Can newly-elected Ted Strickland help the Democratic presidential candidate carry Ohio in 2008? It's a fair question, and Reid Wilson from the RealClearPolitics blog seems to think the answer is yes.

By far the most common criticism was that I had omitted the most obvious choice: Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. The newly-elected governor and former long-time congressman was subjected to the veep treatment by Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray in the Washington Post a few weeks ago, and would be a big help for any Democrat hoping to win Ohio.

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-- Finally, Strickland is arguably the most popular Democrat in Ohio, save perhaps John Glenn. Ohio is perhaps the most important state, electorally, to a presidential contest. With an historically weak Democratic Party that is only now rebuilding itself, state Democrats need someone at the top. With Strickland's solid presence, the party can work to regain seats in the legislature and take out several Republican members of Congress it has targeted in recent years. In the long run, Strickland as Governor does more for the Democratic Party than Strickland as Vice President.

Ted Strickland is a good match for Ohio. Inoffensive and kind of bland. Just like the state. But could he help carry Ohio? Maybe, but there's a big risk. The truth is that Strickland is still very much untested in a big heavy statewide campaign. In 2006 he ran against the Republican establishment and painted his opponent Ken Blackwell as part of it. Blackwell let him. As the former Governor Taft had a 15% popularity rating, it was a walk in.

First, the Cincinnati Enquirer sensationalizes Ken Blackwell's attacks and focuses almost exclusively on the Ted Strickland as gay theme, ignoring what Blackwell really said during the last debate. For the record, the Blackwell campaign was focused on the issues.

The very next day, front page news: "Strickland Is Not Gay." Yeah, thanks for clearing that up Howard. But you're asking the wrong questions.

Thursday the Enquirer lambastes Blackwell for distributing the Cunningham-Hannity transcript. Included in the story are the juicy details of course. Plus they race around to collect quotes only from other GOP candidates.

Friday the Enquirer once again hands the megaphone to Cunningham and Strickland spokesman calls it "outrageous"

Now, Today, the Enquirer castigates Blackwell for a muddy campaign.

A friend was back from Ohio yesterday, and I've been thinking about what role the Buckeye State barometer will mean for national politics these days.

So far, the most notable Ohioan out there in the presidential race is anti-war Democratic gadfly Dennis Kucinich. He shows us that the Midwest maligned by Easterners like myself actually has a liberal side. I guess the 2004 presidential election proved this: Even though Dubya won the state, John Kerry did well in urban areas. So, if even the Midwest is trending left, that's a good sign for Democrats.

Yet while liberal Ohioans like Kucinich, new Sen. Sherrod Brown, and new Gov. Ted Strickland are enjoying rising fortunes, though, don't expect the religious right in the state to roll over. After all, powerful Pentecostal pastor Rod Parsley, of the World Harvest Church outside Columbus, has come out with a new book, "Culturally Incorrect," which is on the best-seller list of the newspaper he loves to hate, the New York Times.

Scuttlebutt around Ohio has it that DeWine is going to settle back for a couple of years and prepare to challenge Ted Strickland for governor of Ohio in 2010. Publicly, DeWine is only saying that he's considering a teaching career, but you don't kill off an old politician that easily. He's going to try for something. But what? Governor is out, Voinovich will run again for his seat in 2010. A congressional district is a step down for a senator, so that leaves the governorship in 2010.

The rumors of this are filling the Ohio GOP rank and file with dismay. While DeWine was a two-term US Senator, he also lost to an all-out liberal in what is widely regarded as a terrible campaign. The campaign was slow, it went negative clumsily and not on the strongest issues, and we often got the sense that DeWine never really took the campaign seriously. Certainly he never really made the case to vote for him. He made the case that the other guy was worse. Well, now we have the other guy.

But here's the real reason the ranks are saying "no DeWine". he completely flipped the counties in SE Ohio over to the other side. What was that about?

The race between Senator Mike DeWine and Senator Sherrod Brown is neck and neck. From the perspective of a gun owner the race is lose-lose and there is no lesser of two evils. It is important to note that the Brady Campaign has endorsed Senator Mike DeWine for re-election.

Oh.

Governor Taft, not content with a 17% Approval rating, and being shown the door out of the statehouse. Gets another slap in the face. The first override of a governor since 1975:

Gov. Bob Taft today vetoed a concealed-carry gun bill that would have overturned local bans on assault weapons, including one in Cincinnati.

The Ohio House then easily overrode the veto today, 71 to 21. The House needed 60 votes to override.

A total of 19 votes are needed for the Senate to override. The Senate reconvenes on Tuesday.

This marks the first time the House has voted to override a Taft veto. The governor has vetoed just two other bills in his eight years in office.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. James Aslanides, a Republican from Coshocton, said his legislation is as grassroots as legislation comes and has the support of law enforcement.

Apparently it's not enough that he has turned the state of Ohio blue singlehandedly. He has to continue to alienate key constituencies of normally GOP voters. Maybe he's going for an under 10% approval rating?

