Ohio 'telecommunications harassment statute' appealed to US Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit

House Bill 151 was sponsored by Republican State Representative Marlene Anielski of Walton Hills. Known as the "Cyberstalking and Harassment Legislation," the bill addresses "the use of technology growing rapidly every year, the tools available to offenders who wish to threaten or harass others is also growing.

Gov. John Kasich, seen here in 2011 

delivering his first and only State of the

State speech from the Ohio House, signed

HB 151 into law.

HB 151 is a step toward bringing state law up-to-date with today’s technology," a posting by the House Member says.

Lead attorney Eugene Volokh of the Scott & Cyan Banister First Amendment Clinic at the UCLA School of Law and Raymond V. Vasvari, Jr. of Vasvari/Zimmerman, an Ohio law firm, filed an appeal of "Plunderbund Media L.L.C., et al. v. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, et al," in which I am one of three plaintiffs, challenging a key provision of HB 151 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

The Honorable Sara Lioi, a judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, ruled that plaintiffs Plunderbund media, a liberal Ohio blog, John Michael Spinelli, an independent blogger, and Tom Zawistowski, Chairman of the Portage County Tea Party, lacked standing to challenge Ohio Rev. Code § 2917.21(B)(2), on the grounds that Appellants suffered no injury in fact and there was no credible threat of prosecution, according to court documents filed Monday.

Plunderbund, Spinelli and Zawistowski were recruited by Volokh to challenge a provision of HB 151 that represents the constitutionality of a speech restriction that would "criminalize, in relevant part, 'knowingly post[ing] a text or audio statement or an image [online] for the purpose of abusing, threatening, or harassing another person.'”

All three appellants "fear their criticisms would be construed as intended to abuse or harass political figures, especially local prosecutors, they have limited their criticisms of such figures," plaintiff attorneys wrote.

The state, represented by AG DeWine, a Republican candidate for governor who hopes to succeed term-limited Gov. John Kasich this year, won its case to dismiss from a lower court based on plaintiff's lack of standing according to Article III standing criteria.

According to the filed document of appeal, "It is now a crime in Ohio to 'knowingly post a text or audio statement or an image on an internet web site . . . for the purpose of abusing or harassing another person,” un-less the speaker is within a favored list of exempted media entities. All three appellants do not meet media standards as defined by the bill, which covers only people who are speaking “while employed or contracted by a newspaper, magazine, press association, news agency, news wire service, cable channel or cable operator, or radio or television station.”

Volokh argues that the First Amendment protects against the kind of "chilling effect" the bill imposes "by rendering overbroad statutes unconstitutional." Accordingly, Volokh says, "Courts invalidate [overbroad] statutes in their entirety to prevent a ‘chilling effect,’ whereby speakers self-censor protected speech to avoid the danger of possible prosecution.”

At the core of the case is the understanding that nothing in the bill, specifically § 2917.21(B)(2), excludes political speech, such as the speech in which Appellants seek to engage. Moreover, the bill has no exception for political expression, an activity that all three plaintiffs engage in on a regular basis.

Included in what it does, the bill prohibits a person from intentionally posting a message using written communication, like e-mail, Facebook or text message, or verbal graphic gestures to lead another to believe they are in danger.

“The bill brings our current laws on menacing and stalking up to date and will provide more peace of mind to the victims and families of those who have experienced these terrible situations,” Rep. Anielski said. Moreover, the bill expands the offense of “menacing by stalking” and telecommunications harassment and prohibits a person from knowingly causing someone to believe that the offender will cause physical or mental harm to that person’s family.

The bill was inspired by one of Rep. Anielski’s constituents, from Broadview Heights, who was a repeated victim of cyber stalking and harassment in the mid-2000s. At the time, local law enforcement was unable to assist due to the type of harassment was not specified in state law.

In Kasich's favorite state—not Ohio—polling shows Trump clobbers the 'National Chaplain' 2-1

Kasich Gets Trumped Again In New Hampshire

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. 

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.

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

I speak with Sen. Sherrod
Brown in 2016 in Columbus

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.

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. 

Kasich taps Tapper on CNN's 'State of the Union' like a sweet maple syrup tree

Duty bound to keep outgoing, lame-duck Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich's name front and center before he fades into the sunset, The Columbus Dispatch reported that the Buckeye State's CEO is warning that suburban women, who have "traditionally been voting Republican," are very uncomfortable with the harsh rhetoric on today's political front.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich looking his crusty

self in the Lincoln Room in the Ohio

Statehouse. His term ends later this year.

Offering nothing more than the conventional wisdom shared by most beltway pundits, that Democrats are more energized this year than Republicans, one of Ohio's best career politicians said what politicians say about respecting a free American press, despite  a Quinnipiac Poll poll showing more than 50 percent of Republicans don't trust the press and think, like President Trump believes and instructs them to believe, that media is the enemy of the people.

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union with it's super-friendly-to Kasich host Jake Tapper, Kasich said people from both parties came up to him last night at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner to say they support him should he stop his favorite peek-a-book scam of keeping the idea that he'll run to challenge Trump in 2020 and declare his candidacy.

Tapper, who with his wife was also in attendance last night at a dinner where comedian Michelle Wolff was unanimously condemned for crossing the line of attacking political people on a personal basis, couldn't help himself when, at the conclusion of an interview about everything except the state of Kasich's Ohio, he lobbed another big softball to Kasich, a former TV pro from Fox News who often substituted for now disgraced Fox News "No Spin Zone" TV leader Bill O'Reilly. Kasich, grinning like a slugger who sees a slow pitch coming his way, drove it out of the CNN park.

Kasich, a politicians politician after nearly 40 years in public office whose public service extends from 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives to the Office of Governor, said the far-left and far-right have left open a middle ground that he purports to represent. He said that when a blue department story and a red department store no longer offer what people want, it opens the door to a third department store. Tapper got played like all other national TV political talk show hosts, giving Kasich another shot at the free-throw line to further pump up himself as a candidate who can fill the void.

It was classic Kasich, when he again said he has no idea what Democrats stand for today. For someone who's fought against nearly everything Democrats do and have stood for for decades—like taxing the rich more, universal healthcare for all, pro-choice policies, strengthening unions, supporting public schools and their teachers, expanding voting rights, and not balancing budgets on the back of those who can least afford to pay more, among a long-list of other Democratic-backed issues—it was stunning to again hear him say he doesn't know what they stand for.

At the same time, Ohio Democrats wrote a letter to Kasich telling him some of the things they do stand for, as reported by Kasich's adjunct PR department, The Columbus Dispatch. What Ohio's congressional Democrats told Kasich was to do more than he's doing on expanded Medicaid, an issue Democrats have given to Kasich without challenging him on its implementation. Waivers and work requirements, they told the governor, are bad for Buckeyes.

