ohio – Page 8 – Moe Lane

Lee Fisher (D CAND, OH-SEN) and sweet, sweet corporate lobbyist money.

Dirty, dirty lobbyist money, too – at least, if you’re a progressive – but that just adds that little sparkle to Lee’s eyes, I’m betting. He’s got that look.

Lobbyists for drug, oil and hedge fund industries to mix, mingle with Lee Fisher and Sherrod Brown

Read the entire article, which first lists some of the Big Pharma, Big Oil, and hedge fund clients of these sweet, dirty corporate lobbyists that are raising sweet, dirty corporate money for Lee Fisher’s (D) sweet, dirty corporate-funded Senate campaign. After that comes the passage that I really want people to see:

But that’s the problem with political rhetoric. When are these good lobbyists, and when are they bad? Does it matter to Democrats if they’re lobbying the Democratic side rather than the GOP? We won’t badmouth lobbyists in this blog post, but we’ll let Fisher do it. As he wrote in the Huffington Post in April: “And for years, Washington insiders like our Republican opponent here in Ohio, Congressman Rob Portman, have lined their pockets with contributions from Wall Street’s army of lobbyists while turning a blind eye to this looming financial disaster.”

Tomorrow might be a good time to tell that to a Managed Funds Association lobbyist.

Continue reading Lee Fisher (D CAND, OH-SEN) and sweet, sweet corporate lobbyist money.

OH County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora (D) threatens reporter’s wife.

This was pretty funny, right up to the moment where (Democratic) Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora threatened reporter Henry Gomez’s wife.

The background is as follows: Dimora is being investigated as part of a corruption probe* – yes, I know, corruption in Cuyahoga county; how shocking – and Dimora is a bit upset about the way Gomez (and his paper the Plain Dealer) is covering the investigation. So Dimora ups and accuses Gomez and his paper of not reporting a particular detail of the investigation: to wit, that Ohio Auditor (and Republican candidate for Lt. Governor) Mary Taylor had not released two years’ worth of audits. Only problem is, this had been reported – including a quote from, guess who? that right, Jim Dimora – and when Gomez told Dimora about this, Dimora called Gomez a liar.

So far, so funny. Now here’s the unfunny bit:

Continue reading OH County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora (D) threatens reporter’s wife.

Well, at least Meghan Cofield’s getting work.

Who is Meghan Cofield? Well, she’s a Ohio worker who lost her job, and it’s all John Kasich’s fault!

No, wait, it was all John McCain’s fault!

Yeah. That was an ad from 2008 – same person, and even some of the same footage – when Barack Obama was pretending to be hating on NAFTA (needless to say, that promise came with an expiration date: also needless to say, Strickland has no intention of bringing that up with the President). Which leads me to the next question: just why is Meghan Cofield so depressed? She seems to be developing quite the career race-baiting the Chinese.

Moe Lane Continue reading Well, at least Meghan Cofield’s getting work.

Reducing OH unemployment, one jobs czar at a time.

It’s… innovative, for a given value of ‘innovative:’ creating a new job in the Ohio state government to address why the Ohio state government has not been able to create jobs, I mean.

Ohio needs a jobs czar to envision ways of putting Ohioans back to work and to coordinate programs scattered across nine state agencies, a new report concludes.

The report, “Help Wanted: a Lead State workforce official,” depicts a system of overlapping and splintered programs and strategies that it says could be strengthened through a unity of purpose. The nonprofit Columbus-based Community Research Partners in Columbus released the report Thursday.

The above word ‘lead’ is meant in terms of ‘head’ or ‘chief’… and not in terms of ‘heavy, toxic weight,’ which is an accurate representation of the general effect of Democratic party policies on Ohio’s unemployment rate since Ted Strickland took office four years ago. 11%, these days: at this rate, they’ll have a czar to address why the job-creation czar hasn’t created more than one job by no later than June. The state’s only hope is that they can somehow accelerate the process to the point where a new czar pops into existence every second… Continue reading Reducing OH unemployment, one jobs czar at a time.

Portman rivals Rubio in 1Q fundraising: 2.35 million.

Not too shabby:

Rob Portman announced today that his U.S. Senate campaign raised $2.35 million during the first three months of 2010 and has $7.6 million cash-on-hand. More than 5,600 individuals contributed to the campaign during the first quarter, bringing the total number of individual supporters to more than 13,000 – over 80 percent of whom are Ohioans.

Couple that with his polling outside the MoE on the latest Rasmussen and Portman’s having himself a decent quarter here. As opposed to his Democratic counterparts, who are currently rather busy cutting each other into ribbons over whether or not there’s a whispering campaign going on:

[OH SOS Jennifer] Brunner told The Vindicator during a Friday telephone interview that her criticism is “obviously getting under his skin. I have evidence, but when people who support me tell me these things they’re afraid to let me give their names. There are numerous instances where either he or his wife will say to people that the governor has endorsed [Lt. Gov.] Lee [Fisher]. People won’t come forward because they’re scared.”

