Gubernatorial Race
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The first Gubernatorial debate will be tomorrow evening. If it’s sufficiently explosive, look for it to dominate the news cycle all week.
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The Youngstown Vindicator contrasts Ted Strickland’s shiftless, weak talking points with the relentless policy proposals put forward by John Kasich.
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Politics Daily warns that if Democrats lose big enough in 2010, they’re doomed in 2012 as well.
Senatorial Race
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The Cleveland Plain Dealer does a fascinating and in-depth study of the sources of funding received by Rob Portman and Lee Fisher. Interestingly, it finds Portman doing better with Lee Fisher’s top donors than Lee Fisher:
One relies on Wall Street, the other on trial lawyers. This is more than just a claim in the increasingly bitter November contest between Rob Portman, a Republican, and Lee Fisher, a Democrat, veteran politicians vying to be the next junior U.S. senator from Ohio.
Like anyone running a multi-million-dollar campaign, each has tapped into special interests. Portman has raised a lot more cash altogether — $10.7 million, to Fisher’s $4.9 million, as of their last finance reports — but Fisher, too, relies on select constituencies.
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And The Plain Dealer slaps Fisher down on economics and trade, suggesting it’s time for him to go Clintonista:
Former President Bill Clinton was to campaign with Democratic Senate candidate Lee Fisher in Cincinnati Sunday night. The two have a long relationship: Back in 1991, when Clinton was little known beyond Arkansas, Fisher — then Ohio’s attorney general — offered to lead his presidential effort in Ohio.
So let’s hope that if Clinton got a glimpse of Fisher’s first general election ad, he took his old friend aside and gave him a quick lesson in history and economics.[…]
The problems in U.S.-China trade, including currency values and China’s cheating on trade rules, won’t be solved by withdrawing from the arena or by fear-mongering. Clinton has known that for a long time. Does Fisher?
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And following last night’s rally, it’s not impossible that this will happen. Fisher’s Twitter is ablaze with Clinton quotes and Clintonite sentiments. It all says the same stuff Fisher’s been trying to sell for months, but much more eloquently, and with football analogies.
House Races
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In the midst of an otherwise delusional article suggesting Dems will keep the House by one seat, DagBlog drops ice cold water on Steve Driehaus, Mary Jo Kilroy, and John Boccieri:
OH-01: Rematch of first term Rep. Steve Driehaus (D) against his wave-election predecessor Steve Chabot (R), who represented this district from 1994 until 2008. He’d like his job back. Early 2010 polls suggested Chabot was way ahead. A recent GOP-funded poll suggests it’s close, and the internals suggest to me that the voters want fresh ideas and change, and don’t see an advantage there in reverting to Chabot. In a wave election, hard to see Chabot not pulling this one out, perhaps easily, another one-termer out.
OH-15: Tea Partying challenger Steven Stivers (R) polls ahead of first-term incumbent Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D). Expect this to continue on November 2. Red pickup.
OH-16: Democrats in states that were worked incredibly hard by Obama’s GOTV operation are likely to crash harder than Democrats in states that were not. I see Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Colorado in this group, Pennsylvania and Ohio more so because of the industrial economy and the older electorate, which took more exception to health care reform than the average voter. For this reason, I don’t see centrist Democrat John Boccieri surviving; he won his first term in 2008 by 10 in a district Obama lost by 2. Ohio’s voters are sliding 6-8 points to the right, based entirely upon voter intensity, which should be enough for a red win here. Two polls show Boccieri getting beat badly. I see him losing by 8 to 10. Not pretty. GOP pickup.