Kasich: The FBI comes calling

THE KASICH-LED intra-party hit job that drove State Republican Chairman Kevin DeWine from office is still haunting the perps.  There are continuing reports that the FBI is looking into possible bribes by the governor's lower-level apparatchiks - otherwise known as the Kasich Goon Brigade (KGB)- to complete the deal.  The palace intrigue is now a topic for national blogs like Daily Kos.  Not a good image to project, Republicans.

You may recall that the leak in the Kasich back-channel bubble arrived via ex-Portage County GOP chairman Andrew Manning, who accused two of the governor's agents - Summit County Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff and party activist Bryan Williams - of  promising  Manning a more honored  place in the Kasich Order if Manning, who supported DeWine,  withdrew from the state central committee.  ( It was as though the party had regressed to the medieval days when Kings and Popes fought over who was actually in charge of the domain.)

Manning signed an affidavit that he was offered a quid pro quo at a sit-down at Portage Country Club on Feb. 4.    Arshinkoff/Williams denied that they had  any such thing in mind.

But now come reports of other complaints about the governor's tactics.  Helen Hurst, chairman of the Lorain County Repubican Party, called for a response from Kasich on the allegations.  There were still others who entered the fray:  Maggie Cook, of Warren County, told the Plain Dealer that her job with Associated Builders and Contractors, was threatened if she didn't withdraw from the central committee race in which the governor put up his own slate. She refused to resign from the committee.  She was later fired.

Pause to catch your breath while I report that Bryan Williams, former director of the Summit County Board of Elections,  is a lobbyist for said Associated Builders and Contractors and a likely suspect in trying to influence Cook.

Finally, the spreading wildfire claimed another victim who supported DeWine.  The Columbus political blog Plunderbund reported that Jean Raga resigned from the Central Committee, when the Kasich forces allegedly threatened to take it out on Dayton Power and  Light.  Her husband Tom happens to be a  DPL  lobbyist.  The plot thickens.

Hard to know how far the FBI will take this probe under the  federal law that says, you can't "corruptly" give, offer or promise anything of value with "intent to influence any official act. ...'" (It's all in detail on the Internet.)

On with the show!  But first a question: Do you ever wonder whether this bunch of cold warriors ever has a little fun?

Arshinkoff for State GOP chairman??????

CALL IT far-fetched, but politics has always been sympathetic to far-fetched ideas. So now I'm hearing about a subplot in Gov Kasich's well-organized scheme to drive out Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. It rests on the March 6 primary election in which the state Republican Central Committeemen will be elected. Now that it is common knowledge that the Kasich family is trying to take control of the central committee as liftoff for a vote against DeWine, it naturally leads to speculation on his replacement if the governor succeeds.

In my Northern Ohio neighborhood, there's talk that Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff would be on the A-list to succeed DeWine. In this line of speculation, it has all of the signs leading to Arshinkoff. He has sought the job for decades, only to be rebuffed by

GOP marquee stars like George Voinovich. What's more, nobody has tried harder to serve the governor than Arshinkoff, for which he has lucratively added lobbying clients, including the University of Akron. So, yes, the name comes to mind.

Still, as one state Republican activist told me, "It will never happen." So it may be time for a political writer to take his ball and bat and go home. That won't stop Arshinkoff from trying to achieve the Ohio Republican dream. As I started to say, as far-fetched as it seems, on rare occasions far-fetched happens.

Ohio GOP: Elephants in the china shop

'TIS NOT THE season of good cheer for the Ohio Republican Party. Hostilities continue to erupt in the internecine battle of GOP Titans. In one corner is Gov. Kasich; in the other, state party chief Kevin DeWine. When it comes to clashing egos, this could go all 15 rounds.

The latest word reported by the Columbus Dispatch is that DeWine has accused Kasich's staff of recruiting candidates for the 66-member Republican Central Committee to set the stage for ousting him. According to the Dispatch, Kasich's forces started to plan DeWine's removal the same moment that he and Kasich moved into their respective new offices in January. Folks, such an artful move by the governor recalls his promise on entering office that people who stood in his way would be run over by a bus, train or, for that matter, locusts. Whatever worked. .

DeWine insists this is the ugly way that Kasich is treating central committeemen who "have just simply poured their blood, sweat and tears into helping get this guy elected. And the thanks they get is his staff working to gin up a contest in the re-election to the committee."

