The Club for Growth’s Tea Party Verdict

The HeritageAction Scorecard is one of the best ways to check on important votes cast by your congressman, and now we can add one specifically designed for the Class of 2010 from the Club for Growth.  The Tea Party had its genesis from the constant wasteful and over-reaching government spending that had not been contained by Dennis Hastert or George Bush and has exploded under President Obama.  Many Tea Party activists came forward to challenge both Democrats and Republicans, and we were blessed with one of the largest congressional freshman classes in history.  So what is the scorecard show for Ohio’s five freshmen?

First of all, I would not define two of these members as true Tea Party as both Steve Chabot and Steve Stivers were running rematches of their 2008 campaigns.  Also, Steve Chabot had served seven terms representing the Cincinnati area before losing the seat in Obama’s sweep of the state.  One would think that an establishment-type like Steve Chabot would vote with the leadership on big spending pork-barrel legislation, but one would be wrong.  Chabot scores as one of the highest in the country at 93%.  Steve Stivers?  He was considered a fair conservative in the Ohio Senate but in the US House his Club for Growth score is among the lowest at 45%.

That leaves three congressmen who were active in Tea Party affairs and campaigned as people who would reign in federal spending.  Bill Johnson leads the way with a disappointing score of 70%, followed by Jim Renacci at 68% then Bob Gibbs at 64%.  The median score for the whole class is about 71%, and there are some good spending cut votes that were taken by all these men.  I worry when votes look like they have a go-along-to-get-along mentality.  I have heard of Ben Quayle and Tim Huelskamp and appreciate their stands on fiscal restraint, but who are Justin Amash and Raul Labrador?  I’ll have to watch these two more carefully, and maybe our freshmen should watch them as well.

Finally, since I pulled up the Heritage Scorecard I might as well summarize those scores.  Jim Jordan leads the pack at 94%, with Steve Chabot next at 79%.  Gibbs is at 60%, Johnson is 59% with Renacci at 52%.  Steve Stivers is the lower freshman at 49% followed by Steve LaTourette, the lowest scoring Republican, at only 33%.  The highest scoring Democrat?  Dennis Kucinich at 24%, although he may have cast some votes the right way but for the wrong reasons.

Sherrod Brown Will Not Win

Conventional wisdom is a curious thing.  Somebody in some think tank looks at Ohio and says “They voted for Obama, therefore it’s blue.”  They look at the 2006 election and say, “Look at all the support that Sherrod Brown has, of course he will win again.”  It’s almost as if economic policy results don’t matter and that 2010 never happened.

But it’s only May, and at least an article like Both Parties Brace for Tight Race can be written now instead of October.  Sherrod Brown is a consummate politician holding an elective office since the Watergate days of 1974.  Josh Mandel wasn’t born until 1977 and spent time as an intelligence officer in the Marines before running for the Ohio House.  Sherrod Brown has the backing of national unions and left-leaning PACs, and Josh Mandel has the backing of Jim DeMint and right-leaning PACs.  This will be a race that should garner a lot of media attention.

In 2006, Sherrod Brown won Ohio 56-44 over Mike DeWine.  Here is the county map of his victory.

Democrats have always done best in the north, but then Sherrod Brown also received a great deal of support from the Ohio River counties and others in the southeast central.  It should be remembered that Ted Strickland was from this area and was on the ballot to become Governor of Ohio.

This area is now represented by Tea Party freshman Bill Johnson.  A very important subplot to the whole Ohio electorate will be his rematch with former Rep. Charlie Wilson.  If Bill Johnson struggles in his re-election bid, then that may be a harbinger for a Brown and/or Obama victory in Ohio.

But I do not believe the stories of the demise of the Tea Party; I think 2011 was a year of watching the actions and reactions to legislation in the House and the inactions of the Senate.  Ohioans know that it takes time to turn a ship around, and there’s a sense that our Ohio economy has begun to rebound.  (Well, at least it seems we’re doing better than Michigan. )

Elections have consequences, and I think people in these swing districts realize that Strickland, Obama, and Brown were steering Ohio in the wrong direction.  Come November, I’m sure Ohio will be solidly in the “Leans Republican” aisle.

