Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Governor (Open, Republican-held)
Ted Strickland (D) 60 - Kenneth Blackwell (R) 39
The Ohio Republican Party is in a world of hurt. For starters, Governor Bob Taft is the least popular governor in the country, sitting on a 15% approval rating in some polls. The party has faced any number of scandals in the past two years, my favorite of which is the Republican fundraiser who convinced the state Bureau of Workers' Compensation to invest $50 million into his coin business. Now, whoops, $12 million worth of state-owned coins are missing. So if you get injured on the job, make sure you do it in Ohio. Even without the scandal and rank incompetence, I suspect Democrats would be winning the Ohio governor's office anyway. Ted Strickland is a congressman, minister and avid hunter (he went hunting with John Kerry the week before the 2004 elections), and he has done a fantastic job of keeping Ohio's ideologically diverse Democratic base on his side. Ken Blackwell, on the other hand, is Ohio's Secretary of State, who along with Florida's Katherine Harris will directly lead to a series of laws over the next decade or two preventing state elections coordinators from supporting candidates. (Bush has called Blackwell "a nut" despite Blackwell co-chairing Bush's 2004 Ohio campaign.) Blackwell is also a Pat Robertson/Alan Keyes conservative when it comes to social issues, a position upon which he has inexplicably decided to focus his campaign. This one won't be close, and thank goodness.

Senate (Republican-held)
Sherrod Brown (D) 54 - Mike DeWine (R) 46
I like the symmetry between this race and the governor's race: here the Democrats are running a candidate who might be considered too liberal to win in the general election, whereas Strickland might be considered too conservative to be a Democrat. The campaigns seem to have worked well together, though, and tomorrow they're both going to win. It took me a while to like Sherrod Brown. He declined to run for the Senate seat, and seeing no strong Democrat running, Paul Hackett, hero of the 2005 special election for Ohio's 2nd district, decided to run himself. When Mike DeWine's poll numbers dropped a little further, Brown reversed course and jumped into the race, and then Democratic establishment folks like Chuck Schumer shoved Hackett out. Subsequently I discovered that Hackett had done little to no fundraising, so while he still might have won the primary, there was no way he could have won the general election. So I started liking Sherrod Brown more, especially since he's solidly progressive, unafraid to admit it, and an awesome campaigner. I saw some of his ads and realized that there's an Ohio accent for the first time; he talks exactly the same way my cousins do. That was awesome.

OH-01 (Republican-held)
John Cranley (D) 50 - Steve Chabot (R) 48
I'm not sure what Chabot has done so wrong (besides the worst comb-over in Congress, truly an accomplishment) beyond being your standard everyday knee-jerk Republican, but he does have one of the most African-American districts of any Republican in Congress, and that I can't support. Cranley seems like a pretty good guy, and he's managed to link Chabot to Bob Taft and George Bush's scandals to the point where this race is a tossup, so I hope he pulls this one out.

OH-02 (Republican-held)
Victoria Wulsin (D) 51 - Jean Schmidt (R) 48
This may be wishful thinking, but I can make a pretty good case for hoping for a Democratic win here. This seat became open in the middle of 2005 when Bush appointed Rob Portman to be US Trade Representative, and given that this Cincinnati-area district was his most successful district in Ohio, conventional wisdom held that the Republican primary would amount to the general election. Jean Schmidt won the primary and then ran into a head of steam called Paul Hackett, a lawyer and Iraq war veteran who seemed not to care that he wasn't supposed to win. Hackett proudly promoted Democratic causes and paired his policy views with his own aggressive style, calling Bush a liar and saying he didn't give a whit whether someone else wanted to get a same-sex marriage. He excited Democrats nationwide and seemed a threat to win the thing outright, falling four points short. Congresswoman Schmidt wasn't done, though: when former Marine, conservative Democrat, Iraq War supporter and 24-year U.S. Rep. John Murtha reluctantly concluded that it was time to bring the troops home, Schmidt actually went onto the House floor and told Murtha that Marines don't cut and run. Even Republicans booed (you're not supposed to attack specific House members on the floor), and Schmidt tried to excuse herself by saying she didn't know Murtha was a Marine. She dodged a primary challenge this spring, and now Democratic candidate Victoria Wulsin has stayed close, even leading in some polls. I'm not sure how Democratic this district has really become, but it's clearly more so for Hackett's enthusiasm, and I think he deserves a lot of credit. This district also serves as an example of how supposedly Republican districts can turn blue (or at least less red) with an aggressive local Democratic Party infrastructure.

OH-06 (Open, Democratic-held)
Charlie Wilson (D) 55 - Chuck Blasdel (R) 45
This is the seat that Ted Strickland is giving up to run for governor. Charlie Wilson was considered a strong favorite to win this seat until his campaign failed to come up with the 50 signatures required to run. Now, I know campaigns make mistakes all the time, and really this was some moron staffer and not representative of an entire dysfunctional operation, but some campaigns have much tougher signature thresholds than that. California recall supporters had to submit over 700,000 valid signatures there to make the recall happen. The Wilson campaign then had to gear up for a massive write-in effort to make sure he won the primary (with Republicans doing their part to try to puff up minor Democratic write-in candidates to deny Wilson the nomination), but, as it turns out, the write-in effort wound up turning the Wilson campaign into a whip-smart organization and introduced a lot of voters in the district to Charlie Wilson in the process. That was a close shave, but he should win this one handily.

OH-12 (Republican-held)
Pat Tiberi (R) 58 - Bob Shamansky (D) 41
Shamansky, oddly enough, is a former congressman himself, having served one term in the early 80s. This election is mostly discussed nationally in the sense that if this is a truly Democratic wave election, even Pat Tiberi could lose. He won't.

OH-13 (Open, Democratic-held)
Betty Sutton (D) 56 - Craig Foltin (R) 43
This is the seat that Sherrod Brown is leaving to run for Senate. This district leans Democratic to begin with, but the toxic atmosphere for Republicans in Ohio and the strong Democratic candidate put this seat out of play. Sutton used the support of EMILY's List (Early Money Is Like Yeast - get it?) to win a crowded primary that included a shopping mall heiress in her 20s and a former congressman named Tom Sawyer.

OH-15 (Republican-held)
Mary Jo Kilroy (D) 53 - Deborah Pryce (R) 45
This Columbus-area district is trending away from the Republicans, and the incumbent congresswoman is the fourth-ranking Republican in the House and played a leadership role in pretty much everything Congress has done in the last few years. Since Congress has a worse approval rating than even President Bush, I'm picking Kilroy to pull this one out. Pryce also just walked out of an interview with CNN a couple of days ago, publishing a statement that "what's happening in Iraq is not a direct reflection on me." That's a fascinating thought, but do you think that if a member of the House Republican leadership announced that she would not support the war, we would have rushed in nearly so quickly with no plan for the aftermath? I don't think she gets off so easily.

OH-18 (Open, Republican-held)
Zack Space (D) 55 - Joy Padgett (R) 44
Bob Ney, the current congressman here, faces a maximum of ten years for his attempts to cover up the Jack Abramoff scandal, so he's not a real viable candidate this time around. I'm not sure Zack Space is necessarily a viable candidate either, but when Ney withdrew after the primary Republican party leaders got to pick the nominee, and they stupidly let Ney make the call. Here's a tip for all you scandal-mongers out there: if you want your party to hold the seat after you get caught, don't let the Democrat call his opponent "Bob Ney's chosen successor." Also, for some reason Padgett's bankruptcy is a strike against her. This district will be a top Republican target in 2008.