Photo courtesy Cleveland Plain Dealer

A month ago on BigGovernment.com and Third Base Politics, we told you about how Mitt Romney’s campaign has been relying on Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine and a scandal-plagued political consultant named Brett Buerck to advise him on his Ohio campaign.

Brett Buerck, widely known among Ohio political activists for his scandal plagued career, is now back as one of Mitt Romney’s point men in organizing Ohio. Buerck is also known as ORP Chairman DeWine’s closest consultant on Party politics. Finally, Romney’s sole appearance in Ohio during this entire campaign season was months ago when he appeared arm-in-arm with DeWine in southeast Ohio and proceeded to flip flop against Kasich’s government union reform bill, all at the recommendation of DeWine.

In other words, Romney is counting on Buerck and DeWine to lead him to victory in Ohio.

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How would you describe someone who chose to stand with Ted Strickland over Ken Blackwell in 2006, and proudly displayed Strickland bumper stickers and signs on their vehicles and property?

Would you call them a Republican? Hardly, right? Well, guess what? Such a person sits on the Ohio Republican Party State Committee. The person in question is Nancy Suhadolnik, wife of Gary Suhadolnik. Not only did Gary go to work for Strickland, he also speaks out frequently against Governor Kasich.

And judging by how much money Kevin DeWine is spending to keep her in her seat, she is the most important person in the ORP. One family in Broadview Heights has now received TEN postcards and 10 robocalls promoting Nancy and the 24th district committeeman Jeff Dean, in just 2 weeks. Remember that TV and radio ad buy I referred to yesterday? That buy alone is enough to buy a new Mercedes. And a person inside the ORP has said that DeWine is willing to spend $100,000 just in Nancy’s 24th district alone.

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Meet Mark Weaver.

Weaver is an Ohio political consultant who has been around the state for a long time, and had a pretty great track record before 2011. He was the campaign media consultant to Rob Portman’s successful Senate campaign in 2010, and even was an adviser to Ronald Reagan.

Last year, however, during Ohio’s fight to reform public employee union laws, he sold out and went to work for the unions.

A prominent Republican media consultant has been hired by police and fire unions to thwart plans by Gov. John Kasich and GOP lawmakers to kill binding arbitration and eliminate or alter collective bargaining.

Mark R. Weaver has been commissioned “to help us with our communication efforts as we try to educate the legislature on the realities of collective bargaining and not the sound bites,” said Jay McDonald, president of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio and a major in the Marion Police Department.

Remember how the unions lied so much in their ads that even the Cleveland Plain Dealer called them out? Weaver was their media consultant and one of the brains behind that campaign to kill reasonable union reforms in Ohio.

We have learned Mark Weaver has been working with someone else in Ohio. Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine.

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We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th.

In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention.

So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to the degree that Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia do. Santorum has some strengths he can draw on in the Buckeye State, as his blue-collar message could play well even among Republicans there. If he wins, it means that we probably do have a deeply divided GOP, with Gingrich taking the anti-Romney vote in the South, and Santorum taking the anti-Romney vote in the Midwest.

So with Ohio holding such incredible importance to Mitt Romney’s hopes of becoming President, why is he betraying the very Ohio conservatives he needs to assure victory?

Let me explain.

As many of you may have read already, Ohio Republicans are currently in the midst of a major power struggle between moderate Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine and Governor John Kasich, Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder, and other conservative elected officials.

Conservatives are up in arms against DeWine for a number of offenses, such as actively working against Governor Kasich in the mainstream media, by working to divert fundraisers away from Kasich near the end of his close battle against incumbent Gov. Strickland in 2010, lying to contributors, outright shunning members of the Tea Party in Ohio, and most recently, blatantly abusing and violating the Party’s own bylaws in order to prevent Tea Party candidates from getting seated on the State Central Committee.

So how does this all connect to Romney?

Brett Buerck, widely known among Ohio political activists for his scandal plagued career, is now back as one of Mitt Romney’s point men in organizing Ohio. Buerck is also known as ORP Chairman DeWine’s closest consultant on Party politics. Finally, Romney’s sole appearance in Ohio during this entire campaign season was months ago when he appeared arm-in-arm with DeWine in southeast Ohio and proceeded to flip flop against Kasich’s government union reform bill, all at the recommendation of DeWine.

In other words, Romney is counting on Buerck and DeWine to lead him to victory in Ohio.

Make no mistake. Conservatives and Tea Party members are actively engaged in Ohio state politics. With such an intense focus on Ohio’s GOP primary, there is no doubt they’ll play a huge part in who ends up with Ohio’s massive number of delegates on Super Tuesday.

By working with Buerck and DeWine , Romney is making it crystal clear where he stands when it comes to wooing Ohio’s conservative base. In fact, by allowing Buerck and DeWine to lead his Ohio effort, Romney is effectively aligning himself against the very people he needs if he wants to win the nomination and the general election in November.

