From the monthly archives: November 2011
From today’s Columbus Dispatch:
We Are Ohio has election night parties planned throughout the state, including one at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus. A spokeswoman for Building a Better Ohio, the Republican group formed to support Issue 2, said campaign officials will watch the election results somewhere near the Statehouse and that Kasich will speak with reporters after the issue is decided.
When one campaign is planning the party, and the other is planning its concession speech, it’s over, man.
Seriously, Building a Better Ohio isn’t even trying to fake that it believes it’s going to win tomorrow [...]
Full Story... →Three weeks ago, PPP showed Issue 3 passing at a whopping 31-point margin (55%-24%). Now, Public Policy Polling shows Issue 3 is polling below 50% at a more competitive 49%-35% margin. There has not been a single ad either pro or con on Issue 3. The only way Issue 3 has gotten into the public consciousness is by Mitt Romney’s visit to Cincinnati wherein he refused to endorse both issues and all the roadside signs that link to the two issues together.
Is a fourteen-point gap able to close by tomorrow? Actually, let’s take a closer look at [...]
Full Story... →The fight is not over yet, but Public Policy Polling’s final poll before tomorrow’s election show’s Issue 2 headed for a huge defeat.
PPP shows that 59% of Ohioan’s plan to reject SB5 and only 36% plan to vote to keep it. This is up three points from October’s 56%-36% margin and 12 points from August’s 50% to 39% margin.
The poll shows 30% of Republicans and 54% of Independents are planning to vote No.
Polling for Issue 3 shows the “No” side improving, with the Yes votes lead narrowed to a 14 point margin. And with 16% [...]
Full Story... →Here’s a picture John Kasich tweeted of a pro-Issue 2 rally over the weekend.
Kind of makes you wonder what pictures they didn’t run instead.
If this is “great enthusiasm” for Issue 2 in Cuyahoga County, I’d hate to see downright opposition to it… oh, wait, we’ll see that on Tuesday night, won’t we?
Sounds like its sad times on the Kasich FAIL bus.
Full Story... →Well, this should come as a surprise to exactly no one, but according to reports published last week, Josh Mandel’s public employee search engine seems to be a little inaccurate. According to ABC 5 in Cleveland, the State Treasurer’s office has been receiving reports from citizens who are looking their names up in the database only to see that salaries attributed to them are inflated. How inflated? Inflated enough that at least one school district wants Mandel to take down the site to fix the $1.6 million overstatement in salaries attributed to them.
School district treasurers and a university [...]
Full Story... →The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s editorial page may support Issue 2, but that didn’t stop its cartoonist Jeff Darcy from having some belated fun on “Grannygate.”
Meanwhile, as Joe mentioned yesterday, Kasich got the first claim rated by PolitiFact as “Pants on Fire” in the entire SB 5/Issue 2 debate. Then, it also rated Building a Bitter Ohio’s claim (we should have been using that name all along) that public employees make 43% more than private sector workers as “Mostly False.”
AEI authors Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine said that wages were “comparable,” that [...]
Full Story... →Pro-SB5 group, Building a Better Ohio. has been lining up business groups in support of Issue 2. The measure, designed to limit the collective bargaining rights of public workers in Ohio, has no direct impact on private sector employees. But, as the Dayton Daily News reports, the private sector is helping to fund the campaign because, as the President of the Dayton Chamber of Commerce was quoted in the article:
“Business supports lowering taxes, reducing the cost of government and making it more efficient”
Sounds altruistic, right? Businesses have to make a profit, so they should know a [...]
Full Story... →John Kasich likes to present himself as if he was Johnny Everyman. Today, in the Columbus Dispatch, Kasich, an avid Steelers fan dating back to his origins as a Pennsylvanian transplant, uses a sports analogy to illustrate his sheer awesome ability to pull the Building a Better Ohio campaign across the finish line:
“We never thought (former Cleveland Browns quarterback) Bernie Kosar would bring the Browns back and win that big championship game,” Kasich said.
First of all, if you’re using a Cleveland Browns reference as an analogy for your “winning,” you obviously aren’t winning. Hollywood would make a [...]
Full Story... →Politifact saves their pants-on-fire ratings for straight-up lies, so it seems quite appropriate that Kasich just got one for his continued insistence that out-of-state arbitrators are helping to resolve contract disputes in Ohio.
According to Kasich:
“They talk about this problem with binding arbitration. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to have somebody from Los Angeles fly into Zanesville and impose a wage settlement on you that you have to pay and then they’re on the plane back to Los Angeles.”
Kasich has also claimed arbitrators could be coming in from “Kokomo, Indiana.”
Full Story... →Shortly after the Republican Party’s 2010 victory, Governor-elect John Kasich’s first priority was attempting to getting Kevin DeWine replaced as Chairman of the Ohio Republican Party by Kasich confidante/Franklin GOP Chairman Doug Preisse. Not surprisingly, the Ohio Republican Party Central Committee saw no reason to replace the man who had just led the GOP party out of the political wilderness and back into power, sweeping all the State races, winning back the Ohio House, and picking up five Congressional seats (Space, Wilson, Boccieri, Driehaus, and Kilroy). So Kasich’s GOP coup was thwarted, and a rivalry deepened. Preisse got a consolation prize of quickly [...]
Full Story... →Surely, this isn’t the “closer” ad for the Building a Better Ohio camapign. Regardless, Building a Better Ohio this morning released a new ad, and it’s, well, interesting.
The central message of the ad is that if it doesn’t pass, your children will leave you, and you’ll die miserable and alone because they’re never visit. And they don’t seem to suggest that will happen in the distant future but immediately as they show what appears to be a practical toddler sitting in a car, symbolically leaving the State now not even waiting until she is an adult.
As if [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
