Ganley campaign insists on brakes for clunkers

THE PLAIN DEALER'S Sabrina Eaton of the paper's Washington Bureau has opened a Pandora's box with today's piece on the business workings of Republican congressional candidates Tom Ganley and Jim Rinacci. While Ganley, the giant auto dealer who is on the ballot in the 13th District, has made his opposition to government programs a staple of his campaign, Eaton noted that his dealership took advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program with the sale of 934 cars worth $20.6 million. Here, the narrative gets a little sticky for Ganley because after the GOP primary, which he is quite likely to win, he will be running against U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, the Democratic congresswoman credited with setting up the clunkers program.

Likewise, Rinacci, a conservative whose many business enterprises include a Chevrolet dealership, sold only 40 cars worth $754.167, Eaton reported. In this context with Ganley, Rinacci's sales could have qualified for a flea market.

It is interesting to hear the negative spin that Ganley's campaign chairman put on the trade-in program.

"The program," Jeff Longstreth told Eaton, "was, at its basic level, an unnecessary intrusion of government into the private business sector," adding that it merely helped car buyers and not the dealers. "It was unnecessary federal spending that is indicative of the current administration's policy of spend, spend, spend."

But as Sutton's campaign manager Julie Sweet replied: "If he is now saying it's a bad program, he's trying to sell you something, and it's not a car."

I doubt that you will see many clunker traders lining up at the dealers' counters to return their ill-gotten machines as their patriotic duty. I also doubt that Sutton will take Ganley at his doleful word on the program by returning her Distinguished Service Award from the Ohio Automobile Dealers Association for her work on the clunkers program.