Things could get interesting in next year's Ohio Governor race:
http://www.cleveland.com/...
Republican Gov. John Kasich will seek re-election next year, likely without the fervent Tea Party support that helped sweep him into office in 2010. His efforts to expand Medicaid coverage and raise taxes on big oil and gas companies have made political enemies out of this very critical chunk of the GOP base. Democrats are poised to counter with Ed FitzGerald, the Cuyahoga County executive and former mayor of Lakewood.
An election where Tea Party voters stay home or – just as bad for Kasich – show up and cast ballots for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning, could propel FitzGerald to the governor's chair. And that's perfectly fine with the movement's leaders, some of whom see a FitzGerald victory as collateral damage for making a statement.
"The Republican Party has no ground game at all other than what the Tea Party does for them," said Tom Zawistowski, a top Tea Party activist from Portage County who ran unsuccessfully for Ohio GOP chairman this year. "Their victory centers will be empty. John Kasich was elected by the Tea Party, whether he wants to admit it or not."
Matt Borges, a longtime Republican operative in Ohio who easily won the state party chairmanship with strong establishment backing, said he has made Tea Party outreach a priority. He also said FitzGerald has problems in his base, with notable holdouts such as Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge not yet backing the county executive's bid for governor.
The goal, Borges added, is to "make sure conservatives around the state understand John Kasich's conservative record" on taxes, school choice and other key issues.
"I think there's an extreme frustration with the state of affairs in Washington," Borges said. "That has certainly fomented in a movement that is understandable for folks who want to see real change, and to them I say, 'welcome to the fight, welcome to the cause. Let's make sure the Democrats don't get their mitts on state government again.'"
Despite all the chatter about the potential for a third-party challenger who runs to the right of Kasich, recent polls show the governor with strong support among Republicans. In head-to-head matchups, he plays better in his party than FitzGerald plays in his own. Yet a late June survey by Quinnipiac University found that 10 percent of Republicans found Kasich too liberal, while 9 percent said too conservative and 69 percent "about right."
In 2010, Kasich beat then-Gov. Ted Strickland by 2 points, or 77,000 votes. Libertarian Ken Matesz received roughly 92,000 votes, the Green Party's Dennis Spisak 58,000. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 9/13/13
A third party challenger right now may not be at the top of Kasich's list of things to worry about. It's his record on job creation that should have him up at night fearing 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Both in Cincinnati and across Ohio, roughly 7 percent of the population remains unemployed. Kasich loves talking about jobs - but apparently is silent when an opportunity presents itself to actually help create them.
Not surprisingly, there's been a chorus of outrage against Kasich putting his own moralistic posture ahead of keeping good-paying, professional jobs here in Ohio.
Even the biggest conservative talk radio station in the state lambasted the Governor, with one of 700 WLW's popular daytime hosts saying to Kasich, "These are good jobs. What the hell is the big deal?"
Meanwhile, neighboring Kentucky - apparently feeling less prude - immediately sprung to action with a proposal for Pure Romance that CEO Cicchinelli has described as a "really nice offer."
If Kasich keeps up his anti-jobs behavior, he'll likely have plenty of spare time on his hands when voters boot him from office in November of 2014. - Huffington Post, 9/12/13
We'll have to wait and see. In other Kasich-related news, looks like the ghosts of Kasich's old job in the financial industry haunt Ohio:
http://www.examiner.com/...
Leverage has become a favorite go-to strategy for another former Lehman worker, Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich, who toiled for LBH for six years before he was elected Governor of Ohio in 2010. His work at LBH became a campaign issue in his race against then incumbent Democratic Ted Strickland, who ended up losing the match to "the Congressman from Wall Street" by just 77,127 votes statewide. In that campaign, Kasich always downplayed his job at LBH, and went from touting what an "awesome" guy LBH top dog Richard Fuld was, when he first got hired to be a rainmaker in Ohio, to turning cool on the same guy he said is the "the kind of guy you want to go into battle with" when LBH tanked in 2008 and Fuld got stuck with the blame for its demise.