Appearing at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night is further proof that Kasich is networking on the tax-payer dollar to land himself another lucrative, talking-head gig on TV that will keep his name in play for 2020. It was another example of the gone governor being gone from his normal day-to-day duties back in Ohio, where both his Republican wannabe successors, one of them his Lt. Gov for two-terms (Mary Taylor) are running as fast as they can away from him.

It's worth mentioning for Tapper's benefit, that unlike what Kasich did back in 2010, Republicans Taylor and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine have shown the press their tax returns. Kasich refused to do this, choosing instead to let media have a 30-minute gander at just one of his tax returns with further restrictions of no copying.

Kasich got another unchallenged shot from the 3-point line to tout his fake news that back in Ohio he's balanced budgets, created jobs, and produced surpluses. He and every other state governor is by law forced to balance budgets.

Tapper doesn't care about this, otherwise he might have asked the supply-side politico why lawmakers had to fill a billion dollar whole with cuts to other programs? His statement of creating one-half million jobs is better understood when the fact is brought to light that he's underperformed the national job creation average for 64 straight months, and that Ohio today has fewer jobs than it did in 1980?

Kasich bragging about a state surplus is tempered by the fact that he stole billions from public education and local government funding to do so. Many of these same local governments have had to make up for Kasich's executive branch theft by putting tax levies on the ballot to keep services levels the same. Kasich seems to have no memory of the billions of dollars he took away from public school system budgets to fund poorly performing for-profit charter schools, among them ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) that gave Kasich plenty of campaign cash and a chance to address an ECOT graduating class.

When media does the bidding of flimflam politicians like Kasich, who has mastered the craft of pretending he's not a politician who does very political things while denying he's doing them, they indeed deserve the low ranking the public places on them. Until and unless Jake Tapper confronts Kasich with his own record, and all the rhetoric that surrounds it, the big, high-paid talking heads only add to their reputation of being complicit with skilled politicos like Kasich when they should be deep-diving on a record that shows Kasich's very Republican ideology doesn't work in Ohio and won't work for the nation.

Kasich's duplicity gets even worse. "I'm still a Republican ... the Republican Party left me," he told Tapper about why he's on the outs with the White House and Democrats. His political bi-sexuality is stunning, begging the question of why the media turns every outlandish statement into its own article.

Gov. Kasich can be credible, first by stop saying he does know what Democrats stand for, then by acknowledging that his performance salesmanship is part of his stagecraft to find a job where he can pontificate (a cherished goal for all former Catholic choir boys) and spread his sweet sounding but false narrative of austerity politics, while still being considered a rising star as he approaches his seventh decade of life.

Is Ohio the home of the brazen or land of the failed?

The State of Ohio is in quite a state these days. Statehouse watchers can genuinely wonder whether it's the home of the brave and land of the free, or home of the brazen and land of the failed?

The Buckeye tree is indigenous to Ohio.
It's nut is poisonous and hard to crack,
much like some of its political leaders.

The leading big presidential battleground state that can make or break the fortunes of candidates seeking to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. is caught on the horns of a dilemma of its own making.

A once purple state, Ohio is now ruby red in many ways. From control of statewide offices to the composition of the General Assembly, its leadership has devolved toward the worst public policy on taxes, women, voting rights, fair representation, income inequality, education and healthcare, just to name a few areas where it falls far short of best practices.

With moribund population growth and diminished political clout in Washington, the Buckeye State is stumbling forward to elect a governor this November to replace outbound John Kasich. Ohio's 69th governor is governor in name only, as he fills his remaining months with out-of-state events designed to keep his long hoped for fantasy of being elected President of the United States, a quest he's failed at spectacularly twice already, an example of zombie apocalypse come true.

Ohio media carries its fair share of guilt coddling Kasich over the last eight years. It has chosen to put down its investigative pen when it comes to Kasich's many scandals while inking many column inches following the former Fox News TV host's various performance-politician forays into national politics. The consequences of these Quixotic have been to make a once-great state less great.

For Kasich fans, his abandonment of governor's duties is all for higher goals, as his surly ego plays on the national stage in advance of 2020, when America will again be keel-hauled as President Trump defends himself and Democrats try again to connect with voters at the local level on kitchen-table issues like jobs, wages, healthcare and taxes.

Camp Kasich tells us about what Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck career politician does to fill his days. A three-fer trip to Texas, to commune with for Bush-era Secretary of State Jim Baker prior to speaking at the Baker Institute for Public Policy's lecture series, an appearance at the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation and remarks delivered at the 2018 EarthX Global Gala event in Dallas, are among his recent sojourns as he auditions for National Chaplain.

Ignoring the fact that Ohio under his watch has lagged the national job creation average for 64 straight months, Kasich touts March as the second best month for new business filings in history and a state unemployment rate at its lowest point in 17 years. Not to be missed Kasich classics include well-worn fake news talking points like balancing the state budget, cutting government spending and taxes and diversifying Ohio’s economy. His showboat number, that out of context sounds fantastic when it isn't in context, is creating over a half million new jobs, when in reality Ohio has fewer jobs today than it did in 1980.

"Under Gov. Kasich's leadership, Ohio continues to set an example for other states and the nation that when we balance our budgets, lower taxes and remove the regulatory burdens, it leads to job creation," Camp Kasich says.

One of Ohio's Big Eight legacy newspapers sees a very different Ohio. Here's what the Toledo Blade sees and says.

"There is plenty to be angry about. Poverty and crime infest our central cities. Our great lake is perishing before our eyes. Many of the beautiful small towns of Ohio, and the gentle folkways that existed in them, have been obliterated by the so-called global economy. Our children are dying of heroin and fentanyl. And as all this unfolds, our governor, blinded by an idiotic dream of being president of the United States, has seemingly lost all interest in the people who are suffering in our state, or in governing — the job he is duty bound to perform."

The Blade passes judgment on Kasich without naming him, as it struggles to endorse two aging, it says boring candidates, who may be elected Ohio's next and 70th governor.

"Maybe the old shoe Mike DeWine and the plodding, rational Rich Cordray, both of them uninspired and uninspiring, win by a kind of default. Both will offer sobriety, calm, competence, and something else — full engagement. Half the secret of being a good governor is working at it. Not at the promotional part of it but the job itself."

Land of the free and home of the brave doesn't explain Ohio today. The nation's 17th state has seen far better days since it joined the union in 1803. Claiming eight leaders who moved into the Oval Office, Ohio, where people once moved to for a better, richer, fuller life, is rusty-belt fly-over country.