Meanwhile, Fisher is bragging about his role in the 172K job loss in Ohio in 2009.

No, really.

Moe Lane

PS: Support Rob Portman anyway. There’s always the chance that the Democrats will wise up and nominate a functional candidate for Ohio Senate.

Crossposted to RedState.

Democrats get another GOP office vandalized.

Mission, as they say, accomplished.

This time, in Ohio:

‘Stop right wing’ is message to local GOP
Delivered via brick through HQ window

MARION — Two Republican party officials were shocked to hear someone had thrown a brick through a window at their headquarters downtown — with a message directed at stopping conservatism.

“Stop the right wing,” was written in purple ink on a piece of notebook paper.

[snip]

It may cost more than $600 to fix the window…

Send the bill to the DNC.

Moe Lane

PS: The Ohio GOP site is here.

Crossposted to RedState.

John Boccieri: confirmed not-yet-decided on health care.

(I actually wrote this at around 2 PM. I don’t know why it didn’t load then.)
I just got off the phone with someone from John Boccieri’s (D, OH-16) office. Rep. Boccieri, you might remember, was one of the four Congressmen that Rep. Clyburn suggested were possible ‘yes’ votes on the health care bill, and who were later rumored to have switched their votes. I’m informed of the following:

Rep. Boccieri has not made a final decision;
His office has gotten a considerable increase in phone calls on this issue, both in-district and out of district;
I was told that the in-district calls have been somewhat more supportive of the health care bill, and that reform in general was a constant theme*;
And that Rep Boccieri has been available to people wishing to discuss their concerns with health care.

This, of course, can change – but that’s the state of the situation as of about fifteen minutes ago.

Moe Lane

I should note, by the way, that the Congressman’s office was very civil and accessible to an openly conservative Republican blogger asking for information. Mind you, that doesn’t always happen – but when it does, it certainly makes getting information easier.

*The trick is, of course, is in defining ‘reform.’

Ohio state Senator racially slurred…

…but it’s all right: she wasn’t being a proper Democrat, anyway.

CLEVELAND, OHIO — A controversial editorial cartoon in the Call & Post, a weekly Cleveland newspaper with a large black readership, has increased the racial and political tensions surrounding Cuyahoga County government reform and one of its key backers.

The cartoon, which appeared on the front page of Wednesday’s paper, depicts State. Sen. Nina Turner as Aunt Jemima, the much-maligned vaudeville character and food-company logo that has become a pejorative symbol of a black woman who aims to please whites in authority positions.

Turner, who represents Cleveland’s East Side, was the only black politician to endorse Issue 6, the reform proposal passed by voters last month.

Continue reading Ohio state Senator racially slurred…

Traficant’s back!

He’s tanned (not really), toupee’d, and ready to… why, he’s ready to do anything at all for OH-17, really.

Anything.

BOARDMAN, Ohio — Seven years in prison doesn’t appear to have changed former U.S. Rep. James Traficant’s style whatsoever, and the 1,200 supporters who gathered at a Boardman banquet hall Sunday afternoon loved him for it.

“I was a quarterback. I was a congressman. Now I’m a convict,” Traficant said, his signature toupee firmly back atop his head. “I wouldn’t change one single thing. And to the powerful enemies that I have, I’ll just say this to you: They had to cheat to convict me.”

The crowd roared. After 15 minutes of remarks, hundreds swarmed the make-shift stage to shake his hand or ask for an autograph.

Continue reading Traficant’s back!

PPP: Strickland/Kasich within margin of error.

Not that they noted that, really. But there’s still been some erosion of Strickland’s support in the last several months, whether PPP’s explicit about it or not:

43% of Ohio voters approve of how Strickland is doing his job as Governor, while 42%
disapprove. A January PPP survey found the numbers at 48/35.

Strickland’s approval among Democrats has dropped from 70% to 62%, an unusually low
level of support for a Governor within his own party. He’s also seen an increasing level
of dissatisfaction with him from Republican voters, 72% of whom now say they
disapprove of what he’s doing after just 59% did earlier this year.

Matched up against likely GOP candidate John Kasich, Strickland leads 44-42. He had a
slightly wider 45-39 advantage in January. Strickland is mostly hurt by a 54-33 deficit to
Kasich among independent voters, even though those same voters prefer a Democrat for
the Senate in numbers that PPP will release on Tuesday.

See Third Base Politics for more analysis (and Ohio Politics Online, on general principles). What I want to see is the next Quinnipac poll; both the March and the May ones were done back when there was an expectation that DeWine would be running for Governor. It’ll be interesting to see if the twenty point lead shown in both has dropped in the last two months, too.

In the meantime… as I said yesterday: Go Kasich.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.