ProgressOhio

In Ohio lore, much like Woody’s “three yards and a cloud of dust” there is a legendary political story about Jim Rhodes, on the stump, pulling a wallet out of his back pocket, slamming it on a table, and telling Ohioans in essence “it’s the economy, stupid,” long before Bill Clinton re-packaged it in 1992.

How distant is the memory of politics “Buckeye style?”  For today, political cuteness reigns, with politicians dreaming of procedural politics and stripper-free zones sweeping them to ever new heights in Rhodesian Ohio lore. (We’ll give Sen. Kevin Coughlin a break today, and set-aside crayola license plates.)

THE A-HAA MOMENT OF BILL TODD

Bill Todd, a long-time Attorney for right-wing causes, has a new-found appreciation of open government now that he is a candidate for Columbus Mayor.

With the ink on his filing fee barely dry, Todd’s convenient conversion came into focus when he asserted that some appointments to Columbus City Council were illegal because the other council members secretly agreed on the choices before taking a public vote. In mock bi-partisan spirit, he took to quoting Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann’s precedent on Ohio PUCO appointments.

"Clearly, this whole process (Columbus Council appointments) has been designed to avoid the application of the open-meetings law," Todd told the Columbus Dispatch.

The question becomes, is this a welcome, almost noble gesture? Had he championed open government in the past, perhaps we could conclude that he was courageous. But the record of Mr. Todd is that he has not. In fact, Todd has a long history of crusading for secrecy by bending disclosure requirements and concealing the true source of campaign donations.

So, with help from Tom Noe, Larry Householder, Brett Buerck, Kyle Sisk and others, Todd’s long shadow has been involved in a half-dozen efforts to use non-profits for political purposes -- without the usual scrutiny required by election law.

He is perhaps best known as the attorney for Citizens for A Strong Ohio, a notorious issue advocacy campaign, against Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick in 2000. The chamber-backed group spent $4.4 million - contributed by people whose names it wouldn't disclose - trying to defeat Resnick with its infamous Lady Justice ads.

The ads suggested that Resnick was party to a bribery scheme in which she traded votes for campaign cash. These ads were so offensive that they backfired and helped to transform Justice Resnick into a modern-day martyr.

Courts eventually pried open the books.

Todd didn’t place that in the lessons-learned category. Instead, he continued to work with other groups created to place political ads – but keep secret the source of the money used to pay for them.

Examples:

Road to Work: Todd served as the lawyer for Road to Work, a 2006 group created to “build a coalition in support of privatizing the turnpike.’’ Road to Work got to work after Ken Blackwell, the GOP nominee for governor, unveiled his plan to privatize the turnpike.

Common Sense Ohio: Todd represented Common Sense 2006, a nonprofit group that attacked Democrat Ted Strickland during his run for governor against Blackwell. The group ran TV and radio ads critical of Strickland but listed a companion group, Common Sense Ohio, as the sole source of its $1.5 million in funding.

Team Advocacy; Informed Citizens for Ohio; YourOhio.org: This trio of non-profits was hatched in concert with then-Speaker Householder and his aides -- Brett Buerck and Kyle Sisk – and support from now-discredited coin dealer Tom Noe. Once again, Todd did the legal work.

Memos about the organizations said their purpose was to sweep the 2006 elections with the assistance of a pro-business think tank whose trustees included Noe, the prodigious fund-raiser at the center of the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation scandal. Noe was recruited to sit on the board YourOhio.org, a non-profit issue advocacy group.

Organizers envisioned YourOhio.org as an eventual conservative counterpart to MoveOn.org, the national organization that spent millions of dollars to register Democratic voters and try to defeat President Bush in 2004. But before YourOhio.org gained national prominence, it was dissolved amid revelations that federal agents were investigating Householder.

YourOhio.org was intended to be an umbrella organization that would direct the political activities of issue-ad groups. Although the principals of YourOhio.org and Team Advocacy  registered as business organizations, both were dissolved in early 2004 before starting operations after a federal grand jury began investigating the fund-raising practices of Householder and his aides.

“I think that chilled everybody who was interested in going forward with the organizations,” Todd told The Plain Dealer. “Because of the grand jury and all, the other people said, ‘Let’s step back from this for a while and see what happens.’”

THE DMZ FOR OHIO STRIPPERS
It’s easy for politicians to stand up for free speech – unless it means standing up for strippers, lap dances and the right to tuck dollars into G-strings.

But a few brave souls in the Ohio Senate actually spoke out against a bill that would limit the hours of strip clubs and other adult entertainment establishments and ban lap dances with a new rules that says patrons and dancers have to be at least six feet apart.

Not one single law enforcement association testified in favor of the bill, but it’s the pet project of Citizens for Community Values, a right-wing Cincinnati group headed by Phil Burress, a self-described porn addict who is on his third marriage.

The Senate did Burress’ bidding and passed the bill, signaling that strip club regulation is among its top priorities.

One of the few senators with enough courage to speak out against the measure was David Goodman, a New Albany Republican. He told his colleagues that he can already envision future campaign ads that tag him as pro-porn and pro-stripper. Then Goodman got serious:
"I am very, very concerned about walking down the road of creating community standards at the state level," Goodman said. "I think this is a very dangerous precedent."

Voters weren’t so kind:

When the on-line version of the Columbus Dispatch asked, “Should Ohio force sexually oriented business to close from midnight to 6 a.m. daily,’’ more than 80 percent of those who responded said “no.’’

Some of the more colorful comments:

“Wouldn't that be the best time for them to operate? When everyone else is asleep?”

“What do Phil Burress, George Bush, and Adolf Hitler have in common? They want your loyalty, money, power and your freedom.’’

‘’This has to be a conspiracy by businesses in surrounding states to make Ohio so mind-numbingly dull that anyone who wants to spend their time and money doing anything besides mowing the lawn, watching the Buckeyes, and beating their kids with the Bible will have to drive across the state line to have fun.’’

WHERE’S THE WALLET?

While these disparate stories -- Mr. Todd’s conversion to open government and Mr. Goodman’s lonely stand against more erosion of local control standards for strippers – are not linked, lurking in the shadows is a larger question for Ohioans and more importantly for an increasingly off message right-wing junta.

Ohio’s infamous Bush NASCAR men and Clinton soccer moms go to the polls with a wallet in their pocket and job wishes in their hearts, not a Constitution or an Ohio Revised Code tucked away and lust in their souls. For these new generations of right-wingers – the shadow of Jim Rhodes Ohio success has faded.

And last I checked, Ken Blackwell was living in Cincinnati because of it.