Growing western and southern states are the new frontiers for jobs, family and lifestyle.

Ohio to decline even more after Chevy Cruze lays off 1,500 at Lordstown

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and ODJFS released employment and unemployment data for Ohio on Friday. Even though the numbers look good in comparison to previous months' figures, the speed of job growth in Ohio remains well below the USA national average, Ohio's top jobs number analyst reports.

The Ohio Statehouse Rotunda

" Ohio extended its lengthy sub-par job growth streak to 64 consecutive months with Ohio's job growth below the USA national average," George Zeller wrote today. "The March 2017 year over year Ohio job growth rate is 1.17%, while the USA job growth rate during the same period is 1.55%," Zeller noted, adding, "This horrible sub-par job growth streak in Ohio has now been every month for five full years and four additional months."

Ohio To Decline Even More

Ohio's economic slide down hill over the decades is well documented. Ohio Gov. John Kasich lands lots of newspaper ink for going out of state to pursue a favorite fantasy that he'll be elected president in 2020.

Kasich got shellacked bigly by Donald Trump in 2016. Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck governor's name always escape mention when the state comes up short on the jobs front, as it has each month for more than five years. Kasich, a former Wall Street banker who worked for Lehman Brothers before it crashed, promised to "move the needle" on jobs if elected in 2010. He's has moved the needle, but mostly in the wrong direction.

Poor, Slow And Fewer Jobs Now Than In 1980.

As Zeller observes, during 2017 Ohio gained just 32,200 jobs, the weakest annual year for job growth in Ohio since the end of the "Great Recession."  Ohio's job trend, he says, is most closely associated with trends in Manufacturing and Government employment. "During March, Ohio gained 1,600 mainly high wage Durable Goods Manufacturing jobs. In contrast to most months during 2017, Ohio also gained 2,200 Government jobs, including 1,900 Local Government jobs, 200 State Government jobs, and 100 Federal Government jobs," he says.

Poor, slow and fewer jobs than in 1980 isn't what one Ohio Republican leader saw in today's number. Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof (R-Medina) prefered to focus on the figure of 501,000 new private sector jobs created since 2011, as if that's an impressive number when it's not. Obhof ignores the fact that the Buckeye State today has fewer jobs than it did in 1980 and has yet to recover from the recessions of 2000 and 2007.

"We work diligently to not only create an environment of possibilities for Ohio's job creators but also to ensure Ohioans from all backgrounds are prepared to take advantage of those opportunities," Obhof said in a statement Friday.

"We've done this through creating a jobs-friendly business environment, developing a jobs-ready workforce and empowering Ohio's small businesses, the backbone of our economy," he said, adding, "While this is an important milestone that shows Ohio's policies are working, we have much more to do, and we will continue to build on this progress."

The John Glenn School of Public Affairs released a report recently on Ohio's decline called "Toward a New Ohio." Co-authors William Shkurti and Fran Stewart offered lots of history and perspective along with a dozen questions the 2018 class of governor hopefuls should have to answer if only Ohio media would ask them, instead of asking questions based on the daily ping-pong of social-media side issues that replace more substantive ones.

Cruze Lay Offs Will Also Lay Off Hundreds More In Supply Chain

When I asked Zeller to noodle on the consequences for Chevy Cruze's announcement that it will lay off 1,500 jobs at its Lordstown plant, he offered some key observations you won't find any other Ohio media reporting on, since their focus on these monthly statistics mostly focus on the unemployment rate, which offers little to no understanding on the numbers.

Zeller tells me that the Ohio job trend is most closely associated with trends in Manufacturing and Government employment. He then says that during March, Ohio gained 1,600 mainly high wage Durable Goods Manufacturing jobs as well as gaining 2,200 Government jobs, including 1,900 Local Government jobs, 200 State Government jobs, and 100 Federal Government jobs.

"The odds of continued growth in Durable Goods Manufacturing will decline in the short run future, as a result of the already announced mass layoffs at Lordstown," Zeller says. He adds, "In addition to those layoffs, there will be additional declines in the hundreds by contractors who provide parts for the Cruise."

It is likely, he says, that Durable Goods Manufacturing will turn negative during next month's April data, although that might extend to May, depending on the actual date of the mass layoffs in Trumbull and surrounding counties.

The other variable he mentions, is that it looks like a "decline in Federal Government is likely, given day to day chaos in Washington with the federal appropriations process." Moreover, cuts made by the Ohio legislature are also relevant.

"This month's and last month's gains in Local Government are locally financed, not financed by the state. There are limits to what the cities, counties, townships, and school districts can spend, given the large cuts that they took at the legislature," he warns.

Plain Dealer's Kucinich endorsement argues against it twice endorsing Kasich

The Cleveland Plain Dealer (PD), a once respected legacy newspaper that's fallen far short over the years as its readership has dwindled, endorsed Dennis John Kucinich Sunday as its preferred candidate in this year's Democratic primary.

Dome of the Ohio Statehouse

"Ohio's next governor must be a fighter -- a fighter for greater equity, justice and common sense; a fighter for the state's urban centers; and a fighter against the moribund thinking on education, diversity, economic opportunity and home-rule rights that's held Ohio back for too long," the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer wrote today.

In its endorsement of Kucinich, a former mayor of Cleveland who served numerous terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and twice ran for president, the PD used the same kind of spurious thinking it used when it first endorsed John Kasich for governor in 2010 and again when he ran for reelection in 2014.

The PD offered a list of what's wrong in Columbus without ever once mentioning that John Kasich, the candidate they fell for twice, has been Charles in Charge for the last eight years, running at times with and against the state's legislature controlled by veto-proof margins in both chambers by Republicans. 

Instead of choosing the steady hand of former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, on whose watch the Great Recession descended on Ohio like a plague of hungry locusts eating up hundreds of thousands of jobs in quick fashion in less than two years, the PD editorial board bought the razzle dazzle, flimflam of Kasich, who promised much but delivered little.

After nearly eight years of Kasich's political showmanship, that favors rich individuals and corporations over everyday laborers and small businesses, Ohio ranks 40th among states. The perennial battle ground state that's drifted far right of center over the decades, now trails the nation in job creation, made life for women harder and robbed cities and schools of billions in revenue that was redistributed to the already wealthy, among many other metrics.

Rich Cordray may be a smart guy but he lacks charisma. Dennis Kucinich has charisma but he lacks Cordray's connections to Clinton-Obama money. When the PD says " ... business as usual in Columbus has left too many Ohioans behind," they are now in opposition to their own reasoning on endorsing Kasich over both Strickland or Ed FitzGerald, the 2014 candidate Democrats ran against Kasich who the media slaughtered for all the wrong reasons while letting Kasich off one scandal after another Scott Free.

