Neurotic Democrat

First, you can download the official general elections ballot here.

I’m going to do this in ballot order, in one long post. Disclaimer: I tend to be a straight ticket voter, and this year is no exception. Feel free to cut along the dotted lines and take this with you into the voting booth.

For President and Vice-President:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Shocker! On my sample ballot, Obama-Biden was listed fifth, even beneath Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, Socialist Party candidate Brian Moore, and Ralph Nader. McCain was listed first. This is the kind of thing that gives Neurotic Dems fits.

For Attorney General:

Richard Cordray. This is the special election to fill out the remaining two years of disgraced Democratic Attorney General Marc Dann’s term. Cordray is a Democrat. Republicans have been trying to link him to Dann. But, as the Columbus Dispatch noted in an editorial endorsing Cordray:

Republican attempts to tie Cordray to Dann don’t hold water. The two have virtually no history; they didn’t coordinate efforts or even donate to each other’s statewide campaigns in 2006 and made only perfunctory campaign appearances together.

In endorsing Cordray, the Dispatch had this to say:

His legal background is impressive. Former Attorney General Lee Fisher created the position of state solicitor for Cordray in 1993, modeling it after the federal solicitor general. In that post, he represented Ohio before numerous state and federal courts. In his career, he has argued six cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

As an officeholder, Cordray brings fresh thinking to bear on old problems. While serving as Franklin County treasurer, he used a variety of approaches to squeeze unpaid taxes out of scofflaws and collect revenues for the county. Some responded to simple letters from Cordray’s office that warned he would file tax liens or report them to the Better Business Bureau, credit bureaus and local banks if they didn’t pay overdue taxes. In other cases, he auctioned delinquent tax accounts to banks and other financial institutions.

For Representative to Congress (13th District)

Betty Sutton. No surprise that I’d support the Democrat here. I was disappointed that Sutton did not vote for the $700 billion bailout the first time around. The right thing to do was to support that bill, as unpopular as it may have been. But Sutton, who sits on the House Judiciary and Rules committees, is a reliable Democrat — she’s voted with the Dems 98.2 percent of the time — and, if elected, Obama is going to need all the friends in Congress he can find to help him actualize his ambitious agenda, from health care to tax reform.

For State Representative:

Brian G. Williams. As the NY Times just reported, “GOP Senses Opportunity in Statehouse Races.” The Democrats made gains nationally in state houses two years ago; Republicans see a down ballot opportunity to reverse those gains this year, and to flip control in a half a dozen states. And with a new census in 2010, those elected now will likely have a say in redistricting. Nothing hurts partisan comity more than gerrymandering. The Ohio Senate currently has 21 Republicans and 12 Dems — so we need a strong Democratic voice.

Williams, an Akron native, is a Democrat, currently serving his second term in office. (His Web site is here.) He spent more than 35 years as a teacher, eventually becoming superintendent of schools.  In the state house, he has proposed increasing penalties for animal cruelty and helping disturbed children and domestic violence victims. He supports a measure to allow schools and nonprofits to hold fundraisers, which would ease the burden on taxpayers.

For County Executive:

Russ Pry. Endorsing the Democrat, the Akron Beacon Journal makes an important case:

His most notable accomplishment involved steering the county role in the Goodyear headquarters project on the east side of Akron. The county proved indispensable, and not simply for its financial support. The moment pointed to the improved focus and commitment of the county in economic development. The change was evident, too, in the county contributing to the successful effort to keep Bridgestone-Firestone in the city. Pry has been moving forward on several fronts to achieve a coherent strategy, including plans to discourage poaching, communities competing in ways harmful to the regional economy.

For Prosecuting Attorney:

Sherri Bevan Walsh. While out to lunch a few weeks ago with Neurotic Dem contributor GRosen, Sherri stopped at our table to chat. She was amiable and politically savvy, recounting the story about how she won her first election against a better-known opponent who came out with comments that voters perceived as sexist. I liked her a lot, and GRosen’s endorsement only seals the deal.

For Clerk of Court of Common Pleas:

Daniel Horrigan. My neighbors with the McCain signs on their lawns have Horrigan’s opponent’s signs on their lawn, too. That can’t be good.

