Dick Celeste: The true happy warrior

Dick Celeste, the former Ohio governor, breezed into his home state for a few days last week with an itinerary that included endorsing  Democratic Senate  candidate P.G. Sittenfeld.   That bit of political business aside, he called me for a friendly  chat while riding to Cleveland from Columbus.

At 78, he's still engaged in several missions after his nine-year presidency at  Colorado College that ended in 2011. Earlier,  he had been a two-term governor, Peace Corps director, ambassador to India.  (I may have missed six or seven along the way. )

Forever accessible in office as a casual upbeat guy with a broad smile,  wit, and overwhelming formal intelligence, Celeste is now busy in a project to lure the Winter Olympics to Colorado.  "We've raised $50 million of our $80 million goal,"  he says with his always present optimism. With his tireless presence on the team,  I figure they'll reach the goal.

He's also working on  his memoirs that could fill several books  for  his path of successes.  Joe  Hallett, the widely respected Columbus Dispatch political columnist, now retired,  once wrote of Celeste that the Cleveland-born, Yale-educated Rhodes scholar  was "one of the most-accomplished and consequential Ohioans of the past half century".  As one whose job was sustained coverage of Celeste, often like catching a whirlwind, I can easily agree.

Our brief conversation a few days ago, no more than several minutes long, reminded me of how the  state let a person of enormous ability get away. As the University of Akron's troubles continue to grow, I can only speculate how it might have had a happier narrative if the school's managers had somehow convinced him to take the job  back when presidencies  lasted a lot longer than they do now.   He had been a finalist for the president's office at Case Western Reserve in 2002, but the story at the time was that a person with designs on the  job in the Oval Office might just stay a few years before returning  to the political arena.

So he's back in Colorado Springs.   Meantime,  any other highly qualified academic whiz who might have a taste for the top job of a public university as  a Democrat would have a tough time getting past the boards burdened across the state with Republicans.

The University of Akron is no exception.  It's been rebranded with a new name, so to speak, with a president safely sheltered in the mix.  But with so many sparks flying on the  downtown campus today, wouldn't it have been more appropriate  to label UA as "Ohio's Pyrotechnic University" instead of the current techie one?

Sorry, the Celeste Effect is that after a few moments on the phone with him, we are left with regressing into what might been.


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Coughlin bows out. That's news?

SEN. KEVIN Coughlin's withdrawal as a Republican gubernatorial candidate should have surprised nobody. He was never in the game, even before ex-congressman John Kasich blustered his way onto the GOP's A-list with deluded promises to cut taxes. Tax reduction is no longer a serious policy matter with GOP candidates. It is simply feel-good politics, like telling the voters that you were late for a town hall meeting because you were busy delivering groceries to an elderly couple. It has a nice rosy glow to it even if it is a fool's paradise in a time of desperate revenue needs.

Interestingly, it would be hard to distinguish the ideological differences between the two men. Both are crackerjack conservatives, and you can take it from there. The only difference, I'd guess, is that Kasich, being a Central Ohioan with more than a few dimes in his pocket as a former Wall Streeter, has earned more Brownie points from the GOP's front office in Columbus than did Coughlin, who allows that he may try again someday.

Still, it must be said that his decision to forgo a gubernatorial campaign was the fastest exit since the late Sen. Oliver Ocasek decided his chances for winning the Democratic nomination for governor in 1978 were none and none. I doubt whether you will find any mention of Ocasek's clandestine candidacy in the political annals, but for a short time at least he was an eager warrior. His ambition was carefully nurtured by his good friend and Summit County Democratic powerhouse Robert Blakemore, who believed that Ollie had toiled long enough as a leader in the Ohio Senate to build a statewide constituency . Blakemore assembled a group of labor, education and political activists in private meetings around Mansfield, Oh., to discuss an Ocasek candidacy.

When I learned of it as a political writer for the Beacon Journal, I wrote something to the effect that Ocasek, though a decent man, was on a wild goose chase inasmuch as another Democrat, Richard Celeste, had a huge head start in raising cash. Always the gentleman, Ollie called to say that he was deeply hurt by my article and would prove me wrong. He took off around the state, meeting countless township trustees, school officials and political friends, certain that his campaign would rise to any challenge. But, alas, when he returned to Akron several weeks later, he arrived in our office with a one-line statement: He had decided not to run after all. He was in shock, really, that for all of his good efforts as an Ohio state senator, he was given so little encouragement -and cash - to fulfill his dream. He also sustained the theory that nice guys don't win pennants.