Ohio's primary election is tomorrow. Two editorial commentaries on the OH-02 congressional race have been published in the past few days, one honest, the other not.
The honest commentary comes from dispassionate reporters at The Hill, a professional DC journal of politics. http://thehill.com/... They see the spurning of David Krikorian by some Democratic Party "leaders" in Ohio as "crashing and burning this cycle," noting that Krikorian was:
the most successful independent federal candidate in the country in 2008.
Yet:
The party wanted nothing to do with him
when he chose to return to the Democratic Party for the 2010 race.
This is Part IV of my coverage of the swiftboating campaign against Krikorian in OH-02. The first three parts can be accessed by clicking on my blogroll, as my last three diaries.
It may take some measure of remove to see the vendetta against Krikorian for what it is, most clearly illustrated by the fictitious "racism" accusations levelled against him, launched last week by Jean Prevaricator Schmidt herself, and immediately joined by the Judases of the Ohio Democratic Party – party apparatchiks Tim Burke, David Lane, and Chris Redfern. All based on charges now demonstrated to be fraudulent. (See my last diary for links to eyewitness testimony.)
The writers at The Hill conclude:
By going after one of their own, Democratic leaders are basically throwing in the towel on this one.
That is, for those with a low quotient of intelligence or integrity or both: Only David Krikorian has a chance of beating Jean Schmidt in November.
As for the Schmidt puppet candidate endorsed personally by Burke and Lane (NOT by any party organization), The Hill notes:
Yalamanchili has raised less than $70,000 for the primary and doesn't appear to be a serious competitor in a district that went 59 percent for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Which precisely accounts for the dishonest editorial endorsing Yalamanchili, which appeared in Sunday’s edition of the Cincinnati Inquisitor (it’s the Enquirer but I spell phonetically). The Inquisitor is the most staunchly Republican of Ohio’s major papers, with a history of endorsing the Democrats who would make the weakest opponents to the Republicans the paper really backs.
That motive is clearly apparent in the Inquisitor’s glowing write-up for Jean Schmidt, whom the paper endorses over three Republican primary challengers, any one of which would come to the job with a boatload of more integrity than the incumbent:
Schmidt has approached her job with discipline and focus, and has grown in the position.
I suppose in the way that an in-grown toenail "grows with discipline and focus," that would be true.
On the Democratic side, the Enquirer didn’t say as much about the shill endorsee as it did about Krikorian, the genuine Schmidt-kicker. And most of what it said was to re-air the fraudulent charge, based on an unsubstantiated Schmidt assertion, that the same paper had erroneously played on the front page last week. (The corrective article including testimony from eyewitnesses was, of course, buried deep in the paper on Friday.)
Now, the Inquisitor also endorsed Jennifer Brunner for Senate, an endorsement even more cynical, I have to say. I support Brunner, I hope she wins, and I think she would be the strongest nominee to face Cincinnati native son, Rob Portman. However, it’s become conventional wisdom on the basis of polls that Lee Fisher is about to win the Democratic primary. Hence the Inquisitor gave its highly-qualified nod to Brunner, just to make Fisher’s job of winning in November extra tough.
The Cincinnati Enquirer is to Rob Portman as a cheerleader is to the home team. And yes, they call Cincinnati Porkopolis with some reference to the political editors at the city’s major paper.
But now let’s get back to Surya Yalamanchili, who’s described by the Inquisitor as:
a former brand manager at Procter & Gamble who gained a measure of fame as a contestant on Donald Trump's "Apprentice," is the quintessential American success story - the son of blue-collar immigrants from India.
Well, let’s take a look at that. He certainly was a brand manager at P&G, which happens to be the Cincinnati Enquirer’s largest advertiser, not that this might merit disclosure or anything, since the Enquirer doesn’t count as real journalism.
Yalamanchili did appear on one episode of The Apprentice, where he claimed to "learn a lot" by participation in mock "board meetings." He was rejected by Trump in the first round. I suppose that counts as stellar credentials for a stint in Congress, using Jean Schmidt as a basis for comparison.
But the rest of the bio is pure baloney. If you’re looking for the "quintessential American success story—-the son of blue-collar immigrants," you’d have to look at David Krikorian. All of his grandparents were survivors of the Armenian Genocide. David’s father was a postal worker and member of the postal employees union for 22 years. David went to business school, and made of himself a successful entrepreneur.
