Ohio Senator George Voinovich announced tonight on a conference call that he will retire rather than run for reelection in 2010. AP has it at http://www.google.com/...
This was widely expected, especially by those of us in Ohio (I diaried his retirement in August), but it's good to have it be official. The last serious political pronouncement Voinovich made was to say, in August, that Sarah Palin "has chutzpah." I suspect that the Yiddish supporters of Sarah Palin were not sufficient to keep George Voinovich in business.
Discussion of replacements below the fold.
Representative Tim Ryan will be the Democratic nominee. I know other names have been floated, but Ryan toured the state with Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown during the fall campaign. That means he has been christened by the machine, and Ohio's machine is second only to that of Belarus in hegemonic power. Ryan's a good guy -- the machine chose well in this case.
The Republican replacement will be either Rob Portman or John Kasich. Kasich has already declared for the Governor's seat, which would imply that Portman will run for Senate. However, Portman has also declared interest in being Governor, and could more easily beat Ted Strickland.
Therefore, I suspect Kasich and Portman will switch and Kasich will run for the Senate seat. In either case, Portman and Kasich are cooperating and will endorse each other once they decide what's what. That will lock out any other Republican challengers.
So the 2010 slate on both sides is now pretty clear, except for the Portman-Kasich positioning. The one potential wildcard would be a decision by Ted Strickland to retire, in which case he would tap Lt. Governor Lee Fisher to run in his place.
Those of you familiar with my point of view know that I sincerely wish that Strickland does retire, so that the Ohio Democratic Party can be a little less like Belarus and move in the direction of, oh, let's say, Turkmenistan. I also think that Strickland will lose, and drag down the whole ticket, after the next two years of a disastrous economy, butchered state budgets, and heaps of more Democratic corruption scandals in Ohio.
But let's not belabor the point and for now join in celebrating the passing of one more Senate fixture to that great golf course in an off-shore tax haven.