An Akron law firm - and an Inaugural whodunnit

THE PUBLISHED report (Plain Dealer) that the Akron law firm of Roetzel and Andress has been raising money for the Kasich Inaugural extravaganza will be met with more than cursory interest around this town. Isn't that the same R&A that has been the source of so much disdain by county Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who long ago set out to scandalize the firm as a back-room Democratic operation with no redeeming virtue? You bet it's the same one.

To add to the chairman's fallout from the disclosure, one of the R&A lawyers who was said to be involved in the affair, former Ohio auditor Jim Petro, was also Alex's bete noire of choice when Petro tried to run for governor in 2006. At the time, Arshinkoff said that if Petro, a Republican, won the nomination, the chairman would support the Democratic candidate instead. Petro didn't win and the Republicans ended up with Ken Blackwell as their sorry candidate.

As is customarily the case. none of the usual suspects accepted responsibility for the donor appeal appearing on the law firm's website. (It vanished from the site after the PD started tracking it down.) But the paper did note that the liaison between the Inaugural committee and R&S was Matt Borges, an ubiquitous chap who was once convicted of a misdemeanor and fined (later expunged) after pleading guilty to some mischief in dealing with donors as the chief of staff of former state treasure Joe Deters, the alleged play-to-pay guy.

Yep, these things can become convoluted in politics, which are forever ringed with these characters. . But we esxpecially liked State GOP Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. who praised Borges. "No one did more to help all of our state, local and federal candidates this year"

That didn't go without saying, so DeWine said it.

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