Roldo Bartimole, Ohio's leading independent reporter, recoiled at the PD's endorsement of Kucinich. Bartimole, who worked for the Wall Street Journal and the Cleveland Plain Dealer back in the day when it was respected far more than it is today, thinks the paper has gone off the rails.

"The PD, I think, is just so far out of it that they don’t know what they’re doing," Bartimole wrote to me today. He stopped short of accusing the PD of being in league with the DeWine/Husted camp, but thinks the paper comes up short if it doesn't also inform its readers that Kucinichs progressive image has some serious defects, as he points out here and here. He and others think the PD would rather see Mike DeWine as the next governor than either Kucinich or Cordray.

"I think they’re for DeWine to win. Such bullshit," he says.

Let's not forget that the PD took down a disturbing video of Gov. Kasich acting the petulant child he is just weeks before the midterm election in 2014, when Kasich, FitzGerald and Anita Rios, the Green Party candidate, were together in the same room at an editorial interview session. Kasich knew that to be viable to run for president in 2016, he had to win a second term. Kasich's performance was such a train wreck that his aides bullied the PD into taking the video of the interview session down after it being on line for just a day or two. For many, that action cemented the paper's bias for Kasich, who hasn't stopped running for president even though he got clobbered in 2016.

When your so-called political friends turn on you, it's a bad sign of bad things to come. But that was as clear as pure water when a very Republican, very conservative blog, 3rd Rail Politics, butchered Kasich for abandoning his job as governor.

Cyndy Rees, author of "A Contract with the Caucus," said Ohio GOPers should "require Governor

John Kasich on Election Night in 2010

Kasich to actually do his job, or else pay back his salary and face removal proceedings." Rees writes what is in plain sight for all media not too blind or too invested in Kasich to see. "The state’s Republican Governor has checked out of Ohio for the express purpose of trashing the sitting Republican president and challenging him in 2020. And in a state where the President won by 8 points, the Republican General Assembly gives him a pass? From the moment Kasich boycotted the Republican convention in his home state, the legislature should have made his tenure a living hell. Instead, they privately grumble and hope things will get better under Mike DeWine. The ostensibly conservative Ohio House should be steamrolling this guy whose staff is already out the door anyway."

Who Democrats nominate for governor will have an impact, like it or not, on whether Ohio's senior senator in Washington wins a third term or goes home defeated if Trump Republicans turn out to install Brown's GOP challenger if Democratic turnout isn't up to snuff. Team Brown emailed today, saying, "A newly released poll says a single point is all that separates my opponent, Congressman Jim Renacci, and me. Needless to say, this isn’t very comforting."

If Kucinich leads the ticket, will Brown endorse him or campaign with him or run a campaign that divorces itself from him? It's hard to imagine Kucinich losing without Brown suffering repercussions, since all their names will be on the sample ballot. But like Kucinich, who has lined up on occasion with President Trump, Brown has done the same on steel and aluminum tariffs he sees protecting Ohio jobs.

A recent poll of Democratic candidates for governor show Cordray and Kucinich tied at 21 each. Voter turnout among Democrats, and whether independents or Republicans will vote in the Democratic primary are big factors that can swing the May 8th primary vote to either the consumer finance protector or the Fox News fighter who has everything to gain and nothing to lose.

America's 'National Chaplain" preaches federal balanced budget amendment, then evaporates as House votes it down

When he first came to public office back in 1978, Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck governor offered up a resolution for a federal balanced budget amendment.

Donald Trump, see here campaigning in 

Columbus in 2016, signed two bills that

will add $2.7 trillion to the national debt 

over the next decade.

John Kasich has made it part of his performance politics mission to rail against red-ink spending in Washington throughout his 18 years in congress and after. Ohio's soon to be gone CEO voted for each and every one of President Ronald Reagan's budgets that ballooned the federal deficit, especially in military spending as the Great Communicator sought to grind Russia down by out spending them.

Kasich has made it part of his agenda over 40 years to blather on about how Washington should rein itself in on spending. At the same time, he's never turned down a dollar DC was handing out if those bucks furthered some aspect of his political agenda.

In Amazing Grace, the composer says, "I once was lost, but now am found. T'was blind but now I see." Kasich, who can hardly keep the Lord out of any comment he makes, is still lost and still can't see, when it comes to debts and deficit spending.

In Ohio, where he's cut income taxes several times based on his misunderstanding of economics, the state found itself nearly a billion dollars short of a balanced budget. So what did the GOP-controlled legislature do? Of course, it made cuts to other important programs to come into balance as state law requires. For reasons too numerous to cover now, Ohio ranks 40th among states, a measure of how poorly Kasich's budget razzle dazzle has worked over two terms.

In DC this week, the U.S. House of Representatives, with a large margin of like-minded Republicans who cry about deficits and debt but only add to it when they can with tax cut bills and massive military spending, failed to pass a federal balanced budget amendment.

As the Los Angeles Times put it, "As House Republicans prepare to vote this week on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget, it's hard to know what adjective to apply: Cynical? Ironic? Hypocritical? Or all of the above?"

The Golden State newspaper added this observation: "...Republicans have taken every one of those opportunities to make the deficit worse, whether by passing a wholly unwarranted and enormously expensive tax cut or demanding budget-busting increases in spending on defense and homeland security (increases that Democrats were more than happy to support, as long as their favorite domestic programs were similarly blessed)."

Back in Ohio, a state where Kasich spends increasingly less time governing because hes mounting another peek-a-boo campaign to run for president in 2020, his voice on one of his favorite topics—a federal balanced budget amendment—was a silent as a rural night in Appalachia. Instead of being the lead voice in pushing his party members to adopt the bill—which lost 233-184—Kasich disappeared from the effort.

As Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it according to USA Today, "Anyone supporting a balanced budget amendment should also have a plan to achieve a balanced budget and support efforts to implement such a plan; otherwise, it is not a serious proposal."

Kasich and others have no plan that doesn't include exempting military spending while simultaneously cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid drastically to make up for being blind on defense spending and tax cuts that don't create jobs of prosperity for anyone but one-per-centers.

The combination of debt expected to be added after President Trump signed a massive tax cut bill and an equally massive spending bill is projected to be $2.7 trillion more in debt over the coming decade, a figure the congressional budget analysts had not anticipated just a year ago. "It made sense for Washington to run large budget deficits in the wake of the deep recession in 2007-08. It makes no sense to run bigger ones now, after eight consecutive years of economic growth," the LA Times editorial board opined.

