Courting GOP politics in the courts

The frigid  temperatures we've all been suffering still can't match the icy winds blowing from Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic's office to Federal Judge John Adams' court.

Don't know why anybody would be  surprised that the feisty mayor, from sheer frustration, unloaded on Adams in a letter that appeared on the Beacon Journal's op-ed page.  The volcano has been heating up for some time in the wake of Adams' hostile decisions against the city on a long-delayed sewer plan  and  other matters that the mayor found to be intolerably disruptive to the city's order of business.  Not only that:  the well-reported sewer issue has cost Akron's taxpayers a tall pile of money from the court-ordered delays.

Along the way the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has been critical of Adams' judicial behavior in a suit involving a Stow firefighter and withdrew the case from Adams' court.  In another case, the appellate court reversed his decision that was  detrimental to a federal public defender.  The Beacon Journal  said Adams had acted ''carelessly".

Meantime, the odd behavior  of a  Summit County   Common Pleas judge erupted into another unraveling of what the public has a right  to expect from the judiciary. Judge Tammy O'Brien  recused herself from about 60  cases because, of all things, her bailiff-in-command refused to share the court room with  Jay Cole, an assistant county prosecutor.  It took on  political soap opera proportions because Tiffany Morrison, the bailiff,  threatened to quit her job if Cole showed up in O'Brien's court to do his assigned job.  But daylight at last: On Wednesday, O'Brien, faced with the onrush of  public criticism,  said she would end her recusals.

 Tiffany is the daughter of Atty. Jack Morrison, who has had a few brushes with the law in which Cole appeared in a  case involving  the Ohio Ethics Commission. Morrison was  cleared of the misdemeanors .

Dad Morrison is a big kahuna in the Republican Party as a contributor and legal advisor to GOP county chairman Alex Arshinkoff.

The chairman has been a forever critic of Plusquellic and has been known over the years to whisper that the mayor would be indicted, but never clear about what.  He's also played a strong hand in the appointments of Adams and O'Brien to their current labors.

Don't want to sound like a conspiracist, but there does seem to be a political intrusion into a couple of issues  hereabouts. It isn't cheating if you squint  for greater clarity. .

Tell me I'm wrong.

For the Summit GOP: Look who's coming to dinner

SUMMIT COUNTY REPUBLICAN Chief Alex Arshinkoff has never been known for moderation, whether in political hype or personal habit. He can now add to that dubious reputation his latest jewel for his crown: He will have as the main speaker for the party's annual finance dinner on October 19, which will be studded with dollar signs, the guy known as the most conservative congressman on Capitol Hill: Rep. Jim Jordan, who lives on a farm near Urbana, Oh.

Thus Arshinkoff, straining to become a national player, will push the once-moderate Republican County Party entirely over the cliff into the dark soul-less fringe that has taken over the GOP today.

Let me tell you about Jordan. He is a Tea Party evangelical whose rise to prominence, among others, was boosted by FreedomWorks, Dick Armey's right-wing cash machine. Jordan is now chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, and don't let that group's modest title mislead you into thinking it is a group of intellectuals sitting around and parsing Shakespearean verses. No way. He told the Plain Dealer last May that his job as the HRSC chairman will be to "help Republicans act like Republicans." - which, we all can see today, they aren't doing by the late Ray Bliss' standards.

In the same interview with the PD, Jordan, 47, listed as one of his hobbies "cutting weeds and firewood". And another: watching sports on television. He was, after all, a national wrestling champion. He tried the weed- cutting stuff with his sharp opposition to House Speaker John Boehner 's moves on possibly raising the debt ceiling, and angered the Republican forces around Boehner. Some peeved Ohio Republicans told the Columbus Dispatch that Jordan's behavior in the matter was "boneheaded." Fitting the profile, Jordan also is vibrantly against same-sex marriage and abortion.

Come to think of it: Why am I telling you all of this stuff? The people sitting at the $2.500 tables for 10 will hear it in the most glowing terms from Arshinkoff, who once wanted you to believe that he was a moderate Republican himself.

P.S. If the lights in your home dim briefly on the big night, it will tell you that Alex has just begun his rapturous introduction of his weed-cutting pal.

Is the Summit County GOP calming down?

