I’m going to give you a Madden playbook why John Kasich’s courtship of State Auditor Mary Taylor makes no sense for anyone but John Kasich. But let’s start with the most obvious point: it is absolute insanity for the Republicans to risk the only Apportionment Board seat they held in 2006 by moving an incumbent who was on track for a relatively safe re-election so that she can run for the non-essentially (from both a political and governing sense) Lt. Governor slot.
It’s is amazingly insane. Second, if it were a done deal, Kasich wouldn’t first float it through Jon Keeling’s blog and then let the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch’s Joe Hallett write about as if it weren’t. They’d just announced it.
Read Hallett’s column and tell me it doesn’t sound like Hallett isn’t practically serenading for John Kasich’s public political courtship of Mary Taylor. Kasich is trying to put Taylor on the spot: join my ticket and help me keep the Tea Bag base from deserting me by November when they realize how I’ve been an anti-establishment phony for the past year, or publicly embarrass me, the Republican standard bearer. (Most of Kasich’s arguments don’t even make sense. Taylor could arguably attack Strickland just as easily running for re-election.)
Believe me, if the GOP establishment wanted Taylor to be Kasich’s running mate, Kasich wouldn’t feel the need to put Taylor on the spot so publicly. It would have been an arranged political marriage and announced, no such speculation has existed in the past. Kasich is doing this because there is strong resistance in the Republican party to having this ticket, just look at the comments on Keeling’s blog.
Despite Taylor’s claimed fundraising woes, she’s still the only Republican to survive 2006, and nothing has happened since then that has made her more politically vulnerable. Privately, most Democrats would even agree that Taylor was heavily favored for re-election.
Move her out of the Auditor’s race, and it’s an open seat (Taylor could not even resign in the hopes to make the Republican candidate to replace her the incumbent. Any such vacancy would be filled by appointment by Governor Strickland.) Suddenly, Hamilton County David Pepper has more than just a fighting chance for the office.
Who’s the most likely candidate to replace Taylor if she agreed to be Kasich’s running mate? Well, it sure as hell isn’t Mike DeWine or Matt Dolan. After all, what political calculation would require Kasich to need the support of Mary Taylor but DeWine as Auditor?
No, the most likely replacement to Taylor would be Josh Mandel, who is currently running for State Treasurer. This means Kevin Boyce is likely re-elected as opposed to being considered highly vulnerable.
Even with Mandel and his millions in the race, it’s still a very competitive open seat race, and not one where Mandel’s qualifications put him at any unique advantage, either.
There is no way that Taylor leaves the Auditor’s race without making that race more likely for a Democratic takeover as a result. None.
And if Boyce and Pepper wins, so does Jennifer Brunner. It would be highly unlikely that any party captures the Auditor’s and Secretary of State’s races in open seat races while losing the gubernatorial race. Therefore, with Pepper viewed as now likely to win the Auditor’s office, Brunner’s run for Senate isn’t as loaded down with Apportionment Board concerns.
And Jon Husted has to be wondering why he endured all the attacks over his residency only to see the ticket up ended such that his win is viewed as largely irrelevant. Jennifer Garrison also loses as Democrats can support Strickland and Pepper while sitting on their hands over her.
If there is any hallmark of the Ohio Republican Party is that they tightly control the formation of their statewide tickets before now. And just last week, ORP Chairman Kevin DeWine saw with justified confidence that his party was likely to win the Secretary of State’s race and Auditor’s office, thus an almost guarantee that they’d keep the Apportionment Board. If Taylor bolts for Kasich, that is all upended just 41 days until petitions must be filed.
Which is, again, why it would be absolutely insane, both for the Ohio GOP and Taylor personally, for her to join Kasich’s ticket. That’s why Kasich is resorting to putting his courtship so publicly to put Taylor on the spot.
It’s a huge gamble. Because either Taylor does this and gives the Democrats a real shot at picking up a crucial seat on the Apportionment Board, or worse, she says no and publicly embarrasses Kasich and make him look incredibly weak.
You cannot look at the idea of Taylor on the ticket and not be reminded of the reason John McCain chose Sarah Palin. Like Kasich, McCain picked Palin to try to encourage conservative excitement. Like McCain, Kasich is courting Palin Taylor to present himself as outside the Bush Republican establishment.
If you doubt that there’s lack of enthusiasm for Kasich consider this: the only conservative blogger that has been writing about Kasich at all is his former congressional staffer … from Virginia. There isn’t a single conservative blogger in Ohio who’s been writing with any excitement for John Kasich. Not Kyle Sisk, WMD, Bizzyblog, Matt Naugle… none of them. They’ll, at best, write about Strickland, but Kasich is persona non grata. Among Ohio conservative bloggers, John Kasich is getting a colder reception than Ken Blackwell did.