Kasich and other Republican governors who won office in 2010, including Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Rick Scott in Florida, mocked then-President Obama for his stimulus spending bill, that was far less than many responsible economists of the day said was necessary to pull the nation out of the economic ditch it found itself in, when Lehman Brothers—the storied Wall Street investment bank Kasich worked for—imploded from derivatives and sub-par mortgaged backed securities.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said on the House floor Wednesday according to USA Today, "This Balanced Budget Amendment is supposed to trick people into believing Republicans still care about fiscal responsibility."

The woman Republicans love to demonize, that helped guide important legislation like Dodd-Frank, the stimulus bill and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, said of the GOP bill, "The balanced budget amendment is in no way balanced in terms of values and how we invest in our future." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "Now Republicans have the chutzpah to bring forth a balanced budget amendment." She added, the real goal of that measure was “to force devastating cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.”

Kasich voted for Ronald Reagan's Social Security fix, but then told people in his 100-plus town hall events in New Hampshire in 2016, that they would have to work longer and receive less when they retired, based on his mindset that austerity, not increasing the resources the federal government needs to do its job, is his preferred choice to make ends meet.

For these and many other reasons media are afraid to challenge Kasich on, he won't be president in 2020. He won't run as a third-party or independent candidate, since both are the kiss of death. He will find a handful of loyal donors who will keep his name and voice in the mix going forward after he leaves office later this year.

Sadly, the National Chaplain from Ohio is still lost because he still can't see.

Kasich loves buzz about media buzz on his peek-a-boo 2020 run for president

Ohio Gov. John Kasich rolls in the media buzz about him and the 2020 race for president like a pig loves rolling in warm mud. New Hampshire, it seems, is the real promised land for Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck governor these days. Not Ohio, as he likes to recount about his uncle telling him as a young boy traveling west from his home state of Pennsylvania.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich at Bureau of
Workers' Compensation campaign
event about returning funds to employers.

Ohio's 69th governor has been drinking liberally from the taxpayer trough since before the 2014 election, when a second-term win would guarantee he would mount a second campaign to win the White House. His first try in 2000 failed early on, after he left his 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. His second try came two years ago, when he failed spectacularly by loosing 49 state GOP contests. His lone victory, with less than 50 percent of the Republican vote, came in Ohio where he beat Donald Trump. Polling shows Kasich remains popular, but it also shows President Trump would handily beat him today in Ohio.

The State of Ohio pays Gov. Kasich $71.30 per hour. Estimates are out there that suggest John Kasich racked up over a million dollars over the course of his last presidential campaign. Kasich isn't a fan of public scrutiny of his administrations workings, as many requests for public records document. His administration refuses to show the bills Ohio Highway patrolman logged protecting his CEO-ship, when he spent month after month campaigning out of state for a job taxpayers didn't elect him to pursue when he won a second term during the lowest voter-turnout year since World War II. 

Kasich wrote another book about his last campaign run, which aside from its title, essentially tells Kasich's personal story again. His book and his campaign have become assets to him as he tries to keep his voice in the public arena, as media fawns over him as to whether he will or he won't make a third try at winning the hearts, minds and votes of Republican Party voters. As the quirky leader looks past his date of retirement from elected office, Kasich has the media right where he wants them: Following his every comment and speculating about his every move on whether he's all talk and no action for 2020 or whether he'll again enter the fray, this time to take on an incumbent GOP president who shellacked the one-time boy who wanted to become a priest but found politics had a more direct road to fame and fortune.

Republican candidates to succeed him are either distancing themselves from him, or in the case of his two-term Lt. Governor partner, Mary Taylor, trying to wriggle out of his endorsement of her. Democrats, meanwhile, sound like they'd vote for him based on their constant adulation of his so-called "Kasich expansion of Medicaid." From Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown, running for a third term this year, to Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, Kasich enjoys them touting his work without ever once returning the compliment on any issue.

CNN appears to have signed on, like Columbus' hometown newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, to promoting Kasich for his next Quixotic run at the White House. "'Why doesn't he shut up and go away.' And these come from staunch Republican Trump people were sick of" me, Kasich told reporters, CNN reports. "So, that must tell me I'm doing something right."

Kasich loves being Daniel in the Lions Den, from afar, not so much to actually being in the den itself. The performance politician he is, even though he says he's sick of politics and politicians, Kasich is careful to pick and choose where he shows up. And showing up in the Lion's Den, where someone might drill down on him for his terrible record in Ohio that includes tax giveaways that mostly benefit the rich, signing gun bills that relax rules while signing anti-abortion bills that tighten rules, standing by as for-profit charter schools rip off the state for billions, being on the wrong side of gay marriage, and his poor performance on creating good-paying jobs for Ohioans still looking for one, isn't where you'll see him.

Where you will see him is on national TV shows where he's the reliable dancing bear to mouth anti-trump criticism and in the tiny Libertarian-oriented state of New Hampshire, scene of his best performance in the 2016 GOP race for president.

When he needs a helping hand from above, Kasich doesn't shy away from play the God card. CNN reports Kasich saying, "The Lord" could eventually tell him to "shut up," but it hasn't happened yet. It's sort of like, it's not just you hear voices. You get a sense of what you're supposed to do. Keep doing what I'm doing," is how he describes his short term plan. He continued, Even though there are times when I can be severely criticized, it's okay, it's part of it. If you can't take a punch, get out of the business, you know?"

Kasich has Ohio in his rear view mirror. His comment about being out of state so much is that Ohio is actually easy to run from afar. Had Kasich fessed up about whether he would or would not run for president when he ran for re-election in 2014, that would have been a demonstration of honesty few have seen over the years. At the time, media seemed amused by the fact that Kasich had no formal re-election campaign event, adding it his well-known penchant to go rogue as a modern-day Pecks Bad Boy.

Soon to be out of office, and looking for a new perch where he can be his bombastic self, John Kasich doesn't want to go back to Wall Street, where he worked for Lehman Brothers before it failed and the American economy melted down. Kasich is looking for his next TV gig, like the one he had at Fox News, where he often substituted for Bill O'Reilly and hosted a show about the heartland.

John Kasich is independently wealthy, so he can afford to stay in the media spotlight if media wants him in it. He has a handful of contributors who can pay for his voice to stay in the mix. He'll continue to make appearances to talk about bringing people together, when examples of that back in Ohio are few and far between.

Kasich won't run as an independent candidate in 2020, a move that guarantees he'll become another foot-note on the list of losers. He won't lead a third party in a couple years, either, since he's Republican from his head to his toe, even though one of his favorite claims is he "has the right" to refashion the GOP in his image. Trump controls the party, and the party is behind Trump, not Kasich.

Media buzz will last as long as media toys with him like a cat plays with a mouse. In most lion's dens outside the Bible, the lions thank God for delivering them their next meal.