Yalamanchili was born in suburban Pennsylvania, and grew up as a rich kid in New Jersey and New York. He often tells audiences that his mother was once a union member, without any mention of his father. It appears that Yalamanchili’s mother only worked while his father was in engineering school, and the extended family is well-off enough to have made a number of maximum $2400 individual contributions to Yalamanchili’s congressional campaign. Yalamanchili lives as a single man in a posh penthouse condominium in Cincinnati.
Two of Surya B. Yalamanchili’s top six donors are his uncle and aunt, Surya R. and Madhuri Yalamanchili of fancy-shmancy Endicott, New York. In fact, their two contributions constitute a whopping 10% of Surya B's total congressional donations. Madhuri is a physician. Surya R. Yalamanchili is about forty years old and his profession is listed on Surya B.’s FEC financial report as "homemaker." How liberated!
But is it true? On the basis of former addresses obtainable with a simple Google search, he is the same Surya R. Yalamanchili who co-authored this publicly-listed article with Rao Yalamanchili for the US military in 1992:
Various Finite Difference Schemes for Transient Three Dimensional Heat Conduction, MAR 1992
Authors: Rao Yalamanchili; Surya R. Yalamanchili; ARMY ARMAMENT RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT AND ENGINEERING CENTER PICATINNY ARSENAL N J CLOSE COMBAT ARMAMENTS CENTER
The motivation for this task comes from the needs of future hypervelocity projectile surrounded by asymmetric flow due to angle of attack and/or fins in case of kinetic energy projectile. In either case, unsteady and three-dimensional effects, large and nonuniform heat fluxes, tedious and repetitive number crunching capabilities of supercomputers dictate optimum numerical techniques and predictive critical time steps for successful and practical solutions. Finite element modeling is ideal whenever ...
Again on the basis of former addresses, Rao Yalamanchili appears to be Surya R.’s brother and the mysterious father of the congressional candidate, Surya B. In other words, candidate Yalamanchili’s father and uncle are military engineers, who did joint research for DOD on missile technology. Their other research would, of course, be classified.
"Homemaker"? "Blue-collar parents"? Um, I don’t think so. I think there’s an interesting reason why Surya never mentions his father, and why his parents are missing on his donor list, which would require disclosure of employers and occupations.
Surya B. Yalamanchili, the puppet candidate, was ten years old in 1992, when that article was written. It was the last year of the George H.W. Bush administration, and the U.S. then stood accused of providing covert support, including missile technology, for the Tamil Tigers, described by Time Magazine as:
one of the most organized, effective and brutal terrorist groups in the world. They invented the suicide vest and, according to the FBI, are the only terrorist group to have assassinated two world leaders.
Source: http://www.time.com/...
The Yalamanchili family is Tamil-Telugu, not just "Indian-American." (The Tamils and Telugus, who speak closely related Dravidian languages, tend to be of mixed genealogy.) While many Tamils live in India, the same ethnic group has been fighting a separatist civil war in Sri Lanka.
It would seem unfair to lay all this "baggage" on poor Surya B. Yalamanchili, who only wants to rise from the penthouse ashes of surreality TV to hold a seat in the US Congress.
However, there is a hypocrisy thing. Yalamanchili is the one who has repeatedly accused Krikorian of bringing "baggage" into the OH-02 congressional race, a clear reference (spelled out on the Yalamanchili website) to Krikorian’s Armenian heritage. Schmidt, who co-chairs the Turkish-American Congressional Caucus, has repeatedly fought against a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. Surya says the voters of OH-02 want a nominee free of such baggage.
Mr. Yalamanchili, please explain: Why do Krikorian’s Armenian roots constitute "baggage," while your ethnic roots in an area of terrorist extremism do not? And if all this is some huge misunderstanding, well, why not clear it up with some actual disclosure about your family, and about your stand on a few issues of the day, like Tamil independence?
It seems that the "journalists" of the Cincinnati Enquirer neglected to ask those questions during the endorsement interview. Maybe they knew that you’d never have a serious chance anyway?
Voters may want to consider what fun Jean Schmidt will have with the Tamil connection, given her record of baiting and batting Krikorian over Armenia. That is, if she feels compelled to address Mr. Yalamanchili at all, what with her growing entourage of Democratic Party county chairmen.
There is only one Democratic candidate with a chance of beating Jean Schmidt. That’s David Krikorian. Learn more or donate at http://ilikedave.org
Ohio’s primary is tomorrow, May 4.