Hot Spot
All the issues that are key to this fall's elections are on display in Ohio
Though his party has held the governorship for 16 years, Republican gubernatorial nominee Kenneth Blackwell says he's the new blood that's needed. "I've spent ... the last seven years opposing Bob Taft's tax-and-spend initiatives," he says. Blackwell, the current secretary of state, helped write an amendment to the state Constitution to limit tax and expenditure increases and rode it to victory in a tough primary this spring. But he backed off the amendment after Republicans in the state Assembly passed a watered-down version, prompting Democrats to cry flip-flop. Republicans called it a victory. "The General Assembly just enacted a major Blackwell proposal," says state GOP Political Director Jason Mauk, "and he hasn't even been elected yet."
Either way, Blackwell has managed to portray himself as a Republican outsider by taking the opposite tack from DeWine: burnishing his conservative credentials. Some establishment Republicans have actually been turned off by Blackwell's antitax activism and outspoken social conservatism; he has said he opposes abortion even to save the life of the mother. Yet polls show Blackwell, an African-American, picking up a third of Ohio's black vote, unheard of for a Republican. Strickland, whose district has a tiny black population, "has to go out and work for black votes," says Ohio Wesleyan University political scientist Carl Pinkele. "And I haven't seen evidence that he is."
The closeness of the Senate and gubernatorial races suggests that, for now, the candidates are as much a factor as the adverse political climate for Republicans. There is no clearer indicator than the Democrats' attempt to defeat troubled Bob Ney in the rural hill country of eastern Ohio. Ney's former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe the congressman, and National Journal ranks Ney as the most vulnerable House incumbent. In Ohio, however, even many Democrats say Ney's popularity makes him formidable. "Ney works his district," says Paul Tipps, a Democratic lobbyist in Columbus. "Everybody thinks they saw him over the weekend--every weekend." In a conservative rural district, Ney is playing up his opposition to abortion rights and gay rights and to free-trade deals like CAFTA. "People in Washington constantly come up to me and say, 'Are you surviving?'" Ney says. "But the issue of Abramoff ... less than 10 people have even raised it to me [in the district]."
Ney's challenger is Zack Space, a lawyer with little political experience who raised less than $150,000 through mid-April, the most current figure available. Ney raised $1.2 million in the same period. Marching in Chillicothe's Feast of the Flowering Moon Parade, Space attempts to tie Ney's alleged corruption to the lives of those in the district. "The trips to London, to Scotland," he says while handing out Tootsie Rolls to children. "He's been able to lead this lavish lifestyle that people here only dream about." But many analysts say Space's only real shot at the seat would come if Ney were indicted, as many expect. "We wouldn't mind if the indictment came down sometime in mid-August," when Ohio law would prevent the GOP from replacing Ney on the ballot, says state Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern. Ney tells U.S. News, however, that he will stay in the race even if indicted: " I'm in this race till the end."
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