'Ohio in decline' report reveals Gov. Kasich's budget 'razzle dazzle' as unproductive

It was par for the course for the politically compromised Columbus Dispatch to run another supportive headline about Ohio Gov. John Kasich's upcoming trip to New Hampshire.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich at a bill signing
ceremony in the Ohio Statehouse

Kasich's next out of state trip is designed to create more sound and fury about whether the term-limited, lame-duck Buckeye CEO will mount a third try in his long political life to win the White House during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

"Kasich's New Hampshire trip will create buzz" ran in the Sunday edition of Ohio's so-called "Greatest Home Newspaper," priming the pump in an otherwise dry well.

"John Kasich’s return to New Hampshire this week is likely to get widespread media coverage as a significant milestone toward what many view as his inevitable 2020 presidential campaign," the legacy Columbus newspaper wrote about a candidate and personality it has promoted for going on 40 years. 

In the same Sunday edition, though, in an article titled "Report documents Ohio’s job slide, presses candidates for solutions," about Ohio's economic slide down hill over the decades, Kasich's name isn't mentioned once, even though the former Wall Street banker who worked for Lehman Brothers before it crashed, setting the "Great Recession" in motion, ran promising to be a jobs governor who would "move the needle."

The only important needles Kasich has moved so far have moved in the wrong direction. Ohio's 69th governor has overseen lagging job growth that's under-performed the national job creation average for 63 straight months. He's sequestered a billion or more from local governments and schools, which have had to resort to tax hikes to keep services from deteriorating further. The one-time boy from McKees Rocks, PA, who wanted to become a Catholic priest, has seen the quality of Buckeye schools plummet from fifth to 22nd in the nation. And the list can go on and on, from creating hurdles on women's health to unproductive tax cuts for the wealthy, to more sinister episodes including the husband of his chief of staff who falsified data in a federal education grant and a dirty-tricks campaign to derail a potential challenger in 2014, Kasich and his kitchen cabinet have done some pretty awful things.

For Ohio voters, unfortunately, media who follow his every bombastic move or comment have fallen short of their vaunted duties and responsibilities as the Fourth Estate to delve into any meaninful investigative reporting on his many shadowy scandals.

This is not the kind of news Kasich will tout in New Hampshire about why he should duplicate his lackluster record in Columbus in Washington, as the rest of the nation plowed forward from policies Kasich believes in that always favor the private sector at the expense of the public sector.

Meanwhile, the report from The John Glenn School of Public Affairs on Ohio's decline, "Toward a New Ohio," released last week and co-authored by William Shkurti and Fran Stewart, offers lots of history and perspective along with a dozen questions the 2018 class of governor hopefuls should have to answer, if only Ohio media would ask them, instead of the daily volley about inter-party and internecine political dustups that are part of every campaign season, which usually have little if anything to do with the real issues of the day, that voters should use to make informed, not emotional, decisions about which candidate can move them forward instead of treading water or going in retrograde motion.

Some members of Ohio media are realizing, maybe eight years too late, that the razzle dazzle Kasich promised in 2010 was just so much snake oil that didn't cure the patient and may have made matters worse. One example of the political enlightenment some commentators now have, based on Kasich's nearly eight years in office, comes courtesy of Brent Larkin, a former Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial page writer, who takes Kasich to the woodshed on his duplicitous record on guns and gun legislation.

Larkin writes a truism in his opening sentence: "No one on the planet has a higher opinion of Ohio Gov. John Kasich than Ohio Gov. John Kasich." Larkin follows that up with another reality many Ohio media reporters, and all big-monied national reporters, are slow in reporting, that "some of the stuff that tumbles from this governor's mouth suggests he's become borderline delusional."

For perspective, John Kasich was one of 16 other Republicans who fought and lost the war to topple Donald Trump in 2016. Kasich's best showing came in New Hampshire, a small libertarian leaning state where his off-beat performance and personality can hit its target audience. But even in this tiny state, with only two congressional district, where Kasich returns soon to evoke memories of his distant, second-place loss to Trump, he'll find his fading star won't guide many wise men to his next manger scene. Kasich knew that if he stayed in the presidential primary race in 2016 media would be forced to follow his trajectory by portraying his fool's errand as the anti-Trump dancing bear as bucking his party. When it was all over, the former 18-year congressman from a reliably Republican district near Columbus only earned one Electoral College vote, just 269 shy of winning the nomination.

Blaming his poor performance two years ago on poor name id and poor fundraising, John Kasich thinks that will all change after he steps down from state CEO, when he'll wander in the wilderness for another three years, hoping to find a media perch to keep his voice in the mix. Unwanted and unliked back home, his poor track record from 2000 (his first try to run for president) and in 2016 won't open the doors big donors control.

Who will give him scores of millions of dollars to mount a third campaign in a Republican party firmly in the grasp of Trump? If Ohio's petulant and easily-angered leader decides the GOP isn't his vehicle going forward, running as a third-party candidate will only underscore the truthiness of Larkin's diagnosis of being delusional.

Based on the success of third-party candidates over thee last century, Kasich will become another biggest loser should he decide to abandon his life-long Republican Party. He may get his fair share of publicity, courtesy of adjunct PR departments like the Columbus Dispatch and national news crews ignorant of his work on the ground in swing-state Ohio. But he'll have little funding from the likes of the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson when the rubber meets the 2020 road. As it is, those who believe in John Kasich enough to give him a few bucks to keep his media boat afloat come from Ohio. 

Kasich's now-documented flip flops, false promises and sever under-performance on a host of key issues Shkurti and Stewart focus on in their white paper on Ohio's decline will be both his calling card and his obituary.

CNN, Columbus Dispatch tag team promote Kasich for 2020 POTUS run

It takes little research to realize that the Columbus Dispatch, out of all Ohio's Big Eight legacy newspaper, is the most likely to keep Ohio Gov. John Kasich's 2020 presidential run afloat.

A long time public relations machine for the now outbound, lame-duck governor, the very Republican newspaper devotes lots of column inches to what Kasich says on any given day. Whether he's "popping off," as he said he did when he called recent job numbers showing how bad the state is doing "fake news," or decrying politics and political parties, Ohio's so-called "Greatest Home Newspaper," follows his ever utterance, as it has since he first entered politics back in 1978.

Tag Team

Ohio Gov. John Kasich at the Ohio
Statehouse during his first term.

