Late Hit in OH-12

Maybe it's sour grapes. Maybe it was a reporter with an agenda taking quotes out of context. Whatever the cause (and email to Goodwin's campaign email address yesterday has gone unanswered), it was ugly and certainly has not been a great kickoff to the supposedly shared goal of getting new representation in Congress for OH-12.

"It" is an article published on March 7 innocuously entitled "Goodwin Loses His House Bid" in the Gay People's Chronicle. The article includes a number of reasons given by Goodwin, the former head of Stonewall Democrats in Central Ohio, for his loss:

1) “We were outspent by quite a bit, possibly four to one,” ... Goodwin said he raised and spent around $12,000, and guessed that Robinson had closer to $50,000.

2) “We ran a clean race, but it didn’t pay off,” said Goodwin

3) Goodwin said one of his opponents ran a quiet gay-baiting campaign behind the scenes, though he cannot tell which one. That campaign included phone calls and “push polls” questioning why the Democratic Party would endorse a gay man to run in a conservative, Republican-leaning district.

Goodwin did add “I’m a good Democrat. I endorse Robinson,” against Tiberi.

UPDATE: Source close to Goodwin campaign confirms that Robinson WAS NOT the opponent referred to in #3 above.

I'm sorry, but claiming you lost because you ran a clean race, while your opponents threw money at the electorate and ran a quiet gay-baiting campaign does not an endorsement make, especially when the only reason you can come up with is generic party loyalty. This is a Monday morning hit piece, and the only questions are whether Robinson deserves the hits and whether Goodwin was accurately represented in the piece. As I've said, my attempt at contacting Goodwin has been unsuccessful, so I can't answer the second question, but I had a conversation with David Robinson this afternoon, and I'm definitely leaning toward an answer on the first:

No, he doesn't.

Before I spoke with him today, I had already gone to double-check the FEC filings. As of 2/13/08, Goodwin and Robinson had both raised about the same amount of money, with Robinson having raised a few hundred dollars more than the $12k Goodwin had raised. Robinson's filing showed that a chunk of his funds had come from a few maxed-out donors. The claim that Robinson had raised almost $40,000 dollars from a brand new donor base, when the party had endorsed his opponent, in three weeks, during which time Goodwin apparently raised absolutely nothing, was far-fetched enough to make me question Goodwin's credibility.

As it turns out, the Robinson campaign estimates that it spent about $25000 on the primary, or about double what Goodwin had raised at the time of the last report to the FEC. It's a pretty impressive total given the circumstances, but it is half of what Goodwin claimed. Robinson was actually sympathetic to Goodwin regarding this, as a central part of Robinson's campaign strategy is centered on efficient use of campaign funds, getting lots of "bang for the buck." Tiberi has a major cash-on-hand advantage, and will be able to raise more on demand if he feels threatened. The fact that the campaign was able to make their warchest seem twice as large as it actually was in the primary is being taken as a good sign.

As for the rest of it... Robinson was clearly disappointed at the suggestion his campaign may have engaged in gay baiting tactics. Robinson described such tactics as "personally repugnant," and offered two pieces of information to make his case. First, when it came to light that a caller to a radio show had engaged in such tactics, the Robinson campaign had gone out of their way to denounce the action and assure the Goodwin campaign that they had no interest in engaging in that type of offensive campaigning. Second, Robinson pointed to a statement he wrote for the February 21 issue of Outlook Weekly, in which he sought to make apparent his intent to be a strong ally of the LGBT community. The statement reads, in part:

As I see it, securing full and equal rights before
the law for the LGBT community is central to the
advancement of the American Promise of “life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness” for all. Our Constitution
legally grounds this premise. But even
more fundamentally – on the level of the soul and
spirit – I believe that all of us are the expression of
the divine (however one conceives of this), and the
world is poorer when any of us is forced to suppress
the positive, full expression of who we are and how
we love. Until these ideals are realized and codified
in law, we, as a nation, remain in a state of contradiction
with ourselves.
If chosen to represent the 12th District in Congress,
I will wholeheartedly support legislation that
extends equal rights to LGBT couples of all ages, in
regards to civil unions, healthcare and social security
benefits and inheritance tax laws. I will support,
unlike the incumbent, final passage and enactment
of HR 1592: Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes
Prevention Act of 2007.

I know that losing an election can be rough, and that things get said that one sometimes regrets ("monster," anyone?), but if Goodwin really wants to be seen as a good Democrat, he'll clarify his comments or at least keep them to himself in the future. We've got a very good candidate motivated to take on Pat Tiberi, and this sort of post-election stinkbomb isn't good for anybody.

Who You Calling Rusty?

