BSB picks up a good one. Tom Ganley might be the biggest, stinkingest, foulest hyper-hypocrite in politics right now. Which must mean he’s a Republican candidate for Congress.
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I don’t get it. Here we are a few weeks from the beginning of early voting and here’s what I’m seeing:
- Daily e-mails about the Fisher campaign’s schedule.
- A teleconference with volunteers signing up to do GOTV/early voting calls.
- Daily press releases and statements like reactions to Obama’s Oval Office in Iraq.
- Rumors of record-breaking fundraising substantially higher than we seen in his campaign before?
None of which I’m used to seeing from the Fisher campaign. Doesn’t Fisher read Slate or Politico? Doesn’t he know that he’s supposed to be running a bumblin’, fumblin’ campaign? This well honed, message focused, political campaign isn’t what’s supposed to be going on.
The Fisher campaign is for real. The only question is did they get their act together in time to still win in November.
One of the best things to happen to Lee Fisher is that John Collins isn’t his communication director anymore. Collins ran a poor communication shop. He blacklisted us, even after the primary, was not engaging, and frankly impossible to get any useful information. Fisher’s new communication director, in her second week, shows a new sheriff is in town. And I’ve heard more Fisher in the past week than I think I did all summer.
Look at Fisher’s statement on his reaction to the President’s Oval Office address last night:
“I honor the incredible sacrifice our servicemen and women have made throughout this war, and I support President Obama’s responsible withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
We should now move quickly to draw down our troops in Afghanistan.
We must continue to ensure that Afghanistan is not a safe haven for terrorists, and the time has come to undertake a more targeted mission to hunt down Al-Qaeda wherever they are hiding, whether it be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, or elsewhere.
I wholeheartedly agree with the President that our central focus needs to be on reviving our economy and creating jobs.”
Fisher wants to end our effort in Afghanistan. A position that a sizeable majority of Ohioans agree, but Portman does not hold. It’s also the position that Jennifer Brunner staked out before any other candidate was willing to.
That, in an of itself, was major news, and smart politics.
Those who are counting Lee Fisher out are missing a major story. His campaign is better off that it’s been since Day One. Will Rob Portman still have a sizeable monetary advantage? Probably, but Lee Fisher is going to have the money necessary to run an effective campaign. Despite MILLIONS in paid television ads in his favor, Rob Portman has made no movement in even Rasmussen. He’s tossing millions under a muddy, spinning wheel and getting no traction. I’m starting, for the first time, to get a little bullish on Fisher’s campaign.
You’d think someone in the political media world would note that. But then again, what do I know?
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State Auditor (and John Kasich running mate) Mary Taylor finally released her long-awaited and long-overdue Lottery Commission Performance Audit today and the results are ASTOUNDING!
Wait…
Did I say astounding?
What I meant to say was incredibly boring.
The primary focus of her report involves recommendations that the agency fire a bunch of people to save about 2 million bucks. It’s not chump change, sure, but given the fact that the lottery took in over 2.5 BILLION dollars last year it’s really just a drop in the bucket.
And if you read the whole report you’ll discover something pretty funny. In the Executive Summary section (1-10) she spends a few sentences commending the current Lottery Commission for their hard-fought and unexpected success in the difficult task of changing software vendors which, she estimates, saved nearly twenty million dollars per year over the next 10 years. That’s nearly $200 million dollars in total!
Yes.
You read that correctly.
The Strickland-appointed lottery commission already saved the State TEN TIMES AS MUCH per year as all of Mary Tayor’s recommendations combined.
I’m not going to sit here and personally defend each and every Strickland appointee – the lottery director especially. But when you look at the big picture and you actually look at the actions of the Strickland Administration it’s amazingly obvious that Ted has pursued and, in most cases, accomplished everything the Republicans are proposing this year.
It also seems worth mentioning: Taylor was supposed to have this audit done in 5 months (by March) at a cost of $188,000. It’s now nearly September and the audit took twice as long as expected. One has to ask: did it cost twice as much? Did Taylor’s report cost us $400K? If so, why?