ANOTHER YEAR, another Summit County Republican Finance Dinner, another event in which the accolades for the home team ranged from great to greatest. Nothing new there. Political parties, Republican and Democratic but no socialists that I'm aware of - yet) get high on promoting their versions of Academy Awards night.

So it was at the Hilton West Hotel Monday evening with County GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff presiding over the throng whose number was described to me to be "500 plus change"). These opportunities are always Arshinkoff's high points of his long political life ( he's been at it for 32 years) , allowing him to announce that the dinner of chicken and Duchess potatoes raised between $675,000 and $700,000. Evidence enough that some of the diners paid a tad more than the going bleachers price.

For all that, the fund-raiser was tamer than some of the past adventures into stagecraft. It lacked the harshness of the past, with those earlier assaults on the Beacon Journal from the podium. (The BJ's business manager was in the crowd.) Mayor Don Plusquellic wasn't scorched. And even George Bush wasn't mentioned - by anyone!

Instead, Arshinkoff exclaimed that University Akron President Luis Proenza, who was seated in the audience, was the "greatest president in the history of the University of Akron". He also described the economy as "Obama's depression." That is pretty harmless partisan stuff on occasions such as these. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, followed up on lofty praise for him by others on the dais by calling Arshinkoff "one of the greatest chairmen Ohio had ever had." Kasich thought the way to a bright future for the country was to resurrect Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. Oh?

Still, the litany was directly from the essentials of the GOP playbook: cut taxes, stress individualism, don't screw around and ruin the health care system, create jobs. You will continue to hear a lot of that.

The guest speaker was Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, whose thick southern accent was reminiscent of LBJ's Texas patois, and his rambling good ol' boy humor was remarkably close to that of the late Jim Rhodes. He, too, declared it was time for a change, accusing the Obama Administration of "deindustrializing" America. Much of his rhetoric was a traditional locker-room pep talk to a team behind at half-time. For all of the glittering comments, it was a sign of the times that Dubya was never mentioned once. A Republican officeholder who pased by me in the back of the room whispered satirically "They left out eight years."

Barbour was a long way from home, where he has been sharply criticized for converting $600 million in federal Katrina flood relief money (tax dollars!) intended for rehabbing a lot of middle-income flood victims. The money was used instead for other projects as tens of thousands of Mississippians remain in desperate need of housing. The Bloomberg News Report also told of Barbour's family-related lobbyists who have prospered from the Katrina contracts.

Yet the nagging problem of the Republican Party is less about Barbour's possible mischief at home than it was in the sea of faces at the Monday night event. There were fewer than five African-Americans in the crowd - give or take a few - and there's not much the party has been able to do about it, even if it tried beyond its showpieces of Justice Clarence Thomas, who is more royalist than the king, and Michael Steele, the conservative head of the Republican National Committee. As I mentioned in an earlier blog about minorities and Steele, the party elders have have talked about the problem for more than a generation with promises to do better. Trouble is, the GOPers in Congress then vote the other way while many southern venues hiss, "don't bother".

The dinner also reflected the continuing disappearance of the media - print, radio and TV. Fewer and fewer keep night hours these days. As I stood alone at the rear, one gentleman rushed up to damn the Beacon Journal. I tried to explain that I hadn't worked there in 18 years. Unconvinced, he wanted to tell me he had canceled his subscription to the paper. Again, I reminded him I'm no longer on the payroll. He apologized. Later a woman rushed by, asking me, "Are you a spy?" On the other hand a Greek Republican friend fetched a program for me and invited me to lunch at his church. He said he would call. It made for a better-than-usual evening.

GOP Deep Southerner coming to Akron

NEWS FLASH: Summit County Republicans will get an ample supply of Deep South politics at their annual finance dinner on Oct. 19. The featured speaker, says County Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, will be Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Barbour is the former GOP national chairman and I would be surprised if he didn't have something to say about all of those "socialists" across the aisle.

Battleground city

DOES ANYBODY get the feeling these days that, as the Music Man put it, ya got  trouble in River City?  And, my friends, that could only mean Cuyahoga Falls, the suburb just north of Akron which has been set aside as the very own fiefdom of Republican Mayor Don Robart.  For now, he's the most prominent burden that party deliverer Alex Arshinkoff must suffer in an already bleak year looming for county Republicans.  

