Suffolk University published a poll about New Hampshire that Ohio media, especially the Columbus Dispatch, the legacy newspaper most likely to promote Ohio's lame-duck, term-limited Gov. John Kasich, didn't cover.
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Two years before Kasich's campaign
banned me from attending his 2014
State of the State Address, I attended a
year-end discourse in the Ohio Statehouse
in 2012.
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And for good reason: It showed President Donald Trump again clobbering America's "national chaplain" 68 percent to 23 percent.
New Hampshire, the tiny libertarian leaning state where Kasich won only 16 percent of the Republican vote in 2016, is where he continues to travel to pump up overblown expectations that he'll try a third run at the presidency under the Republican banner in 2020.
Other than coming in a distant second to Trump in the Granite State two years ago, Kasich's best showing, and only outright win, came in his home state of Ohio, where despite his victory, he failed to break above 50 percent.
Tuesday Turnout In Ohio
Tomorrow is primary day in Ohio, a one-time bellwether state that could make or break a candidate's goal to be elected President of the United States. For most of the last couple decades, Republicans have ruled the roost, helping to explain why the Buckeye State is losing political capital in Washington and hurting on so many fronts, from education to job creation, from laws harming women to voting rules that suppress voting to scandals galore that Ohio media have allowed to grow and fester without any serious investigative reporting to place blame where it lies.
Following the 2010 midterm elections, where majority Republican in the legislature colluded with GOP statewide office holders like Kasich and others to terribly gerrymander the state in away that chances for Democrats to win those same seats are often far out or reach, The Ohio Democratic Party (ODP), under different leadership from former Chairman Chris Redfern to his successor David Pepper, got their respective heads handed to them in local and statewide races in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
If this year's midterm elections go to Republicans as they did in the last three election cycles, ODP can virtually pack their bags and turn out the lights, because voters will have essentially done that work for them.
With voter turnout expected to again be low, maybe as low as it was in 2014 when turn out at 37 percent was the lowest since World War II, Ohio's gerrymandered districts will deliver Republicans another win, albeit maybe a few seats less than its current veto -proof majorities in the State House and Senate.
In the Democratic race for governor, Richard Cordray is facing off against Dennis Kucinich, with two other candidates, Bill O'Neil and Joe Schiavoni, placing far, far behind the two front leaders, as polling shows will be the case.
In the Republican race for governor, where front runner Attorney General Mike DeWine appears to have a significant lead over Kasich's two-term Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, the issue is which is conservative and Trumpy enough to keep the state headed in retrograde motion, especially with respect to healthcare. Each has said, Taylor directly and DeWine more evasive, that Medicaid expansion undertaken by Kasich in an end-run around lawmakers who didn't want to accept it won't be continued, putting hundreds of thousands of Ohioans at risk of having no affordable health plan.
Does Sherrod Brown Play Well With Other Democrats?
This question has yet to play out in real time. Brown let former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland twist in the wind in 2016. The two-term senator with seemly permanently mussed up hair and signature gravel voice didn't show up with Strickland on the stump. Even though Strickland saved Ohio from a far worse fate after the Great Recession decimated jobs by the hundreds of thousands, by cutting state spending—a favorite principle of Republicans over the years—Ohio media gave him no credit for turning the state around, but did give credit to Kasich for his rhetorical routine of claiming the state was "broke" when he took over.
Kasich's narrative was that he replenished the emergency fund, created JobsOhio to bring
jobs back, and balanced the budget. To show how out of touch with reality one Ohio newspaper was, it said sending Strickland to the U.S. Senate would only contribute to gridlock, then later labeled Strickland a cynical candidate.
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| I speak with Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2016 in Columbus |
What concerns some Ohio Dems about Brown is that he'll keep his distance from Cordray, to avoid the link between Cordray and former President Barack Obama, who selected Cordray to run the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, a federal agency Republicans didn't wanted created in the first place and wanted to shut down if they could. Brown definitely won't come close to Dennis Kucinich, either, since his populist base is full of Bernie Sanders' supporters, 10 percent of whom voted for Trump in 2016.
It's not well known because Ohio media has not reported on it, but Brown isn't doing fundraising with or for local county Democratic parties. Sources say all his fundraising is for his own campaign.
The Democrat's so-called "coordinated campaign" isn't very visible at this point, with the exception of a few large counties. Some see ODP's Pepper more interested in pushing his works of political fiction than working to make the rumors of a national blue wave a reality in Ohio.
Not seeing this kind of hard work helps explain why Trump is making campaign stops in Ohio, where he's endorsed Jim Renacci to go against Brown. At the same time, Brown is trying to not wake sleeping GOP/Trump dogs by saying he and Trump are on the same page when it comes to issues like tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Brown knows that Ohio voters who voted for Trump, if they turnout this year like they did two years ago, would deliver another great disaster to Ohio Democrats including Sen. Brown, who was on Hillary Clinton's short list for her running mate.
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