Oddly enough, two days ago, I made the following comment in response to a question about how Sherrod Brown ended up an Ohio Senator –

As the story goes, Sherrod Brown was the beneficiary of rino tomfoolery. In 1992 the R establishment in Ohio wanted Mike Dewine to run for retiring Howard Metzenbaums senate seat in 1994, but staunchly conservative 6 term congressman, Bob McEwen was expected to run and had a leg up in that prospective race. So the establishment used the 1992 redistricting to make McEwen’s safe seat unsafe – and pitted McEwen against another R incumbent  Ted Miller, in the primary in a newly drawn district. McEwen beat Miller in a brutal primary, then lost in the general to Ted Strickland by a small margin. Thus getting McEwen out of the way for Mike Dewine in the 1994 Senate race. Dewine ended up being very squishy on several issues, and lost in 06 to Sherrod Brown. It was Dewine’s squishyness as well as the whole Ohio Republican party leadership’s that led to Brown’s victory as much as much as any national sentiment. So we gave away two safe house seats to a dem who rode it to the governors mansion so we could avoid a conservative senator who would have likely defeated Sherrod Brown. The story was told to me by somebody very close to Bob McEwen.

McEwen then tried in the second district but was defeated by Rob Portman. When Portman joined the Bush team in 05, McEwen tried again. In  that primary race, Pat Dewine (son of Mike) spent a million bucks (spent the most in the race) mostly sliming McEwen as the top candidate in the special election.  Jean Schmidt nosed McEwen thanks to Dewines million bucks. Dewine came in 4th.
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Now, that comment (cleaned up a bit above) was written before the threats against Jordon. As an interesting aside, John Boehner endorsed McEwen, against Portman.  Flash forward to this diary wondering who is responsible for the Jordan threats.

http://www.redstate.com/paulkib/2011/07/29/oh-gops-threats-to-rep-jim-jordan-is-swamp-draining-in-order/

Which gets me thinking about Ohio party chairman Kevin Dewine, and his cronies who are nicknamed the “Dayton Mafia.”  Yes, Kevin is the second cousin of Mike Dewine, our former Senator and current Attorney General.

Some examples of how this nickname was earned.  The state Central commitee is in the habit of endorsing its members in Central Commitee races with no actual votes to endorse. OK, they say they encumbants are automatically endorsed. But in 2010, the Tea Party was making serious Central Commitee inroads, and Dewine risked losing the chair. Suddenly Central Commitee is endorsing non-encumbants who happen to be Dewine friendly against conservative encumbants -  without an actual vote to endorse. Not only that, they spent a ton of money that could have been used in the general to promote their cronie non-incumbants that they didnt actually vote to endorse. What hppened tp encumbants being automatically endorsed? When the got caught they said it was a mistake – but still never clarified who they endorsed. 

Example number 2 is that the Ohio Tea Party is convinced that these guys put the full Court press / threat to David Yost to take the auditor’s job so that Mike Dewine could run for attorney General.

http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/02/02/copy/auditor_fight.ART_ART_02-02-10_B3_JGGFNUA.html?sid=101

The same Mike Dewine who got trounced in 06 by Sherrod Brown.