Neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night.....

.....can separate a politician from a room full of money.

Bob McEwen, trying to up-end Jean Schmidt in the May 2 Republican congressional primary, was up and at 'em before dawn Tuesday morning, sliding into downtown Cincinnati through the early-morning snowstorm with his wife Liz for a $250-a-plate fundraiser at the Queen City Club.

The headliner at the McEwen event was former GOP vice presidential candidate and HUD secretary Jack Kemp, a former Buffalo Bills quarterback for whom Tuesday's version of a Cincinnati blizzard was nothing more than a snow squall.

Kemp, who served with McEwen in Congress in the Reagan years, gave his usual stump speech extolling the virtues of tax cuts and free market economics, declaring that the present Republican-contreolled Congress is a little short on effective advocates for his point of view.

"Frankly, there aren't many people who can articulate our ideas,'' said Kemp. "I'm embarrassed by the Republican party at this time.''

He also repeated exactly the same opening joke that he used last spring when he appeared at another McEwen event at the Eastgate Holiday Inn - a shaggy-dog story about how he gave a protestor at the 2004 Republican National Convention his comeuppance, a story which does not improve with age.

"Frankly,'' to borrow the word Kemp is fond of starting sentences with, the nearly 100 Republicans in the audience were at least as interesting as the featured speaker.

Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis was front-and-center, and so, too, were two of the founders ofthe national right-to-life movement, John and Barbara Willke, the couple who created the local anti-abortion group that Schmidt used to chair.

McEwen's campaign staff was sweating bullets shortly before the 7:45 a.m. fundraiser began, fearing that the foul weather would mean Kemp would be performing before a half-empty room. Many of the faithful showed up late, but they showed up; and ended up filling nearly all the tables in the basement meeting room.