On Labor Day weekend, with thousands spread out across the lawn that fronts the Black River in downtown Lorain, Ohio, the president of the county AFL-CIO, Harry Williamson, glowingly introduced Tim Carrion, a leader in the city’s large Latino community. Carrion then took the stage and announced he was running for mayor in the 2015 election to bring “new leadership, new ideas, and a vision of solidarity.”

After his remarks, as a raffle drawing for big-screen televisions closed out the day’s festivities and the sun set behind Lorain’s abandoned Ford plant, people discussed the dramatic effect Carrion’s run would have on local politics. They were right, and maybe not just about Lorain.

So what’s going on in northern Ohio? Most leftists outside of the state first heard of Lorain after last year’s municipal elections, when, on the heels of the victories of Kshama Sawant in Seattle and Bill de Blasio in New York City, Labor Notes published a story about Lorain’s independent labor slate.