Brown and Portman: A tale of two senators

As we continue to plumb the depths of fear among Tea Party-NRA-bullied Republicans, you'll find no better contrast than in your Ohio.

Sen.  Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democrat, has cast the Tea Party and the NRA to the winds, twice winning his U.S.Senate seat against conservative Republicans - then incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine and again against Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who ran with King Midas, Karl Rove and Wayne LaPierre at this back.

Now we turn to Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, among the most fearful of a Tea Party challenge, who joined the cavemen in the Senate in voting against the background check bill.

Now I ask you , on a scale of one to ten, where do you rank each of these guys on profiles in courage facing the same Ohio voters?

Is the Ohio right-to-work debacle only old news?

MORE THAN a half century ago, the anti-union establishment in Ohio (do I have to name it?) decided it was time to end closed union shops by adding a right-to-work amendment to the state constitution. With an arrogant dismissal of organized labor's bread-and-butter proprietary claim to guard its membership rolls, the pro-right-to-work team propelled the issue to the November ballot.

The result was - or should have been - a defining moment in labor relations in Ohio. The proposed amendment was swamped by more than a million votes (63-37) in what was described by the Plain Dealer at the time as the widest margin of defeat that any ballot issue had ever suffered in Ohio.

The consequences were even more severe for leading Republican officeholders. Among the losers on the November ballot were the governor, Bill O'Neill, who actively supported the amendment; and presumed unbeatable conservative icon, Sen. John Bricker, who opposed it as political suicide. That, too, describes the late Ray Bliss, then-Ohio Republican chairman who saw it as a death warrant for the GOP ticket. (Such political wisdom is absent today in the governor's office as well as at the county level, where the party is managed by alleged Bliss disciple Alex Arshinkoff, a Kasich soldier to the core.)

The defeat of right-to-work was one of the GOP's darkest days in Ohio's political history.

That was 1958. I was a young reporter for the Columbus Citizen and as the results came in there were worried glances among the paper's top editors, and then shock over the overwhelming size of the issue's defeat. Within a day or so, Jack Keller, the managing editor, sent a memo to the city desk calling for greater coverage of the city's unions, from hard news to features. It was a damage-control concession that the paper had been less than attentive to the voice of labor. Other than occasional reports that union membership has shrunk, the media remain indifferent to the workaday world of a unionist on the national TV news panels and the local business pages. (Have I overlooked evidence to prove me in error?)

Well, here we are in 2011 and if the polls are wildly correct, Kasich & Co. - even with enormous resources ready to be tapped from anti-union treasuries from across the land (think, the Koch

brothers) - can expect to lose a rousing battle. The governor is counting on his two favorite newspapers, the Plain Dealer and Columbus Dispatch, to orchestrate the narrative in the coming months in which we will be frequently reminded that it's hurtful to the state to go forward with the Senate Bill 5 repeal campaign after the governor offered a compromise. Lost in the dire warnings is the simple truth that it was the Kasich union-busting culture that created the whole mess in the first place. Whatever else it might have been, it was bad politics. What could he and his legislative buddies have been thinking?

Really, folks - would a brash and self-centered cowboy like the governor be talking about a compromise if he expected the repeal to be a loser in November? It's possible, of course, that he never really expected the leaders of the public-union repeal to the public at large. Or so it might be argued. But, as expected, it's the repeal advocates who are now being accused of playing politics. Please.

A long time ago, a savvy Ray Bliss had it right and his warnings went unheeded. Is there nobody in the governor's office today who comes close to having it right?

Booze leading another state rep to the dock

WELL, THAT'S TWO!

First,we recently learned of the sinful behavior of ex-State Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, the holiest-of-holies Republican from the Dayton area who resigned in the wake of a deadly combination of booze, a young female stripper and Viagra , as discovered by an Indiana (for Heaven's sake!) state trooper.