The Democrats here aren't being stupid either. They're voting for the concealed weapons law, saying, "See, we're on your side rural voters!".

It should be noted that incoming Democratic governor Ted Strickland, and incoming Dem AG Marc Dann are both pro-gun, and their GOP opponents were anti-gun.

Ted Strickland's (D-OHIO) residency becomes an issue, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:

The fun began when an East Liverpool woman, Jacquelyn Long, filed a complaint recently asking that the Columbiana County Board of Elections determine whether Strickland lives in an apartment above one of his congressional offices, in Lisbon. Long's prime piece of evidence: a homestead exemption form signed by the Stricklands that lists a Columbus condo they own as their primary home.

(Oh, by the way, Long's son is a supporter of Strickland's gubernatorial opponent, Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, according to Long's attorney, Heather Heidelbaugh.)

The issue doesn't affect Strickland's run for governor, but if Long is successful, she could keep him from voting. The Board of Elections shows his Lisbon apartment as his voting address.

The problem is that Strickland lists a small upstairs apartment in Lisbon as his residency for voting purposes. But to the IRS he's said that a Columbus condo is his primary residence. More information and video from the board room meeting available at RightAngleBlog.com. Local blogger Lincoln Logs has also spent a lot of time reporting on this story (he lives in close-by Marietta).

The fun part is that it was a tie vote. Guess who breaks tie votes? The secretary of state, Ken Blackwell. Ted Strickland's Republican opponent in the Ohio gubernatorial election, Ken Blackwell. Ha!

Perhaps is Ted promised that he would vote for Ken, Ken might let him vote? Naturally Blackwell wants no part of this and he's either going to kick it up down or sideways and recuse himself.

Either way, I'm sure that avoiding a subpoena is not what Ted Strickland would like to be doing right now.

In 2004 I was amazed at the self-delusion of the lefties who kept insisting that Kerry would win Ohio when fact after fact showed the opposite. I started my blog in early September of 2004 and finding out the real story of the Ohio ground game quickly became a major focus.

After that election I promised myself that I would never be that self-deluded. So when I look at the numbers and all the facts on the ground, I say realistically, that Strickland is going to be the next governor. I don't like to say it of course, but the polls, the energy that I see all points in the same direction. If you ask me to take my best shot, that's what it's going to be. If you're conservative, I don't want you waking up on Wednesday morning suprised and shocked as the lefties were in 2004.

That being said, I honestly believe there's a couple of wild cards in play that give Blackwell a real chance.

There's been a little kerfuffle today in Ohio when our new governor up and decides that Bush's plan to resettle some 7,000 Iraq refugees is not welcome.

"I think Ohio and Ohioans have contributed a lot to Iraq in terms of blood, sweat and too many tears," Strickland said. "I am sympathetic to the plight of the innocent Iraqi people who have fled that country. However, I would not want to ask Ohioans to accept a greater burden than they already have borne for the Bush administration's failed policies."

The U.S. has a responsibility to help Iraqis who face danger in their own country for helping Americans topple Saddam Hussein's government, said Abid Al-Marayati, a professor of government at the University of Toledo who left Iraq in 1958.

"It's not a question of whether we should accept them or not. These people served the U.S. forces," Al-Marayati said. "I think for our country, we could absorb that (number of refugees) quite easily."

The statement in the first paragraph is very odd coming from a Democrat whose campaign rhetoric all throughout the campaign season was about helping the downtrodden. Apparently that only works if the downtrodden are currently citizens of Ohio. Everyone else can get lost, even if you have helped the US in the war on terror.

This statement is raising eyebrows on normally friendly territory.

Buckeyestateblog:

Not sure what to think, so... I'm reserving judgement on this one until the Governor has a chance to more fully respond to the issue. (And I'm certain he'll have that chance).

I have made it a policy NOT to comment on my colleague bloggers' posts. It is a courtesy of extending out the right of free political expression and opinion. But this blog is just too damn much.

"If the Democrats were consistent about 'protecting the children,' they would demand that Strickland resign from the race. Obviously that's not going to happen. This is not a big issue for me except that it highlights and exposes Democrat hypocrisy on the Mark Foley issue.

"Think about it. If Deb Pryce is culpable for merely associating with a guy who chatted up teenagers on IM (whether she knew it or not). Ted Strickland should be equally culpable for actually hiring one."

As I reported in my piece on Strickland, and the campaign aide who remains unidentified due to an expunged record for a 4th-degree misdemeanor, it was clear from all the investigation done on Strickland's relationship to the aide that while there may have been a sloppy background done on the man but that there was never knowledge of the nature of that misdemeanor. Nor was there any evidence that anything other than a collegial relationship exited between the two.

First the ads, The Columbus Dispatch reports:

Although Blackwell has scant TV ad time purchased before Oct. 29, he is planning to blitz the airwaves in the last week before the Nov. 7 election. On the three Columbus network stations, Blackwell reserved time for 272 ads at a cost of $435,250, which is nearly 80 percent of his total ad buys for the entire general election at those stations.