You get the feeling that there will be no holiday party in GOP quarters this year, don't you? I mean, "blood, sweat and tears"? Churchill couldn't have said it better. But an historical truth is that you simply can't have two elephants in the china shop at the same time.

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TODD MCKENNEY, the newly apointed Summit County Probate judge, isn't expanding his earlier comments to the Beacon Journal about his decision not to seek election to the office next year. He told me on the phone today that he has nothing more to say about his odd decision to remove himself from contention a few weeks after the governor appointed him. .

When he spoke to the Beacon Journal upon his appointment, McKenney, a former state representative and ordained pastor, said his work as a probate judge would be distracted by a political campaign.

However, as I reported earlier, there has been a lot of back-channel talk among lawyers that he had offended Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff by making two appointments to county boards that were not on the chairman's A-list. In turn, Arshinkoff reportedly sent harsh word to McKenney that the county GOP would not support him with any money to run a decent race. McKenney declined to talk about it. But Arshinkoff is well-known for hardball tactics, which are in play again in this instance.

Kasich/DeWine clash: Back to the Middle Ages

NOW THAT THERE is no post-season bowl hysteria to whip up the Buckeye football fans in Columbus, Republicans have generously - and uncommonly - offered their own blood sport to fill in the void. It's the clash of GOP Titans, namely Gov. Kasich & Co., and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. There is a strong medieval flavor to it, as when popes and kings duked it out over who was in charge of the masses.

Clearly, the unlikely power play that violates Republican tradition of never publicly slamming a member of your own party (while blistering each other sotto voce) is an open sore nowadays. A well- connected state Republican conceded on the phone with me the other day: "It's serious. It won't go away soon." Is it ego? I asked. "Exactly," he said, suggesting there were a number of moving parts. It's understandable only if you bring yourself to concede that with Kasich, the top tier of the pecking order is occupied by lobbyists, cronies and old friends.

That's the short version of the party's in-house hostilities that are worrying some of the faithful's bystanders. It will bleed into a busy political year with a presidential election at stake. Indeed, as the Columbus Dispatch's Joe Hallett keenly reported a few days ago, the State GOP's second-in-command has scorched the Kasich forces for splitting the party by openly trying to unseat DeWine. "It's almost become: we have met the enemy, and it is us," said Kay Ayres, state GOP vice chairwoman. Her message to the governor: Lay off this nonsense.

Nice try, but it won't be enough to satisfy the Kasich machine that is driven by lobbyists who are doing quite well with Kasich's aid, thank you. The governor has been joined by his buddy and torpedo, House Speaker Bill Batchelder to wield the axe. Batchelder has accused DeWine of working against the governor's best interests.

Meantime, no less than Kasich claque Alex Arshinkoff, the Summit County GOP chairman, took a strong stand for Batchelder's credentials in the Plain Dealer, offering a brief character sketch of Batchelder. Declaring Batchelder to be a great party leader ( by the way, Arshinkoff never fails to describe his political pals as great) said: "I've never known him to lie." But I digress.

The Columbus political blog Plunderbund offered some insight into the quarrel: "Kasich came into power with a plan: privatize everything in the state and enrich as many of his friends as possible in the process."

That point is hardly debatable. There have been numerous reports the past year of Kasich handing off lucrative contracts through well connected lobbyists to the sort of recipients who would be expected to reciprocate. That's how the governor has done business and continues to do so. On the other hand, DeWine is said to believe that too often state policy is being carried out by the governor's friends.

Lobbyists? Friends? Cronies? Here's one example cited by Plunderbund. Don Thibaut, who was Kasich's chief-0f-staff for two decades when Kasich was in Congress, now operates a lobbying firm, Credo Company with a boast on his "About Us" page "highlighting his very personal and long-term relationship with John Kasich. " So should we be surprised that when the state sold off a prison to a private buyer, the contract went to a Thibaut client?

God knows how much of this is going on. Yet wasn't it John Kasich, upon entering the governor's office, who warned lobbyists that he would not put up with them in the bright new era of progressive governing? Sure he did. And like Batchelder, he never lies.

The GOP's midsummer night's dreams

All the world's a stage

And all the men and women merely players...