Ohio is well known among national political strategists as being the home of a bevy of quality political hacks. There are throngs of men and women with a strong history of leading congressional and statewide candidates to victory. In other words, Romney has no requirement to rely so heavily on state organizers with such sordid stories as DeWine and Buerck. He can easily look elsewhere and avoid the danger of giving the middle finger to Ohio conservatives and Tea Party members.

If he wants to win the Presidency, that is…

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics

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Kevin DeWine is going to go down in history as the most corrupt chairman of the Ohio Republican Party ever. And he doesn’t seem to care. The more people that turn against him and call for him to resign, the more desperate and brazen he seems to become.

As a brief recap, remember that just a couple of weeks ago, in an attempt to save his chairmanship and disqualify people running to defeat him, he and his allies proposed an amendment to change the rules of who can be seated on the State Central Committee, even though candidates had already filed for the election weeks ago. On Friday, the committee met and voted on several issues, including the rule change.

The committee consists of 66 members, and a majority of them, 34 or more, is required to make such a rule change. However, DeWine declared a victory for the rule change with a 29-28 vote, claiming a majority of members present. This is clearly a violation of the party bylaws, and is bound to be challenged in court.

We now have some new information about Friday’s events. Most votes of the committee, and even most of the votes on Friday, are conducted in the open. However, for the proposed rule change, they used a secret ballot. So, it appears that to protect their seats from a fair election, DeWine and his allies are willing to:

1. Change the rules after candidates have already filed, and early voting has already begun,
2. Violate the party bylaws in order to enact their rule change, and now…
3. Hide behind a secret ballot so voters can’t hold them responsible.

Unbelievable, despicable and very, very cowardly. I spoke with a SCC member on Sunday, who informed me that in his 8 years on the committee, it was only the 2nd time he could recall a secret ballot being used.

We, and some tea party affiliated groups are doing what we can to identify the members and who voted how. Right now, our advice to Ohio conservatives is to call your committee members and ask them how they voted, and also to ask them if they stand by Kevin DeWine or not. If they voted for the rule change or indicate they support keeping DeWine as chairman, then obviously you need to vote for their opponent on March 6. Then, tell every Republican primary voter you know to do the same. Every State Senate district is represented by one man and one woman on the committee. Find out what Senate district you live in, and then go here to identify who represents you.

If you do get an answer from your committee people, please email me with your report at bytor3bp @ gmail.com. (remove the spaces)

Finally, don’t be fooled by any mailers you receive from the Ohio Republican Party. Once again, Kevin DeWine is spending party resources to protect his and his allies’ own seats, and using tea party type logos on them to trick people. These two were received last week. Just like 4 years ago, they are attempting to thwart the tea party while pretending to have “tea party values” and pretending to support Governor Kasich.  Let’s not let them get away with it.  Help us vote out the traitors, keep the good people who belong on the committee and take back our state party.

Cross-posted on Third Base Politics, an Ohio-based political blog.

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The Dennis and Marcy primary saga continues.

First, a look at Kucinich’s and Kaptur’s districts as they stand today, before redistricting. Dennis’s 10th comprises most of western Cuyahoga county. Marcy, in the 9th, represents most of Lucas County (including Toledo), all of Ottawa and Erie Counties, and western and southern Lorain County.

In Ohio, we knew that we were going to lose 2 seats in Congress, and the speculation began as to which seats would be drawn together to condense the map from 18 districts to 16. It was widely anticipated that Dennis would be eliminated by the Republican majority. But in September, when we first saw the new map, it looked like the one below.

Both Kucinich’s and Kaptur’s seats had been drawn together in the new 9th district, and Dennis was elated that he kept a large portion of his most loyal support.

Dear Friends,

We have a district! The race is on! In a stunning development, the redistricting gave most of the Republican part of my old district to three incumbent Republican congressmen and left most of the Democratic part of my district intact.

What happened next is that the Ohio Democratic Party stomped their feet and threatened to put the map to a voter referendum, which would’ve put the map on hold and caused chaos for 2012′s elections. You can read the entire history here, but in the end, the map below is what was finalized in December.

What happened was that while Republicans were negotiating to alter the map to get enough Democrats aboard, the new 9th was changed, and the advantage swung back to Marcy Kaptur. The Toledo Blade has some good analysis of the district here. Dennis, of course, was not happy about this. Check out what he said even before the redrawn map was made public. He knew who to blame: his fellow Democrats in the statehouse.

In the past week a mind-boggling number of re-mapping efforts by Democrats in the Ohio General Assembly have been made to try to reshape our district in such a way as to dilute the strength of my core constituency in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County. Yes, the Republicans drew a Democratic district, using most of my present district and creating a seat which is based in the Cleveland area. This map gave the advantage to my constituents in the greater Cleveland area. I have said so. Some statehouse Democrats want to repeal this map. I don’t.

Then, this past Saturday, Brent Larkin of the Plain Dealer dropped a bombshell. He says Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern orchestrated the change. Why would he do this? Because he has his eye on the seat for the eventual day that Kaptur retires, and wanted to shift the influence of the district back towards Northwest Ohio, his home base.

