Debates: Mike DeWine,the people's lawyer who isn't there

Re-posted from Plunderbund 

Ever since Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine put on his reelection campaign game face, he's been drifting across the masses like a UFO with the best wishes of a forgiving  press  and a looming Republican year at  the polls.

Now you see him, now you don't.  He prefers to cast his attention to his other interests that gives him a Deep South spiritual coating as a social conservative - nay, as a blessed Medievalist opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage, raising the minimum wage, defending  Hobby Lobby, opposing gun control  and above all, the Affordable Care Act.  On that point, he has long made his rounds outside the state to wherever he could pitch in to help defeat ObamaCare.

Of late, he has taken up the cause of restricting Ohio's new voter system, the one that a right-wing Supreme Court just delayed after two lower federal courts had ruled it unconstitutional. The Supremes would have overruled tfhe lower courts 5-4 anyway  if DeWine had gone fishing.  Or spent a little more time facing his opponent, David Pepper, a Cincinnati Democrat, in at least a debate or two.

Pepper put the debate issue in the right context when he spoke  at the Akron Press Club this week.    As a lawyer himself, Pepper gamely questioned DeWine's  rejection of any debate, including the invitation  from the Cleveland City Club. Some newspapers gently  questioned the UFO's decision, too, but for too many voters,  debates are best left to molecular physicists.

Pepper,  however,  squarely defined DeWine's posture as unbecoming of a guy who must serve  as the people's lawyer and be  never fearful of airing differences with opponents in courts or anywhere else.      "If you're afraid to debate as the attorney general,"  Pepper declared, "something must be  wrong."

Indeed,  it is.  And that should include the many reports of how DeWine has converted his office into a pay-to-play cash cow, hauling in campaign cash from those who stand to sweeten their own pots in return.   In one recent exposed case, DeWine replaced a company that had ably served several  different governors in debt collections, giving the lucrative contract to a pal of Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, despite the recipient's admission that he had little experience in that line of work. (Over the years, Alex has smelled money like a shark  attracted to blood. He was once on DeWine's payroll as the AG's liaison in northern Ohio. )

Still there is strong feeling that Mike DeWine towers so high in ballot strength that he is unbeatable.  That hasn't always been true.  Sen. Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democrat,  no less,  thumped DeWine out of the. U.S. Senate in 2006 with room to spare. (56 pct. landslide.)   On that occasion DeWine had no more than an approval rating in the 30s, putting him just above Rick Santorum as the most unpopular  senator on Capitol Hill.

But DeWine has the ability to hover in politics.  In 2012 he was a Santorum supporter in the presidential.  He then startled the experts with a  mid-campaign switch to Mitt Romney when  it became increasingly clear that Ol' Rick wouldn't win the Ohio Republican  primary. Call his retreat from Santorum as a "course correction".

Four more years for this mercurial UFO?    You decide.

P.S. Pepper did speak to the Cleveland City Club luncheon this week, sans DeWine.

From today's news heap, Kasich pleads ignorance

Today's latest news, Hot off the Mess:

Leave it to our governor to produce another Kasich Kerfuffle in response to a question following his speech to the Cleveland City Club on Wednesday.  It occurred when a woman in the audience asked him whether he agreed with fellow-Republican Ohio Atty. Gen. Mike Dewine's fellowship with some other Republican AG's in a lawsuit involving employers and contraceptives insurance.

Dewine has never let anybody forget since the day he ran for the office that he wants to slay the Obamacare dragon and has channeled it with religious fervor into an assault on the legality of whether employers should include contraceptives in their employes' insurance coverage.

It's been in all  of the papers.  The governor, however, batted away the issue by saying he had not heard of the Dewine gambit and ducked the question.  Besides, as the governor has boasted, he never reads newspapers because sometimes they leave him unhappy.

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Is it just me,  or do you find it a bit odd that two obstinate anti-gun control congressmen will be the featured guests at a dinner celebrating an  historic Republican icon?

Yep, that's a reference, folks,  to the annual Summit County Republican Lincoln Day dinner. L-I-N-C-O-L-N.  The anointed guests are Ohio Reps. Jim Renacci and  Dave Joyce,   sworn opponents of restrictions on guns.

Is this Lincolnian crowd, who will be dining quite well the night of the repast, April 27, aware of how Lincoln's life was abruptly ended?   Was it from the gun of John Wilkes Boothe, the Confederacy sympathizer?

Oh, to be fair, maybe they missed the movie.

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We close with  this bit of gloomy insight into the American Century:

According to the respected Public Policy Polling (PPP), 20 pct. of registered Republicans believe President Obama is the Antichrist. ( 6 pct. of Democrats agree!)  37 pct. of Republicans believe global warming is a hoax; 7 pct. says the moon landing was a hoax.

In my poll of today's Plain Dealer op-ed page, one right-wing columnist (Kevin O'Brien), wrote that the Connecticut gun-control law was"ridiculously restrictive"  because nothing could have prevented the Newtown massacre.    He also threw in the notion  that "teaching children is a side job for public schools".

On the other hand, the Beacon Journal reported that charter schools - the answer by the governor  and his ilk to creating an enlightened nation - can expect a dismal report card from the Ohio Department of Education's new grading standards next year.   Get this: 89 pct. of tax-supported charter schools will get an"F" for their graduation rate; public schools, 7 pct. would receive an "F".  Who knew?  








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Congressional debates: What makes Ganley run?

SHOULDN'T SOMEBODY take auto dealer Tom Ganley aside and whisper to him that he is supposed to be a Republican congressional candidate and not a passenger in one of his cruise-controlled demos with a new car warranty? As we have noted more than once, he has rejected invitations to debate his Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, for the flimsiest of excuses - this from a financially powerful operative who boasts that even as a political rookie in his late 60s, he will turn Congress around as a hard-nosed businessman with no seniority.

The Beacon Journal took note of his evasiveness Sunday. His campaign manager strung out the Akron Press Club for more than a month before agreeing to no more than a solo flight at a club luncheon on Oct. 26. That was sort of an undeserved reward for his adamant refusal to face Sutton on the dais. (She agreed to debate but accepted a luncheon slot on Oct. 20 - alone, of course.)

The Cleveland City Club, the state's prestigious political forum, was not as accommodating to Ganley's rules for a walk on the red carpet. It invited the candidates to debate, but when Ganley refused, it simply said something that sounded like, "Too bad, Tom - Betty Sutton will have the audience all to herself when she appears on Oct. 22." As it should be.

Apparently at a loss for even a mildly lucid explanation on where Ganley is these days, his communications director, Meghan Snyder, told the BJ:

"Tom is ready to debate Betty Sutton, if we can do so in a situation where the only thing on the agenda is the issues. We will not grant her the opportunity to continue to lie about him in a public forum." Good grief, Ms. Snyder. Who decides the issues? And what better way to counter those "lies" than in a public forum with your rival?

On the other hand when a candidate is prepared to spend millions in unchallenged TV ads, he might just as well be campaigning from an isolated pad back in the parts department.