Now, the Columbus Dispatch is reporting that one of Mecklenborg's very conservative colleagues, Rep. Jarrod Martin (R- Beavercreek) has fallen victim to the spirits. He was arrested on charges of drunk driving and child endangerment, having had two children in his car that was spotted weaving in and out of traffic. The Dispatch said today that it was the very same Jarrod Martin who was discovered passed out in the Statehouse garage last year - so intoxicated that he could not be immediately revived.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not picking on Republican lawmakers. Alcoholism, I've learned over the years of hanging around with these sturdy representatives of the people, is non-partisan. But hypocrisy is something else. When the God-fearing pretenders in the Republican ranks want us to believe that they have the only sure route to the great beyond, it's good to be reminded every now and then that hypocrites seldom practice what they preach, sober or inebriated..

Meantime, the blessed Ohio GOP lawmakers are doing something to themselves that the minority Democrats are incapable of accomplishing: laundering their ranks. Good for them!

UPDATE: As long as we're talking about hypocrites, how about the world-class example being reported about Chicago-area Tea Party Republican U.S.Rep. Joe Walsh, who ranted on TV against raising the debt limit because he didn't want it to be on the backs of his children and grandchildren. It now turns out, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, that his ex-wife has sued him for being delinquent on paying more than $117,000 in child support for their three children.

The White Hat in the legislative ring

IT DIDN'T TAKE that long for the Kasich Administration and its cupbearers in the Republican House to demonstrate their servitude to people with the deepest pockets. In a shameless reward to the party's financiers the GOP-ruled House of Representatives passed a budget bill that includes a few charter school amendments that were doubtless written by the pale light of the moon. None of this would displease Ohio's charter king, David Brennan, whose for-profit White Hat Management colossus has managed a $230 million return of state dollars for his investment. At this point, it should be further noted that White Hat's record of providing charter-school education has ranked near the bottom in its schoolhouse performance.

About those amendments to the budget bill: They would permit White Hat to operate as sort-of absentee landlords of their charter system without any accountability of how they spend the state money. Brennan's lawyer, Rocky Saxbe, explained that odd arrangement by saying that once public money goes into the private pot, it becomes private money that is beyond accountability.

Nice try - and I'm not a lawyer.

So in the simplest terms, what we are seeing is a one-way street in state expenditures: Give White Hat the money and don't ask what it does with it. The issue is so nettlesome that some local charter school operators have now taken White Hat to court to question what the company is doing with the princely sums from the taxpayers. The Brennans - David and wife Ann - also have their personal PACs and are the sole contributors to them, which serve as additional conduits to provide room and board for their favorite pols.

It's no secret where some of the profits have gone: Brennan has contributed $4 million to his Republican political allies over the past 10 years. Among the recipients of the maximum of $10,000 from each of the Brennans are Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, former gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell (in case he would win, which is known as planning ahead ) and House

speaker Bill Batchelder of Medina. And, of course, Kasich wasn't overlooked.

Batchelder, who is a seasoned pol on the glide path with his eccentric right-wing leadership in the General Assembly, has raspishly denied to the media that there is one iota of a connection between his gift from Brennan and the upward course of charter schools in the new year. Still, we would feel more comfortable if someone, including Batchelder , could flat us tell us how the anonymous amendments were wedged into the budget bill that moves to the senate. He says he doesn't know, but we can guess.

All the while, Kasich has been been standing by, if needed, to keep the charter money flowing. He's already told the world what a great thing charters are in the lifeblood of education. And he's made sure they will grow exponentially without Big Brother watching over them.

The guv promised that he would make Ohio No. 1, and with the current proposed legislation, he and his buddies will have succeeded in making the state unique in its lack of accountability for these schools. For the average Ohioan who isn't in the loop, it will be no more than an awful spectator sport for business as usual down in Columbus.

Kasich's Trojan Horse survives by one vote!

IN 2000, by the margin of a single vote, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the presidency to George W. Bush, , who lost the popular count by 537,000 votes. On Wednesday, the Republican infantry in the Ohio Senate handed Gov. Kasich his Trojan Horse by approving an historic measure to end collective bargaining by public unions in Ohio - by a single vote. (At least it allowed the state to be first in something!)

