Catching up

One blog I subscribe to is Ohio2006, aka Ohio2006Elections, aka Ohio Elections 2006 (okay that last one only appears in my mistranscribed blogroll entry). In ten days, it will not be known as any of those things. It will disappear and YellowDogSammy will start a new venture, OhioDailyBlog. If you have an interest in Ohio politics, I highly recommend that you add it to your newsreader software when it goes live in 10 days. If you don't have or use newsreader software, OhioDailyBlog might be a reason to start.

Another Blog I subscribe to is Jill Miller Zimon's WritesLikeSheTalks. Not just because she found the picture of my daughter on my old blog and called her 'gorgeous,' (although that was a testament to her perceptiveness), and not just because she can wallow through a mucky paragraph of legalese and entertain you as she scrapes it off her shoes, but because she has the energy and devotion to go after something like Issue 3 with 56 straght days of reasons to vote against it. That's blogging.

For me on Issue 3, though, I only needed one reason. As soon as I saw the ad campaign that had multiple commercials talking about Learning and Earning scholarships, and not mentioning gambling, even indirectly, one single time, I knew I would not vote for it. If you don't think the public will support an idea given that they actually know what it is and understand it, you are spitting on democracy when you campaign for it anyway using deception. Same thing with Smoke-Less Ohio. If you need some people to believe that you want to make Ohio smokeless when your plan constitutionally guarantees that will never happen, then I will not vote for your proposal.

We're seeing it time and again this cycle. Issue-backers and candidates who do not believe that voters will choose them on their own merits, or even based on the actual shortcomings of their opponents, are resorting to gross distortions. I'm still a bit in shock at the brazenness of these tactics.

Most candidates don't simply make things up. I've accused the Columbus Dispatch Editorial Board of doing so, even as I have been careful to note that the job done by the reporters at the CD this season has actually been quite good. They were put in a somewhat awkward position while analyzing David Goodman's latest ad. They pointed out the numerous misleading statements, finding very little positive to say about the ad (they liked Emily Kreider's newest ad better). When they got to the part in the ad where Goodman quotes the Dispatch's endorsement, specifically using the just plain false assertion that Ms. Kreider has made 'shrill and sometimes ill-considered attacks,' AdWatch had to tread very carefully. Call the claim false, and they were calling out their bosses as liars. Call the claims accurate, and they'd be just as guilty as their bosses. What did AdWatch do?

"The Dispatch endorsed Goodman, and the citations in the ad are accurate"


It is true that Goodman is telling the truth when he says that the Dispatch said that. No claim is made as to the accuracy of the original assertion. It would've been nice to see an explicit refutation of the charge, but the lawyerly way in which the accuracy of that portion of the ad was assessed leads me to believe that an implicit rejection was being made. That's a start.