Kasich employs leverage time and time again with multi-billion bond programs to fund the state's Third Frontier program and JobsOhio, the governor's pet project, that critics have assailed because it's private and secret and off limits to state statutes that allow citizens to see inside other state organizations through normal public record request channels and state audits.
It's argued by some that Lehman collapsed because it invested borrowed capital into deals that destroyed wealth over the long term while creating short term profits. In the case of LBH, its mistakes were concealed through the so-called Repo 105 fund to keep the bonuses rolling in, even as the firm went bankrupt.
For Gov. Kasich, it hasn't yet become a talking point by his declared but as yet not nominated Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald. On Monday, FitzGerald, who resides in Cuyahoga County, offered suggestions to Gov. Kasich if he wants the heat on JobsOhio to subside. Public audits, transparency and oversight were among the top calls by FitzGerald to turn the black box that is JobsOhio into a sunlit agency everyone can see into.
From reports on Kasich's time at LBH, it should come as no surprise that his critics call him the ultimate crony capitalist. In an interview with Steve Eder of Reuters News Service in August of 2010, Kasich revealed how in-tune with LBH and its leader, Richard Fuld. In Eder's article, Kasich demurred about his work at LBH that he said was broken down into 80 percent for LBH and the balance for other endeavors, including appearances on Fox TV, speaking engagements and writing books, like his non-fiction inspirational work "Stand For Something: The Battle for America's Soul."
When Democrats in 2010 tried to pit Strickland the Methodist Minister and Appalachian commoner against Kasich the Wall Street Banker as a battle between Main Street and Wall Street, it didn't deliver the punch party officials hoped it would. Kasich learned he could wiggle out of the Wall Street Banker corner by claiming he was but one of 700 managing directors at the firm and had nothing to do with running it.
The job of a rainmaker like Kasich, a former 18-year GOP Congressman from central Ohio who matriculated up Chairman of the House Budget Committee after the Contract for American won his party and its leader Newt Gingrich control of the people's chamber, was to open doors for LBH especially in Ohio. Kasich has maintained his introductions did not amount to any business, but as Eder wrote, "Ohio's public funds still lost hundreds of millions of dollars on Lehman products." - Columbus Government Examiner, 9/12/13
And of course Kasich's re-election coud pave the way for his second act in politics:
http://blogs.rollcall.com/...
If he runs for president, Kasich surely will assert that he cut taxes in Ohio at the same time that he eliminated the huge budget shortfall that he inherited. And he’ll tie his success in the Buckeye State to his federal record by saying that he balanced the budget when he was on Capitol Hill as well.
The governor is also likely to point to Ohio’s importance in any presidential contest (though the state’s Electoral College vote has fallen from 25 in 1980 to only 18 last year), arguing that his electoral success in the state would be an asset in a presidential election.
Insiders believe Kasich’s biggest change from his brief 2000 presidential run to a potential run in 2014 is money.
“He spends more time in the Cleveland media market than any place other than Columbus,” one longtime Ohio watcher said. “There are still plenty of votes and plenty of money up there. He has done a good job locking that money up. He finally has some serious people behind him financially.”
But Kasich would have to answer a handful of questions before being included as a top-tier contender. He will have to prove that his recent swerve to the left on some issues has not cost him future conservative support, and show that he can put together a team that can make him a formidable contender. And, most importantly, the governor has always been dogged by questions about his discipline as a candidate. - Roll Call, 9/10/13
Governor Kasich is awful enough. President Kasich? That's just scary.
Meanwhile on Team Blue, Ed Fitzgerald (D. OH) is running on campaign of change and transparency:
http://www.cleveland.com/...
Ed FitzGerald vowed Monday to pursue more transparency at JobsOhio if elected governor next year. But the Cuyahoga County executive and likely Democratic challenger to Gov. John Kasich acknowledged it would be tough to eliminate an institution written into Ohio law by a Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Even if FitzGerald wins, that GOP majority in the legislature is unlikely to evaporate.
