These guys don't like to lose
If you are Ken Blackwell, the news release that came out of the Ted Strickland camp Friday afternoon may be worse than another poll showing you 20-plus points behind.
The Strickland campaign was trumpeting an endorsement from the Associated General Contractors of Ohio, a organization made of of hundreds of union and non-union building contractors around the state, and a group whose members do business regularly with state and local government.
Backing a loser avails them naught. And they can read the polls just as well as anybody.
On Sept. 15, the association dragged both candidates for Ohio governor into their Columbus office to be interviewed by the association's board of directors, who put eight questions on the table -- many of them dealing with how each candidate would make it easier to deal with state and local governments, including school boards, when they are seeking public contracts.
Apparently, they liked Strickland's answers the best.
In the press release, AGC president Gary Haas pointed out that Strickland comes from a family of cement masons and worked in construction himself in his younger days.
To make it worse for Blackwell, the Strickland campaign pointed out that this is the first time the contractors' group has endorsed a Democrat for Ohio governor.
8 Comments:
at 7:59 PM, September 29, 2006 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 1:47 PM, September 30, 2006 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 2:08 PM, September 30, 2006 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 5:03 PM, September 30, 2006 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 5:57 PM, September 30, 2006 
John in Cincinnati said...
-
-
at 9:50 PM, October 01, 2006 
John in Cincinnati said...
-
-
at 1:00 PM, October 02, 2006 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 2:32 PM, October 02, 2006 
Anonymous said...
-
-
Post a Comment*"To make it worse for Blackwell, the Strickland campaign pointed out that this is the first time the contractors' group has endorsed a Democrat for Ohio governor."
When you have a history of corruption as egregious as Blackwell's, this should come as no surprise.
Thanks to J. Kenneth Blackwell and his friends at the Board of Elections and Diebold, we have a pResident in "our whitehouse" who claims to be a devout christian while at the same time promotes torture, mass murder in Iraq and lies to the American people on a daily basis. Thanks Ken. May you rot in hell!
These guy hate to lose so they shut out other candidates that are on the ballot from the debates. They are crooked cowards so they put on a charade disquised as a debate where they chose the audience members, pick the questions and the media/stenographers to ask them.
It's all well coordinated so they don't get questioned about their horrible records or where all their big contributions are coming from.
This isn't democracy, it's plutocracy!
Blackwell was incompetent in administering elections in 88 counties so why should Ohioans trust him to run the entire state?
Just read his own report on how the Lucas County (Dem Stronghold) '04 election was administered:
• Failure to maintain ballot security;
• Inability to implement and maintain a trackable system for voter ballot
reconciliation;
• Failure to prepare and develop a plan for the processing of the voluminous
amount of voter registration forms received;
• Issuance and acceptance of incorrect absentee ballot forms;
• Manipulation of the process involving the 3% recount;
• Disjointed implementation of the Directive regarding the removal of Nader and
Camejo from the ballot;
• Failure to properly issue hospital ballots in accordance with statutory
requirements;
• Failure to maintain the security of poll books during the official canvass;
• Failure to examine campaign finance reports in a timely manner;
• Failure to guard and protect public documents;
• Lack of staff election plan;
• Current administrative operations; and,
• Non-compliant areas of the administrative oversight status mandates.
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/electionsvoter/lucas/LucasCountyInvestigationReport.pdf#search=%22Lucas%20County%20Investigation%22
I read the City Beat article where Marian Spenser referred to Blackwell as an opportunist.
"Marian Spencer doesn't mince words. She is an African American, 86 years old and a civil rights warhorse of the 1950s and '60s in Cincinnati, fighting to integrate Cincinnati public places such as Coney Island amusement park and then its swimming pool. The battle lasted, incredibly enough, until 1961. In the mid-1980s, she served on city council, including a year as vice mayor.
"I'm 86 and I have thought about a lot of things over the years, and I don't need a lot of time to think about Ken," Spencer says at the get-go. "I've been around long enough to see all the changes in his life, and they have been so varied. I see him -- and this is very harsh -- but I see him as the ultimate opportunist. It's that word I'll give you again in capital letters -- it's OPPORTUNISM.
