Change versus experience. Establishment versus grassroots. Aura of
inevitability versus underdog.
Sound familiar?
The race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Ohio is
shaping up just like the 2008 presidential primary.
I just want to emphasize how boring of a campaigner Lee Fisher is:
A veteran Ohio political operative who wishes to remain anonymous asked me to publish this article on his behalf. There is a definite paradigm shift happening in the Ohio Senate Race which definitely should be getting more attention on Daily Kos. I also worked in Ohio for one cycle, and have nothing but praise for Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State of Ohio.
First, a recent article to bring anyone who hasn't been closely following the race to fill Voinovich's seat up to date, from the Plain Dealer political columnist Aaron Mashall in "Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner bucks Democratic establishment to run for Senate":
If Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner woke up last Wednesday morning with a bloody horse's head in her bed, it wouldn't surprise me.
That's how ticked off the Ohio Democratic Party Lifers Club was at Tuesday's news that she would spurn an incumbent run as secretary of state for a 2010 U.S. Senate seat tussle against Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher. After all, Brunner romped to a pretty easy secretary of state win in 2006 and looked to be in decent shape to hold the critical state apportionment board seat in a couple of years.
(Apportionment board seats - state au ditor, governor and sec retary of state - matter especially in 2010 be cause they will de termine who draws the legislative and congres sional districts in Ohio for the next decade. And Ohio Senate Democrats, especially, aren't going to sniff a majority in this lifetime or any other without the power of the pencil.)
So now instead of Brunner on cruise control, Ohio Democratic Party Chief Chris Redfern and the rest of his gang have their hands full trying to keep the spring 2010 rumble of Jennifer vs. Lee from ever actually taking place.
Still, if your name isn't Chris Redfern, Tuesday was kind of a fun day to be involved in politics - Brunner beating Fisher to the punch in an early afternoon announcement, forcing him to scurry back from a speech for a hastily thrown-together early evening news conference.
(Where he inexplicably entered to "Hip Hop Hooray" by New Jersey's finest rappers, Naughty by Nature. Who knew? Fisher always seemed like more of a West Coast-Snoop Dogg kind of guy to me.)
That Brunner would buck the Democratic establishment - Gov. Ted Strickland and House Speaker Armond Budish, for example, appeared by Fisher's side in a show of solidarity - actually makes some sense. She likes to roll the dice and has a tough street-fighting streak.
After all, she gave up a cushy Franklin County judgeship that she would have probably held forever to run for secretary of state - and when she got in the race in September 2005 it was far from a foregone conclusion that Democrats would be riding the wave they did 14 months later.
And then in April 2007, Brunner threw herself headlong at then-Republican Party Chief Bob Bennett when he wouldn't step down from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, as she wanted. That's messing with a man's paper - retirement pension in this case - and not done by the timid.
That's why when the party puts a squeeze-a-rama on Brunner in the coming months, which you can bet they will, it's far from certain that she'll pack up and head back to the secretary of state's race.
If her fund raising isn't cut off at the pass - and that's what Fisher and his minions will be working overtime to do - Brunner actually has a puncher's chance against Landslide Lee, and she knows it. It'll take more than the party regulars being mad at Jennifer Brunner to get her out of this race.
And from my Ohio political veteran friend:
People are asking Jennifer Brunner why she is running for higher
office now. They tell her that she can afford to wait. CW says she
doesn't have a chance against establishment candidate, Lt. Governor
Lee Fisher. Cynics say she won't have the institutional support, she
won't be able to raise the money, she doesn't have the experience of
her opponent. We've heard all this before.
Brunner faces the delicate challenge of taking on the duo who I would
call the Clintons of Ohio Democratic politics. There is no doubt that
Ted Strickland – Fisher's most prominent backer – is a force to be
reckoned with in Ohio. He played no small role in delivering Hillary
Clinton's and Barack Obama's respective, unexpectedly decisive
victories in the Buckeye State. But, as Barack Obama proved, big
endorsements from the party establishment don't mean everything.
Ohio's big fundraisers and lobbyists will support Fisher. Already, we
are hearing that Fisher is bullying big donors into steering clear of
Brunner. The Clintons were accused of similar heavy handed tactics.
Brunner has committed to relying on small donors, with whom her
fundraising success will lie.
The grassroots will inevitably rally around Brunner. Grassroots
activists love her for cleaning up Ken Blackwell's mess and making
Ohio elections a national model, rather than the laughing stock that
it was in 2004. Her work to count every vote is credited for
delivering Democratic victories last November.
Fisher has been around for a while and claims to have the right
experience to be Senator. When he hastily announced his candidacy last
week, he said that he understood the issues being debated in
Washington, a subtle jab at Brunner. But, as Barack Obama taught us,
"there is the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of
experience." Lee Fisher spent two years as Ohio's director of economic
development and under his watch, Ohio lost the second most jobs of any
state, and the state continues down a path of the largest job losses
since the Great Depression.
Fisher will try to blame everything from Ohio's devastating economy to
bad hair days on George W. Bush (and likely GOP nominee Rob Portman)
rather than take any responsibility himself. Obama reminded us that
many of our nation's woes were not solely attributable to George Bush,
but that these problems also persisted under a Democratic
administration. Brunner will do the same.
Lee Fisher represents the status quo of Ohio's broken economy. Brunner
is the only candidate with a demonstrated ability to bring change.
This is the distinction upon which she will wage her campaign. In her
own unlikely journey, she too can defy the skeptics (these "cynics in
Columbus" if you will) by staying focused and running a disciplined
campaign based around a single buzzword: change.
What do you all think? Will Lee Fisher and the political establishment in Ohio be able to stop her? Should they? And furthermore, do you think some polling needs to be done on this race? I haven't seen any yet, and it might give us some perspective on where this race stands, as the Fisher Campaign completely freaked out at the prospect of her being able to associate herself heavily with the popular new President.