From all of this, it is easy to see once again that the victors write the history. (The Ohio House will vote on it, but the battle is over for now.) For the garrulous autocratic governor, the chip on his shoulder will be insufferable for his vanquished subjects. But not resting on his laurels, he has already sent out appeals for campaign contributions for whatever office that might amuse him down the road.

It didn't come easily, as six Republican senators defected to join 10 Democrats to oppose it.

And two of the defectors were pulled from their committees by the GOP leadership to prevent them from casting votes that would have frozen the bill in a deadlocked committee. This is generic hardball.

The biggest surprise was the turn-around by Sen. Frank LaRose of Akron, a young rookie who had convinced a lot of people that he was opposed to the bill. After talking to him at dinner several nights ago, I and a few others at the restaurant table concluded that he would break ranks with the Kasich Republicans and cast a no vote.

After all, he had also told a reporter for the suburban Norton Post that he he wasn't enthusiastic about a ban on collective bargaining, "I think the goal is to accomplish the dual purpose of helping the state, the cities and the counties manage their budgets," he said to reporter Bob Morehead. "But we have to be fair to our public employes. I don't think SB5 [Senate Bill 5] really does this the right way (to reform collective bargaining). You can't reform it by taking away workers' rights."

He then voted in favor of the most critical - and memorable - measure that he will likely encounter as a lawmaker! Firefighters, police, teachers and university faculty have already made note of that as his credibility takes a dive. Not a good way to begin a career in politics - particularly in a region with an historic union culture. Add it to LaRose's learning curve. But it will do little to remedy the damage.

Without his flag, the Lukens Buz is gone.

THE DEATH OF former Ohio congressman D0nald (Buz) Lukens was reported on the Plain

Dealer obit pages with a photo of a forlorn figure atilt to the right. If it suggested a need for sympathy, there was something missing. As one of his aides once explained to me after he and a few others struggled to force upright an American flag whose pole scraped the ceiling of a small airport office, "The congressman never goes anywhere without a flag."

For a time back in the Rhodes Era of Ohio politics, Lukens, a feel-good, show-biz, super-patriotic, Bible-quoting conservative, could not be entirely ignored by the Republican Party, whether he was recruiting right-wing support groups or looking for ways to embarrass Gov. Rhodes in anticipation of challenging him for a senate race in 1970.

At first glance, Lukens was a pleasant, unthreatening creature with a lively wit and the sort of looks that might very well attract young women to a sweet-talking bachelor on the way up.

As a political reporter for the Beacon Journal, I spent several days in the Middletown area in southwestern Ohio tracking down rumors that Buz was engaged in mischief with campaign funds. That included mysterious $100 rewards to majorettes for reasons not easily explained.

His friends back home were concerned about it as they appeared to have no more than a superficial understanding of where the money was going. Even his "24th District Club" was little more than a name on a letterhead. When I talked to the club's treasurer, Ed Cranmer, he had trouble remembering the name of club president, Fred Harding. Later, Harding tried to explain the unaccountable nature of the club: "If I sound somewhat vague at times, it's because we have a somewhat loose operation and our bookkeeping might be a little sloppyl"

That suited Lukens just fine.

But there were big, bad moments ahead for him. He tried to undermine Rhodes by secretly passing along charges to Life magazine alleging the governor's earlier ties with the mob - a clandestine initiative that he vehemently denied at a hastily -called Capitol Hill news conference denouncing me after my article appeared in the BJ. (One of his aides later said Buz was upset because the article's details were so accurate he wondered who leaked it.)

Twenty years later, having returned to congress after a long break in the Ohio senate, he was convicted of having fully-paid sex with a 16 year old Columbus girl, then lost the 1990 GOP primary to John Boehner. He resigned before his term expired. His troubles didn't end there: In 1996, he was sentenced to a 30-month prison term upon conviction of accepting bribes from a couple of Cincinnati businessmen.

Despite that photo, flag or no flag, I find it hard to sympathize.

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