Chris Redfern has to be nearly drunk in delight at this development. No matter what Taylor decides, he wins. If Taylor runs, suddenly Kasich has made the Republican’s most secure Apportionment Board seat a tossup race. If Taylor doesn’t join the ticket, then Kasich looks incredibly weak amongst his own Republicans. Regardless, behind the scenes, Republicans are fuming that their frontrunner has created this predicament.
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We’ve been talking a lot about firearm regulation here at Plunderbund this past year, and I even mentioned in passing I was taking a CCW/handgun safety course earlier in December. Last week, I purchased a handgun. As of today, I’m licensed to carry that handgun concealed. I wanted to relate my impressions of the process.
Wingnuts are always going on about “angry liberals”. Well, 
Dispatch journalist/WBNS reporters still not willing to report already established facts about "Troopergate"
by ModernEsquire on March 18, 2010 · Comments
At what point does the Dispatch lose all journalistic credibility?
The entire “bust” at the Governor’s Mansion started by a letter intercepted by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections written by an inmate to his wife. Nobody disputes this.
According to my sources familiar with the letter (i.e. people who actually have SEEN the document), the letter refers to the contraband as a “six pack” and even discussed the price he obtain for getting the item in the prison.
At the time, officials at the DRC informed the Highway Patrol investigating the matter that the term “six pack” is commonly used code word by inmates for… tobacco cigarettes. I’ve been told that no less than the then DIRECTOR of the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections told the Patrol that the term and the price mentioned indicated that the item could only be tobacco cigarettes, and not drugs.
Nonetheless, some mid-level managers in the Patrol insisted that the item might be drugs even though there was no evidence to support the conclusion.
So pervasive was the perception that the contraband in question was likely tobacco and not drugs, that even the mid-level Patrol managers who were pushing to do the “bust” detailed in their plan that the first priority upon seeing the inmate’s wife making the planned drop (even though those same officers conceded that there was also a strong likelihood that the intercepted communication never even made it to the inmate’s wife) was to first determine if the item was, in fact, criminally illegal contraband. A fact that neither the Dispatch or WBNS has reported in their news stories despite the fact that the Dispatch published e-mails on their website that they’ve received pursuant to a public records request that confirms this (see pg. 9).
Even worse, a WBNS reporter actually used an image of the inmate’s letter in a news story last night, but never mentioned that the terms used in it led almost every investigator involved to conclude that there was a strong probability that any stop of the woman would be illegal as there was no criminal conspiracy as the suspected “contraband” was likely tobacco cigarettes.
In fact, the WBNS reporter did not even ACKNOWLEDGE what even the Dispatch has admitted– that the item was likely tobacco and a big reason the “raid” was scrubbed was that it was more likely than the raid itself was illegal than the suspected contraband.
Furthermore, neither the Dispatch, nor WBNS has reported that the organization representing the rank-and-file of the Ohio Highway Patrol has been decrying the politicization of this “bust” by the very mid-level Highway Patrol managers involved who are upset over the Governor’s most recent appointment to Superintendent of the Patrol–something that the Dispatch’s editors have also attempted to castigate at the time.
I’m awaiting further documentation, but I’ve been told that instead of being reassigned for political retribution (as the Dispatch’s media empire has reported) over the thwarted cigarette raid at the Governor’s Mansion, one of the officers involved was being reassigned due to disciplinary misconduct entirely unrelated to the situation at the Governor’s Mansion. Again, a fact easily ascertainable by a public records request (mine is pending) that the Dispatch organizations would ordinarily examine if they were interested in reporting the full facts of this story.
And what’s worse, here’s an actual quote from the Senate Republican seeking to use his Committee gavel to politicize the issue further as reported by… you guess it, WBNS:
“Here’s what I believe is part of a cover-up to an unwarranted and unnecessary criminal investigation that should have been allowed to have been completed.” State Sen. Tim Grendell.
Not even Chairman Grendell can blast the Strickland Administration without admitting that “bust” was an unwarranted and unnecessary criminal investigation!
So ridiculous has the situation has gotten than no less than the editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer– a frequent critic of Governor Strickland (more so than even the Dispatch)– has decried the politicization by Republicans and former Patrol managers as being more about settling political scores than anything dealing with genuine law enforcement concerns:
If the Dispatch wishes to be taken seriously as anything other than a Republican propaganda machine, it will end this deliberate and irresponsible cherry picking of the facts and just report the news, the whole news, and nothing but the news. Something the Dispatch has demonstrated a systematic allergic reaction to doing in this instance.
If they won’t do it, I, or someone who actually gets paid to do this for a living, will.
As they say, DEVELOPING…
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