Those looking for an explanation for why voters aren’t buying Lee Fisher’s continued class-warfare attacks on Rob Portman here in Ohio should look no further than a meeting this Wednesday by the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association. Ask yourself who really lacks the common touch as you read this Cleveland Plain Dealer report:
Members of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association might have had other reasons Wednesday evening to prefer Rob Portman, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio. But Lee Fisher, the Democrat, could have improved his chances of winning the endorsement of the patrol officers, detectives and dispatchers by making more of an effort.
Portman came and addressed the cops. Fisher was supposed to send a substitute. The sub was a no-show.
With about 170 members of the 1,400-member union voting, Portman won the endorsement by 22 votes, says Steve Loomis, the union president.
Well before Wednesday, Loomis received calls in support of Fisher from people whose names he won’t divulge but who came, he says, from the federal, state and local levels. The union told Fisher’s campaign that its members like to hear from the candidates, and the union told the campaign that it hoped to see both Fisher and Portman on Wednesday.
Fisher apparently had a conflict. But, Loomis says, ”We were told a representative was going to come up.”
“He would have been better off had he said he wasn’t coming rather than saying he would send a representative,” Loomis says. “We were told that somebody was coming, and nobody did. It gives the impression, although I don’t believe that it’s true, that they don’t give much care to whether we are going to endorse them.” […]
For a former state attorney general, Fisher is having a hard time with the cops. The Ohio Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Portman last month. It’s not a partisan thing; both of these police unions have endorsed Ohio’s current attorney general, Richard Cordray, a Democrat who’s seeking reelection.