I really don’t want to attack Taylor here. I think she, unlike her running mate, is pretty honest. I really think she means well and she has the best interest of Ohio and Ohioans in mind when she makes decisions. And I commend her for not using this report as a political tool.
But you still have to ask yourself: if the best ideas coming out of the GOP this year are nothing more than poorly rehashed ideas the current Democratic administration has already successfully implemented, why should I vote for the Republicans?
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Steve Stivers is having a little problem… Steve Stivers’ record.
Last week, Steve Stivers claimed he was FOR embryonic stem cell research despite his vote in the State Senate to ban funding for it.
Today, Stivers attacked Kilroy over her support for cap-and-trade:
“Liberal special interest groups are at it again. Rahm Emanuel’s little brother and his Hollywood friends think they know what is best for the voters of Ohio’s 15th District. They had the audacity to run an ad in the Columbus Dispatch that leads people to believe that Cap and Trade is good for central Ohio. They want you to believe that Ohio can afford to lose 100,000 jobs.”
The only problem? Two years ago, Stivers ran on a platform promoting cap-and-trade as a free-market solution to global warming, according to the Columbus Dispatch:
In a July 2008 press release, Stivers praised the idea: “Among other things, Stivers supports the concept of a market-based cap-and-trade system, increased fuel standards, and massive investment in the new, clean-energy technology that will help spur a new, greener economy.”
Rob Portman, as we’ve mentioned before, has the same problem with seemingly supporting cap-and-trade before Democrats proposed it.
Stivers’ flip-flop is particularly bad given that it’s just been two years since he campaigned on supporting it.
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So, apparently, there are a ton of people in State government and the Columbus Dispatch who are interested in reading about Nash’s romantic relationship with the House Republicans’ Communication Director Megan Piwowar. Seriously, the #1 and #3 posts read today was just about them, and that’s mostly from people from the Dispatch and State Government computers (naughty, naughty) was reading about them.
So, I have potentially terribly news for you Nash-Piwowar watchers. Rumor has it that Mr. Nash was in Chicago last week interviewing with the Chicago Tribune. No word on whether Megan was aware of this or what their status of their relationship.
Maybe I should I check our traffic logs for people from Chicago reading these posts, too?
Let’s hope these two crazy kids can find a way to make it work….
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I think, and I’m not alone nationally in saying so, that the Strickland-Brown campaign has amazingly run a sharp and effective campaign in this political environment.
It took not more than a single brain cell to figure out the economy would place a major component of this election. What the Strickland campaign has smartly figured out is how to turn the economy as a negative against Kasich with focusing on his slavish devotion to Wall $treet greed and outsourcing. That has been no easy task.
So effective was this campaign was that the Ohio GOP and the RGA even attempted to muddy the waters of this attack by, incredulously, attacking Strickland on this issues with laughable results.
Anyone watching the ads sees the race as largely a debate about outsourcing and free trade. That’s about as favorable ground to frame the economy in Ohio that Strickland could find in this environment. This has been capped off with Friday’s ad highlighting Kasich’s personal involvement in supporting sending 300 Ohio manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico.
Now is the time to go in for the kill.
Last week was a terrible week for the Kasich campaign. Kasich unveiled the second proposal of his campaign, and it was largely a plagiarized copy of Ted Strickland’s regulatory reform. This was a perfect opportunity to introduce people to one of the largely unknown aspects of Strickland’s record as Governor.
Which gets to my largest criticism of the Strickland campaign. Paid media has a disproportionate impact in how people view a campaign. Television ads shape how people view races more so than press conferences, “earned media,” press releases, and public speeches (combined.) Despite attacking Gov. Strickland in every venue but paid media, Kasich has managed to spin some into viewing him as running a “positive” campaign and that Strickland has largely ran a negative campaign. The former is not true, but the latter is.
Again, not that I blame the Strickland campaign. Kasich was largely unknown and introducing Kasich to voters on their terms made sense. But now with every attack, Kasich’s response has been that the Governor has nothing positive to say about his own record… a negative attack disguised as an observation. It’s clever spin. And it’s starting to stick.
