Monday, May 01, 2006

Which One of These Losers Will Be Ohio's Next Governor

A man named Jim Hightower wrote a book a few years ago entitled If The Gods Had Meant Us To Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates. Now, I know nothing of Mr. Hightower, but from that title I would guess that he is a Democrat. I've been voting since I was eighteen, most of that time as a registered Democrat, and I have never encountered a candidate from any party that I was really excited about. Their have been no shortage of candidates, mostly Republican, to vote against, however.
Take this year's gubernatorial contest here in Ohio. Ted Strickland, the man who will most likely emerge from tomorrow's primary as the Democratic gubernatorial (I just love that word) candidate, seems like a nice enough guy from what I have read and heard of him, but so far he has said or done nothing that makes me especially want him to be my governor. The main reason that I will most likely vote for him in November is that he is not Ken Blackwell.
Blackwell, currently Ohio's Secretary of State as well as statewide chairman of George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004 and the likely Republican winner tomorrow, is a man whose proudest accomplishment, at least this is the impression his campaign ads leave me with, seems to be leading the campaign to whip up a statewide furor of homophobia sufficient to pass an amendment to the Ohio constitution banning gay marriage. His primary opponent Jim Petro opposed passage of the amendment, according, again, to Blackwell's ads, and those ads conflate opposition to the amendment with favoring gay marriage, though there were many other reasons not to want to see the measure adopted, not the least of which was that the legislaturer had already passed a "Defense of Marriage" law which banned gay marriage. Blackwell's ads stop just short of calling Petro a "faggot," which I'm sure he would do if he thought he could get away with it.
By the way, does it strike anyone else as smacking of conflict of interest that the man in charge of overseeing elections statewide should be actively campaigning for any candidate other than himself? Maybe that's what we need an amendment to ban. I would, in fact, favor removing the Secretary of State's office from the realm of campaign politics altogether by making it an appointed office. I'm sure most voters have no idea what the SoS does or who the people are behind those names on the ballot.
Okay, enough politics....let's see what my evil twin, Charlie Sheen has been up to lately:
Hell, I think I'd rather have Charlie Sheen as my governor than either of those two bozos.

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