Now that Kasich won't be state CEO anymore in just nine short months, the role of cheer leading Kasich on seems to have fallen to "most trusted name in news," CNN. Kasich was one of 16 Republicans who tried and failed to topple 2016's non-traditional candidate, Donald Trump, but he seems to be the only big presidential loser CNN regularly offers Sunday cameo spots to, to ask him to weigh-in on domestic or foreign issues that have little if anything to do with Ohio, as they detour around his less than impressive record in office since 2010.

Basking in the limelight media afforded him, Kasich has got his TV rap down. A bare-knuckles politico his entire life, Kasich talks like he's no longer a politician, saying he's sick of politics, as if to buddy up with many in America who share the same thought. A life-long Republican who has walked the GOP pathway diligently for decades on lower taxes, less debt, fighting unions, standing against abortion and gay marriage while doing more to ease regulations than button them up, Kasich has one issue he owns, namely, expanding Medicaid in Ohio over the objections of the state's alt-right legislature that wanted to let low-income people in Ohio faced with health problems fend for themselves, to avoid the state's share of funding the federal/state health program from consuming a larger percentage of the two-year budget.

Democrats are complicit in giving Kasich the high-ground on the expansion, always referring to it now as "Kasich's expansion of Medicaid." These same Democrats, from the state party and its officials to Democrats running for various statewide offices or the legislature, seem unable to tie Kasich to busting public unions back in 2011. In his first year as governor, Ohio's 69th governor led the charge to enact SB 5 as him and his team threw themselves and a ton of resources into fending off a statewide referendum on the bill that broke 2-1 against the former Fox News channel TV host. Yet Kasich's name is never associated with SB 5, but he owns the admiration of Democrats when it comes to expanding Medicaid, a program he probably would have voted against had he been in congress in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson got it passed because it created "dependency" on government, and he's not for that.

On a recent edition of CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday talk show, Kasich came on following a syrupy video endorsement by former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bodybuilder and adulterer wants Kasich to mount a third run for the White House by challenging Trump in 2020, should the New York real estate mogul and reality TV star still be president. Always wondering what the Lord has in store for him, Kasich man-handled show host Brianna Keilar like a cat plays with a mouse. Keiler thought the tough question to ask was if performance politician, who's honed his craft of bombastic commentary, intends to try to unseat Trump in the 2020 primary?

Headed for pasture, he risks being buried in the political graveyard once he leaves his perch as Ohio governor. Kasich, who has little interest in being governor these days, opined on Trump taking on new advisers, especially John Bolton. Keilar had no clue how poorly Ohio has performed under Kasich's control, where state schools fell from fifth to twenty-second in the nation, where tax cuts have only enriched the already wealthy leaving the state's median wage far below the national average, and where job creation has lagged the nation so much that Ohio today has fewer jobs than it did in 1980.

And so it is remembered, even though CNN and other media outlets have memory loss, John Kasich lost 49 state contests and only earned one Electoral College vote. He was the last candidate to bow out, but voters from the earliest states on were not enamored of Kasich as vote totals showed. Kasich stayed in the race because he knew that was the smart and political thing to do, even though his chances were less than nil to catch fire.

Kasich Lobbies To Guest Host SNL

3rd Rail Ohio, a right-of-center blog whose tag line says, "We touch what they won't," offered a stunningly funny story about Kasich secretly lobbying Saturday Night Live! executive producer Lorne Michaels to guest host the show. Kasich has claimed his low name ID, and lack of funds to boost his familiarity, was the reason he didn't do well in 2016. 3rd rail counters, saying he's unlikeable and has a mediocre record.

"While Kasich has been a fixture on the political shows, he is also trying to cross over into the pop culture scene, to 'be cool' and connect with millennials and that segment of the electorate that doesn’t watch Morning Joe and his girlfriend," wrote Cyndy Rees. "The results have thus far been, shall we say, mixed. But can you imagine Governor Kasich and his awkward Dad-jokes in an SNL monologue? Neither can we.  And, we’re guessing, neither can Lorne."

A new poll by Baldwin Wallace in Ohio shows Trump would smash kasich by 11 points if an election were held today. CNN and other reporters call him a "moderate" governor, based solely on his decision to expand Medicaid, a decision he made that differs greatly from why Democrats wanted it.

For Kasich, the allure of $2.5 billion coming to the state was too much to pass up, and since the state had no obligation to kick in a ten-percent share until he was out of office, the decision was even easier. For those that follow since boring budgetary items like Medicaid costs, Kasich used some of those federal tax dollars to fund more tax cuts, by shedding programs the state had funding out of general revenue and letting Medicaid pick up the tab. It was a win-win for him: he got lots of money and Democrats, not Republicans, applauded him, making him their hero.

SOA would love to hear from anyone who can show Kasich spending more than three words to compliment any Democrat like Dems do for him. Kasich's innate inability to speak of anyone other than himself is a good reason why he's not vice presidential timbre. Can anyone imagine Kasich playing the adoring role to his superior like the role Mike Pence plays with Donald Trump? Are you kidding?

Dems Pursue Hands-Off On Kasich Policy

Insiders at the Ohio Democratic Party tell SOA that state party leaders don't pound on Kasich because he's not on the ballot and his approval is above 50 percent. SOA would argue that Ted Strickland isn't on the ballot this year either, but that's not stopping Republicans from bashing him and his record on jobs, when "The Great Recession" took down Ohio like it did virtually every other state. And maybe, just maybe, Kasich is as popular as he is precisely because ODP and Democratic candidates have taken a hands-off approach to him.

Democrats have made Kasich their hero on Medicaid expansion, an awkward set of circumstances he'll point to as another exception to his rule of being a locked-in GOPer on virtually all other issues. Democrats seem to have no appetite to go after him. Were they to grow a backbone on it, Kasich-friendly media might find it hard not to cover their criticism, which would be valid, based on his very observable record.

The governor who some say is virtually stealing from the state, now that he's outbound, mostly to venues outside the state, is auditioning well as the "gone governor."

Report: Ohio still has fewer jobs than it had in 1980 as Kasich extends sub-par job growth to 63 straight months

The Dayton Daily News reported Friday that AES Ohio Generation plans to lay off approximately 370 workers in Aberdeen and Manchester at two power plants. Once known as Dayton Power & Light, the news of jobs cuts isn't all that unusual.

The power plant job loss became public on the same day that job growth numbers show Ohio under Gov. John R. Kasich has extended his sub-par growth streak, relative to the national job creation average, to 63 consecutive months.

Kasich Can't Get The Jobs Done

John Kasich on Election Night 2010
promised to "move the needle" on jobs.

Ohio's preeminent jobs number cruncher, George Zeller of Cleveland, reported a startling finding on Buckeye State jobs. Revisions to 2017 data "find that Ohio's job growth during 2017 was precisely zero ... Thus, 2017 resulted in no recovery at all in Ohio, the only such year since the end of the "Great Recession," Zeller told Spinelli On assignment today via email.