Steve LaTourette: The Weak Voice of Severe Moderation

Steve LaTourette has been representing northeast Ohio since the Gingrich Revolution in 1994.  He defeated the freshman Eric Fingerhut, a Democrat who has since run unsuccessfully for Senate in 2004 and then for Governor in 2006, in an area where Republican officeholders are few and far between.  For the last ten years, the district extended from east of Cleveland and north of Youngstown and all the way to Erie, Pennsylvania, and this year it will move further into Akron and Cleveland.  Much of this area is modestly Democratic with a big red spot in Geauga County.  LaTourette had never campaigned or presented himself as anything other than a moderate, and he may think that the time has come in Washington for a voice like his.

The problem with moderation is that it starts at your final negotiation position.  If both sides began with their moderate position, then this certainly would be a quicker and more efficient method to reach an agreement.  But there is nothing moderate with the positions in today’s Democrat party.  Federal spending has gone from almost $3 trillion to almost $4 trillion in the Pelosi / Obama era, and we never had the $3 trillion with which to start!  In the LaTourette era, spending has more than doubled.

While the Rand Paul spending bill is the best starting point in my opinion, the Paul Ryan bill should be more palatable for Republicans to begin budget negotiations.  The silence of the Democrats speaks volumes, and the discussion should be the Democrat incompetence with federal spending.  When Steve LaTourette joins the Democrats in condemning the Paul Ryan bill… well it’s what the tea party has come to expect from establishment-types.

His bipartisan proposal was bipartisanly defeated, which at least extends the argument on the Democrat incompetence.  LaTourette has a weak Heritage rating, but he has won his re-elections fairly comfortably and does not appear to have a significant challenge at this time.  The Democrats are throwing wild pitches right now, and I hope that Republican moderates would stop swinging outside the plate.

Joe the Congressional Candidate (formerly the Plumber)

Samuel Wurzelbacher won a tight primary race for the Congressional race in Ohio’s 9th “Lake Erie” district. People were watching the other side of this race as Marcy Kaptur beat Dennis Kucinich by almost 20 points, and she is heavily favored in this gerrymandered Democratic seat. It connects Toledo, moves through Ottowa, Erie, and Lorain Counties before including the urban parts of northwestern Cuyahoga County. These are heavy Democrat areas, but is there a chance for an upset in November?

In Cleveland, Kucinich was quick to attack Kaptur after her victory. (http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/03/dennis_kucinich_holding_back_o.html). Voters who may be solid Kucinich fans may switch sides just to punish Kaptur. There may be other Democrats who are new to this district who simply don’t know Marcy Kaptur and hold no particular allegiance to her.

In an article from Canada’s National Post (http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/11/joe-the-plumber/), we see the appeal he may have as simply an out-of-the-box candidate. “What qualifies him for Congress?” asks CNN. “What qualifies me? I’ve worked all my life. I mean, see these hands right here, there’s callouses on them,” he said. “I worked the last 25 years having to make results to feed my family, pay my bills. Politicians, you know, they live off the backs of broke taxpayers.”

In order to win, Wurzelbacher will need a good number of Democrats who are likely to vote for Obama to then choose to split their vote and punch his name for Congress. If these voters do split their vote, it won’t be because of the Toledo Republican’s views on tax policy or on Isreal. If Joe wins, it will be because people who have been working and struggling all of their middle-class lives will identify themselves more with a plumber than with a person who has been in Congress since the Reagan administration.

The Importance of the Jean Schmidt Primary Loss

I live in northeast Ohio, so I sometimes miss the ground game in other parts of the state. But I was not alone in missing the fragility of Jean Schmidt’s standing with Ohio’s 2nd district. According to news outlets, none of the Republican machine expected this result, and now we must figure out what happened and see if it might happen elsewhere. And before digesting this race, lets meet the Iraq combat doctor who beat her. http://www.fox19.com/story/17097080/iraq-war-vet-defeats-jean-schmidt-in-gop-primary.

Jean Schmidt has been in a difficult situation from the time she was appointed in 2005. Her special runoff election met with national news as her Democratic opponent was an other Iraq veteran Paul Hackett. He was the original “Vets Against the War” recruited by the Democratic Party to run for Congress in 2006. Hackett lost a close race in 2005, but we all know what happened in 2006. In her first term, she again made national news by directing to John Murtha on the floor of the House the line, “Cowards cut and run, marines never do.” She later apologized, but it was certainly an auspicious start to her Washington career.  In a time when incumbents frequently win in landslides, Schmidt hardly got past 50% of the vote in subsequent elections.

