Marty Behr of Langley is back from his excellent political adventure, pounding the shoe leather to swing the swing state of Ohio.

“It’s been a real eye-opening experience,” Behr said. “I know the economy has affected Whidbey. But it’s nothing like this. These people are really hurting.”

Figuring that Washington state is solidly behind Barack Obama, Behr, 65, took a week’s vacation from his travel-agency job, packed a bag and went to canvass undecided voters in neighborhoods around Cincinnati.

“Southern Ohio has been really impacted,” he said. “A hundred plants have closed in the past eight years, and tens of thousands of people have been laid off.”

In an e-mail to friends back home after his first day of canvassing for Obama in the poor Cincinnati neighborhood of Norwood, Behr wrote:

“I feel like I have been plunked down in a movie set for ‘America’s Crumbling Rust Belt.’”

“The neighborhood where I am working is not white-collar,” he continued in his e-mail. “Working people in small brick bungalows and low-rise apartment buildings with 2-6 units. Many pristine and very well cared for. Others crumbling. Many in foreclosure, with bank ‘For Sale’ signs. Several eviction notices or health department unsafe living conditions notices, and the look of people who left in a hurry.

“Of 250 homes and apartments on which I called yesterday, more than

50 residents had moved,” his e-mail continued. “And I am calling on registered voters only, so these people must have been living here for awhile. Lives torn apart, voters likely disenfranchised.”

But there were positive signs, he added:

“Kids by the hundreds playing in the streets on a sunny fall day. (Reminded me of my youth in Chicago.) Black, brown and white — together and seemingly oblivious to skin color … And the gracious people inviting me into their homes, some so poor and ramshackle that I had to hold back my tears.

“This neighborhood rioted in 1968 in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King,” he wrote. “But it stayed together, black and white neighbors. Now they are friends, neighbors, optimistic … but scared.”

Behr said his next canvassing assignment after Norwood was East Hyde Park.

In a follow-up e-mail he wrote: “It’s an area of small older homes filled with young professionals. No foreclosure or eviction signs, people who still have their jobs, but in some cases they talk about being forced to work part-time or losing their health insurance by being asked to go off payroll ‘on contract.’ These people are cautious and waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Behr said that on Saturday, his last day of canvassing, he was assigned a portion of rural Claremont County in southwest Ohio.

“It’s usually a Republican stronghold,” he said. “I visited 55 households, and must have walked 10 miles, they’re so spread out.”

He said the rural areas are much like the poor neighborhoods of Cincinnati, filled with people whose jobs have been shipped overseas.

“They have to take low-paying jobs for half of what they were making,” Behr said, adding that the homes are modest, but most of them are owned by the residents.

“But many are just suffering in terms what they’re going to do to put food on the table for their children,” he said. “The issues for them were jobs and healthcare.”

Behr said he was immensely impressed by the Obama organization in Ohio.

“There are an incredible number of volunteers,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like the energy behind this campaign. Nobody’s taking the election for granted. They’re pouring it on.”

He said that when he was leaving to return home Sunday, more than 500 new volunteers were “streaming in from every state that wasn’t a swing state.”

“There were a lot of teenagers too young to vote, to people in their 80s,” he said. “There was tremendous spirit and tremendous diversity. It’s unprecedented.”

“All of us older volunteers with lots of experience were working for young people in their 20s,” he added. “They were great. They listened. It was a lot of fun”

Behr said he thinks Ohio is still too close to call, but that the Obama campaign is determined to keep the pressure on, delivering the message while watching out for last-minute dirty tricks and efforts to disenfranchise voters.

Behr, who is semi-retired, has lived on South Whidbey since 1990. He is active in the community, has served on several boards and is a firmly entrenched Democratic activist.

He said he and his friends will continue to push the cause at home through a Democratic phone bank from now until the Nov. 4 election.

“With all of this energy and money in the campaign, I am optimistic,” he said. “It’s been a real education.”

Roy Jacobson can be reached at 221-5300 or rjacobson@southwhidbeyrecord.com.