--- Shakespeare

Of all of the charades being played in politics today, the leading entry must be the right-wing Republican choral group on Capitol Hill that is demanding a vote on a balanced budget

constitutional amendment before any agreement with President Obama on a plan to avoid default. Guys like Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell may be foolish, but they aren't stupid on their better days. You do have to wonder, however, how they intend to continue tilting windmills right up until the last seconds before the nation defaults from Wall Street to Beijing.

To remind you of the formidable task of adding an amendment to the Constitution:

It requires a two-thirds vote to pass in both houses, which would make it DOA in the Senate.

It requires the approval of three-fourths of the state legislatures.

The bad news for most of the Boehner-McConnell Republicans is that they wouldn't be around long enough to see it happen. Nor, for that matter the Ol' USA as we have come to love it. No matter. All 47 Republican senators are supporting this long day's journey into night - and many nights afterward.

So what's the point of this political theater of the absurd? There isn't any point aside from politics while the nation is held hostage.

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While we're on the subject of charades, I loved Gov. Kasich's official reason for not attending the forthcoming Ohio Republican Party's royal outing of the year in Cleveland - the annual dinner - coming on Friday. He has, it says here, a "scheduling conflict" in southwestern Ohio, his aides explained with a straight face. It's the most hackneyed explanation for a political no-show that the pol didn't want to attend anyway. Even in the day of Jim Rhodes, he was always out of town during civil rights programs in Columbus. He even showed up at a place where he wasn't expected.

Kasich's snub of his party, immediately set off hisses among Republicans that it again demonstrates the icy feeling between the governor and State Chairman Kevin DeWine dating back to the November campaigns. This could get interesting in a matchup of egos over who is really running the state party - or running away from it.

By the way, Kasich's sidekick, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, will be skipping the dinner, too. Another scheduling conflict. The state and county Republicans continue to look south for their after-dinner speakers. This year's state dinner will feature Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. It will be his second coming to Ohio for a free dinner. He's already appeared in the lineup of southerners who have become regulars on the dais of the Summit County GOP dinners.

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The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday that Richard Cordray, former Ohio attorney general, will be nominated by President Obama to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau scheduled to open this week. But wait. The congressional Republicans have already caused Elizabeth Warren , a Harvard law professor, to withdraw from consideration for the j0b even though the bureau was her idea in the first place. Republicans stopped short of calling for a Constitutional Amendment to abolish the bureau to satisfy objections from America's financiers on Wall Street.

Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown expects Cordray, among the Democratic Party's brightest stars, to be confirmed. Cordray was defeated by Mike DeWine in last Noember's Republican near sweep in Ohio as the economy played the major role.

P.S.: a GOP Constitutional Amendment against the consumer affairs bureau may still be in play.

An Akron law firm - and an Inaugural whodunnit

THE PUBLISHED report (Plain Dealer) that the Akron law firm of Roetzel and Andress has been raising money for the Kasich Inaugural extravaganza will be met with more than cursory interest around this town. Isn't that the same R&A that has been the source of so much disdain by county Republican chairman Alex Arshinkoff, who long ago set out to scandalize the firm as a back-room Democratic operation with no redeeming virtue? You bet it's the same one.

To add to the chairman's fallout from the disclosure, one of the R&A lawyers who was said to be involved in the affair, former Ohio auditor Jim Petro, was also Alex's bete noire of choice when Petro tried to run for governor in 2006. At the time, Arshinkoff said that if Petro, a Republican, won the nomination, the chairman would support the Democratic candidate instead. Petro didn't win and the Republicans ended up with Ken Blackwell as their sorry candidate.

As is customarily the case. none of the usual suspects accepted responsibility for the donor appeal appearing on the law firm's website. (It vanished from the site after the PD started tracking it down.) But the paper did note that the liaison between the Inaugural committee and R&S was Matt Borges, an ubiquitous chap who was once convicted of a misdemeanor and fined (later expunged) after pleading guilty to some mischief in dealing with donors as the chief of staff of former state treasure Joe Deters, the alleged play-to-pay guy.

Yep, these things can become convoluted in politics, which are forever ringed with these characters. . But we esxpecially liked State GOP Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. who praised Borges. "No one did more to help all of our state, local and federal candidates this year"

That didn't go without saying, so DeWine said it.

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Will Tea Party dump Ohio GOP overboard?

