Two Weeks to the Election.
Gubernatorial Race
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Ted Strickland is running out of options. He trails John Kasich by 10 points in the latest Quinnipiac poll (up from 9 last week), faces a barrage of ferocious attack ads both from Kasich and from the Republican Governors’ Association, and seems only to have platitudes about being “business-friendly” to offer and utterly false attacks about Kasich’s plans for Ohio’s development programs. Kasich should start picking out the colors for his interior office — I suggest something along the lines of champagne. He’ll want something that’s sort of neutral, but with a little calming color, quite unlike this race.
Senatorial Race
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Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher is still going to lose. Even though Politifact isn’t happy with his opponent, Portman could run around saying the sky is red and still probably be 15 points up.
House Races
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John Boccieri and Jim Renacci of OH-16 debated last night, and by all accounts, it wasn’t pretty. At least one of Boccieri’s talking points was debatable — the Republican contender Renacci is by no means a clear-cut supporter of social security privatization, according to Politifact.
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John Boehner is standing behind Rich Iott in OH-9 despite his controversial past as a Nazi reenactor. I guess it’s better to be a fake Nazi than a real socialist.
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The Dems are in full-scale retreat in Ohio, with OH-1 and OH-15 written off completely and OH-6, OH-18 and OH-16 now the big fights. Despite the whole wife-beating thing, Charlie Wilson of OH-6 enjoys a financial advantage over his opponent, Bill Johnson, but there’s no guarantee this will work. Johnson has national GOP help.