More background to bring everyone up to speed. Understand that in Ohio, all statewide elected posts have been controlled by the GOP for two or more election cycles.

It all went downhill with governor Taft. in 1998 Taft was first elected governor and easily succeeded George Voinovich, who moved up to the senate, taking John Glenn's seat away from the Democrats.

Taft cakewalked to victory. Name recognition means a lot and Taft just happened to be the grandson of 'Mr. Republican' Senator Taft and great grandson of President and supreme court justice William Howard Taft. How's that for a pedigree?

So even before he was elected, Ohio voters thought he was already the governor.

Flash forward to 2002, again the Democrats put up a weak candidate with little money or name recognition and Taft wins again. Meanwhile Taft had been steadily ticking off key parts of the Republican base.

This post is intended toward folks who are not familiar with Ohio and/or Ohio politics. This is something new for me since I've been writing about Ohio politics and other various stuff at nixguy.com for a long time now.

So let's see if I can do a quick survey of the political landscape in Ohio.

CW says no, but Kaus says "Not so fast!"

Constituent Dynamics ran a poll which says that Mahoney was up over the "Foley" name by 7 points, 50-43. Not good for the GOP but about what you'd expect given the scandal.

But then again they ran the poll again after telling the voters that another Republican would be replacing Foley, that vote was 46-49 still in Mahoney's favor.

I think it stands to reason that Negron has a chance here. Republican voters are not idiots, and they should be well aware that Negron is not Foley.

Rush has gone on record today saying that the GOP keeps this seat.

The extremely excellent and unfortunately often overlooked local Ohio blogs BizzyBlog and Porkopolis have taken a look at recent coverage of Illegal Immigration by our local Cincinnati Enquirer.
BizzyBlog:

The fact is that there is a significant criminal element in the illegal-immigrant population, that they are operating with virtual impunity in Southwestern Ohio, and that the problem is probably getting worse. Willfully blind journalists like Krista Ramsey, who refuse to recognize what is going on, and who backhandedly criticize those who are trying to open others' eyes, are a very big part of the problem. Their failure to inform us of the dangers that exist could cause people to either miss clues that might lead to the apprehension of perpetrators, or could put people unknowingly into dangerous situations. It is totally inexcusable, and breathtakingly irresponsible.

The above might explain to Chris Czilla why this 'odd issue' is an important part of the OH-1 Campaign between Chabot and Cranley.

Taking a break from the usual Ohio stuff, one of my friends in the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance, Viking Spirit, takes a look at George Allen's unprecedented two minute ad buy.

On one hand I think this is a smart move by Allen's campaign. Allen HAS to get off the race issue to win this race, and by making this largely unprecedented move I think he will get the race back to the issues. The only reason Jim Webb is competitive in this race is because Allen has been dogged by ridiculous allegations of racisim over the past couple months or so. If the race gets back to the issues, Allen will win because Vriginia is a Republican-leaning state.

On the other hand, this smacks of depseration. The fact that Webb is even competitive with Allen, let alone in a statisical dead heat, show how bad of shape Allen is in. Allen is an entrenched incumbent, being elected as Governor and Senator of Virginia, and as I said before Virginia is a Republican-leaning state. Needless to say, Allen shouldn't be having any problems winning this race. But, when the biggest issue in the race is wether you used the 'N-word' in your college years, there's a very, very big problem.

This move may save Allen his Senate seat, but I think you can put a cork in his run for the Presidency in 2008.

Time.com

The polls keep suggesting that Republicans could be in for a historic drubbing. And their usual advantage--competence on national security--is constantly being challenged by new revelations about bungling in Iraq. But top Republican officials maintain an eerie, Zen-like calm. They insist that the prospects for their congressional candidates in November's midterms have never been as bad as advertised and are getting better by the day. Those are party operatives and political savants whose job it is to anticipate trouble. But much of the time they seem so placid, you wonder whether they know something.