A FUNNY THING is happening to the Ohio Republican Party on its avowed fail-safe way to sweeping the Democrats in November. Despite its cordial attempts to play nice with the Tea Partiers, the Republican team is finding that wishing won't make it so. N o less a party celebrity than Ohio GOP chairman Kevin DeWine extended an olive branch to the Tea Party in a visit to Akron last week, inviting the outriders to come through the front door to join the state party.

But by Sunday, the Plain Dealer was reporting the latest collision between State Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, and Ralph King, the leader of an outfit called the Cleveland Tea Party Patriots. For whatever reason - and you don't need many these days to stake out an opponent - King & Co. don't like Husted. Worse than that, as King explaind to the PD reporter, "The only relation Jon Husted would have with the Tea Party is if he would have been driving the British ship into Boston Harbor." Safe qualifier. Even Google couldn't put Husted on that British ship. Besides, King accused Husted of showing "open hatred and contempt for the Tea Parties." Husted, of course, denied it.

There will be a lot of this sort of political auto de fe as the Tea Partiers flex their muscles, or whatever, this year, and Republican candidates are spending more time genuflecting to them than demanding that they stop telling lies. As matters now stand, the state GOP ticket is leaning heavily to a detente with the enemy.

John Kasich, the candidate for governor, has spoken at their rallies while trying to fend off Democrats' charges that he is tainted by being a white collar manager for Lehman Brothers up to the time that it went bankrupt. (Curiously, he has defended his years of employment with the big bank by suggesting he was little more than a walk-on each day - a claim of low-level servitude that seemed contradictory to his bonus of $432,200 in 2008 on top of his salary of $182,692!)

Rep. Seth Morgan, a very conservative GOP candidate for state auditor, has been endorsed by the State Tea Party; auto dealer Tom Ganley, challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton in the 13th congressional district, has appeared at Tea Party rallies; and U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine,who wants to be attorney general and should know better, has announced that his first task upon entering the office would be to file suit to repeal the health care reform law - and what Tea Partier would be against that?

As political campaigns go, this year's will be more irrational than ever. Don't be surprised if there are some surprises over in the Republican camp.

GOP's Kevin DeWine: A tidy partisan talk

AS POLITICAL SPEECHES GO these days, Kevin DeWine's talk at the Akron Press Club was a rather tidy affair. The Ohio Republican chairman was in a mood to keep his comments on the safe side of today's outrageous rhetoric from his GOP teammates on Capitol Hill, offering the standard party talking points to the smallish audience in the Martin Center, maybe half of which were Bliss Institute students, the co-sponsor of the uneventful event. Considering the fact that he didn't call President Obama a Nazi or a socialist, who could be put off by his routine partisanship in this election year?

Still, some thoughts:

Like many of his GOP brethren, he resorted simply to criticizing the health care reform law as a $1 trillion initiative. I would bet there are many Americans who hear that astronomical number and shiver. Trouble is, many of these same folks may also believe that the trillion will be spent next month when, in fact, it is spread over ten years, matching the cost of the Iraq war. Indeed, the Bush Administration preferred to keep that cost on a separate budget, out of sight of a nosy taxpayer or two.

He may be dreaming when he says the Tea Partiers and the Republican Party have much in common and he would welcome them into his party. At the moment, it may be more accurate to wonder whether Tea Partiers would ever welcome Republicans into their ranks. Nevertheless, DeWine said nothing that would rankle the TPs.

Insisting that Obama's poll numbers have fallen two years before the mast, he might have been reminded that so did Ronald Reagan's at the same point in the recessional early 1980s. I think Reagan's approval rating was 42 pct. When the economy is sour, so are the voters.

Finally, as he is paid to do, he gingerly defended John Kasich's notion to eliminate the state income tax, which provides 40 pct. of the state revenue, saying Kasich didn't mean that he would do it immediately but instead would look at the entire budgetary limits first. If not immediately, then when? Indeed, Kasich isn't very clear about where he would cut the budget to avoid deficits.

Oh, there was a call for Republicans to return to their core values and support lower taxes and smaller government. He did turn to repeated use - in case you missed it the first time - of the term "skyrocketing taxes". Whatever happened to plain old "taxes" to arouse the voters?

He also predicted a big comeback for Republicans in November. No surprise there. What's a party chairman for?

