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Husted, Strickland await Supreme Court rulings to determine fates

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By William Hershey, Staff Writer 5:38 PM Saturday, August 22, 2009

COLUMBUS — It turns out that Gov. Ted Strickland and state Sen. Jon Husted still have something in common after all.

The political fates of both men rest with the Ohio Supreme Court.

Strickland and Husted aren’t likely to show up together at the Art Deco building housing the high court.

The cases affecting them are separate. And very different.

Strickland and Husted don’t pal around publicly like they did in the buddy-buddy days of 2007 when Husted, then the Republican House speaker, helped push Democrat Strickland’s first budget through the legislature with just a whiff of dissent.

No, their togetherness is a testament to the court’s position as an equal, but often quieter partner in state government, right alongside the executive and legislative branches.

Husted has asked the court to settle the dispute over whether Kettering is his legal residence.

He has said the demands of his job as senator keep him in Columbus so he sometimes lives with his wife and kids in her Upper Arlington home. His legal residence is Kettering, however, where he says he plans to return when his term in public office ends.

Until the issue is resolved, a potential cloud hovers over Husted’s campaign for secretary of state.

As for Strickland, the court has the ability to blow a hole in the delicately balanced state budget bigger than Duck Run, the governor’s speck-on-the map hometown in Scioto County.

LetOhioVote.Org has asked the court to affirm the right of the voters to decide whether video slot machines should be placed at Ohio’s seven racetracks as the state budget calls for.

If the court agrees, the group will launch a petition drive to put the issue on the November 2010 ballot and halt the state’s ability to begin collecting the $933 million the slots are supposed to generate over two years.

Without that money, Strickland will have to shuffle more than Muhammad Ali at his most nimble to balance the budget, a shuffle the governor most certainly wants to avoid next year when he’s up for re-election.

There’s no telling how the court will rule in either case.

But both will put a spotlight on a court that could be in flux depending on what happens in next year’s election. Three Supreme Court seats, including the one occupied by retiring Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, are up for election.

No Democrat has won a Supreme Court race since 2000 and Republicans have held all seven seats since 2007.

Democrats hope to break through next year.

Already two former Ohio State Bar Association presidents — Gary Leppla, an attorney from Dayton, and Mary Jane Trapp, a state appeals court judge from northeastern Ohio — have expressed interested in running as Democrats.

“We’re going to have candidates who are formidable,” vowed Chris Redfern, state Democratic chairman.

Republicans concede nothing.

Justice Maureen O’Connor, who got more votes statewide last year than President Barack Obama, is expected to head the GOP court ticket as a candidate for chief justice. Republican incumbents Paul Pfeifer and Judith Ann Lanzinger are expected to seek re-election.

“Ohioans have shown an overwhelming preference for a conservative judicial philosophy on the state’s highest court,” Kevin DeWine, state GOP chairman, said in an e-mail. “And we’ll fight aggressively to defend it.”

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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