My husband took me to the opera in Cincinatti - Ken Blackwell country; or so I thought. We were the guests of his boss who is a big patron of the opera. You can also buy tickets to a catered dinner that they hold upstairs in the ballroom and we were his guests at dinner as well. The ballroom was packed to the rafters with wealthy Republicans. I kept busy minding my manners and sticking to noncontroversial subjects at dinner when our host suddenly brought up politics.
He pointed to an attractive woman, sitting at another table, and told us that she is a very succesful political fundraiser in the state. For years she had worked solely for Republican candidates. But this year, there was a change of heart and now she is raising money for Ted Strickland.
I'm not done. Keep reading.
After dinner, he introduced her to my husband and me and she first told us that she had started to work on the issue of how to get a single payer health insurance system to Ohio. Yes, I said she had been a Republican for years. But the impending financial crisis in the health care industry is finally shedding some visible light that even people like her can see. She then went on to describe a party she had at her home to introduce Ted Strickland to sixty of her most influential (and wealthy) Republican friends. One of the men she mentioned was formerly a Republican County Chairman and a huge financial backer of the party. He left the party after giving a huge check to the Strickland campaign AND he signed on as a campaign volunteer.
You might wonder, as did I, WTF is going on in Ohio politics that thousands of dollars are being raised in a single evening by Republicans for Strickland. The answer is simple. Moderate Republicans are disappointed, angry, and frightened at the direction the party has taken in Ohio. They are disappointed because apparently, Ken Blackwell wasn't always a right wing religious nut. He used to at least appear to be a moderate Republican with a fairly bi-partisan approach (at least when he served on the city council in Cincinatti). They are angry because they feel he sold out to the religious right for no other reason than a lust for power, because they feel that the party in general won't listen to moderates or support moderates in elections, and because they are mostly Christians from mainline denominations who are feeling that their commitment to the faith has been dismissed and disrespected. They are frightened of what the people behind Ken Blackwell stand for and have planned for the state. And I heard several people say that they are disgusted that Bob Taft has not resigned after his conviction for accepting gifts illegally.
I have a good friend at church who ran for a State Legislature seat as a Republican. He should have won easily because he had done an excellent job serving on the school board and he is smart, honest, and committed. But, the party told him they would not give financial support to his campaign unless he ran against his opponent's gay lifestyle. My friend said he didn't see how being gay affected a person's qualifications for office one way or another and the Republicans stopped sending campaign money. It is exactly that sort of attitude that had people seething at the dinner last night and apparently, that kind of thing has happened in every part of the state.
Some of these moderates are planning to jump parties for one election, just to send a message. But some of them are looking at a more permament realignment. Either way, the Republicans are in for a rude awakening come November. Because, the people they are losing are not just people who vote; they are also people who are active in all aspects of the community and whose opinions carry weight. They are people who don't just write big checks, but also they gave their time to build up the Republicans in Ohio. I'm feeling more optimistic than I have for months! Bring on the election!
And the opera was fantastic as well!