If Governor Strickland is going to continue to be our Governor, he needs to run a positive ad about his record. He has to show Ohioans that the “good things” that Kasich is proposing as an economic solution: like cutting taxes, regulatory reform, and smaller government is things that Ted Strickland has already done. The crazy stuff that Kasich has proposed, like privatizing economic development (which, I guess, does develop the market for private economic development consultants more) and a repeal of our income taxes with no plan to pay for them. Talking about your record and comparing it on such terms does not make this a “referendum” election. A “choice” election strategy requires that you give voters a reason to vote “for” you as well as a reason to vote “against” your opponent. Instead, we have two candidates running a referendum against the other.
Joe Hallett of the Dispatch wrote on Sunday:
In fact, it is time for Strickland to stick an oar in the water and offer Ohioans a vision – even one single initiative – of his plans for a second term. Instead, all we’ve received from Strickland is negativity: campaign speeches smearing Kasich, one attack ad after another.
I disagree with the characterization that Kasich has been smeared, but Hallett’s larger point: a negative campaign softens up support for the other guy, but the second side of the coin is that you give those wavering voters a reason to vote for you to close the deal.
No campaign has ever won an election simply running against an opponent who has not under an indictment or public scandal involving bribery or sex and won.
Ted Strickland can win if he can look voters in the eye and show them exactly what he’s done as Governor. I’ve yet to meet a voter who didn’t at least pause when I told them about Strickland’s record. It’s not enough to have it on your campaign website. In this environment, he needs to get it on people’s television screens. Ted can win with an ad that acknowledges the problems we’re all facing in this economy and talk about what he’s been doing about it (not talking about it doesn’t remove it as an issue. Instead, it feeds Kasich’s entirely false narrative that Strickland hasn’t done anything effectively regarding the economy.)
I’ve yet to have a single conversation about Ted’s record that didn’t, at least, give even the most loyal of Republicans some pause. In fact, the reaction I get is disbelieve because they can’t believe that a politician with this record wouldn’t mention it more. The reality is that Ohio’s media has done a piss-poor job covering Strickland’s record. And if the Governor’s office was going to effectively communicate Strickland’s records, well, we wouldn’t be in this situation. The reality is that people know as little about Strickland’s record as they do about Kasich at all. So little that most don’t realize, and Kasich is cynically praying on, that much of what Kasich has said are things that Strickland has already done, just like regulatory reform.
There’s time to win this thing, but we have to cover both sides of the equation. We’ve got Kasich against the rope… now hit him with your record, Ted.
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The Akron Beacon Journal editorial board rips John Kasich for plagiarism of Governor Strickland’s regulatory reform:
Yet what’s most striking about the Kasich plan is its own duplicative quality. In 2006, Ted Strickland campaigned making the same pledge. . . . Almost from the start of his term, Strickland launched Advantage Ohio, part of a broader effort to improve the performance of government. In February 2008, Advantage Ohio resulted in an executive order setting in motion a comprehensive review of state regulations, especially those affecting business.
The ABJ notes the similarities in the titles of Kasich’s proposal and the 2008 Executive Order issued by Kasich which also seems to share a similar organizational structure.
The Kasich camp knows all of this, and responds with three words essentially: Not good enough. The campaign points to a legislative regulatory reform task force that reported in December 2008 continued problems with balky and harmful regulation in the state. That shouldn’t surprise. State government is a large enterprise, involving some 10,000 regulations. A program to repair regulatory kinks and flaws won’t erase all problems in a matter of months.
What deserves attention is the framework the Strickland team set up, plus whether officials have pushed forward with the effort. Kasich talks about transparency, feedback, respect for businesses and reduced paperwork. The Strickland effort hits all of those spots.
…
Might the pace have been quicker? That is easy to suggest. Are there still problems? Of course. That would be so under a most brilliant plan. For his part, Strickland at times has leaned too heavily toward aiding narrow interests, in particular, organized labor. On regulatory reform, he has delivered something strategic, overdue and purposeful.
Which raises a telling point: If Strickland identified the problem, and now Kasich wants to take his shot, what did Republicans do for the 14 years they commanded the Statehouse? In view of the regular Republican cudgeling of big government, you would think every last wicked rule had been axed or repaired. Finally, when lawmakers took aim at codifying the Strickland plan, their effort collapsed, the Democratic House and Republican Senate unable to reach agreement on legislation. Which left Ted Strickland alone to fight this good fight.