"This is the hand he has played. He has waffled, he has moved in ways that best served him at the time. I think he would be as opportunistic a governor as he was a councilman and secretary of state."
Curious about Marian's words I decided to do some research. I had to use microfiche. I found that Blackwell squeaked onto council in his first run by only 500 votes. But in his second run he was the 2nd highest vote getter outpolling other incumbents including the mayor and vice-mayor. According to a November 11, 1979 (B-7) article in the Enquirer, Blackwell had made public comments about the appropriateness of low-income public housing in Westwood and Northside two months before the election even though the issue had no bearing on the council election. And as you can probably imagine Blackwell polled very well in white communities on the east side and did especially well in Westwood. In fact he trounced four other candidates, including the mayor and vice-mayor.
"What bothered Blackwell's fellow Chaterites was that council was not asked to support or condemn the proposals (public housing) only to determine whether they fit the plan. That they did was not contested.
snip
In his victory sppech Blackwell claimed that these comments were not due to "political expediency".
He also said that, "While race was a factor in some of the resistance, it was not the only factor."
I think Marian is right.
I won't be voting for Ken Blackwell because he's done a terrible job administering elections. And for those of you who may not know, that's one of the key responsibilities of being Secretary of State. Rather than admit problems, Blackwell has either pretended that everything worked well--as he did in a Washington Times editorial and the same piece run in the Enquirer, Thanksgiving Day, 2004 -- OR -- he's blamed any problems on the 88 county Boards of Elections.
When you're the chief executive officer (CEO) of an operation -- and the SoS is CEO of elections in Ohio -- it's your job to make things run smoothly, and your responsibility when they don't. They haven't and Blackwell hasn't.
Because of poor voting machine allocation in 2004 and huge lines, almost 150,000 Ohio voters went home without voting. That's horrible in a democracy. And according the the DNC Ohio election report, those voters were equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. That should make both parties extremely angry.
After Florida 2000 the federal government wanted provisional ballots used to ensure that every legitimate voter got to vote, yet in Ohio in 2004 over 35,000 provisional ballots (about 22 percent) were not counted. Many, many of those not counted were because a voter was in the right building but in the wrong line. That's no way to run a democracy.
Some might say that was just because of the large turnout in 2004. Yet, the same things happened in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) in the primary this year, when turnout was only 20-some percent. Ultimately it's bad management, and that means Ken Blackwell in his role as election CEO.
No thanks, I don't want that kind of mismanagment in the most important office in our state.
How bad is this for the chief election officer of our state?
Last spring the courts held the elections Blackwell's run violated the constitutional rights of racial minorities, the poor and the disabled.
Last summer his voter registration rules were held to be unconstitutional for the same reasons.
Now he's being sued to make him do his job and issue directives for boards of election so they will know how to handle election day procedures. Fortunately a judge has agreed to issue a ruling by mid-October.
They don't like to lose so they rfuse to debate anyone else that's on the ballot. Their to scared to debate Libertarian or Green party candidates because they will be exposed for the corporate owned tools that they are.
Dr. Bill Pierce is an economist so they don't want to debate him on that subject. Blackwell doesn't want Dr. Bob Fitrakis talking about the massive disenfranchisement of African Americans that Blackwell caused in the 2004 election.
Then again either does Carl Weiser.
The opportunity is up to African Americans, who else is offering a six billion dollar capitalization plan?
* Our online blogs currently are hosted and operated by a third party, namely, Blogger.com. You are now leaving the Cincinnati.Com website and will be linked to Blogger.com's registration page. The Blogger.com site and its associated services are not controlled by Cincinnati.Com and different terms of use and privacy policy will apply to your use of the Blogger.com site and services.
By proceeding and/or registering with Blogger.com you agree and understand that Cincinnati.Com is not responsible for the Blogger.com site you are about to access or for any service you may use while on the Blogger.com site.
<< Home