Before Labor Day is the perfect time to ask: Just what in the hell is the Ohio Democratic Party doing?
We have a dud at the top of the ticket due to poor vetting, poor fundraising, and even worse campaigning. This seems to happen at bad times: 2010 - Strickland was strong (and technically the top of the ticket) but Lee Fisher was awful - that midterm is not totally the party's fault as it was a big Republican year - but when you look at various polls this midterm isn't like that one. Which makes me wonder why we even consider our statewide campaigns all "upsets."
To be sure, the power of incumbency is strong. Pepper over DeWine is a no-brainer though - candidate quality-wise, Pillich is a pickup if we want it bad enough (she even leads in some polling), Husted is vulnerable to Turner, and on and on. There's even a competitive congressional raise despite Republican gerrymandering.
Clearly, Chris Redfern has proven to be ineffective at his job. The party lacks some kind of direction or ability to succeed that is directly tied to loose organizational skills. When I look at the slate of state-wide candidates, I see the same dearth of "big names" everyone else sees, but I have to wonder why we can't find cost-effective ways to become competitive even in tough races.
An example would be my district (12) with Tiberi - a dude in a suit who's done nothing vs. a quality (so far as I can tell) Democratic recruit named David Tibbs. The Cook PVI of the new district is R+8 (the spread of the last presidential election in the district - however in 2008, a slightly less conservative district was won by President Obama and the 18th District reelected Zack Space) and the district does have several pockets of places where Democratic support COULD hypothetically be found - Zanesville, Newark, Mansfield, Dublin and parts of Columbus. Beating Tiberi would be a near impossible win, but I'm concerned about the lack of effort. The 12th isn't as red as the 2nd or 4th. When we totally concede all hope to win, we are effectively resigning ourselves to using all our resources on the 3 or 4 state-wide contests we could win.
Ohio is purple, not red. Ohio is trending blue, not purple or red. Surely, Republicans will continue to do well in numerous elections in the state, particularly US Congressional seats - but only because the ODP seems to lack grassroots energy or even basic capability.