The point about the task force report is critical because Kasich defenders like the newly-wed Carpetblogger and Naugle have lamely used a task force report that was issued shortly after the Executive Order was first issued as an attempt to suggest Strickland hasn’t actually done anything substantive on the issue—but that report predated the repeal of hundreds of regulations and the revision of thousands more that were just starting to be reviewed when that report was issued.
John Kasich’s done more to get the media to start covering Ted Strickland’s record on this issue than anything else so far. As I said on Twitter last week—give John Kasich some credit for at least redefining what it means to run on your opponent’s record. I think this is prime material for a campaign ad on Strickland’s record.
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You’re not going to find me at a Marc Dann Fan Club meeting. I didn’t support him in the primary in 2006. I openly wrote that his attorney disciplinary history was a major liability for the general election. And I made the legal and political case for Marc Dann’s impeachment. However, today’s blog post by Steve Nash at the Dispatch’s Daily Briefing Blog is nothing more than tabloid Dann bashing… two years after Dann left the public eye.
For no apparently reason, Steve Nash feels it necessary to report to the public at large that the recently divorced Marc Dann… has a profile on an online dating site.
Marc Dann is no longer a public officials, and hasn’t been by roughly two years. He’s entitled to have a private life now. There is absolutely nothing newsworthy about this information. It’s not more than a shameful act of public mockery passed off as “journalism.”
However, I have asked Mr. Nash to comment on reports that he is romantically linked to the Ohio House Republicans’ Communication Director. This is relevant information given that Mr. Nash, as a journalist, regularly reports on legislative political events as it goes to his bias.
Yet, for reasons we can only speculate, Mr. Nash has refused comment. He apparently believes his private life deserves more privacy than Marc Dann.
Journalistic hypocrisy, table for two?
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In the past two weeks, we’ve seen Kasich start to roll out some policy proposals. The first was a plan to privatize the Ohio Department of Development that has widely been panned as likely unconstitutional and not likely to deliver better results (quite the contrary.)
He then followed it up with his Ohio CSI idea which was nothing more than a plagarized version of Governor Strickand’s Advantage Ohio regulatory reform idea.
Lost in all this is the lack of any ad (from either Kasich, the RGA, or even Strickland or the DGA) is any mention of Kasich’s signature proposal: repealing Ohio’s income tax.
Like a good closing argument, I tend to think that campaigns start with their strongest idea first. And, the privatization of the Development Department, thoughly widely panned, at least didn’t accompanying statewide press coverage about how similar it was to something Ted Strickland has already done. So, I guess, that makes it a stronger proposal by default?
What do you think? Do you think Kasich’s will roll out more proposals that are stronger than the two he’s rolled out the past few weeks? Or is it possible it’ll get worse from him?
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The Federal Elections Commission has notified State Senator Bob Gibbs (R), who is challenging Congressman Zach Space, that he must return over $50,000 in donations because they exceeded the lawful maximum donation amounts under federal law. As BSB already noted, that’s around 25% of Gibbs’ most recent cash-on-hand total.
Over half of that amount is based on donations made by the Ohio Republican Party. And despite getting a massive amount of apparently, illegal, donations from the Ohio GOP, Gibbs was still facing a 6:1 cash-on-hand disadvantage to Space.
Two weeks ago, I noted how the NRCC had left the Space/Gibbs match off their initial ad reservation for the last few weeks of the election. This tells me what I’ve been hearing privately for over a month: the GOP is taking this race off their radar this cycle. Despite their believe that the demographics favor Republicans and the environment could not be better, Gibbs emerged from the primary too damaged, too unknown, and too broke to run a serious campaign against Space.
The Space Campaign wasted no time to bounce:
After Bob Gibbs broke federal law by accepting illegal campaign contributions from one of his campaign staffers, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has now uncovered 15 additional instances in which Gibbs is in violation of federal law. The 16 separate instances in which Gibbs took illegal contributions add up to a total of $50,467.01 – all of which must now be refunded, per FEC rules.
