No concrete plans for ad

In Columbus, Democratic and Republican pols all make a point of showing up for the Shamrock Club’s candidates’ night which was held on Wednesday. The Shamrock Club is the city’s largest Irish organization and hosts the largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in town, closing downtown streets for three hours.

The scuttlebutt swirling around the party, along with the kegs of beer, was all about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland's supposed faux pas in his Cleveland debate with Republican Ken Blackwell that afternoon.

Immediately after the debate, the Blackwell camp sent an e-mail and video clip to a zillion closest friends saying Strickland had “demeaned” Ohio’s working men and women saying, “Without education, I probably would be doing what my brothers have done with their lives, finishing concrete for a living.”

The story being floated at the Shamrock Club was that labor was “mad as hell” at Strickland and that Blackwell intended to use the clip in a campaign ad.

Bill Anthony, chair of the Franklin County Democratic Party and a local leader of the OCSEA-AFSCME labor union, said it is not so that labor is upset with Strickland. “I used to pour concrete,” he said. “There’s nothing demeaning in that.”

Blackwell’s campaign spokesman, Carlo LoParo, said that “it was a stupid thing to say” but that the campaign has no plans to make an ad out of it.