Nina Turner is runnning - and not on empty

As we've all witnessed for too long,  Republican operatives have tried to sell voter restrictions with the myth of voter fraud. Their efforts were quite evident in a vain attempt to hand the Buckeye State to Mitt Romney in  the 2012 election.

Among the chief perps of the shrunken voting hours, switched precincts and other ploys to selectively suppress the vote was Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican handiman who spent most of the campaign trying to defend his spurious pledge to defend the integrity of the ballot box. You could depend on more credibility from the cast of mythical characters of the ancient Greek tragedies who intervened in people's lives from on high.

No one who heard Sen. Nina Turner's speech at the Martin Center last  week could have any doubts that Husted's plain-spoken Democratic opponent will zero  in on his role in the voting rights controversy, questioning the motives of those so-called electoral guardians who have yet to demonstrate plausible existence of hordes of voters out there trying to sneak into the system.

  "Immoral" -  she said of the practice, as she condemned the other side in her more temperate description.  She has also accused it of being "arrogant and inebriated with power".

Turner, an aggressive champion of women's rights, can turn a phrase, too, as she did on the abortion issue in the Ohio General Assembly , which grabbed the attention of national TV.  At a Planned Parenthood press conference, the Cleveland senator wore a shirt that demanded , GOP Get Out of My Panties.  (Check the acronym!)

It gets better. As a lawmaker,  she thought it would be a good idea  if her anti-abortion colleagues showed the same concern for their own health as they do about women's  bodies in the abortion fight.  Her  solution:  men ought to undergo psychological tests  before they reach for "dangerous drugs to treat their erectile dysfunction."

None of this kind of in-your-face sass  will play well with the clubby Republicans running the state today. Her critics who will  say that  anybody who, satirically  or otherwise, talks like that doesn't' deserve to be taken seriously. Oh? Just wait.

Nina is  smart, combative and has issues  on her side. Doesn't look like Husted et al can  have any hope of denying her of voting  on election day.