Watergate on the Olentangy!
The next time you're in a conversation about how worthless and biased most newspapers are and how we'd be better off without them (believe me, I have this conversation all the time), and someone says "But how will we stay informed if we didn't have newspapers? Blogs can't do the same job!," show them this:
http://www.plunderbund.com/...
This is from Ohio progressive political blog Plunderbund. It's a story that ought to change the course of the governor's race — and it would if A. the party hurt by the story wasn't the Republican, and B. if the willingness of the two biggest state newspapers to be errand boys for illicitly acquired information wasn't a major part of the story so they won't cover it.
If it were a Democrat, this would be the front page for two weeks, and his campaign would be done. But the newspapers are working so hard to reelect Kasich that his campaign should declare their coverage a donation in kind. Now we're seeing there's an even more direct and corrupt link.
http://www.plunderbund.com/...
Read the story, but let me give you a little background first.
In April 2013, Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) executive Ed FitzGerald announced he was running for governor against incumbent John Kasich, who at that point was looking highly beatable. Kasich had angered the unions with SB 5, which took away public union negotiating rights and was repealed by more than 60 percent at the polls. He'd created a shiny new privatized entity called JobsOhio to replace the Department of Development and got the legislature to rush through a bill shutting its books from public scrutiny.
You can read all about THAT in the Center for Media & Democracy's new study "Pay to Prey" about governors selling of public assets for the benefit of their cronies and donors. For added fun, there are chapters on such bad actors as Scott Walker, Rick Scott and Rick Snyder.
http://www.prwatch.org/...
Ed is a great progressive. His campaign has centered around the income gap, the attacks on the middle class and working people, and how Kasich moves such as an income tax cut that went almost entirely to those at the top, are exclusively benefiting the wealthy. He has stood up in full-throated support of marriage equality, been a crusader for voter rights (he's the main reason the attacks on voting in Ohio by GOP secretary of voter suppres... I mean STATE ... were somewhat mitigated), and stood by women when Kasich signed into law a package of attacks on a woman's right to choose.
Ed and Kasich were running fairly close in the polls for the first year. Then suddenly the media threw a peculiar storyline into the race. Actually, they tested a couple. One involved FitzGerald being discovered having a (fully clothed) conversation with a woman in his car at 4am. That didn't fly because it was so clear there was nothing more to it. But then they found the one that bizarrely imploded FitzGerald's campaign: it seems he was driving on a temporary license for many years.
I know. Some of you are asking, so what? But for some reason, this narrative gripped the state, and our two biggest newspapers the Columbus Dispatch aka the Disgrace and the Cleveland Plain Dealer aka the Plainly Republican clung to it like a pitbull with a chew bone, endless day after after coverage like it was the worst sin ever committed by a human being.
Eventually that took its toll, demoralizing Democrats, causing some weak and spineless ones to publicly reject him, even causing some Democrats to say they won't vote for him despite Kasich's assaults on labor, women, voting, education, local government funding etc etc etc. Ed is now running something like 20 points behind Kasich who is refusing debates, refusing to answer questions about contentious issues like right to work and the Heartbeat bill, which we know he's in favor of. He's letting the newspapers do his work for him.
And oh, how they did. If you clicked on the Plunderbund link — and you are going to want to read the story — you know what's coming. It's something I long suspected, and Plunderbund has pretty much proved it. One thing I asked myself early on when Democrats started wailing, "Oh, why didn't the Democratic Party vet Ed better?" is "How on earth would they have even found that out?" It's not something you ask candidates and it's not a matter of public record.
Unless you illegally access those records. And apparently that's what happened. The Plunderbund story has the gory details and is trying to ferret out exactly who was involved.
http://www.prwatch.org/...
It also reminds us of the time in 2008 when someone at the Ohio BMV illegally accessed Not Joe the Not a Plumbers driving record. The Republicans threw a giant hissy-fit and someone lost their job.
Now it appears the Kasich campaign dug up this information with the help of someone inside the BMV who violated department rules for them, and they apparently leaked it to a dutiful Disgrace "reporter." Of course, once the Disgrace 'broke" the story, the Plainly Republican, which has had it out for Ed for years ever since he opposed their beloved county charter issue, made it their #1 story for months, with a new angle every day from so-called "reporter" Henry Gomez, now turned de facto Kasich campaign flunkie.
Where are the Woodwards and Bernsteins of today? They certainly are not working at the Disgrace or the Plainly Republican. They're writing for blogs like Plunderbund. Go read the story about how a strong, decent, progressive candidate was ruined by a stupid, trivial piece of information blown out of proportion by Kasich-favoring newspapers and how that information was ill-gotten and never should have been public anyway. If only we had a fair and balanced media that would call out the perpetrators NOW – not after the election. But then they'd have to do some serious soul-searching and apologizing.
http://www.prwatch.org/...