Still, she's gotten a little carried away in touting the state's importance.
In her victory speech in Columbus, she rightly characterized it as "a bellwether state . . . a battleground state." Then she sent us scurrying to the history books with this claim: "And no candidate in recent history, Democrat or Republican, has won the White House without winning the Ohio primary."
Well, it depends on what your definition of "recent history" is.
In Ohio's 1960 primary (Clinton was 12 at the time), the man who won the White House later that year, John Kennedy, took a pass on the contest. The Democratic delegates initially were pledged to a favorite son, then-Gov. Michael DiSalle.
Similarly, favorite sons in both the Democratic and Republican primaries won in 1964 and 1968 (a timeline creeping ever closer to "recent history").
Since then, it appears Clinton was correct -- but in a very technical way. As Andrew Cayton, a history professor at Miami University in Ohio, noted, the state's primaries typically have been held when the likely nominee has surfaced in each party -- and not so long ago, most expected that would be the case this year.
Clinton, in her round of stops on TV shows, continued to promote Ohio as having outsize influence. "If you cannot win in Ohio, you cannot win the presidency," she said.
True enough for Republicans -- as virtually every political reporter knows by heart, since the GOP was founded in the 1850s, not one of its nominees has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.
Among Democrats, however, Kennedy ended up taking the inaugural oath despite losing Ohio to Richard Nixon, and Franklin D. Roosevelt won his fourth -- and final -- term in 1944 despite losing the state to Thomas Dewey.
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Times staff writer Scott Martelle contributed to this report.
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Excerpted from The Times' political blog, Top of the Ticket, at www.latimes.com /topoftheticket