For Sheriff:

Drew Alexander. He’s a Republican. Possibly the first I’m ever going to vote for. True, he’s running un-opposed. Still, I like what he says on the Summit County Web site. He seems focused on community and youth. Here’s a snippet:

“We have two main objectives - to take care of the citizens and to take care of the officers.” …

To accomplish what he has set out to do, the Sheriff is building a partnership between the citizens and the deputies.

“We are going to involve the citizens in police work. I like the idea of the Citizens Academy where citizens can see police training, even do some training with the police, ride in cruisers and have some hands-on experience. And of course, block clubs should continue.”

The Sheriff supports community policing, a partnership between the community and the police as well as community involvement in policing. “I’ve found out that in police work you need to meet people face-to-face - not just through the window of your cruiser,” he said.

The Sheriff also suggests an idea that overlaps community policing. “I’ve been looking into crime prevention through environmental design. It’s clear. One way to prevent crime is through better and smarter design of our homes, our buildings, our public housing and our streets. Just think about the value of the porches on the houses in our older neighborhoods. The people in their homes and on the streets of our County can be and should be part of the policing of their own communities.”

Love that point about environmental design. I’m now officially a ticket-splitter. I wonder if I’ll start getting more calls from pollsters next cycle.

For County Fiscal Officer:

 John A. Donofrio. His name is on all the gas pumps. Read more about him here.

For County Engineer:

Alan Brubaker. His campaign slogan: “Build it Right the First Time.” His Web site, here.

UPDATE: Largely on the advice of poster Irv Sugerman, below, I decided to vote for Republican Greg Bachman for county engineer. So I voted for two Republicans this time around (see also, Drew Alexander). Taking a cue from the top of the ticket — reaching out across the aisle.

For Member of County Council:

Frank Comunale. I feel strong about this one. Frank is a good, honest, long-time establishment Democrat in the Akron area. A few weeks ago, when I had a meeting at my house to gin up support for Obama in the local Jewish community, Frank not only showed up, he brought fresh energy and enthusiasm, speaking at lengthabout the importance of our work, and making a strong case both against McCain and for Obama. None of which would be particularly notable, except that Comunale isn’t Jewish. He’s Catholic. I’m not even sure how he found out about the meeting. But he clearly fit right in, hearkening back, with his words, to the days when Jews, Catholics and blacks worked together for grassroots political change.

He sent me a lovely thank you note afterwards. I’ll send him one back when he gets elected.

Official nonpartisan ballot:

For Member of State Board of Education:

Heather Heslop Licata. She’s the Dem, who was appointed to her post initially by Gov. Strickland. In a recent West Side Leader article, she noted that, with two kids in district schools, she started out as a “room mother” and worked her way up to PTA president, before joining the state board. (Hmn. Next stop, vice president of the United States?) I couldn’t find out too much more about her, but I do note that someone posted on Daily Kos asking for advice on the down ballot races (”Help me vote in Ohio“), including this race. Earl from Ohio responded with a comment slugged ”Licata for state school board,” noting: “Democrat. Her opponent is a tin foil hat wacko.”

The judges:

These are not listed by party, but a few weeks ago, a canvasser came to our house with a complete set of Democratic judicial candidate playing cards, with bios and web sites for each.

I’m voting straight Democratic judges. We have had eight years of Bush appointees to the federal and Supreme Courts, and we need to tilt the scales in the other direction.

Why? Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scaliagave as good a rationale as any last month, when he was interviewed on Sixty Minutes. Here’s a CBSNews.com article based no the Leslie Stahl interview:

“You wanna talk about Bush versus Gore. I perceive that,” [Scalia] replied. “I and my court owe no apology whatever for Bush versus Gore. We did the right thing. So there!”

“People say that that decision was not based on judicial philosophy but on politics,” Stahl asks.

“I say nonsense,” Scalia says.

Was it political?

“Gee, I really don’t wanna get into - I mean this is - get over it. It’s so old by now.”

No, Judge Scalia. It won’t be “old” for at least another 8 days.

