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Valley View vs. Greenville
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.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > July > 29
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Martin Gottlieb: Fisher has much bigger problem than money
2010 ELECTION
Don’t bad-mouth Lee Fisher’s chances in November because you’ve been reading that he doesn’t have any money.
Bad-mouth them because of the prediction yielded by Allan Lichtman’s system for predicting election outcomes.
Regular readers, if any, may recall that this column highlighted the Lichtman system’s prediction in the 2008 presidential election. The column made the flat call of a Democratic victory before anybody knew who the Democratic candidate would be.
In other words, forget about the debates and Barack Obama’s alleged charisma and racial guilt and all that; forget, indeed, everything that happened during the fall campaign. The victory came because it was a Democratic year.
Old readers may remember similarly prescient input from these quarters well before the presidential elections of 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992 and 1988.
Well, Lichtman also has a similar system for predicting Senate race outcomes. It looks at eight factors — or “keys.” Standing alone, each is a pretty good predictor of outcomes. The idea is that if you combine them, you might approach foolproof, as the presidential system (with 13 keys) has, so far.
The Senate system also used to be noted regularly in this column, but it hasn’t been in very recent years. It’s not as powerful as the presidential system. It does often get more than 90 percent of the races right in a year. That makes it better than any other method I’ve come across, especially when you figure that the predictions come before the campaigns.
But the Senate system runs into problems in certain kinds of years. If there’s a great national tide in favor of one party — the Republicans in 1994, the Democrats in 2006 — the accuracy rate can fall. The keys are mainly about local factors.
With that in mind, we come to 2010 in Ohio.
I’m sorry I didn’t run this column sooner, because the system yielded a prediction well before Fisher’s money problems showed up. (He’s being outraised by about 9-1 at last report.)
Let’s look at each of the keys. Four must turn in the direction of the incumbent party if it is to get the prediction. The Republicans are the incumbents, with Sen. George Voinovich.
Key 1 goes to the Republicans if they are putting up the actual incumbent as a candidate. No. Voinovich is retiring.
Key 2 goes to the Republicans if their candidate is a major national figure. No. “Major” means major. We’re talking Hillary Clinton, John Glenn. Not a former Cabinet officer.
Key 3 is Republican if they avoided a tough primary. Yes.
Key 4 is Republican if the party got more than 60 percent of the votes the last time the seat was contested. Yes. Voinovich shellacked Eric Fingerhut.
Key 5 is Republican if they outspend the other side by 10 percent or more. Yes, almost certainly.
Key 6 is Republican if the Democratic candidate has never been in Congress or governor. Yes.
Key 7 is Republican if the Democrats hold the presidency. (Mid-terms tend to be bad for the president’s party.) Yes.
Key 8 is Republican if the Democrats did not have a serious primary. (A primary among the challengers is, for whatever reasons, typically followed by victory for them.) No. The Democrats had a serious primary.
That’s five keys for Portman; four even without the money key, which is enough.
If Fisher wins, he not only overcomes the keys, which is unusual. He does it in an unusual way. The usual way is to ride a party’s national tide. But one thing nobody is expecting in November is a Democratic tide.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Columns, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio politics
Editorial: Candidates love spinning Ohio tax statistics
Gov. Ted Strickland was just trying to score points when he said it was “appalling” that Auditor Mary Taylor, John Kasich’s running mate, volunteered that, as a private accountant, she counseled people to move to Florida to avoid getting hit with Ohio’s income and estate taxes.
Ms. Taylor’s job was to tell clients what their options were and to advise them how to save money. Do you think a lawyer shouldn’t tell a client how to stay out of jail? Same difference, somewhat.
The context was the usual, with Mr. Kasich and Ms. Taylor complaining that Ohio’s taxes are too high. Oddly, they’re making that case at the moment that much of the news is about Ohio’s coming $8 billion deficit in the next two-year budget.
The estate tax generated almost $334 million in 2009, 80 percent of which went to cities and townships where the decedents lived. Though some places are more dependent on the money than others — think older, wealthier suburbs — none of them wants to eliminate the tax. They have no reason to think the state would make up the loss, and they’re already scrambling to make budget.
Florida’s tax climate has come up in other conversations, too, lately. When LeBron James was deciding where to go, some commentators said Florida would be particularly appealing to someone in Mr. James’ income bracket. (Ohio, New York and Illinois all have state income taxes.)
But talk to accountants and they’ll tell you that deciding where to live based on taxes gets complicated. If, for example, you’re wealthy and believe you’ll be going to the great beyond soon, you might, indeed, want to settle in one of the 29 states that don’t have an inheritance or estate tax.
On the other hand, if you’re planning to live a while, Florida does have financial disadvantages. The property taxes are high, and some people are put off by steep insurance rates and fees. On a per-capita basis, Ohio residents and Florida residents pay about the same in taxes; actually, the latest available data says Floridians pay about $200 more.
In short, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to whether this or that state is cheaper to live in. It just depends.
Both Ohio’s income and estate taxes have, from time to time, come under fire. Currently, Citizens United to End Ohio’s Estate Tax is circulating petitions that would force the legislature to consider a repeal of that levy.
(The best point critics make is that the 6 percent tax rate kicks in at a low threshold — $338,333. Above $500,000, the tax goes up to 7 percent. When a home, for instance, is part of an estate, you can quickly get to $338,333 in assets. Moreover, the tax isn’t indexed, meaning the financial trigger becomes increasingly lower over time. The Ohio Department of Taxation says that one in 14 estates pays some tax.)
There are genuine and important debates to be had about what taxes make sense and how high they should be. But so far, neither the governor or his opponent really wants to have them. They’re content to take cheap shots.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
