Friday, September 07, 2007

Padgett's Retirement Opens Two Republican Seats; Debbie Phillips Will Run

The blogosphere has been buzzing this week about news that State Sen. Joy Padgett would not seek a new term. Obviously, that opens up her 29th Senate district to challenge. In addition, Rep. Jimmy Stewart's decision to run for the seat opens his 92nd House seat. And yes, YDS, Debbie Phillips is running. She informed me this afternoon that she will run for the seat and will officially announce her candidacy soon.

This is happy news at the House of Pho as Debbie is a dear friend. It's also good news for the party. Debbie nearly unseated Stewart last year. The district indexes D, but Stewart won it in one of those things a few years back and has held on as a moderate Republican concentrating on retail politics. Without Stewart the seat sits as a high priority target for the House Caucus.

If you want to get a jump, you can surf over to Debbie's still-extant campaign website, print off a form and send in a donation. Look for new content coming soon.

6 comments:

Jeff said...

Fabulous news! This makes me very, very happy.

Anonymous said...

Are we losing our education chairs on the eve of NCLB reauthorization? Is ODE a sound repository of corporate memory?

Scott Piepho said...

Eric:

Certainly it isn't good that a pro-education Republican is retiring. I'm not sure it affects the impending reauthorization of NCLB -- the state lawmakers in Ohio haven't done much to press Ohio's case in Washington -- but Padgett will certainly be missed as the GA considers revision in Ohio law to accommodate revisions in NCLB.

Happily, Stewart knows education fairly well, as does Debbie Phillips.

As for ODE, actually yes. The professional policy analysts there are quite good. In fact both the Board and those parts of the GA not obsessed with dismantling public schools rely on them heavily.

Anonymous said...

Padgett represents the 20th district, not the 29th...
http://www.senate.state.oh.us/senators/bios/sd_20.html

Omar Cruz said...
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Scott Piepho said...

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