“Bob Gibbs is showing that he’ll do anything – even break federal law – to prop up his desperate campaign,” said Andrew Ricci, spokesman for Zack Space. “Gibbs’ blatant disregard for other peoples’ money is absolutely shameful. After raising taxes on every single Ohioan, Gibbs used taxpayer dollars to pay his campaign’s expenses, and now we’re learning that his campaign is being mismanaged and is in clear violation of federal law.”
“It’s time to tell Go-Along Gibbs that enough is enough,” Ricci continued.
…
The Gibbs campaign had 60 days – all of which have now passed – to reattribute or redesignate the contribution. After the initial 60 days, amounts in excess of the allowed limits must be refunded, according to federal guidelines and the attached letters from the FEC. If the Gibbs campaign has not already taken action on these 16 violations, nearly ¼ of their cash on hand was contributed illegally and must be returned. The FEC has given them until September 28 to comply, though further enforcement action by the Commission – including hefty fines – is possible.
I don’t think these kind of violations move votes, except I do know it’s harder to get your message out if you have to blow 1/4 of your Cash-on-Hand with only weeks left in the campaign on campaign refunds.
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Plunderbund posted the latest Strickland campaign video on Friday. The ad attacks John Kasich for helping Invacare send Ohio jobs to Mexico and China.
The ad hasn’t officially aired yet but Invacare has already released a statement saying it “is very disappointed that its home-state governor would attack it in a campaign commercial.”
Boo-fucking-hoo!
You know who SHOULD be disappointed?
The Ohioans who lost their jobs or didn’t get jobs because John Kasich and the rest of the Invacare board members decided to send their jobs overseas.
Modern summed it up well when he said: “I WANT a Governor who’s willing to stand up to corporations in Ohio that aren’t doing things in our interest, like outsourcing manufacturing jobs.”
It’s obviously hard to take Invacare’s response seriously because Kasich is on their board and was at least partially responsible for their decision to outsource all of these jobs.
But that’s only part of the picture.
If you check out the Secretary of State’s website you’ll find that Invacare’s execs are HUGE Republican donors. And have been for a long, long time.
They have already given the Kasich campaign nearly FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. Last time around they gave Ken Blackwell $10K. And over the past few years they’ve given Jon Husted nearly $23K!
So a bunch of Republican donors who run a company with the Republican nominee for Governor as a board member are “disappointed” with the current Democratic Governor for attacking them for sending jobs overseas?
How the hell is this news?
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If you live in the Columbus area are you are the least bit familiar with the restaurant scene here then you most assuredly know Liz Lessner. She’s the brains behind some of my favorite bars/restaurants in town like Tip Top and Dirty Franks downtown as well as Betty’s and Surly Girl in the short north area.
She’s also big on keeping her businesses socially and environmentally responsible so it didn’t surprise me at all to see her on Countdown this week smacking down Boehner and his plan to bring back the GOP policies that brought about the current financial crisis.
(Here’s a Link to the video on MSNBC)
Here we have a real small business owner whose businesses employ many central Ohioans – the kind of small business owner that the Republicans claim to want to help – supporting the President and dismissing the GOP.
I can’t wait to see Boehner’s response.
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I’m a big fan of Janet Napolitano and think she would have been a great choice for Secretary of Homeland Security had she not been the sitting Governor of a state that would immediately replace her with a crazed, anti-immigrant, right-wing lunatic.
I thought it was a bad idea at the time and the events of the past few months have shown that my initial reaction was absolutely correct.
When I talk about crazed, anti-immigrant, right-wing lunatics, I speak, of course, of Jan Brewer.
Brewer replaced Napolitano right after Jan’s appointment and just in time to sign in to law Arizona’s controversial new anti-immigrant policies.
I hate to pick on the President. He’s made a few bad choices but a shit load of good ones too.
But doing a set of quick, informal calculations, it seems to me that this is one of those choices that absolutely did not pay off as expected.
The total amassed value of the good Napolitano brings to the office of Homeland Security is FAR exceeded by the negative effect Brewer has had on the state of Arizona and the country as a whole.
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