Petro who?

This may or may not be an indication of which Republican candidate for governor is the most confident about Tuesday's election, but we throw it out there for what it's worth.

Ken Blackwell raced up and down I-75 Saturday in his campaign bus, courting western Ohio Republicans in the small towns and rural counties that line the highway.

While Blackwell was doing that, Jim Petro had a bus ride of his own, working the corridor of I-71 between Columbus and Cleveland.

In his campaign stops Saturday, Blackwell barely mentioned Petro's name - in fact, only once that we heard. Petro, on the other hand, seemed to talk about little else, rattling off a long list of reasons why he is a better choice for governor, including a charge that Blackwell's campaign is full of "gimmicks and not substance'' and that Blackwell's spending in the Ohio Secretary of State's office has increased twice as fast as that of state goverment as a whole.

Blackwell, on the other hand, mentioned Petro only once - in a McDonald's on the banks of Grand Lake St. Marys about 130 miles north of Cincinnati. Petro, Blackwell said, "is a good guy. But he happens to be Taft Light.''