Here are the Democratic judges:

For Justice of the Supreme Court: Joseph D. Russo

For Justice of the Supreme Court: Peter M. Sikora

For Judge of the Court of Appeals: Eve Belfance www.judgebelfance.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Orlando J. Williams www.orlandowilliamsforjudge.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Thomas J. Freeman

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Deborah S. Matz  www.matzforjudge.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Mary Margaret Rowlands www.rowlandsforjudge.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: John Fickes www.fickesforjudge.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Robert M. Gippin (One of the best guys I know — artist, photographer, optimist-in-chief – asked me to put a Gippin yard sign on our lawn. His is the kind of endorsement that carries the weight of a thousand New York Times editorials. The sign is there, on Sunnyside Ave, if you’re driving by.) www.keepjudgegippin.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Linda Tucci Teodosio www.judgeteodosio.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: John P. Quinn www.quinnforjudge.com

For Judge of the Court of Common Pleas: Elinore Marsh Stormer (Not to be confused with Republican Mary Stormer, who is running against Horrigan for clerk of court.) www.judgestormer.com

I’m out of gas. I’d love to hear from folks if you have information supporting or undermining these candidates.

Check back later in the week for my picks on the ballot questions.

I’ve been hearing about it for four days — the NY Times magazine cover story, which deconstructs the woeful campaign of John McCain.

I think we can all agree that no matter what happens in these last eight days, McCain’s presidential campaigns has been god-awful. The magazine article (”The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate”) explains why.

Centrally, the article makes the case that while Obama settled on and stuck to one narrative (”Bush is the problem. I’m not going to be Bush, and McCain will be”), McCain shifted with the wind, never deciding on a single story-line.

It’s a long, powerful article, but here’s the nut:

The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain’s campaign headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened “because we still couldn’t answer the question, ‘Why elect John McCain?’ ” Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not a good sign.

Draper identifies six narratives that McCain used over the course of the campaign, storylines for the public that were often in flux, and almost always reactive.

1. The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitter. (McCain, through the Surge, was going to deliver victory in Iraq; Obama was waving the white flag of surrender.)

2. Country-First Deal Maker vs. Nonpartisan Pretender. (McCain’s taken on his own party; Obama has no record doing same.)

3. Leader vs. Celebrity. (McCain came out with a hardline when Russia invaded Georgia, and launched the Paris Hilton ad — implicitly mocking Obama’s European trip.)

4. Team of Mavericks vs. Old-Style Washington. (McCain taps Palin as VP. There are some incredible new details here, about just how little McCain knew Palin when he picked her. Also, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among the finalists that McCain opted against. Just imagine how this election would have played out with Bloomberg, an economic guru, at McCain’s side during the economic meltdown.)

5. John McCain vs. John McCain. (McCain, in launching the attack ads, was running against an earlier version of himself, who had pledged — in 2000 — to unilaterally take down attack ads.)

6. The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal. (After the last debate: all Joe the plumber, all the time.)

It’s a terrific article, in part, I think, because Draper seems empathetic toward McCain. You sort of sense, reading between the lines, a kind of respect he has for the candidate. I do think, however, that in a few important places, Draper leads us to the wrong conclusions.

For example, Draper writes:

The McCain campaign maintained that in contrast to Obama, their candidate had taken on his own party while working with Democrats on such issues as immigration and campaign-finance reform. “Obama pays no price from his party — never has,” Salter told me. “My guy has made a career out of it. So, how can you get people to believe that if you can’t get the press to make an honest assessment of it?

Reading that, I think, you might be tempted to cede the point. McCain has taken considerable heat for standing up to his own party — on campaign finance reform, immigration, and tax cuts during time of war, for example.

What Draper doesn’t say is that part of the reason the press didn’t “make an honest assessment,” as he puts it, is precisely because, as a presidential candidate, McCain has embraced his party on so many of the issues where he once stood apart. He once favored immigration reform; now he wants to build a wall along the Texas border first. (I can’t imagine John McCain 2000 advocating that the solution to the problem of illegal immigration begins with the U.S. spending millions to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans.) He once decried tax cuts in war time as irresponsible, he now wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. The man who supposedly stood up to his party on global warming picks a running mate who is completely in bed with the oil and gas industries, and doesn’t believe global warming is caused by humans.