Part of what happened is Kucinich got mugged by his own party chair. Four people with firsthand knowledge of what transpired, but who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, fingered Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern as a key proponent of changing the boundaries to benefit Kaptur.

The change makes it likely that much of Greater Cleveland, the foundation of the state’s Democratic base, will be represented in Congress for the next decade by someone who resides in western Ohio.

Redfern did not return a phone call. But both he and State Rep. Matt Szollosi, the assistant House minority leader, live in Northwest Ohio and are believed to covet Kaptur’s seat in Congress when she leaves it. Szollosi voted for the map that shifted votes to Northwest Ohio.

Did Dennis really get thrown under the pirate ship by the ODP Chairman? Redfern says Larkin is a liar.

“He tends to invent things,” Redfern said, referring to Larkin. “And in this case, he invented one on Sunday.”

“It’s good that he’s retired. I just wish that he’d focus at times on the truth rather than inventing his own version of the facts.”

ODP Chairman Chris Redfern

Other facts tend to back up Larkin’s story, though. He is running for the Ohio House in his Northwest Ohio district. He is relatively young, and could spend quite a few years building a power base from the Ohio House while he waits for Marcy to finally retire. On the flip side, however, Kaptur has given no indication she will retire any time soon. She has been in Congress a LONG time, and soon could be her party’s ranking member on the powerful Appropriations committee, making her chairman if the Dems ever took back the majority. That’s not something someone gives up lightly.

Don’t count Dennis out, though. He has pulled out tough wins before in his career. One thing is for sure. Joe the Plumber and the other Republicans are wasting their time. No Republican will ever hold this seat.

But the Kaptur/Kucinich battle will be one more fun thing to watch on primary night.

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On Wednesday, we told you about how Senator Sherrod Brown was nowhere to be seen when Barack Obama spoke in suburban Cleveland.

Sherrod can’t use Senate business as an excuse. He is in Ohio today.

What Sherrod and Obama WANT you to believe is that he had pre-existing appointments. But we are talking about the President of the United States here. Most members of Congress are eager to be seen with the leader of the free world in front of their constituents.

And when you look at Sherrod Brown’s history of attending Obama’s visits to Ohio, his excuse makes even less sense.

We then shared with you the list of Obama’s visits to Ohio and Brown’s excellent attendance of those visits that…suddenly changed about 4 months ago.

The President was at the high school from roughly 12:45 to 2:15. Where was Sherrod Brown, who is also up for reelection this year, during that time period?

Eating steak.

Watch the video below, where Senator Brown was seen entering Mitchell’s Steakhouse at 12:15 and hiding out from Obama in there until 1:30.

Sherrod Brown votes with Obama’s positions 98% of the time. So, why is he so afraid to stand publicly with the president in front of his fellow Ohioans?

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It has never been a secret in Ohio that there are tensions between Governor John Kasich and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine. However, earlier this month, DeWine took the squabble public, which Ohio’s press gleefully reported. Democrats and anti-Kasich liberal blogs are now using DeWine’s words against Kasich. The conservative blogosphere in Ohio has reacted unanimously. Some have been long weary of DeWine, while others have remained neutral, but not any longer.

Jason Hart said on Third Base Politics:

Chairman DeWine has also taken heat for his allegiance to Jon Husted. Husted, a former speaker of the Ohio House, positioned himself as a conservative during the 2010 secretary of state campaign only to kneecap election reform a year later. When the House tried to pass a photo-ID voting requirement, Secretary Husted opposed the measure, handing a rhetorical victory to the Ohio Democratic Party’s race-baiters and class-warriors.

Whatever DeWine’s merits or Kasich’s mistakes, Ohio needs Republican leaders on the same page going into 2012. DeWine should step down, Kasich should offer a replacement conservatives can rally behind, and we should all get back to work against Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama.

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It’s been over two weeks since Ohioans rejected the reasonable government union reforms in Issue 2. Big Labor poured over $30 million into a campaign to persuade voters to stay with the status quo. But they also rejected a whopping 78% of school levies that requested additional funds to pay for the ever increasing costs of public union benefits. So in the end, the unions convinced voters that laying off more public workers is preferable to asking them to contribute a bit more to their own benefits.

Not two days later, there was already talk of a new union related referendum. Chris Littleton held a press conference to announce an initiative to amend the Ohio Constitution to make Ohio a “right to work” state.

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We have been warning about the bad news in the recent polls on Issue 2, and stated why the huge wins they show for the anti-reform side won’t be as big as the polls. Now, the Washington Post is reporting on a leaked memo from liberal mob Progress Ohio to the “We Are Ohio” union front group. They also believe its a LOT closer!

An internal memo from a key labor-backed group in the state is flatly warning that the polls are “flawed” and that a big win for labor is not even “remotely possible.” It adds that the right’s messaging has “worked,” and that there’s good reason to suspect that a “massive amount of voter confusion remains,” suggesting the fight could still go either way.

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