IF there is one politician, and one state, that represents in all forms the myriad problems facing President Bush and his Republican Party this year, it is Deborah Pryce and Ohio.

Mrs Pryce, whose fight to remain an Ohio congresswoman has become the key race in the battle for control of the US House of Representatives in next week’s midterm elections, concedes that for her, and the state that swung the close 2004 election President Bush’s way, much is now different.

“The political climate in Ohio has changed,” she told The Times amid campaign stops in Columbus, the state capital.

Indeed, next week’s elections promise to be a watershed for Ohio and Mr Bush’s party. The state, and Mrs Pryce with it, have been hit by a perfect political storm where local and national corruption, the Iraq war, an unpopular President, job losses and scandal have combined to make Ohio look one of the most perilous political landscapes for Republicans next week.

Ohio’s 15th district, home to a cross-section of America’s voting public, was the ultimate swing seat in the ultimate swing state during the 2004 election.

Without Ohio, Mr Bush would have lost the election to John Kerry. He won Ohio by just 51 to 49 per cent — 118,000 votes — and in Mrs Pryce’s district, the two candidates split the vote evenly.

Until now, Mrs Pryce has thrived politically in the 15th district, home to university students, Latino immigrants, middle-class suburbs and dominated by Columbus, a city deemed so typically “American” that marketeers use it to test new products.

Mrs Pryce has easily won her past six elections with only token opposition, because the mix of her district reflects her moderate Republicanism. She has risen to become the party’s fourth-ranking member in the House.

In Ohio as a whole, Republicans have all but taken over the state in the past two decades. Both US Senate seats and 12 of the 18 House seats are Republican. Every statewide office is Republican. The Republican House majority leader, John Boehner, comes from Ohio. No Republican president has ever won the White House without Ohio. Although a battleground state, Ohio has been edging the Republicans’ way and was a crucial part of the plan of Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s chief strategist, to cement a permanent Republican majority in the US.

After giving an interview with a local radio station in Columbus, before heading to the town of Marysville 40 miles west of the city to talk to local newspaper editors, Mrs Pryce is blunt in her assessment of why she is suddenly struggling for re-election, in a race she describes as a “knife fight”.

“It’s the political climate in Ohio this year,” she said. On Iraq, a war which she supports, she added: “Some people tell me we should stay. Others say we should leave. My district is representative of the country as a whole.”

Her district is home to Lima Company, a Marine reserve unit that has seen a third of its men killed or wounded in Iraq, with 25 dead. Pollsters say that antiwar sentiment is widespread in Columbus.

Mrs Pryce, who has never won with less than 60 per cent of the vote, is trailing her Democrat rival, Mary Jo Kilroy, who has run the simplest of campaigns, full of talking points sent from Washington, making the contest a referendum on Mr Bush, Iraq and the spectacular implosion of the Ohio Republican party.

Since Mr Bush's 2004 triumph, a string of corruption scandals have made the state's Republican Party resemble a Midwest branch of the Mob.

Bob Taft, the outgoing governor, pleaded guilty last year to violating state ethics laws. Bob Ney, a congressman whose district sits close to Mrs Pryce's, pleaded guilty three weeks ago to corruption charges. Mrs Pryce was also hit by the Mark Foley pageboy scandal after it emerged that earlier this year she described Mr Foley, the Florida congressman exposed for sending lurid e-mails to congressional helpers, as one of her close friends.

To retake the House, Democrats need a net gain of 15 seats, and three of those could come from Ohio. Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst, said: “Ohio is the window into the Republicans' national problems.”

POWER OF OHIO

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