The reality is that Mr. Blackwell is trailing badly in the polls and not expected to win. And the reason has little to do with any alternative vision put forward by Mr. Strickland. Indeed, Mr. Blackwell's real problem isn't his opponent so much as Ohio's disastrous GOP governor, Bob Taft, and a state party establishment that has self-destructed.
Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist and longtime follower of state politics, said there's something cruelly ironic about Mr. Blackwell paying for the sins of an Ohio GOP that's lost its way. "Ken is the one good Republican in the state of Ohio," says Mr. Vedder.
If Kenneth Blackwell is the one good Republican in Ohio, then the state GOP is in even worse shape than previously thought. This is the man who used his position as Secretary of State and Overseer of Elections for Ohio to systematically disenfranchise as many poor and black voters as possible in the 2004 presidential election. What makes his actions particularly nauseating is that he now touts his status as Ohio's first black candidate for governor as a reason to vote for him.
Might his political misfortune have less to do with the corrupt taint of the Ohio GOP in general, and more with how voters view a man who sold out his fellow African-Americans for George W. Bush's re-election needs?
There is another former secretary of state whose political career is in freefall. That, of course, would be Katherine Harris, another one-time election overseer who made highly corrupt moves on Bush's behalf to secure him the presidency. Running for the U.S. Senate seat of Democrat Bill Nelson, she is currently trailing him by a mere 28%, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. Harris is now planning on selling her house to keep funding for her campaign alive.
I hope there is a lesson here for the ambitious secretaries of state of our great nation. You have been elected to protect the integrity of our country's elections. When you decide instead to exploit the power of your office on behalf of your political masters, in the hope of furthering your own political ambitions down the road, you are, in fact, committing career suicide.
You know why, Kenny and Katie? Because no one's going to vote for someone who once took their vote away from them.
10/19/2006 9:46 PM
Rob Bob wrote:
I wouldn't count Blackwell out to quickly. If all else fails he can simply disqualify his opponent over a trival administrative issue in his capacity as Secretary of State. Reply to this
10/20/2006 9:32 AM
Aaron wrote:
The lack of spontaneous uproar over the election-time activities of Blackwell and Harris have baffled me for some time. Even if they weren't outright crooks, the most rudimentary system of ethics would suggest that running a state campaign for a party or candidate presents a conflict of interest with one's job overseeing the general election. Conflict of interest rules can be extremely effective tools in preventing waste, corruption, and political cronyism, and yet these days such basic ethics get tossed aside with barely a whisper from the mainstream press or the public. Oh, the abuses make the rounds on the fake news circuit, to be sure, and progressive journals and blogosphere-- but it stops there. Where is the agitation for changes in state election laws? Where are the demands for accountability? Why does a college professor have to observe more rigorous conflict-of-interest rules than the people whose job it is to safeguard our democracy? Reply to this
Leave a comment
Copyright . http://TODAYSLIES.COM. All rights reserved.
