Not since the 1900 Presidential election, when voters had to choose between war-monger McKinley and Darwin-denier William Jennings Bryan, have the two major parties presented American voters with such unpalatable opponents in a single race as in this year's Ohio gubernatorial contest. Not to get melodramatic, but I'd put the choice between corruption-kingpin Ted Strickland and ex-Lehman executive John Kasich up there with the quandry after the Chicxulub asteroid impact in 65000000 BC, when Stegasaurs had to decide between breathing poisonous sulfuric air or jumping into a forest fire. Ohio voters aren't asked to hold our noses this year, we're warned to enter the voting booth in full-body hazmat suits.
Yet one thing is clear: The victor won't be Democrat Strickland. Reuters/IPSOS has entered the Ohio polling game, showing Kasich in the lead by nine points, 48-39, with only twelve weeks to go: http://www.reuters.com/... Strickland hasn't led in the race in a legitimate poll (outside the margin of error) since May of 2009. It's over.
The Strickland Administration can now count one definite accomplishment: Governor Kasich.
The Reuters poll also shows Republican Rob-the-poor Portman leading Democrat Lee Milquetoast Fisher by a more modest seven points, 43-36, but Portman maintains an 8:1 cash advantage. Mr. Portman, you see, is actually running for POTUS in 2016, when his Senate term will conveniently expire. Then Rob will become all of you's'uns' problem. We in Ohio call this a plan.
A quick scan of the numbers shows many more undecideds in the Senate race, which is because many Ohioans know one thing for damned sure: Never again will we cast a vote for Ted Strickland. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 457 times, shame on the Ohio Democratic Party for letting this guy stand for reelection.
And the Reuters poll shows Republicans much more committed to voting by a 75% to 52% margin.
I told you so. In 2008, the GOP ran an anti-corruption campaign in Ohio, which was a test-run for the 2009 and 2010 races across the nation. It was obvious. I wrote about it here (see my blogroll). In 2009, Corzine's humiliating defeat in New Jersey spelled certain disaster for Mr. Strickland. Corzine was a better man, and he had plausible deniability regarding the corruption in the New Jersey Democratic Party. Yet voters held him accountable. Voters do. Voters should.
Corruption in the Ohio Democratic Party under Strickland has made New Jersey politics look like a zen retreat in Monterrey. Like his former congressional rival, Rob Portman, Ted Strickland also had White House ambitions, and Ted tried to get there the old-fashioned Truman way, by riding at the helm of a juggernaut political machine.
Cronyism under Strickland reached an obscene extreme. Independent activism including primary challenges met with crushing retribution, as Jennifer Brunner, David Krikorian, and Sharen Neuhardt all found out. Old nests of Democratic machine tyrrany in Cuyahoga, Athens, Scioto, and Pike counties were left to operate unchecked -- resulting now in a wave of federal prosecutions in Cuyahoga. Cleveland (in Cuyahoga County and just ranked one of the two "Worst Places to Live in the USA") -- home to Senate candidate Fisher (which speaks volumes to voters) is now paralyzed from a string of sensational scandals that party activists fantasize never make the out-of-town papers.
Democratic corruption in Ohio is no new thing. It's an unbroken tradition since the party's founding in 1832, the same year that Democratic boss and ex-con Robert Lucas was elected Governor, pretty much on a platform of declaring war on Michigan, a campaign promise he did keep (the Ohio Militia was dispatched to the disputed boundary with authority to shoot). When Strickland identifies his home town as "Duck Run" it's to avoid mentioning the actual incorporated town, which is Lucasville.
Strickland didn't bring corruption to Ohio, he only promoted it to Olympian status. He appointed his old political patrons and cronies to patronage positions, especially at the Ohio Department of Transportation, where state and federal funds could be siphoned into slush funds or private perks accounts. In 2008, the Cuyahoga ODOT district office was discovered to be paying out highway contracts to companies on condition of non-performance, with most of the money kicked back to pay for strippers, hotel rooms and "ham." ("Ham" is a direct quote from the newspapers -- when Ohioans do pork, we do pork.)
The reason that the stimulus has been such a conspicuous and dismal failure in Ohio is that most of the funds were handed over to these same ODOT offices, for phoney-baloney projects like constructing a new cloverleaf serving a cornfield (in Pike County). Looking for stimulus effects? Check the expanded X-box inventories of the kids of ODOT managers.
This littany bears repeating to explain why Ohioans will so adamantly elect Mr. Kasich, a former executive at Lehman Brothers and a Fox News commentator. The blame is squarely with the Ohio Democratic Party, which failed to give Ohio voters any reasonable choice.
Kasich knows he's in command. This past week, he triumphally toured Strickland's home territory in south-central Ohio, with congresswoman Jean Schmidt in tow. The importance of that is that Schmidt has been untouchable in past GOP campaigns. Kasich is very, very confident, and it's a double poke-in-the-eye because Kasich knows that Strickland cannot campaign with the Democratic nominee in OH-02. That nominee, Surya Yalamanchili, has recently made glowing remarks about the REPUBLICAN congressional delegation and about Mr. Portman, after ODP machinations to remove the authentic Democrat, David Krikorian, in the primary.
Mr. Strickland also has known for many months that he is headed for defeat -- he has the best polling operation in the state. Yet through some yet-undisclosed intimidation tactics, Quinnipiac was cajoled into releasing bogus polling numbers that showed impossible large Strickland leads in heavily Republican regions of Ohio. That was caught (by yours truly), which resulted in all Democratic-leaning pollsters stopping their Ohio polling as of June 2010, leaving only Rasmussen in the field. Rasmussen did a creditable job in Ohio, but that was met with stupid disbelief in the self-styled "progressive" community, as can be gleaned from the comments on my last diary here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The upshot of most comments was that John Kasich simply cannot win, because it would break the fantasy bubble into which many "liberals" -- especially Cleveland liberals -- have retreated. Therefore, I have been labeled a liar, along with anyone else who has dared to tell the truth about the current state of politics in this state. The Reuters/Ipsos poll should put an end to that nonsense. Turns out that Rasmussen was being generous to Mr. Strickland.
Get clear on one thing: None of those Quinnipiac or R2000 polls from the spring was legitimate. Those celebrated Strickland surges were not real. The orchestrated hoopla was like a North Korean "great Leader" rally. Denialism digs the ODP deeper into its hole.
If you wanted to avoid a Governor Kasich, or defeat Rob Portman, or control the Reapportionment Board, then YOU had to act no later than 2008 and 2009 to insure that Ted Strickland and Lee Fisher were NOT the 2010 nominees, AND that the Democratic Party had an anti-corruption plan in place. If you didn't do that, you have no right now to complain.
There is, after all, a choice facing Ohio Democrats: Continue to feed the fountains of denial by telling voters that there is no Democratic Party corruption in Ohio, and thereby watch the Democratic congressional delegation be cut from ten to five. Or come clean, become an ally of the justified voter rage in the Buckeye State, admit that Ted Strickland has been a disaster, and end the use of Ted's face as the poster-boy for the Democratic Party. The congessional Democrats in Ohio now need distance from Mr. Strickland. With that distance, and frank talk about how to cleanup corruption, most of those congressional seats can be saved.
It's triage time.