Strickland Leads; Blackwell Falters

It's been a rough start to the week for the Blackwell campaign. First came the bad news from Rasmussen Reports, showing Secretary of State Ken Blackwell the weaker general election candidate against Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Lisbon) for Governor in November. According to Rasmussen, Strickland leads Blackwell by a whopping 12 points, 47% to 32%. The other Republican candidate for Ohio Governor, Attorney General Jim Petro, fares much better against Strickland. He trails the Democrat by only 6points (just outside the MOE of 4.5%) at 44%-37%.
The bad polling numbers for the Blackwell campaign coincided with a stunning rebuke from Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett of their tactics:
"The race for governor should be a contest of ideas, not smear tactics and attack ads. I expect this kind of negative campaigning from the Democrats, but Ken Blackwell should have a better strategy for winning this primary than simply burning down the house. A man who models himself after Ronald Reagan should have a little more respect for winning on ideas and vision. He knows the accusations in these ads are politically motivated, and this kind of guttural politics doesn't win votes. If we can't win with substantive ideas for leading Ohio, we don't belong in the race."

The smear tactics Bennett alludes to appears to involve Summit County GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff and a local political ally of his in Akron, area attorney Jack Morrison, who accused the Petro for Attorney General campaign of soliciting campaign contributions from him by claiming that in order to receive legal work from the Attorney General's Office, Morrison would have to get out his checkbook. This charge has been brewing for a while but Blackwell has recently made it the centerpiece of his negative attack against Petro and last month Arshinkoff endorsed Ken Blackwell for Governor, which should at least raise a few eyebrows. Petro wrote a defense in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on February 3rd saying campaign contributions never affected decisions regarding who to hire for legal work in the Attorney General's Office and that the attempt to question his integrity was being brought on by Arshibkoff and the Blackwell campaign.

The new TV ad released by the Blackwell campaign this week tries to link Gov. Bob Taft and the Tom Noe Coingate scandal all with Attorney General Jim Petro. In many ways, the ad could have been made by the Strickland campaign. Furthermore, the negative ad doesn't make much sense. It shows Tom Noe and Bob Taft at the beginning of the ad and then tries to tie in Jim Petro with allegations that are in no way connected to Taft or Noe.

With the strategy of going negative seemingly have blown in their collective faces, the Blackwell campaign cannot even revert to the policy arena. Opposition against Blackwell's proposed Tax Expenditure Limitation (TEL), which is modeled after Colorado's failed Taxpayer Bill of Rights, is still gaining steam from the Ohio Municipal League, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Columbus Dispatch. The main weakness of TEL appears to be the devastating effect it could have on higher education; especially profitable athletic program like Ohio State Buckeyes football, whose revenue is used to pay for the program and various academic ventures (books, computers, library, staffing, housing, etc., etc.) at The Ohio State University. Under TEL, revenues from Ohio State's collegiate football program would be frozen in bank accounts to prevent institutions like Ohio State from overspening beyond the limits outlined in Blackwell's proposal. In the Plain Dealer article linked above, one of the authors of TEL acknowledges the proposal did not take programs like Ohio State's into account when writing the proposal. To me, it seems like TEL was poorly conceived and too hasitly drafted. It directly prevents state institutions of higher education in Ohio from spending on their own students.

To boot his own policy credentials, Petro propsed his own statewide ballot iniative to curb state tax rates, the Citizens' Amendment for Prosperity (CAP). CAP would be a revenue limit, essentially a cap on state tax rates, rather than a limit on actual dollar spending (like Blackwell's TEL) by state institutions. Petro was joined by St. Sen. Gary Cates and St. Rep. Larry Wolpert in the introduction of the proposal.

Through this all, Petro has chosen to take the high road and not go negative like Blackwell. His campaign is for the future of Ohio and not driven by ego. Petro has the better temperment, policy formulation, and vision to be the next Governor of Ohio. Ohio Republicans need to vote for Jim Petro on May 2nd, for the betterment of our party and our state.