The Ohio GOP wants your telephone number

FOR A POLITICAL PARTY that prides itself on rugged individualism and enforced privacy from government intruders as though the fate of empires depended on it, we now must turn to Columbus, Oh., for the latest word in snoopery from the Ohio Republican Party's front office. The party is defending itself in court from the Ohio Education Assn. for the GOP's deep-well attempt to gather up educators' telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and whatever else (no DNA this time) will help it take its message to the voters. State Republican chairman Kevin DeWine says he doesn't know what the fuss is about because the party is simply trying protect itself from the OEA's "lies and attacks." DeWine says his party wants to reach many other groups, including fishermen and farmers. I don't know what that's got to do with unfriendly teachers, but why not I.D. even infants while they're at it?

It does seem a little strange that as voters are bombarded by the media from all directions, he fears he could miss one or two teachers in Coshocton who haven't heard the latest word about Gov. Strickland and President Obama. A Columbus judge is taking all of this into account before moving on.

But there is obviously no agreement within the GOP on how far you can go - beyond the telephone directory and Google - to tell you more about your neighbor than you care to know. Rep. Michele Bachmann, the latest Republican rage from Minnesota, has noisily declared her scorn for census takers by saying, law or no law, she will bar the prowling socialists from her house.

In fairness to the other side, DeWine might at least agree to a trade that would have him release the names, email and home addresses, and license plate numbers of the many donors to his party. Fair is fair! Sometimes, even in politics.

Of Chicken Dances and bully pulpits

Well, the Republicans have finally found something to cheer about so who can blame them for doing the Chicken Dance through the weekend?  I probably should explain right here that the Chicken Dance is a fun-filled maneuver that I discovered 30 years ago in Rudesheim, Germany, in which the participants flap their elbows, wing-like, against their bodies to the loud cries of an oompah band.  The song-and-dance thing  borders on a joyful patriotic commitment to ethnic expression in some quarters to this day. 

Back to the celebrating  Republicans.  Their national committee chose a new leader, Michael Steele, a very conservative African-American that in an instant expanded its exploratory reach  for party diversity by a grand total of one. For a party that boasts of no blacks in the House or Senate and a single Jew in the House of Representatives, Steele faces a daunting task.  After all, the party has been talking about expanding its base for as long as anyone can remember but  has always  ended up with a bunch of oil men, corporate executives and Wall Streeters to underwrite the political class for tax  favors granted.    

But things will be different from now on, says Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland whose first fighting words on his Olympian tablet were a threat to "knock over" anyone who would obstruct his agenda.  Among the huzzahs were the lofty promise of former Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett, who has been talking about expanding the base since Lincoln's famous address.  Bennett  impressed upon me in an interview years ago that the party was turning the corner to be more inclusive.   In response to Steele, Bennett told a Plain Dealer reporter: "You have a great spokesman for the party.  You have an outstanding leader.  I think that it will certainly benefit the party as we move forward."   Kevin DeWine, the new Ohio GOP chairman, suggested Steele's job would certainly complement the party's grassroots  "hunger  for change."  (But after all these years of  dormant diversity, might we not wonder as John McCain loved to ask,  is it really "change we can believe in"?  

From what I have read, Steele is quite capable of adapting to whatever challenges that confront the national chairman when the  Oval Office incumbent, who also happens to be an African- American, is running quite high in popular opinion.  Call it situation ethics, but I've read that Steele has even campaigned  for the U.S Senate with an ad hoc title:  His literature referred to him as a Democrat (in Democratic precincts, of course) , even though he was listed as a Republican on the Maryland ballot.  Nice try, but he lost anyway.

And although he has told black audiences of his pride that Obama was elected, on other less diverse public occasions he referred to Obama as nothing more than a "media creation."  Somehow, he seems right for the job.  

So now , should we not pause to share a moment of silence in respect to Ohio's very own Ken Blackwell who all but claimed victory with the support of so many Conservative Christian groups (as he did when he ran for governor in Ohio).  They obviously were ignored in the balloting for the RNC chair. He finished dead last on the first ballot. 

But a warning to everybody else:  unless you flap your elbows to the beat of the oompah band, look out for the new bully on the block.  He won't  hesitate to knock you over.  

UPDATE: Steele told Fox News today that the Republican future lies in returning to Newt Gingrich's Contract for/on/with America of 1994. Honest.  I'm not clever enough to make something like this up.  But it does mean that Steele has found a tailor-made rostrum at Fox.