Compunding her troubles within her district were two new issues. Her disctrict to the east of Cincinnatti was stretched to the north exposing her to a new voters. Also the SuperPAC Campaing for Primary Accountability (http://www.campaign4primaryaccountability.org/) had spent some money supporting her opponent. This PAC also ran ads against Marcy Kaptur as they are trying to get rid of incumbents in “safe” districts through the primary process. I must admit that this is an attractive technique – if politicians are going to draw themselves into partisan districts then it’ll take primary challenges to keep them accountable.

I could not find a simple list of candidates who they are supporting, but their next fight will be in Alabama where they have targeted Rep. Spencer Bauchus. If next week we hear that he has lost to a relative unknown (Scott Beason, in this case) then we might have a Tea Party 2 on our hands, and every Congressman will need to check their backs to make sure nobody is about to knock them down.

Ohio: Super Tuesday to November

It looks like Mitt Romney will sneak past Rick Santorum in Ohio by about 38%-37%.  Romney had some momentum with some victories last week, and conventional wisdom said that Santorum would be hurt by all the negative press on the social issues.  (This would be the Limbaugh – Fluke flap.)  But Santorum had obviously built up enough trust and good will among Ohio voters to give him the edge through most of the night.

Romney has done well with urban Republicans, a fact that causes some people concern while other people see it as an asset.  Here is a side-by-side comparison of the Romney-Santorum county map with the Obama-McCain county map.

We see that Romney beat Santorum in most of northeast Ohio, then in the Columbus and the Cincinnatti areas.  The rest of the state including the appalachian and rural areas went to Santorum.  In 2008, Obama won the three big cities plus more of northeast Ohio, the Toledo area, and a few counties by the Ohio river.

So Romney’s strength is regionally identical to Obama’s strength.  The Optimist: “Romney’s urban strength will weaken the margin of victory Obama has in the cities, while the more conservative areas will still hold strong for the Republican.”  The Pessimist: “the turnout in the cities will overwhelm the Republican, and the conservative turnout will be dampened by a candidate like Mitt Romney.”  It remains to be seen which scenario is correct, but I’m afraid that this is the question we’ll be asking ourselves for the next eight months.

In addition to winning the state, Romney has won ten congressional districts while Santorum took six.

There are seven Romney districts in red and three in pink.  These pink disctricts are ones where Rick Santorum failed to get his delegate nominations on the ballot.  These include the Lake Erie district (Marcy Kaptur) and the Younstown district (Tim Ryan) which both would have been won by Romney anyway.  Rick Santorum won the counties included in the southeastern ohio River district (Bill Johnson), so he could have closed it to a 9-7 split with this district flipping to his side.  The red district just to the north of Columbus (Pat Tibiri) was a close call for most of the night, but Romney ended up with a slight edge here.

Santorum had a very slight edge in the 8th district just north of Cincinnatti (John Boehner), but won more comfortably in the rest of the state with particular strength in the northwest districts (Bob Latta and Jim Jordan).   He also won the Democratic 3rd district in Columbus, an unexpected result given Romney’s win in Franklin County.

In other races in the state, Josh Mandel won the Senate nomination with 63% of the vote.  The second place challenger got 14% and ran for Senate as a Tea Party Independent in 2010, while I’ll admit that Donna Glisman is a surprise getting 12%.  I believe Mandel will be a strong candidate with some national appeal (RedState and Jim DeMint), and will bring a good fight to Sherrod Brown and his national appeal (DailyKos and MSNBC).

Two incumbent Congressmen lost in primary races.  Toledo’s Marcy Kaptur was endorsed by Cleveland’s Plain Dealer, and her strength in the Lake Erie distrct was too much for Dennis Kucinich to survive.  I look for him to either move to Washington state to continue his political career, or maybe he’ll switch gears and become a contributor to FoxNews.  Either way, his chapters in Cleveland seem to be coming to a close.  In a surprising race, Brad Wenstrup (http://usabrad.com/) beat Jean Schmidt in Ohio’s 2nd district.  Jean Schmidt had never had a comfortable race since taking over the seat vacated by Rob Portman in 2005, and she obviously could not appeal to newer voters in a redrawn district.  Finally in the new Columbus 3rd district, Joyce Beatty (http://beattyforcongress.com/) won a tight race against former one-term Congresswoman MaryJo Kilroy and she is likely to win this Democratic seat in November.

A long night here in Ohio.  Romney seems to have held his 2:1 margin in delegates over Rick Santorum.  Next week we move south, and if Romney is the front runner then he’ll have to try and compete in Alabama and Mississippi.  Losses there will cause people to continue to question his strength as a front-runner and he’ll have to chalk up victories in the dominican territories (which are likely wins for Romney) which follow afterward.  Two weeks from now is the next Super Tuesday with Illinois in play.

