In the heart of southeast Ohio’s Appalachian region is Athens County, the state’s poorest area with a 31 percent poverty rate. Most of the people living in Athens county at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains near the border of West Virginia—from farmers, professionals at Ohio University, or the working poor—all seem to know their county’s notoriety, but don’t really seem to mind too much. They also believe that nearby Meiggs and Benton counties aren’t far behind them. Within its 11 cities amid scenic hills and plains—mostly along U.S. Route 50’s Appalachian Highway and U.S. Route 33—poverty hasn’t so much been an acquired situation it is more a way of life in the region that has voted mostly Democratic for decades. As for politics, Lorinda LeClain, the local history and genealogy librarian at the Nelsonville Public Library, told The Epoch Times she heard there was a lot of support for …