By comparison, Strickland had reserved time for 186 commercials during the final week of the campaign costing $174,525. But Strickland also bought TV time throughout the end of September and October, and nearly doubled the amount spent by Blackwell for TV ads for the entire fall campaign.

That same article also reports that Democrat Ted Strickland is raking cash at a 2-1 ratio over Republican Ken Blackwell, and they've been spending it on advertising. The last minute blitz by Blackwell could be a good strategy but the huge challenge from now til then is to somehow cut Stricklands lead into the single digits.

Endorsements. The Cleveland PD, the Toledo Blade, and the Columbus Dispatch endorsed Strickland for governor. None of these are a suprise, and only the Dispatch somewhat of a question as it has supported Taft in the past. But the dispatch has a record of going with establishment, conventional wisdom candidates. The Dayton Daily News will soon follow with an endorsement of Strickland as it is a very liberal editorial board. And the Enquirer should endorse Strickland as they have in the recent past.

Strickland is now governor of Ohio:

Democrat Ted Strickland has been sworn in as governor of Ohio, ending 16 years of Republican control in the state that tipped the election for President Bush in 2004. In a midnight ceremony today, Strickland replaced the term-limited Bob Taft. Strickland now holds political control of a state that both parties view as critical to a White House victory in 2008. Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher took his oath of office just before Strickland was sworn in by Ohio Supreme Court Justice Thomas Moyer. Strickland then signed his oath and an executive order limiting the gifts he and other members of his

Can't say I'm happy, because I'm not, but at the very least instead of having a liberal GOP governor, we have a liberal Democratic governor. I see this as a mild improvement because when the liberal policies fail, as they always do, at least the GOP won't be blamed.

The GOP Strategy for now is to let the Democratic governor propose something. (tip to Right Angle Blog) His campaign was very non-specific as to details and plans and now that he's governor, that can't continue. This was especially apparent on school funding where Strickland's proposal was to come up with a plan that everyone likes. Now that he's in office, he's going to have to put some meat on those bones.

WorldNetDaily reports on an old controversial vote by Ted Strickland that could cause him problems in Ohio in light of the Foley scandal.

The issue surfaced Dec. 15, 2005, when the left-leaning Athens News reported on an anonymous letter-writing campaign to Democratic voters citing Strickland's vote as "present" and not in support of the 1999 House Concurrent Resolution 107 that condemned an American Psychological Association study supporting "nonnegative sexual interactions between adults and adolescents."
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Strickland's refusal to vote "yea" has been interpreted as implicit support for pedophilia, as he was given a chance to join an overwhelming congressional bipartisan majority voting to condemn the APA study.

I'm sure that Strickland would rather that the Democrats had not kicked up quite so much fuss over the Foley thing. There is much more here at local Ohio blog bizzyblog.com. Other local bloggers, (like me) wonder if Ted still stands by his vote or, now that he's had time to think about it, agrees with the resolution.

Without the Democrats making a huge issue of the Mark Foley scandal this probably would never have happened:

With Republican Ken Blackwell falling farther behind Democrat Ted Strickland in the race for governor, he tried Tuesday to make the race about child molestation.

He released documents showing a former aide to Ted Strickland had been arrested for exposing himself to children.

And he reiterated charges, made in Monday night's final debate, that Strickland had voted in stride with an organization that supports pedophilia.

Blackwell's campaign released copies of three Athens police reports Tuesday, three weeks before election day, from a public indecency arrest that was expunged as a fourth-degree misdemeanor in 2002.

Blackwell's campaign blacked out names, a license number, date of birth and Social Security number associated with the man who was arrested for exposing himself to children in 1994.

If the Democrats were consistent about "protecting the children", they would demand that Strickland resign from the race. Obviously that's not going to happen. This is not a big issue for me except that it highlights and exposes Democrat hypocrisy on the Mark Foley issue.

Think about it. If Deb Pryce is culpable for merely associating with a guy who chatted up teenagers on IM (whether she knew it or not). Ted Strickland should be equally culpable for actually hiring one.

From my email:

COLUMBUS – Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell recently called opponent Ted Strickland and conceded the election.

Following are Blackwell's comments to Strickland:

"Ted, you ran a good race and have won a tremendous opportunity to lead the people of this state to better days, a stronger economy and a higher quality of life. Congratulations and best wishes for a successful tenure as governor of the greatest state in America."

This is not really shocking at all given the poll numbers. Since Cuyahoga just closed for good, we should be seeing numbers for the rest of the Ohio races. CNN has called the senate race for Brown but I think that's as premature as the NJ call for Menendez.

From today's Cincinnati Enquirer:

While Democrat Victoria Wulsin was conceding the 2nd Congressional District election to Republican Jean Schmidt on Tuesday, Democratic Party leaders were busy touting her for a high-level job in the administration of Gov.-elect Ted Strickland.

Wulsin's concession came three weeks after Election Day because the Indian Hill Democrat wanted to wait until nearly 9,000 provisional ballots were counted in the seven counties of the 2nd District.

On the one hand, this is much, much closer than it should have been in a district that went 63% for Bush in 2004