The path to victory is more difficult after tonight for Santorum and especially for Gingrich, but it is not impossible. Mitt Romney was the conservative choice four years ago, and voters may have to satisfy themselves with pushing him even more to the right in 2012.

Santorum in Ohio and After

A new Quinnipiac poll was released this Friday and PPP and other firms are going to be polling through the weekend, and it shows that Mitt Romney got a bump after his Michigan win but not enough to take an Ohio lead over Santorum. National polls show a bigger jump, but that has changed after every state election. Super Tuesday will be very important for Rick Santorum if he is going to win the nomination. Ohio is as close to a must-win as you can get.

Currently Romney has about twice as many delegates as the second-place Santorum. Even if Santorum wins Ohio on Tuesday, his absence in Virginia and Romney’s strength in Massachusetts will more than cancel out the margin of victory in Ohio. Santorum also was not able to get on the ballot in every Ohio congressional district.  Looking at the total delegate count on Tuesday, it will likely be about a 2:1 victory for Romney which will certainly get every television soul with a mouth proclaiming that Santorum should give up.

In reality, Gingrich should be the one to give up first. (Ron Paul should as well, but nobody expects that.) If Gingrich only wins Georgia and neither Oklahoma nor Tennessee, it’ll be doubtful he could win Alabama and Mississippi the following week. With Gingrich out and Santorum sticking strong, those states may not be likely to vote for Romney and should give their delegates to Santorum.  (Although Alabama has an interesting Republican problem, as presented in Redstate by Daniel Horowitz.)

The weekend after Alabama / Mississippi is the Missouri caucus where Santorum’s ”beauty contest” win will be challenged by Romney in a very severe way. The next Tuesday is a big fight in Illinois with Hawaii, Samoa, and Puerto Rico chalking up votes along the way. Santorum needs to play for and get delegate wins because at this rate, Romney can just play for delegate ties and keep his lead in place.

Looking at the crosstabs in Quinnipiac poll, it shows an expected divide among conservative and moderate Republicans as opposed to the strange exit polls out of Michigan.  Santorum leads Romney and Gingrich among conservatives 40-27-18 and among Tea Party supporters 42-25-22, and also among people who do not identify themselves as Tea Party supporters 35-32-13.  Romney leads among moderates by 46-26-13.  Romney also has small leads among those with a college degree 37-34-14 and with non-evangelicals 37-35-13, and Romney has a significant lead among those 65+ by 40-27-17.  Every other demographic, even among women, shows that Santorum is the current favorite.  Finally, Santorum also has the smallest unfavorable rating at 24% with Romney at 34%, Gingrich at 38%, and Paul at 42%.

This weekend will show different numbers and maybe Romney will catch up and take a small lead.  He is definitely outspending his competition with radio and TV ads, although the Gingrich PAC has also made its presence felt.  Ohio Republicans have had election problems for about a decade.  Josh Mandel should be a good candidate for Ohio conservatives to rally around, but that competition has not started yet.  Mitt Romney has the establishment smell of a Bob Taft and Bob Ney, but only for conservatives who recognize those names.  Santorum has had a very good run as the last of the anti-Romneys and Ohio will be a nice notch in his belt if he can get it.

Ohio’s Kevin DeWine Problem

I don’t get into the machine aspect of politics, mostly because I unfortunately make a presumption that any political leader is their for some “crony” reason. Kevin DeWine is the second cousin of Mike DeWine and was elected to his post after Barack Obama won Ohio in 2008. Ohio’s GOP went from a team of all-stars in the 90′s when Voinovich was governor to a team of whiny has-beens under Taft. DeWine was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives and became Speaker in 2007, a feat that has lost much of its allure since term limits prevents any Representative to build much of a resume.

As the Tea Parties sprung up in April 2009 opposing the big government mentality of the left, it was pretty clear that Ohio’s Republican establishment was going to behave like the establishment and stay on the sidelines. When Tea Party activists began working toward electing their candidates on a local level and to committee posts, the Ohio GOP realized that the Tea Party was going after the big government mentality on the right.

Here are a few links that describe the DeWine problem, including the list of posts at Breitbarts’s BigGovernment by the author Bytor.

http://biggovernment.com/author/bytor
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2011/12/23/at-biggov-go-away-kevin-dewine/
http://nofall.org/2012/02/10/kevin-dewine-continues-tea-party-assault/

The last post refers to a new rule saying that committee members must have voted in Republican primary in 2008, making any Operation Chaos voter ineligible to hold a GOP postition.  I think it will be a happy day for Ohio conservatives when Kevin DeWine is excused from his post… as long as he’s replaced by a conservaitve.  Otherwise we’ll be back fighting big government Republicans while the big government Democrats eat their cake.

