They did it in Florida in 2000 and they are doing it again in Ohio this year. Fearing a flip in the U.S. House of Representatives if a red state like Ohio looses enough House seats to turn it blue, the unsubstantiated rumor that thousands of incoming Republican operatives are being sent to Central Ohio to assist with last minute GOTV efforts to keep three Congressional seats from going to Democratic challengers should not be taken lightly.
Even though it is clearly hearsay, if it is true, the import of the news contained in an email warning that Hill staffers and other GOP operatives will descend next week on Ohio like locus on a wheat field is both good and bad news.
The message said Republican Congressman Debbie Pryce, the fourth ranking member of House Speaker Denny Hastert's leadership team, is footing the bill for more "boots on the street" [wingtips and pumps, actually] to keep her race and the race of fellow multi-term incumbent Dom Tiberi and fellow party member Joy Padgett, a state senator who is closely associated with now-disgraced Ohio Governor Bob Taft and convicted Congressman Robert Ney, from going south.
The news, allegedly overheard at a gathering of insiders that included Matt Kellner, Bush/Cheney 2004 Ohio GOTV Director and now Les Wexner's political director. Mr. Wexner, founder of The Limited, a mega retailer of women and young adult clothes based in Columbus, is a Republican billionaire who has wielded his influence at the local and state levels for decades.
The good news in this rumor is that the races are tight enough to force Republicans to send in reinforcements to Ohio, the state that by fewer than 120,000 votes returned President Bush to the White House for a second term in 2004. With the exception of Padgett, a state senator making her first bid for Congress, Pryce and Tiberi have had cake walks in previous elections. However, in a reversal of fortune this year that is a sign of how ready for change Ohioans are, voters, especially Independents, are poised to do something they have not done in nearly 16 years: elect a Democratic governor and other Democrats to key statewide posts.
Giving hope where there once was only doubt, Strickland's widening margin of victory may provide enough political buoyancy to lift the campaigns boats of other statewide Democratic candidates above those of their Republican incumbents.
Candidates like Jennifer Brunner, who is widely respected and now widely endorsed by most of Ohio's large metropolitan news groups and a number of its smaller news chains to be the next Secretary of State and restore trust and confidence to elections, and Rich Cordray, running for Treasurer whose poll numbers against his Republican challenger are not nearly in proportion to the lead he has over her in fundraising, have joined Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland in a bus-tour campaign that will criss-cross Ohio and make stops in 73 counties in the ten days remaining before Election Day on November 7th.
If new poll results such as the most recent Rasmussen poll showing that Strickland has increased his lead over Republican opponent Ken Blackwell to about 30 points are real, the news represents good news to Brunner and the other down-ticket Democratic candidates on this year's ballot who need a cushion to keep them out of any recount zone.
The bad news in this rumor is that these robo-Republican operatives, who are driven by the same ideological zeal and focus used in 2000 in Dade County, Florida to push votes into Republican columns as officials stared at hanging chads and made decisions about voter intent, are here to pull out all stops in a last ditch effort to flush out as many votes for Republican candidates as they can.
And like great football teams that play great football in the fourth quarter to win great games, so it is again that Republicans, who have shown their organizational superiority in previous elections, are gearing up to run the same power plays that have saved the day by bringing a winning fraction of voters to the polls. At the end of the day, whether it's by one vote or a million votes, the winner takes all in our form of democracy and can govern with impunity until the next election season.
Bob Bennett, Ohio GOP chairman, has previously boasted that he had 65,000 campaign volunteers working to turn out voters in 2004. The number was sufficient to allow one volunteer to manage about 20 homes, a ratio that Ohio Dems did not match then and might not be able to match this year.
Even though Republicans may be swarming to Ohio like locusts to a field of wheat, the trump card Democrats can play to win the hand and the election is their deep distrust of Republican lawmakers and government officials. If elections are close, as they may be in some cases with candidates and ballot issues, CW may give the nod to Republicans who are more apt than Democrats to benefit from Election Day voting SNAFUS. If the margins are not close, as they appear to be this year in many races, more boots on the street will not stop the tsunami of discontent that promises to wash away Ohio Republicans.