At the Races

A few updates on a variety of political decathlons.

Senate
Paul Hackett got some good ink over the weekend for his Café Momus stop. He also got coverage on the Cleveland NBC-affiliate local news program Saturday night. Then tonight, Chris Cillizza the Washington Post politics blogger, reports that Hackett is getting a full-court press to drop the Senate campaign and run against Jean Schmidt again. Friday Cillizza dropped Ohio’s Senate Seat from 3rd to 4th on his regularly-updated Line of seats most likely to change hands. And OPEN notes that Hackett cancelled a scheduled appearence on Hardball tonight.

Governor

Eric Fingerhut folded up the tents over the weekend. Only Bryan Flannery stands between Ted Strickland and the nomination. AP coverage or no, this one is pretty much over.

Jim Petro has his turn on Open Mike this week. Today is Biography Day, and therefore fairly snoozeworthy.

Ohio 13

Word of Mouth reports that Republican Lorain Mayor Folitin has joined the increasingly crowded field. Ohio 13 Blog is unimpressed. Let’s pause for a moment and consider a Folitin vs. Cafaro match-up in November. Always a close call whether voters are more put off by sex corruption or money corruption. Blogger is acting up again, so I'll update with a link later.

Ohio 13 Votes notes the recent Hoffman post about Capri Cafaro and chimes in with a theme I repeated back when I blogged about the race (and still repeat in real life):

The Republicans can’t beat Grace, they can’t beat Sutton, they can’t beat Sawyer (if he gets in) and they probably can’t beat Wolfe. Go find a Republican who’s in the know, get two drinks in them, and they’d tell you.

But the GOP would beat Capri Cafaro like a rented mule.

I’m not sure that I go so far as to say that Cafaro is automatic dead meat in the General. But I challenge anyone to come up with a scenario with any other candidate in which the Democrats lose in November. Anyone can win it, but only Cafaro can lose it. I also think that if Cafaro is the Representative in 2010 and the Republicans still control the redistricting process, they will target the 13th. All they have to do is make it competitive and Cafaro would be hard pressed to survive. Again, I wonder why good people think this is a good idea.

Meanwhile Betty Sutton has gotten the endorsement from the Akron Education Association. Longtime readers already knew that would happen.

Ohio General Assembly

I’ve heard confirmation of the rumor posted on OPEN that former pro football player Tom Cousineau is running against Brian Williams in the Ohio House 44. I know Tom and he’s much much bigger than me, so you won’t hear too much about this race here.

I’ve heard that one Judy Hanna may be running for the Ohio Senate in the (against Kevin Griffith in the primary; Kevin Coughlin in the general). The name sounded only vaguely familiar. A Google search suggests that she may be a field organizer for Common Cause Ohio.