DeWine and Santorum: Together Again

Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Attorney General, is one of the first major officials to publicly switch his support from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum.  These two share the dubious distinction of getting smashed in their 2006 Senate re-election campaign, although their losses were for different reasons.  Santorum, from what I remember, was attacked for being too conservative and out-of-step with his fellow Pennsylvanians.  Mike DeWine had sometimes swayed to the left with the Gang of 14, and Ohio’s Republican Governor and other officeholders had dirtied the waters with their ethics and competence problems.  Nevertheless, they both lost by over 15% in that awful year of 2006, which also saw Senate losses in Virginia and Montana not to mention the Democrat takeover of the House.

While Mike DeWine gave the conservative right a reason to be apathetic towards Senate bid and even towards his campaign for Attorney General, his instincts seemed to be better than his Senate cohort George Voinovich.  (Voinovich, for the record, has backed Romney.)  DeWine initially favored Tim Pawlenty, and then endorsed Mitt Romney after the Minnesota governor bowed out.  Last summer, Mitt Romney was the obvious choice for a member of the establishment and a career politician like Mike DeWine couldn’t be seen with the likes of Bachmann, Perry, or Cain.

But Mitt fever has never caught hold in Ohio.  Four years ago, Mike Huckabee took about 30% of the vote in a March primary that was more noted for its support in the Democrat primary for Hillary Clinton.  Ohio is politically separated by its cities and the turnpike with the urban areas and the counties closest to Lake Erie being more Democratic.  Coincidentally, these areas also supported McCain by a greater margin than the more rural central counties in the state.

I expect that Romney will concentrate his efforts in Cuyahoga and Franklin counties while Santorum will get support from the rural areas.  Romney’s Michigan coattails unfortunately meet a wall at the Port of Toledo and he will need to work for Ohio’s votes like he hasn’t seemed to work before.   In the absence of Santorum, Newt Gingrich would be winning the rural areas hands down and he has an appeal with some urban Republicans as well.  But Santorum’s experience with worker’s unions and mining towns actually help him in these Appalachian areas of Ohio more so than in any other state thus far.  DeWine sees it, smells it, and is jumping on board the Santorum train.

Santorum for President

After a year of saying that I’d vote for any one of these candidates over Obama (which is still true, of course), it seems like Ohio will have a battle for the Republican primary this year. Four years ago, I kept going back and forth between Romney and Huckabee. When Huckabee did not win South Carolina or Florida, he did not seem to have a realistic path to the nomination. When Romney failed to beat McCain in many of the winner-take-all Super Tuesday states in early February, he decided to pull out and essentially to let McCain win. This prompted Rush Limbaugh to promote Operation Chaos in states like Ohio and Texas where Republicans could cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primary. It felt a little odd, but you bet I did it.

Earlier this summer, I was gently backing Herman Cain and I likely would be voting for him next month if he had survived the harassment allegation stories. Newt Gingrich seems to be one of those thinkers who can talk his way through any side of any issue, and I think this aspect of his personality has gotten him in more trouble than he deserves. I believe he would govern as a small-government Reagan conservative and I entirely respect his record of balanced budgets, which would never have happened under a Democrat Congress or a Bob Michel Congress. I would vote for Mitt as well in the general election, but I would like to ask him where he was on April 15, 2009. He was in the weeds with other Republican crickets whispering that these Tea Party folks are crazy.

When Rick Santorum speaks, you know that his conservative message is from the heart. He hasn’t rationalized it (Newt) or been coached at it (Mitt). My hesitancy to this point has been his electability, and I write this before the results come in from Minnesota or Missouri where they are predicting a Santorum victory.  Ideologically, Santorum is the closest to my views and I have a growing respect for people who continue to stand by their religious beliefs despite catcalls from the “tolerant” left.  In fact his negatives from the people with whom I’ve spoken mostly seem to be related to his faith and whether or not he can separate it from his governing.  I’d rather make that argument on personal faith and liberty than an argument on RomneyCare or on irratic monologues.

So previously I was for the Haagen Dazs Black Walnut candidate; now I’m for dry white toast in a sweater vest.  I hope Rick Santorum wins over Ohio and then the rest of the nation.