OH Sen 27: Judy Hanna Is Polling

NOTE: Revised to fix the chronic misspelling of the candidate's name. Apologies.

I got polled last night by the campaign of Ohio Senate 27th longshot Judy Hanna, so my unintentional role of substitute for YellowDogSammy will continue into at least one more race.

I assume it was a Judy Hanna poll based on the assymetry. After the preliminaries -- right path/wrong track, likely voter screening, governor's race (will I vote for Tim Strickland?) -- they startd into the questions about the 27th race. First they start with the positives for Hanna -- basically her position statements. Then -- and this was new for me -- they run through the oppo research on her. Three bad things about Judy and will they make you more likely to vote against her.

Then, when they get to Coughlin, it's all oppo. None of the good stuff. Of course it could just be that there's nothing good to say about Kevin, he said snarkily.

As best I can recall (I was wrist-deep in cooking dinner when the call came) the oppo on Coughlin was:

• A sexual harassment allegation that chased him out of a university teaching job.
• Voting for an income tax cut that went overwhelmingly to wealthy Ohioans.
• Missing the vote on last year's Third Frontier Issue 1 because he was on "an all-expense paid trip" (not clear who paid all the expenses)
  

A couple takeaways. First, Judy Hanna has enough money to put a poll in the field. Given her long odds and early missteps, that's fairly impressive in its own right.

Second, the anti-Coughlin pieces were pretty well-framed and very direct. Hanna won't be shy about going after him, though presumably she will look at how the negative messages poll.

Hey, in apparent influx of resources and sharp-elbowed attacks. This couldn't have anything to do with her EMILY's List endorsement, could it? Doing oppo research on oneself is also an EMList hallmark.

Finally the poll shows that Hanna is at least aware of the disaster that is her Inaguration Day blog. How she will handle it remains to be seen.

For example, she might want to put something her blog. Well, she might want to tap someone to ghost a response. Or she might want to shut the blog down completely since the one post there is similarly disasterous. She's written a single post, that one about a March peace rally, which is no help at all. She probably loses a debate about Iraq in the 27th, and if she wins it doesn't help in a state election. What's more, the post shows the same cavalier attitude toward syntax and word usage that make the Inaguration Day post such an -- erm -- interesting read.