McCain advisor Mark Salter misses the forest for the trees here. McCain made a career of bucking his party, yes, but he then abandoned the most significant of those stances as a presidential candidate. To the degree that the media has held McCain accountable (see, for example, The Daily Show), it has in fact been making a brutally honest assessment.

Obama may not have made a career of bucking his own party, but neither did he embrace its most radical elements the minute he launched his presidential bid. (You could argue he did the opposite. See, for example, his embrace of immunity for telecommunications companies, and his support of the Supreme Court ruling that struck down DC’s ban on handguns.)

There’s a terrific anecdote, toward the end of Draper’s piece, intended, I think, to explain why McCain feels animosity toward Obama:

Authenticity means everything to a man like McCain who, says Salter, “has an affinity for heroes, for men of honor.” Conversely, he reserves special contempt for those he regards as arrogant phonies. A year after Barack Obama was sworn into the Senate, Salter recalls McCain saying, “He’s got a future, I’ll reach out to him” — as McCain had to Russ Feingold and John Edwards, and as the liberal Arizona congressman Mo Udall had reached out to McCain as a freshman. McCain invited Obama to attend a bipartisan meeting on ethics reform. Obama gratefully accepted —but then wrote McCain a letter urging him to instead follow a legislative path recommended by Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate. Feeling double-crossed, McCain ordered Salter to “send him a letter, brush him back a little.” Since that experience, says a Republican who has known McCain for a long time, “there was certainly disdain and dislike of Obama.”

Leave aside, for the moment, the fact that McCain is running one of the least “authentic” campaigns I can remember. (The man who was sunk by nefarious robocalls in 2000 is now sending them out in waves; the guy who said, before tens of millions, that he doesn’t care about a “washed up terrorist” has made that terrorist the center of his campaign.) When you read this paragraph, you feel some measure of understanding — even empathy – toward McCain. He reached out, and was spurned by the cocky newcomer.

That is, until you take a step back and think about it. Who knows why Obama adopted Harry Reid’s approach. Maybe — horror of horrors — the young cocky senator wanted to show some respect to the leadership in his own party, first. Maybe he legitimately liked Reid’s approach better, and his letter back to McCain was a principled stand. There’s a lot left out here.

But one point is clear. Even if you felt spurned, there are a number of ways you could respond. You could, for example — if you wanted to give the benefit of the doubt — take the high road, and leave the invitation open for the future. In the spirit of bipartisanship, you could chose to look beyond the petty and the personal, and decide not to hold a grudge.

McCain, though, felt double-crossed, and he made a different choice. He took it personally: me vs. him. Note the military, tactical overtones in his response: “Send him a letter, brush him back a little.”

Would Lincoln have responded that way? Would Truman, or Kennedy, or Reagan?

I am reminded of an anecdote in Doris Kearns Goodwins’ history, “Team of Rivals.” In it, she recounts how Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois lawyer, was retained on a patent-infringement case in Chicago. The case was moved to Cincinnati, though, and the defense retained Edwin Stanton instead – without bothering to tell Lincoln.

“When [Lincoln] arrived in Cincinnati after careful preparation,” notes the NY Times review of the book:

Stanton and his colleagues ignored him; Stanton was even heard to speak contemptuously of Lincoln as a backwoods bumpkin. Lincoln was hurt by the snub but stayed to watch the trial and was impressed by Stanton’s courtroom brilliance. Six years later Stanton, a Democrat, was practicing in Washington during the [civil] war’s first year and referred disdainfully to Lincoln in conversations with friends. Lincoln was aware of Stanton’s opinions, but when he decided to get rid of the incompetent Cameron, who had made a hash of military mobilization, he appointed none other than Stanton as secretary of war.

Stanton soon justified the appointment. He worked 15-hour days at his stand-up desk and proved to be one of the best war secretaries the country has ever had. 

Point is, Draper’s anecdote wants to suggest that McCain has valid reasons for feeling and acting disdainful toward Obama.

In fact, it highlights — in just a few, short sentences — why John McCain is thoroughly ill-suited to serve as commander in chief.