Any Republican running for Governor of Ohio this year would expect to labor under the burden of legislative disappointment and gubernatorial disgrace but Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell should have been, as one who is heterodox, spared some aggregate blame. He hasn't been, it seems, and against Democratic opponent Ted Strickland polls at a deficit of anywhere between twelve and twenty points. If prevailing analyses are correct, affiliation is enough to include Blackwell in the circuit channeling public discontent.
Ohio is known nationally for four attributes, two historical and two contemporary. It is the American political median and presidential bellwether, its economy has gone torpid and its capital executive would if it were possible be evicted from his Columbus mansion.
Governor Bob Taft, who over the last four years walked stepwise into ignominy, figures as the most popular reason for Ohioans to disencumber themselves of the Republican Party in at least one elected office. He wasn't always. The man views private assets in terms of confiscation but inasmuch as he does, he settles comfortably with Ohio Republicans and would appeal to the typical Democrat. He is prosaic, but Taft resides in the state that exalted George Voinovich. What spent the public's good will was Taft's being disingenuous (his 2002 opponent was accused of wishing to impose the kinds of taxes Taft himself levied once re-elected), then venal (gifts and favors were illegally traded) and then obtuse (the impeachable Taft abides an approval rating below 20 percent).
Of course, inordinate taxation works just the same no matter who is responsible — Ohio nearly leads the Union as the state to where one relocates not to succeed in business but fill state coffers. One study placed it at unflattering ends of rankings, third-highest in taxes and third-slowest in growth. On this matter particularly Blackwell has distinguished — estranged — himself from Taft and much of the rest of the party. In 2003 Blackwell steered a statewide petition to repeal a tax increase approved by a bicameral Republican majority and signed by Taft. The petition collapsed and the secretary was publicly chastised by the state party chairman and a majority leader, but Blackwell was quoted as saying something not likely uttered in Senate or House chambers: "Spending drives our tax policy and our tax policy feeds our spending sprees," he said, reminding taxpayers that services and entitlements are always leveraged against an individual's earnings and prospects.
Blackwell's platform for governor, at the cost of broad appeal, has the same arresting pellucidity. What has he in store for state finances? Holding state spending at an incline parallel to growth of the tax base, requiring a two-thirds legislative majority for the passage of new taxes, telescoping marginal rates. "Government does not create wealth" is the introductory statement, one that most American politicians slip up and blurt out before they wake up from their nightmare. Abortion? Two victims per instance, Blackwell says, the mother and her child. Marriage? If it isn't a man and a woman, it — isn't. Second Amendment? The secretary is a Life Member of the National Rifle Association, thank you. Blackwell's website reads like the written statement of a scrupulous debater, not a candidate for public office.
Compare this to Ted Strickland, looking to Columbus from his place on Capitol Hill, who appears to consider himself incidental to the race — as if a buckling Taft will catch Blackwell at the shins so Strickland can step over the heap of the two of them and into office. Last month two Ohio newspapers reported Strickland to be vague — each paper's word — on policy. The leftward Columbus Dispatch politely noted that for school funding — a regime serially ruled unconstitutional by the state's supreme court — Strickland promised to present an alternative to Blackwell's "65-Cent Solution" at some point after November 7th.
Strickland's policy abstracts reflect this. The candidate is interested in "Promoting Economic Inclusion," "Establishing New Micro-Incubators" and "Creating an Ohio Development and Redevelopment Plan." While Ohio's business environment is barren enough for one to think of hydroponics, the phrases imply the market as seen from a bureaucracy, not as it actually is. If profit needs risk, what happens when a state agency sees to it that risk is removed? Columbus favors these kinds of programs already, but if this set doesn't already exist, how will it be funded? And if Columbus has done nothing for the entrepreneur under Taft, why will a "statewide process" work any differently under Strickland? Indirectly related: was jazz a spontaneous blessing from an American subculture or was it the multi-annual yield of something like Strickland's "community arts projects that will achieve the most productive results for the public," whatever the hell that means? Though obscurantist, Strickland as governor is certainly deducible, all the emphasis on words like "give," "build" and "provide" what Republican Statehouse hopeful Ed Herman drily paraphrased as "For Ohio to grow we must push more state dollars towards state-controlled economic development authorities."
It is justified that Ohioans would want an upright governor, and, too, one that will effect — force, if the legislature isn't amenable — a change in state policies. Both candidates meet the first standard. The second? Ted Strickland was perhaps too accurate in his observation that "sixteen years of Republican rule have driven Ohio to the bottom among key indicators of economic health," as his administration would be, so tendered, just as managerial and ponderous as Bob Taft's. This year, for governor, "change" will come from the Republicans.