"At this point in time, it's what we have," FitzGerald said of the privatized economic development agency during a news conference here at Ohio Democratic Party headquarters. "I don't know if we would be successful overturning it."
Kasich has pushed for JobsOhio to be exempt from state audits and open-records laws, asserting that the state's job-creation efforts must move at the speed of business. FitzGerald and other Democrats have hammered away at the organization, though, characterizing it as a secretive, scandal-prone organization that benefits Kasich backers. They also contend that the agency is failing to measurably improve the state's economy.
JobsOhio Chairman James Boland chalked up the agency's challenges to public misperception in a recent interview with the Columbus Dispatch. "Do we have a problem? You're damn right we do, because the people who are writing about us don't know what the hell they're talking about, and we've got to educate them," Boland told the paper.
FitzGerald scoffed at that opinion Monday.
"I don't think the problem is a PR problem," he said.
Among other policy goals, FitzGerald said he would seek to reinstate the state auditor's authority to fully review JobsOhio's financial records. He also wants JobsOhio to adhere to the same "sunshine law" requirements that other state agencies must follow and to disclose completed agreements on a publicly accessible database.
Many, if not all, of these changes would require legislative approval. FitzGerald said he would attempt to persuade GOP lawmakers that the system should be more transparent. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 9/9/13
Republicans have been trying to disprove Fitzgerald's image as the clean and honest candidate early but fumbled:
http://www.cleveland.com/...
Republicans have hit a snag in their effort to draw more scrutiny to a contribution to Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald's campaign for governor.
Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, told reporters Monday that the party was filing a complaint against FitzGerald with the Ohio Elections Commission. But Philip Richter, the commission's executive director and staff attorney, said the party's complaint was rejected because it did not accuse the Democrat of violating a specific section of Ohio Revised Code. State law requires such specificity.
"The reference included in the complaint was to an administrative code provision," Richter said Tuesday. "The commission is limited to hearing things in our jurisdiction."
Richter said the GOP can file a new complaint, provided it meets requirements. Party spokesman Chris Schrimpf said a revised version was filed and accepted Tuesday.
"We believed that they had jurisdiction as it was written yesterday," Schrimpf said. "They disagreed. We disagree with their disagreement, but we'll file a new one because it's clear to us the law was broken. Whether the elections commission wants to or not, someone needs to, because we feel pretty strongly that the law has been broken."
Republicans have pounced on a $1,000 contribution from J.W. Sean Dorsey to FitzGerald in April, a week after the county executive appointed the investment banker to a county economic development board. The donation, first reported last week by Northeast Ohio Media Group, violated a ethics ordinance that FitzGerald had championed.
Under the county policy, which is more restrictive than state law, county employees and board members are prohibited from giving to campaigns of those who hire and appoint them. FitzGerald said his campaign did not identify the Dorsey donation until July. The money was not returned until last week, after news of the contribution broke. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 9/10/13
And here's something Fitzgerald can look forward to next month which might help his election chances:
http://www.cleveland.com/...
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley will travel here next month for a fundraiser and public campaign event with Ed FitzGerald, the Cuyahoga County executive and former Lakewood mayor who is challenging Ohio Gov. John Kasich in 2014.
Ohio Democrats had been working to land O'Malley, a presidential prospect whose political rise mirrors FitzGerald's in some ways, since at least early August. A Democratic source confirmed to Northeast Ohio Media Group that a Cleveland event is set for Oct. 9.
No additional details were available.
O'Malley helped inspire Tommy Carcetti, a character from FitzGerald's all-time favorite television show: "The Wire." Carcetti's career trajectory – from Baltimore city councilman to mayor to governor – matched O'Malley's.
FitzGerald has cut a similar path for himself in Ohio. After several terms as a city councilman in Lakewood, he won the mayor's chair in 2007. A year later he was plotting a move up to countywide office and, come 2010, he was elected Cuyahoga County executive under a new charter government. He began considering a run for governor no later than last summer, when he schmoozed at the Democratic National Convention. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 9/12/13
If you would like to donate or get involved with FitzGerlad's campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.edfitzgeraldforohio.com/