Included in today's dreary news on jobs, Zeller notes that the year over year job growth rate (not seasonally adjusted) in Ohio fell from 0.52 percent in January to 0.03 percent or almost zero in February. Zeller offers some perspective, saying that the year over year USA job growth rate (also not seasonally adjusted) rose from 0.45 percent in January to 0.57 percent in February.

"Thus, Ohio's job growth rate of 0.03% in February is well below the 1.57% USA job growth rate in February," he concludes, adding, "February 2018 is the 63rd consecutive month when Ohio's job growth rate has been below the USA national average. This lengthy sub-par job growth streak now extends to five full years and three additional months. This is not a one month fluke, since the below average job growth has been continuous for every month during more than the last five years.

Stunningly, Ohio still has fewer jobs than it had in 1980.

Gov. Kasich, who spends more time out of state than in, as he courts media for more attention to his fabled run for president in 2020, is planning a celebration when the state hits the half-million jobs mark. Kasich has no appreciation for how's he's really doing, choosing instead to fixate on a number, that while it sounds impressive, is really underwhelming, especially for a candidate who promised to be a jobs governor when elected in 2010.

Population Problems

Adding to Ohio's jobs problem is its chronic stagnant population problem. New estimates can be read to suggest that Ohio might be stabilizing population loss with growth, but barely so. Ohio had the largest net migration and smallest domestic migration loss in more than seven years, one report showed, noting more than 36,055 people came to the state than left from July 1, 2016, to July 1, 2017.

The numbers are very small and likely won't prevent the state from losing another congressional district or two when the 2020 census is finished, and lawmakers redraw legislative boundaries to reflect population gain or loss. Ohio once had 25 Electoral College votes. That number is down to 18 currently, and could go lower at 2020, further reducing its political clout in Washington, which in turns means reducing its take of federal tax dollars on a wide variety of programs.

Can Sherrod shed Dem candidate worries with Trump approval high in Ohio?

In a new Axios poll called "Big warning signs for Senate Democrats," the race for U.S. Senator in Ohio between two-term incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown and his likely challenger Republican Congressman Jim Renacci of Wadsworth is highlighted.

Banner at Ohio Democratic Party in
2012 when Bill Clinton delivered the key
note address. Hillary Clinton lost Ohio to
Donald Trump in 2016 by 447,000 votes

For Sen. Brown, a liberal, progressive Democrat whose name is very familiar to Ohioans after spending 40 years being elected to a state or federal office, the report by Axios that he's at a 50-percent approval rating and leads Renacci by five points is something to worry about, especially when Republican forces geared up to take him down are coming out in force.

In recent email solicitations, Brown's campaign sounds the alarm that the election this November will be a close one, despite Brown's long tenure in office in his home state.

"We don’t have any room to play games. Once the RNC starts smearing Sherrod -- special interest groups will write seven-figure checks like it’s nothing," a recent email warned. "If you’re feeling the Sunday scaries already, don’t worry. You’re not alone. A new poll came out showing only five points separating Sherrod and Rep. Renacci. Now the RNC has the green light to spend money helping Rep. Renacci win."

Sometimes called the candidate Republicans dislike the least, Brown will have to contend with a mountain of money to soil him—as happened to once-popular former Democrat governor Ted Strickland in his race against Rob Portman— and his time in office.

The senator whose ruffled hair and gravely voice are his trademark will also have to contend with a small army of Republicans coming to states like Ohio, where electing Republican senators to maintain control of the Senate in Washington is first priority.

The RNC is preparing to dispatch a huge ground operation to beat back the threat of a “blue wave” this November, NBC reports. “The RNC will add an additional 170 permanent staffers to its field program by the end of March, more than doubling the number already in the field to over 300," the peacock network said, adding, "And the party expects to add 200 more before before the start of the summer.”

Can the Democratic National Committee under Tom Perez or the Ohio Democratic Party under David Pepper match those numbers for Brown, or for any of the other statewide candidates running for secretary of state or auditor or treasurer or attorney general?

In the Axios poll, approval for Trump in Ohio, where the New York billionaire clobbered Hillary Clinton in 2016 by almost a half-million votes, is at 54 percent. In another poll by Marist, which touts itself the "home of America’s leading independent college public opinion poll," President Trump’s national approval rating is at 42 percent, his highest approval rating since taking office.

In 2012, Brown beat his then-Republican candidate Josh Mandel by about six points, a margin that stayed the same from the beginning of the year through Election Day even though Mandel's campaign was aided by $40 million or more in anti-Brown campaign spending. Jim Renacci, who already has the support of Trump himself even though the Ohio Republican Party has not outright endorsed him as it has the ticket for governor of Mike DeWine-Jon Husted, is independently wealthy and can expect even more help as outside campaign cash to beat down Brown comes pouring in.

Portrayed as an economic populist along the lines of Trump, Sherrod Brown cheers Trump raising tariffs on steel, a sharp contrast to other Democrats who say it could easily lead to a trade war and job loss across the nation. Sometimes called the "liberal lion of the senate," a moniker held by the late great Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts, Brown knows Ohio's working class well and can defend his support of some of Trump's agenda even though the two are fields apart on nearly all other issues.

As Ohio continues to lag in job creation under term-limited, lame duck governor John Kasich, Brown is the working man's working senator. He knows his agenda well and how well it sells in parts of the Buckeye State that are wondering what their future holds, following years of GOP austerity policies that have robbed them of local government funds, which in turn have forced them to raise their own taxes to keep local services running.

Trained in political combat from his early days as an Ohio House Member, through his two terms as secretary of state, and his tenure in DC representing his congressional district in northeast Ohio, Sherrod Brown will use his talent and skills to fend off the many staffers and tens of millions of dollars that will be lined up against him.

It's no small consideration, therefore, to think that since Ohio is so skewed for Republicans, mostly because of gerrymandered districts Gov. Kasich signed into law in 2011, the continued popularity of Trump in the biggest swing state of them all offers Brown and his team lots of reasons to worry.

And like it or not, Brown's name will be on the Democratic slate of candidates. If Republicans turn out in this year's midterm elections with half of their turnout two years ago, Brown will need by necessity to separate himself as best he can from his fellow Democrats whose chances of winning are slim at best, to avoid going down with the ship.

If Democrats don't turnout in so-called "Blue Wave" numbers, that portend a surge of voters going to the polls in November as they have in Virginia or Florida, will Brown drown by that association? Can he build a life raft of his own to keep him afloat as one or more of his Democratic ticketmates go under if Democrats fail to turn out in off-election years as history shows is the case?