They do. What they know is that just six days after George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, his political machine launched a sophisticated, expensive and largely unnoticed campaign aimed at maintaining G.O.P. majorities in the House and Senate. If that campaign succeeds, it would defy history and political gravity, both of which ordain that midterm elections are bad news for a lame-duck President's party, especially when the lame duck has low approval ratings. As always, a key part of the campaign involves money--the national Republican Party is dumping at least three times as much into key states as its Democratic counterpart is--but money is only the start. "Panic results when you're surprised," says Republican National Committee (R.N.C.) chairman Ken Mehlman. "We've been preparing for the toughest election in at least a decade."

I can vouch personally that I have corresponded with Blackwell supporters who should be panicking if they are looking at the public polling, but they seem pretty calm. Like they know something. As a conservative I hope they are right, but polling, energy, and messaging count for something too. Very interesting article that gives a good history of Republican efforts and successes at local organizing. They've suprised people in 2002 and 2004, will 2006 be an unpleasant suprise for Democrats as well?

The Columbus Dispatch has a profile of a Republican, Kevin Bacon, (no, not that Kevin Bacon) who is running for state rep on an explicitly reform package. i.e. he's running against Columbus even though Republicans have controlled Columbus for 12 years.

I especially like the use of the word 'even' in the headline.

This is what many have councilled Ken Blackwell to do and he did, but in the primary only.

Link here:

As shown in the preview, DeWine and Brown are tied for the senate race, 43-45 with 10% undecided. DeWine has the money advantage and the terrorism/Iraq issue and although it will be close, I see DeWine edging out Brown in November.

Blackwell is down 36-53 against Strickland with 9% undecided. Blackwell needs to move these numbers hard with a month to go. The further bad news for Blackwell is that after a month of negative advertising, he has not moved the Strickland unfavorable numbers very much at all.

This further supports my thesis about who Blackwell needs to be campaigning against.

At this point it seems pretty clear to me that Speaker Hastert's office made the correct decision back in 2005 based on the information he had. There was an "overly friendly" e-mail. The request from the page's family was that the communication stop, that's all. Hastert's office complied with that request and Foley was spoken too.

It appears what the Democrats want to have happened was to have Hastert blow this e-mail which was not explicit and the accuser, who did not want to go public, into an ethics investigation and sack Foley. Foley was single and known to be homosexual. As surely as night follows day, Hastert would have been accused of gay bashing and outing.

The really damning pieces of evidence were the Instant Messages. But how long have they been known? Who was the source? That is not known.

It just might turn out that there were groups dedicated to electing Democrats that sat on these e-mails until they had maximum political effect. But I don't know that yet, what I do know is there are some very good bloggers who are running down the story.

nixWednesday the Cleveland Plain Dealer took a look at what DeWine needed to close the gap.

Independent analysts say ideology and anti-Republican backlash probably won't hurt DeWine as much as low turnout will if dispirited Republican voters decide to stay home.

The Democrats haven't really had a strong statewide contender for either the governor or Senate since the early 90's. This year they are running strong in both races and there is a lot of pent-up energy in both. Luckily for DeWine, Ohio has more traditional GOP voters than traditional Democratic voters.

This fact was driven home in the 2004 election when the Democrats did a massive and very impressive GOTV effort in their major stronghold areas. They drove voter turnout in Cleveland, Columbus and urban areas of Cincinnati to unprecedented higher levels.

Unfortunately for Kerry, the GOP matched the high turnout levels in their stronghold areas. Result was that Ohio had the highest turnout since 1992, and Bush won.

Since then the GOP has further perfected their turnout strategy and has the money to get it done, but will that money and strategy be enough if there is no base level energy for DeWine?

Probably. Despite Sherrod Brown's recent votes in favor of the detainee bill and the security fence, he has a long history of voting against the Iraq war and terrorism. While these positions are popular with the Dems, they can be effectively used to firm up DeWine's support among conservatives.

Link Here.

Ohio Senate:

Brown (D) 44%
DeWine (R) 40%

Ohio Gov:

Strickland (D) 48%
Blackwell (R) 39%

The Senate Race is within the margin of error and is consistent with other recent polling showing that DeWine is just behind Sherrod about 3-5 points and within the margin of Error.

Other governors polling has had Strickland up by as much as 20 points, but this poll is consistent with the University of Cincinnati/Ohio Poll which pegged the race at 50-38.