Ohio 13th Dish.

My hopes for a Clair Dickenson campaign were finally extinguished with the announcement this week that he is running again for the court of appeals. Unfortunately he and John Quinn -- both excellent candidates, will be burning their resources in the primary.

As the Ohio 13 guys note, Betty Sutton got the Emily's List endorsement. I had gotten the email as well -- now I know who from Washington has been lighting up my SiteMeter with "Betty Sutton" searches. *waves*

That's good news because apparently a Capri Cafaro run is inevitable. Oh 13 notes that she has been shopping herself to unions and has the love from the UAW. John Ettore has the unofficial "official" word that she is indeed running.

I try to approach this blogging thing with a certain amount of balance, but I'm not concealing my contempt for this idea. Let's see how many reasons I can find for hating on her campaign before allegations about the family business come up.

1. She not from here. It's easy enough to say Tom Sawyer and Betty Sutton aren't either. That would be wrong. Sutton and Sawyer are from Akron, the city of the southern end of the district that the political bosses partitioned in the last redistricting, effectively depriving Akron of real Congressional represention. We already have a Representative from Youngstown purportedly representing us. Frankly Akron and Lorain have more in common with each other than either has in common with Y-town.

2. She opens the door to a Lorain Co. candidate. With three Summit Co. candidates splitting the vote, the stage is already set for someone like Ted Kelo sweep the Lorain County votes and take the primary. It may well be that, absent a Lorain Co. candidate

3. She will not be representing Akron or Lorain. Everything about Capri Cafaro, from her DC intership resume to her Tour of Districts not Held by Tim Ryan screams "Washington Insider Wannabe." If we send her to Washington, we'll never see her around here again.

4. She should be running against LaTourette. If she is a viable candidate, she should run again in the 14th. I'm increasingly convinced that 14th may be the most important Congressional race. Sure Ney and Pryce are looking more and more sullied and therefore vulnerable, but are in much more solidly red districts. Moreover, a good 14th race has a spillover effect. The Democrat in that race isn't just running against LaTourette, he/she is running against the entire corrupt Republican Congress. Given the importance of NEO in the statewide races, spillover from media buys in the 14th will help Democrats generally.
The fact that she doesn't run against LaTourette says something. It says I'm right about her being a wannabe. It says she thinks her personal ambitions are more important than the party. But mostly it says that people are right that she pissed off too many people in the 14th to run there again.

5. For the foregoing reasons, she could actually lose. Under the worst case scenario, Republicans run a Lorain Co. candidate who appeals to regional loyalty and runs against Cafaro's Washingtonienne ambitions. I can't think of a losing scenario with any other candidate.

There we go. Five good reasons a Cafaro campaign is a bad idea and I didn't even mention prison artist James Traficant.