Think for a moment where the state of Ohio was politically two years ago this month. It was, arguably, the center of the political universe with tens of millions of dollars spent on campaign ads and a swarming media – local, national and international – converging on the Buckeye state in staggering numbers. It was practically “As Ohio Goes So Goes the World.”
Well, that was then. Now, particularly in Northeast Ohio, there is an apathy surrounding next month’s election the likes of which I have never seen for a mid-term in my nearly 50 years of following politics. The fault for this, of course, lies with the Ohio Democratic Party in general and the Greater Cleveland Dems in particular.
There was a time not so long ago when Cuyahoga County – Ohio’s most Democratic stronghold – produced the likes of political titan Howard Metzenbaum and successful two-term governor Dick Celeste. However, over the past quarter century the only truly significant Democrat on either the state or national level from Northeast Ohio has been Sherrod Brown.
This year the “standard bearer” for the Ohio Dems is gubernatorial candidate Ed Fitzgerald, the current Cuyahoga County executive and former mayor of Lakewood. Even before his ridiculous lack-of-a-driver’s-license “scandal” broke this summer, Fitzgerald had no realistic chance to defeat John Kasich. Simply stated, as I wrote over a year ago about the impending Fitzgerald-Kasich contest, “You can’t beat somebody with a nobody.”
Fitzgerald’s lead-balloon candidacy deprived Ohio voters the chance to have even a mildly serious discussion of the problems facing the state and the possible alternatives that, say, a solidly progressive, serious Democratic candidate might help generate. Instead, the only relatively positive aspect of the Fitzgerald fiasco is that his “one and done” statewide run assures he won’t ever be back to haunt Ohio Dems again.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Fitzgerald has been such a monumental drag on the statewide ticket that no one is paying attention to the other Ohio races for Secretary of State, Treasurer, Attorney General and Auditor – contests in which, everything else being relatively equal, the Dems should have had a realistic chance to be very competitive in at least a couple of these races.
The incredibly ineffectual and brazen Secretary of State Jon Husted has been playing (not very well) a game of cat and mouse regarding minority voter suppression for the past few years. Yet the potentially exciting candidacy of the formidable Nina Turner has not been able to gain any traction on this explosive issue primarily because few are paying attention to this dull thud of an election and even less are willing to donate time or money.
Treasurer Josh Mandel has been an embarrassment to the Ohio Republican Party since his disastrous, gaffe-filled attempt to unseat Sherrod Brown in 2012, a campaign that has produced some serious questions about Mandel’s ethics. Still, like Attorney General Mike DeWine, who has made one cockeyed ruling after another, Mandel has been gliding along without much of a challenge from the dispirited Democrats and with little interest from the voters.
The Ohio Democratic Party is in dire straights and with the Republican Convention coming to Cleveland, bringing with it the distinct possibility that Kasich will be on the national ticket in 2016, things will likely get much worse for the Dems before they get better.
Here in Cuyahoga County, the prospects for a Democratic star to emerge are not good. Armond Budish will likely be Fitzgerald’s successor as county executive. Well, let’s just say that though Budish does not have “big shoes” to fill, he seems perfectly capable of falling short of even that low bar of achievement.
Aside from Nina Turner, I see no local black politician having the chops to become a statewide force. The Cuyahoga County Council is made up of part-timers and Northeast Ohio Dems in the state legislature are nearly invisible.
Who’s left? Something tells me that local Democrats are still waiting for Chris Ronayne to save them. And with that, I rest my case.
Larry Durstin is an independent journalist who has covered politics and sports for a variety of publications and websites over the past 20 years. He was the founding editor of the Cleveland Tab and an associate editor at the Cleveland Free Times. Durstin has won 12 Ohio Excellence in Journalism awards, including six first places in six different writing categories. He is the author of the novel The Morning After John Lennon Was Shot. LarryDurstinATyahoo.com
2 Responses to “DURSTIN: There Will Be No October Surprises in This Year’s Elections”
John J. Polk
It’s probably worth considering how Cleveland’s Men Behind The Curtain, our local corporate and institutional “leaders,” have undermined the region’s once-consequential Democratic leadership with their obsession with buying candidates and issues who will serve their parochial ends, and whose skillful manipulation of elections has rendered democracy pretty much irrelevant to the County’s political process…all in a effort to AVOID the rise of another Metzenbaum or Celeste, who couldn’t always be counted upon to play ball with local corporate interests…The pattern of these yahoos (with increasing brazenness over the past 15 years) has been to open their checkbooks to mediocrities (Jackson? Campbell? Fitz?) with the promise that if they do what they’re asked to do, they can do whatever else they want…This tends to appeal largely to careerists who are only too happy to kiss up the the GCP types in exchange for a free ride from public accountability and lots of money…I suspect one of the reasons Fitz rose to the top of his ticket was because a few geniuses figured another Governor From Cleveland would suit their purposes, and assured Ed they’d be there for him; lose big in 2014, join a big law firm for four years, then come back and run in 2018…Never occurred to these yahoos that he was nowhere near ready for prime time; they were too busy counting their money…As long as the County’s political process is weakened by (not technically illegal) corruption, parochial self-dealing, and gross disregard of The Public Good in the name of Private Self-aggrandisement, the County, the Democratic Party, and Cuyahoga County taxpayers are gonna continue to get rolled like drunken Shriners
Allen Freeman
Larry, anyone who claims that a Secretary of State is guilty of “voter suppression” because that SOS has created standardized voting dates and times across all 88 Ohio counties, with BOEs open every business day one month out from election day — with vote by mail in place, no less! — is, well, insane.
The only people who can’t vote are people who don’t want to vote, period. The SOS decisions are about budgets and equal access in every county, and has nothing to do with race or suppression no matter how many times you might repeat the insanity…