Full house beats inside straight

Astronaut John Glenn. (NASA photo/via the Associated Press)

Today's Ohio politics quiz:

Q: How many members of the Ohio General Assembly does it take to equal one John Glenn?
A: Considerably more than a quorum.

Mark Mallory spent much of the past week trotting out present and former members of the Ohio legislature, Democrat and Republican, to endorse his candidacy for Cincinnati mayor.

His poker hand included two former state senate presidents, Stanley Aronoff and Richard Finan, and a passel of current state legislators who serve with him in Columbus.

Not a bad hand, but his opponent, David Pepper, raked in the chips Thursday at the Rookwood Pottery restaurant in Mount Adams, where Glenn showed up to offer his support.

The former astronaut and four-term U.S. senator from Ohio has been out of office for a while, but there is still no more potent political name in the Buckeye State than the Democrat whom the late governor Jim Rhodes used to refer to as "The Spaceman.''

About 100 Pepper supporters crowded onto a balcony overlooking the old Rookwood kilns late Thursday afternoon for a glimpse of the senator, and perhaps a photo of themselves side-by-side with a genuine American hero. School kids clutched photographs and copies of Glenn's memoirs in hopes of an autograph. Glenn, of course, accommodated them all.

When was the last time you saw a school kid ask for a politician's autograph?

A word from John Glenn still means a lot to people in his home state, whether they are of the generation who remember him as a young astronaut hurtling through the earth's atmosphere in a flaming tin can in his Mercury days, or whether they are of a younger generation who recalls him as a 77-year-old being shot into earth orbit in the space shuttle Discovery seven years ago.

That is why a decidedly unpopular Republican governor, Bob Taft, turns to Glenn to save his bacon and be the principal spokesman for Taft's Issue 1, a $2 billion plan for job creation and road construction.

Before coming to Rookwood Thursday, Glenn shot some 30-second TV spots for the Issue 1 campaign that Ohioans will start seeing with great frequency very soon.

Imagine if it were Bob Taft's face on those commercials rather than John Glenn. Even the most fervent proponents say that, if that were the case, Iusse 1 would be doomed.

So there is little wonder that Pepper was beaming like a school kid at the Rookwood Thursday, apologizing to Glenn for praising him so effusively.

"I know you don't like having a fuss made over you,'' said the giddy mayoral contender. "But I have to.''

You'd be giddy, too, if you were in Pepper's shoes. He has something that most Ohio politicians, Democrat and Republican, from Conneaut to Cleves, would sell their first-born for -- the "Right Stuff'' stamp of approval.

State Sen. Mark Mallory picks up the endorsement of two powerful former presidents of the Ohio Senate: Dick Finan (left), and Stanley J. Aronoff (right). (Photo courtesy the Mallory campaign.)