo! Political Dashboard, which is keeping close tabs on both Texas and Ohio. Poke around there for the horse race, folks. It's pretty interesting. We've wrapped up this week's issue of Cool Cleveland (save for this page) so I take a break and read about Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre's impending retirement from the NFL. In the time it takes to read this New York Times article, Clinton has nudged ahead in Texas.

The clock hits 11PM: Ohio is declared for Hillary Clinton by CNN and MSNBC. Suddenly, the pundits are talking about a "sea change" toward Clinton, having broken a string of 12 straight Obama wins. This win (along with Rhode Island) is immediately considered a "profound transformation," with commentators almost assuredly suggesting Clinton will stay in the race into June -- despite the delegate count. And now, at long last, with less than 1% of the votes counted, we begin to see some stats from Cuyahoga County... but nothing that would begin to suggest decisions in any particular way.

It's 11:15: Strickland, John Glenn and Stephanie Tubbs Jones warm up the crowd in Columbus before Clinton tells supporters she'll press on to Pennsylvania. Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC speculates that a continued fight for the Democatic nomination could cause a splintering (and perhaps even an abandonment) of the party.

While waiting for the Cuyahoga County ticker to roll back, and listening to Clinton's victory speech, I decide to take a crack at the Pundit Fight political blog. Hilarious. Meanwhile, Clinton: "As Ohio goes, so goes the Nation." Wild applause. Maybe this is some kind of sea change. Suddenly I recall a stat from earlier in the night on either CNN or MSNBC (was it Campbell Brown, Nora O'Donnell or Rachel Maddow... can't remember now...?) where exit polling 1 in 5 Ohioans said that race was a factor in their voting and that 80% of those people voted for Clinton. What is the message in that Ohio statistic, exactly?? I have some conclusions... but I won't begin to hazard a guess in print.

11:20: Ah, here we go... so far, for Sheriff, McFaul has Falzone by 3 to 1 on votes; O'Malley has the same on Cintron, Jr. for Recorder. And Rokakis is handing a 3 to 1 push for Treasurer on Flanagan. Brendan Sheehan, Denna Calabrese, Tim Flanagan and Anthony Russo are moving toward decisive victories for judge seats. Trakas is doing well. School levies aren't doing well, it seems, but library levies (for Cle and Cle Hts) are looking pretty good so far. Percentages range from under 1% to over 20% of the precincts reporting. I click over to CBS; Clinton and McCain might be the story tonight, but two former White House candidates are in fights to hold their Congressional seats: Republican Ron Paul and, of course, Kucinich. Their stories are getting picked up across the pond... go figure...

The Wall Street Journal reported that early vote counts showed Kucinich "leading his nearest rival [Cimperman] by about 2-1." And Paul won his primary rather handily, according to the Associated Press.

11:45: Obama is speaking in Austin, Texas. It's too close to call in the two-step state, but he vows that the delegate count will not change enough for Clinton to gain an advantage. He remains upbeat and positive because "Texas is still too close to call." He's directing much of his political rhetoric at McCain now... weird, AP is reporting that Kucinich only "slightly led early election results" in his battle with Cimperman... I find June Kronholz's WSJ blog and try to learn more. How come we're not seeing results from that race anywhere else online? I flip to WKYC and see that Kucinich is up 54% - 31% with 20% of the precincts reporting in. Yes, 13 points, but not a lock yet. Like you, I won't know until morning if Kucinich will hold on to win.

Midnight: Looks like a snow day outside... and I'm wondering if Tim RoboHagan will call me after I finally get in bed at 3AM. Being a Star Trek fan, I'd prefer a call from Kate Mulgrew... Looks like Issue 15 is well on its way to winning with almost 20% reported in... I am guessing that Cool Cleveland is going out just about anytime now. Let me tell you, I'm digging WKYC's dashboard. Seems easier to follow than the County website. With the latest episode of Cool Cleveland in the e-tube and headed to tens of thousands of subscribers, I know there are miles to go before most pundits and political watchers sleep. But this one's headed to bed...

And then there's The Morning After... The Cuyahoga Effect is being lost in the "Hillary comeback" script already. While the mass media focuses on Clinton's historic comeback, we here at Cool Cleveland are zeroed in on areas like 11th district (which went 3-1 for Obama) even though Stephanie Tubbs Jones has unwaveringly supported Clinton and will likely continue to do so. She seems to be out of sync with her constituency. We're not math majors here, but in doing the math for Cuyahoga County, Obama destroyed Clinton 173,902 to 150,991. All the other local races -- with the exception of our endorsements for judges -- came true. Cuyahoga County went big for Obama -- we'd like to hope that's a wrinkle not lost in all the media noise.

Coverage and ballot photo by Cool Cleveland Managing Editor Peter Chakerian peterATcoolcleveland.com

Debate photo by Bill Rieter, CSU News Bureau

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