http://www.politicususa.com/...
You can read the polling results here:A new PPP poll confirms that the race for governor in Ohio is a dead heat. Republican Gov. John Kasich leads Democrat Ed FitzGerald by a single point 45%-44%.The PPP poll shows why Ohio is so close. Kasich has a four point lead with men (46%-42%) but trails with women (44%-45). The contest in the Buckeye State looks like a microcosm of the presidential election. Kasich has big leads with white voters (50%-38%), and voters over age 65 (60%-32%). FitzGerald leads with African-Americans (77%-14%), and younger voters (55%-17%).
Ohio’s next governor will likely be determined by who turns out to vote. If the electorate looks a little more like the one that voted for President Obama twice, Kasich will lose. If the electorate looks the same one that elected the governor in 2010, he will win a second term.
Republicans are holding their 2016 convention in Cleveland because they are still “clinging” to the hope that they can flip Ohio, but these polling numbers suggest that it may be a lost cause. Ohio’s voting pattern looks an awful lot like a blue state. - Politicus USA, 7/14/14
I can't say that I'm surprised this race is tights. FitzGerald is acting more like a Governor that can get shit done like getting the RNC to pick Cleveland to hold it's 2016 convention:
And he's sounding more like a Governor who is thinking about Ohio's future:FitzGerald, the first county executive of Ohio’s most populous county and the home of Cleveland, showed an early interest in bringing a 2016 political convention to the city.“I remember when Cleveland tried to get the convention in 1992,” FitzGerald told BuzzFeed about his quest to bring a political convention to the city.
It was FitzGerald, along with his chief of staff and David Gilbert, the president of Positively Cleveland, the region’s convention and visitors bureau, who took a day in Charlotte during their 2012 convention to see how Cleveland could get it to their city.
“The county executive was very involved in pushing for the convention,” Gilbert said. “It was a fact-finding trip. We met with everyone from the host committee, Chamber of Commerce, City of Charlotte…”
“When I went to Charlotte, I definitely said we can do as good or better than Charlotte,” said FitzGerald.
FitzGerald said failed bids by Cleveland to host the convention in 2008 and 2012 made clear “we needed to get started very, very early putting a team together.”
While some people had felt “burned” in the past by failed bids, this bid, unlike past ones, “had county participation,” and eventually “people came around to this,” he said.
One of the reasons Cleveland needs the convention is that the city is one of the places where nationwide perception of it is most distorted from reality, FitzGerald argued.
“On a national political blog, they were talking about the river catching on fire,” he said. “They have some kind of perception that was formed in the 1970s, and it’s not reality.”
FitzGerald said a new 600-guest-room Hilton hotel coming to city in 2016, on which he broke ground this year with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Hilton executive Ted Ratcliff, was crucial to securing the city as a finalist. “One of the reasons given in the past was that our hotel capacity was too far below what their standards were,” FitzGerald said.
Asked how the perception and news of the convention coming to a city that is a reliable Democratic stronghold in the state will affect the city, FitzGerald the majority of people are happy about the economic boost it will provide: “The vast majority of people say the Republican convention has to come somewhere and it’s going to be an economic boost for the city. It might as well be here.” - BuzzFeed, 7/9/14
And FitzGerald has been reminding voters about how lousy the job numbers are in Ohio under Kasich:Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald will hold a press conference at 12:45 p.m. Monday to talk about of the expected economic impact LeBron James's return to Cleveland, and we'll be covering it live.A FitzGerald press release promises the release of "new [c]ounty data on the significant impact James's return will have for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County."
Northeast Ohio Media Group reporter Andrew J. Tobias will attend the press conference, and report on what FitzGerald has to say in the comments section of this post.
In a Monday morning radio appearance on "Kiley and Booms" on 92.3 The Fan, FitzGerald said LeBron's return is "huge" and worth "tens of millions of dollars."
"In terms of just actual money it's going to be very close between the RNC and LeBron," FitzGerald said.
FitzGerald also said the return of LeBron, plus the news that Cleveland will play host to the 2016 Republican National Convention, has added up to the "best public relations for Cleveland" in decades. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 7/14/14
And FitzGerald has been hitting the campaign trail hard:Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ed FitzGerald called the job situation facing middle class families in Ohio "lousy."FitzGerald met downtown with Cincinnati City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson Friday morning to discuss recent reports that he believes shows that Ohio has fallen behind other states in economic recovery from the Great Recession.
Ohio still has to recover 120,000 jobs that were lost in the recession, Simpson said. The W.P. Carey School of Business has ranked Ohio at 38th in job growth, with a job growth rate of 0.77 percent, compared to the national average of 1.75 percent.
"Middle class families need leader to make their state a leader," Councilwoman Simpson said.
FitzGerald said Ohio's annual growth rate is currently lower than it was when Governor John Kasich was running and that that state is lagging in growth even more than it was 2010.
Ohio's annual growth rate in 2010 was 1.02 percent, compared to the 2010 national average of .54 percent. The current growth rate for Ohio is .77 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The current unemployment rate is 5.5 percent, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services; when Kasich took office in January 2011 the rate was 9.1 percent.
"If this campaign is going to mean something, we have to talk about actual factual records," FitzGerald said.