Just last week, there was the temperamental mayor referring to Falls Municipal Judge Kim Hoover as a "horse's ass" on the front page of my family newspaper.  That Hoover is also a Republican suggests that the late Ray Bliss' caution against a Republican speaking ill of another political fraternity brother had at some point been dashed over the Cuyahoga River rapids around Broad Blvd. 

The Robart-Hoover feud has been  simmering for years.  But  not until it became etched into the public record for future generations with a vivid alley noun did Robart confirm his own notoriety as a sassy  ill-spoken pol.  I'll even excuse  him for his less physically descriptive second choice to define the judge as a "pathological liar," a term that is even gaining currency in the GOP's choice of a national ticket.  

The flash point has been Hoover's successful initiative to move the Cuyahoga Falls Municipal Court to Stow.  The public outburst couldn't haven't arrived at a more damaging time for a county party already at internal odds about Arshinkoff and the dominoes that are falling since former State Rep. John Widowfield, a Robart favorite, summarily resigned his seat in the legislature in May after it became known that the GOP lawmaker was selling Ohio 

State football tickets on ebay for a neat profit.  (At the time the Plain Dealer reported that he had nicked his campaign fund for $7,752 to pay OSU  for the tickets during a four-year entrepreneurial romp.) 

To make matters worse, he also quickly resigned as the party's choice to compete for a seat on Summit County Council,  after Arshinkoff & Co. helped him in the party primary to defeat Republican Louise Heydorn, a fixture on the council out of favor with the front office.   Now Widowfield's  legislative seat and Heydorn's on the council, previously comfortable in the GOP column,  are in jeopardy.  As for Widowfield, he isn't very visible these days.   Just as well. There's talk on both sides of the aisle that this could get ugly.  Stay tuned.  

 

God, with Chicken & Pork

It was annual drum roll time for the Summit County Republicans who crowded into  the party's finance dinner at Hilton Akron-Fairlawn on Monday night.  Following a tradition dating back to the days of Ray Bliss, more than a score  of party achievers filed into the ballroom   to be introduced individually much like the privileged athletes who race onto the field at the Major League all-star baseball game. The price for the 500 or so loyalists on hand to witness the event after a meal of chicken and pork (on the same plate!) was $250 per.

       But the money arrived in the campaign treasury as part of a three-stage rocket, the first blast occurring at a private fundraiser for John McCain ($170,000), the second and third stages from the dinner and another fundraiser for the county party  and U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette.  Alex Arshinkoff, the party chairman, was pleased to announce that the aggregate total for a night's work was nearly $900,000.  It sounded close enough.  

       Despite the distant sound of the cash register, the evening was largely a laid-back affair. The Republican guests at these dress-up affairs  are usually courteous, collegial and comfortable.  The upbeat  news in the lobby was that Obama was stupid to pick Biden.  "The Democrats made it easier for us," was a the pre-game analysis of several guests.  "It should have been Hillary." That overlooked, of course, last winter's expectations from Republicans that Hillary carried so much baggage - much of it stored safely  in GOP computers - that she would be a pushover.     Even Rudy Giuliani is whistling the pro-Clinton song, sharing the shreds  of his inept political insights that proved fatal in the Republican primaries. 

        The headliner for the evening  was Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor who is being mentioned as a possible veep candidate with  McCain.   A short, low-key speech is not enough to assess a potential candidate, but Pawlenty did seem to like the idea of associating McCain with Ronald Reagan, leap-frogging both Bushes - neither of whom were mentioned from the dais.  McCain,  Pawlenty emphasized,  was "hopeful, decent and an optimist" who would privide "Reagan leadership."

       Another on Republican bandwagon was the Rev. Ernie Kemppel, of the Akron Baptist Temple.  In his invocation laden with political commentary,  the reverend appealed to God to get involved in the presidential campaign and have a "real impact on the election."  Kemppel prayerfully  reminded God that now was not the time to place a novice in true leadership - God Bless the Republican Party."  Tall order, I'd say. 

      Arshinkoff, as is his wont, topped off the formalities of the evening with an angry blast at the Beacon Journal for refusing to send a reporter to the event that might showcase the next vice president of the United States.  Noting the presence of several broadcast reporters and another from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Alex challenged the crowd to guess who wasn't there. It wasn't  a trick question.