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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > December > 02
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Martin Gottlieb: Anti-Obama backlash is problem for Ohio Republicans first
After a meeting of the Ohio Republican Party in September to slate candidates for 2010, John Kasich, who got the nod for governor, said, “I think (President) Obama has performed a miracle: He’s united the Republican Party.”
But then, in New York, the Republicans managed to lose a Republican congressional district in a Republican year by turning to internal war. The division in that race — pitting the Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/“tea party” super-conservatives against the merely conservative party establishment — is now turning up everywhere.
In South Carolina, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has been harshly censured by the Charleston County Republican Party after such infractions as insisting that the party must not be too conservative in some sections of the country, and voting for a Barack Obama nominee for Supreme Court, and working with Democrat John Kerry to put together a proposal on global warming.
Big ideological splits are developing over statewide primaries in Florida, California and elsewhere. The pattern is that big names or established politicians with proven records as vote getters are being challenged by smaller names with big appeal to the party’s famously conservative “base.”
All of which is not to say that Kasich was completely wrong in seeing Obama as an asset to his party. If he had used the word “energized” instead of “united,” he would have been completely right. And that’s important. The best bet is that anti-Obama energy — passion, determination — will prove important next November.
For now, though, it has Republicans taking aim at Republicans. Look at Ohio. Under some circumstances, one might expect Mike DeWine to be a consensus candidate for attorney general, given that he has won multiple statewide elections (before losing a Senate re-election bid in 2008). In truth, he still might breeze to the nomination.
But he’s being challenged by a prosecutor from Delaware County, Dave Yost, who’s getting support from people who have always found DeWine insufficiently rigid in his conservatism.
Yost has been endorsed by the Butler County Republican Party. The chairman of the party in Clermont County told the Cincinnati Enquirer he expects the same result there. Warren County conservative activist Lori Viars acknowledges that DeWine is acceptably conservative on abortion, but she’s still mad about his stand against a gay-marriage constitutional ban a few years ago. (The fight was over wording.)
DeWine’s moderation on gun issues is another problem for him.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, Rob Portman — a consensus candidate of the party establishment if there ever was one — is being challenged by Cleveland-area car dealer Tom Ganley.
Ganley is also coming from the right, though there isn’t much room over there on the other side of Portman. And Ganley has his own money to spend. He has already started running television ads.
State Sen. Jon Husted also faces a challenge from the right in his bid to be the Republican candidate for secretary of state. His opponent is Sandra O’Brien, who upset the appointed Republican state treasurer to win a primary in 2006, only to lose the general election.
Then there’s the case of U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, of the 2nd District. In a congressional career marked by embarrassment, her big selling point in her overwhelmingly Republican district has always been her staunch, unquestionable conservatism. It’s carried her through.
But now Warren County Commissioner Michael Kilburn — he of the “filthy money” complaint about the federal stimulus package — is opposing her in the primary. He thinks it’s about time the district was represented by a conservative.
None of these races may represent the tea-party people at their most potent. The establishment certainly should be able to hold off the challenges.
But that doesn’t mean the party establishment will be unaffected. First of all, there’s the question of how far to the right the challengers will be able to pull the established candidates during the campaign. Conventional wisdom holds that the most conservative candidate has an advantage in a Republican primary. Who will be scared by that, and how scared?
And what about the future? An incumbent hates nothing more than a primary. How far to the right will the incumbents go to avoid such challenges?
These are bigger questions than whether the Republicans themselves will be hurt by these primaries. That’s seriously unlikely. The New York case was peculiar, involving three parties and three names before the voters during the campaign.
Typically, primaries do not harm a party unless the party remains divided afterwards. That’s unlikely to happen to the Republicans so long as Obama is on his current course.
But that’s speculation. What’s known for sure is that the conservative backlash against Obama is, first on the calendar, a problem for Obama’s opponents.
Permalink | Comments (18) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics, National Politics, Ohio politics
Editorial: Local educators deserved voice in funding talks
Gov. Ted Strickland’s education reform plan, passed by the legislature during the summer, sought to add a new step to the school funding process. The idea was to force the state to consider the cost of educating kids when it begins the funding debate.
Ohio’s school funding level has typically been devised every other year as part of the state budget debate, a process that critics have derisively called “residual budgeting.” In other words, whatever is left over after other spending levels are set goes to schools.
Instead, the state has now created a committee known as the Ohio School Funding Advisory Council, whose members were appointed over the last month. The council begins meeting in January to develop recommendations to the legislature for the 2011 budget.
With 28 members on the council, one might expect that some key players from the Miami Valley would be included. But the big names in education mostly are not there, including University of Dayton education dean Tom Lasley; Thomas B. Fordham Foundation vice president Terry Ryan; and Dayton school Superintendent Kurt Stanic. Another possibility might have been former Gov. Bob Taft, who is now working on education policy at UD .
Also not included are Wright State University education dean Greg Bernhardt; Montgomery County Educational Service Center Superintendent Frank DePalma; and Dayton Early College Academy Principal Judy Hennessey.
The Miami Valley is not completely unrepresented. Among Gov. Ted Strickland’s seven appointees are Dayvenia Chesney, Chief Operating Officer of the Miami Valley Child Development Centers; and Robyn Essman, budget director for Columbus Public Schools and a Dayton resident.
Ms. Chesney is the only appointee chosen to represent the interests of pre-school children — an important role, given the state’s recent cutbacks in aid for early childhood education.
Ms. Essman previously worked for Dayton public schools, where she helped devise a better system of tracking charter school students and ensuring that the correct amount of aid is flowing to those schools. Interestingly, she was appointed to a council slot set aside for “community school sponsors,” since the Columbus school district sponsors charters. She has a good grasp of those issues.
One of Senate President Bill Harris’ appointees is John Scheu, the superintendent of Hardin-Houston schools in southern Shelby County. Mr. Scheu is thoughtful about school funding and has been critical of Gov. Strickland’s education reform plan. He laments added costs through new mandates, such as a new requirement that all districts offer full-day kindergarten, without funding them. He’s the only school district superintendent on the council. He is not representative of superintendents in his views on the Strickland plan.
For two slots that were set aside for teachers, Gov. Strickland appointed key leaders of the two statewide teachers unions — Ohio Federation of Teachers President Sue Taylor and Bill Leibensperger, vice president of the Ohio Education Association.
The name that has come in for the most discussion is Nathan DeRolph. It was Mr. DeRolph’s father who sued Ohio almost two decades ago, when he was 15, claiming schools were inadequately funded and sparking a decade-long battle that resulted in four Ohio Supreme Court decisions.
The council has some strengths, including diversity of experience. But the absence of the most experienced, thoughtful people who are familiar with the issues facing Dayton area school districts is disappointing.
The commission has an important role. It needs all the credibility it can get. It could use more.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
