Just two days ago, I published a diary about Republican-Democratic collusion in Ohio's second district, collusion not only in this years race, but in the 2008 race, and going back all the way to Robert Taft's bipartisan "coalition" of the 1930s: http://www.dailykos.com/...
In a rather stunning vindication of my point, an April 26 letter from incumbent Republican Jean Schmidt has been released, in which Schmidt appears to make an endorsement in the DEMOCRATIC primary race, choosing the candidate she knows she can beat, Surya Yalamanchili, over the candidate she knows she cannot beat, David Krikorian.
Even more stunning, the chairmen of the Hamilton County, Clermont County, and Ohio Democratic Party organizations have, without validation or hearing, embraced charges against Krikorian made by the Republican opponent, and issued their own endorsements of Yalamanchili.
All this is happening just five days before the Ohio primary elections on May 4. The letter from HCDP and CCDP party chairs, including Schmidt's letter as an attachment (!!!) are available at a link given in a scurrilous front-page story in today's Cincinnati Enquirer at: http://news.cincinnati.com/...
As you can read, the principal charge, made by Schmidt entirely on the basis of hearsay (no Macaca-moment video here) is that Krikorian disparaged his primary opponent's name in some vague way on the basis of its ethnic sound, and that this constitutes "racism."
The offense was supposedly committed on April 2, when Krikorian made a presentation before the VFW. That it took almost four weeks for the bipartisan authorities to bring this grave but extremely vague offense to light, leaving little time for response before the primary, is supposed to be coincidence.
The Krikorian campaign has yet to issue a formal response. However, three veterans present at the VFW event have signed letters swearing that the alleged offense never occured, (copies of which I have obtained), and more such letters are reportedly on the way. Schmidt was not present, nor were any of the Democratic Party officials, nor was Yalamanchili. In other words, there is no eyewitness reporting that Krikorian made some racist remark that night. In fact, Schmidt's source of information has not been identified, and the congresswoman in notorious for prior fabrications, including most recently, a fabricated "threat on her life" following the HCR vote.
Even Sannes, who served three tours of duty with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam and is a registered Republican, present at the VFW meeting, has written a letter to Jean Schmidt, which reads in part:
I attended this meeting and was very impressed with Mr. Krikorian. Please let me be clear: at no time did Mr. Krikorian make any disparaging or offensive remarks about his opponents.
Mr. Sannes then goes on to point criticize Schmidt for leveling charges when she wasn't even present at the meeting. Too bad, the leadership of the ODP is not so critical of Jean Schmidt.
According to the Grand Inquisitor -- oops -- I mean the Enquirer (legal counsel provided by the old Taft-Rob Portman law firm of Graydon, Head and Ritchey):
[Hamilton County DP chair] Burke told the Enquirer he has heard from "several" 2nd District Democrats saying they have heard Krikorian disparage Yalamanchili's name at other venues.
Again, second-hand hearsay with no actual sources that the paper has talked to. Wait, did I say paper? No, we're talking about a scandal sheet here, not a newspaper. Newspapers check sources, and print news.
But let's say hypothetically that there are some sources, someplace, willing to go on record in a Deep-Throat type arrangement and say that they heard David Krikorian say, as ridiculous as it may seem, that the name Yalamanchili might involve electability issues, whatever that means. Could that possibly be true, in an Einsteinian thought-experiment quantum universe kind of way?
Well, allow me to share what I think is going on here. During the first three quarters of the 2010 congressional race, the Ohio Democratic Party backed a super-Wasp with the double-monosyllabic name of Todd Book. Mr. Book fell victim to an unfortunate scandal incident involving the hiring of his daddy, super-Wasp Tom Book, to work on a state construction project.
During those first three quarters, THE PARTY and its apparatchiks disparaged Krikorian's name all over the place. THEY are the ones who said that "A man with a name like Krikorian cannot win in OH-02." It was said HUNDREDS of times -- it was Book's main selling point. Anonymous posts were left on numerous blogs saying that "Krikorian" sounded like "Kevorkian," and that the racist voters of OH-02 would never go for THAT.
They also argued, at some length, that an Armenian candidate would necessarily drag unpleasant issues involving Armenia and Turkey into the race, and we could never stand for that type of ethnic "diversion." In fact, Yalamanchili makes that argument about Krikorian on his website.
So then the same party hacks who had been making that argument were left, after Book's withdrawal, with a candidate named Surya B. Yalamanchili. To compound the problem, the third Democratic candidate, Jim Parker, started criss-crossing the district, arguing that Ohio voters would never go for a Krikorian OR a Yalamnchili, and this became Parker's #1 argument for himself. (Like Carter he won't use the name James, perhaps because it sounds too ethnic.)
We then had Ms. Schmidt playing the race card by circulating the voicemail message of an obviously African-American man who had called her DC office to call her racist, and allegedly (but not really) threaten her life.
And let's not forget that it was the Ted-meister, Governor Strickland, native son of OH-02, who set the tone, when he told Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air in 2008, that he "cannot deliver Ohio" for Barack Obama, because, he said, Ohioans are too racist.
In short, just about everybody in the Republican and Democratic hierarchies in southwest Ohio was playing ethnic/racial politics. Except, that is, for David Krikorian.
I know David Krikorian. He doesn't play ethnic/racial politics. His friends and allies cross all ethnic-racial boundaries, and in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case, prosecuted on the basis of Jean Schmidt's complaint, it was Krikorian who marshalled evidence about the horrors of genocide and all forms of ethnic discrimination.
But that Jean Schmidt and her friends in the Ohio Democratic Party -- what kidders they are! Fellas, enough humor already. You're crackin' me up!