A study by the Columbus Chamber on behalf of the OSU Medical Center examines job growth in Central Ohio over the past 6 years, determining that OSUMC is responsible for half of the net job growth in the area over that time, and 3 of the top 5 employers in terms of job creation are in health care.

In Columbus, jobs and health care are not separate issues.

The most eye-catching pieces of the report, however, are two tables. One showing the 20 largest employers in the Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area (treating OSU and OSUMC as separate entities), and the net jobs added or lost by those employers between 2001 and 2007. The title of this post refers to the fact that there is only one manufacturing firm among the top 20 employers: Honda. While Columbus is dominated by public-sector employees (being the state capital, county seat, largest city in OH, and home to the nation's largest university) the public sector employers represent 5 of the six biggest net losers of jobs, and the private sector is still represented by more financial services firms (Chase, Nationwide, Huntington) than it is by companies that produce or process commodities.

In which Electability and State Type arguments get thrown in the compactor

Survey USA, a polling outfit with a pretty good track record this year, has polled 600 people in each of the 50 states, and created electoral college maps based on head-to-heads for Obama-McCain and Clinton-McCain. Although they have already warned that there will be some minor tweaks as they update the map to reflect that Nebraska will actually be giving an electoral vote to one of the Dems (the state is not winner-take-all), the preliminary maps show the following margins:

UPDATE
276-262 Clinton
274-264 Obama
(calculated using the interactive map here)

Final Maps show:
276-262 Clinton
280-258 Obama

2 points flipped to Obama in NE. I'm not sure where the other 4 flipped, or if I got it wrong in my first map. The rest of the post remains true.

The fascinating thing about these numbers is that they show almost the exact same margin of victory for each Dem vs. McCain, but the following states each go for McCain on one map, but the Dem on another:

WA,OR,NV,CO,ND,IA,AR,MI,WV,VA,PA,NJ,NH,FA

In other words, the Clinton and Obama victories use entirely different coalitions of states to get to the same EC count.

(OH is Dem on both maps)

Overdue Fawning

The title is a bit of an inside joke, but of the things I should have been putting on the blog during the time I wasn't blogging, the most egregious omission wasn't election-related, it was related to Bexley Government and blogging.

Specifically, I failed to help promo the launch of Ben Kessler's City Council Blog. Ben is attempting to create wider access to and interaction with the Bexley City Council for those of us it serves. I don't know if he discussed the blog in his ongoing interview on WCRX-LP, but if you hear it, let me know.

Morning After Notes

1) BB welcomes readers referred by WLST, Cleveland.com, and NYTimes.com (even if the Times' blogger did take things a little out of context...)

2) Congratulations to David Robinson, John O'Grady, and Nancy Garland, winners of contested primaries for US House, Franklin Co. Commissioner, and State Rep, respectively. I didn't support all of them in the primary (although 2/3 winners is an astounding success rate for me), but I will wholeheartedly support all 3 in their races going forward.

3) Thank you to all of the Democratic candidates who poured their hearts, minds, time, and money into primary campaigns this winter. Some people say that primaries are bad for the party. I'll admit that the short term downside often makes me sympathetic to those who hold that opinion. But in a two party system, primaries are essential for the vitality of our party, and our democracy. So thank you to those who faced losing battles and continued to fight. Thank you as well to all of the Dems who voted yesterday, and decided the directions in which we are taking the party.

4) I listened to the audio of JMZ's interview on the BBC. She says many of the things I said in describing my dilemma, and many things I didn't say but could have. As it turns out, we voted for the same presidential nominee, though I did it for a somewhat less dispassionate and rational reason. On the eve of the election someone made the case to me that they wouldn't ever ask me to change my vote, but if I was truly undecided, would I consider voting for the candidate they cared deeply about, as a personal favor? I'm one less favor in debt now.

5) And finally, I have to highlight one of the comments made in response to my voting story that has made me absolutely ill. As I have no way of confirming any details about an anonymous commenter, I can't give this the push it might deserve:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Completely Unacceptable - Franklin Co. Pollworkers...":

I recently moved into the county and even though I have a valid Ohio DL I, my wife and our son (22 yrs old) were all denied ballots, even provisionals, because the address on our DLs did not match what they had in the book.

I saw what they had in their book - it was our correct, current address of 8 months.

I'm aghast at this. How many other people were denied their right to vote for the same reason?

Posted by Anonymous to Blue Bexley at 6:57 PM

This is a complete disenfranchisement of (at least) 3 valid and legal voters by someone who, as a pollworker, did not know the rules about either Identification OR provisional ballots. If my story filtered up to the NYT website, imagine this story, in November.