FitzGerald argued that tax cuts have only benefited the wealthy, and that while this has benefited a small group of people, many are left struggling. FitzGerald's proposed solution is to give tax relief to the middle class, restore funding to local governments and education and to support small businesses.
"We're going to be making this argument in every town in Ohio," FitzGerald declared. - Cincinnati.com, 7/11/14
Not to mention FitzGerald has also been focusing on this in his campaign:Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald takes his gubernatorial campaign to southwest Ohio Saturday, just days after Gov. John Kasich visited the area.In what his campaign has dubbed the "Hometown Tour," FitzGerald, a Democratic candidate for governor, is expected to discuss the impact of state cuts in local government funding imposed by Kasich and his fellow Republicans in the state legislature.
FitzGerald's itinerary also makes a nod to organized labor -- a major backer of the FitzGerald campaign.
In his first stop in Cincinnati, FitzGerald will participate in "Fire Ops 101," a firefighter training class geared toward public officials. The event, which will begin at 8 a.m., is organized by the International Association of Fire Fighters.
The union has made two maximum $12,155 contributions to FitzGerald this year, according to state campaign finance records, and has budgeted to spend $20 million on elections this year. And Kasich is on the organization's list of potential targets, due to his past support for restrictions on collective bargaining for firefighters and other public employees.
Once he's done in Cincinnati, FitzGerald will make stops in Lebanon, Wilmington and Jackson to address media and supporters on cuts in state aid to local governments. FitzGerald and other Democrats have argued the funding cuts, made in 2011 to help balance a multi-billion dollar state budget deficit, have resulted in higher local taxes and reduced government services. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 7/11/14
And Ohio Democrats are focused on voter turnout:Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald said that Ohio needs to be more diverse with its plans on energy if it wants to continue to compete.FitzGerald said Gov. John Kasich’s signing of Senate Bill 310 on June 3 will set back the state, costing Ohioans jobs and increased utility bills while being damaging to the environment.
While setting himself a far distance away from his Republican counterpart, however, FitzGerald has also set himself away from several members of his party on the issue of energy. Fitzgerald said he felt energy was too important of an issue to be politicized and said all of his decisions would be based on science rather than political moves. FitzGerald unveiled his own energy policy July 2. While his energy plan includes ideas popular with his party such as focusing on clean and renewable energy, his plan would also include maintaining traditional energy sources such as coal or oil as long as they were environmentally responsible. FitzGerald even went on to say he would back the development of fracking as long as it was environmentally safe.
As part of his six-point plan on energy, FitzGerald said his first line of business would be to repeal SB 310. In essence, the legislation froze the state timeline requiring utilities to find 25 percent of their power from renewable and advanced energy sources by 2025. He said he would take it a step further.
“We not only need to reverse SB 310,” FitzGerald said, “we need to re-ensure our partners our partners that were scared off by this legislation. The messages you send to the energy business are very important. This was not the right message to send.”
FitzGerald said Kasich could not kill the 25 percent plan, so he chose to kill it for two years. He said that investors looking to create renewable energy in Ohio were blindsided by the legislation. He said it sent the message that Ohio was not the place to go if you were planning to invest in clean energy. - LimaOhio.com, 7/10/14
http://www.toledoblade.com/...
Of course the Republicans are nervous about FitzGerald's chances of unseating Kasich that's why they're resorting to this bull shit:Democrats have redefined the Republicans’ so-called “war on women” beyond health-care issues, but it still remains to be seen whether the tactic will bring out female voters in droves this November.Polls show Ohio voters, including independents, are narrowly divided and firmly entrenched on the issue of abortion, so the focus on the “war on women” appears to be more about exciting the party’s base to turn out on Nov. 4 than about converting anyone.
“[Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Ed FitzGerald’s choice of running mate [Sharen Neuhardt] signaled that this was going to be an issue in this campaign,” said Paul Beck, professor emeritus in political science at Ohio State University.
“I’m guessing that in [Republican Gov.] John Kasich’s inner sanctum, there have been hopes that more radical Republicans weren’t going to send a ‘personhood’ issue to his desk,” he said. “He’s been able to avoid that kind of problem. Still, I think the problems Republicans faced in 2012, when you had [the rape comments of failed U.S. Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock], showed that people do pay attention to this.”
The narrow defeat of one-term Gov. Ted Strickland by Mr. Kasich in 2010 was blamed to some extent on the underwhelming midterm turnout of the party’s base, particularly in Democrat-rich Cleveland.
“2010 was a nightmare. We’ve watched that movie. We’ve seen the ending, and I never want to see it again,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.), chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said recently at what amounted to a Columbus pep rally to get out the female vote.
So Democrats have embraced the “war on women” narrative. The party belatedly got behind an unsuccessful voting-rights push by the African-American community. It’s done its best to keep the specter of Senate Bill 5, the voter-rejected collective bargaining law of 2011, alive with warnings that Republicans would pursue a broader anti-union agenda if re-elected.
Providing ammunition for the “war on women” is legislation passed by Republicans and signed by Mr. Kasich seen as restricting access to birth control and abortion services. That includes a provision the state is using to try to shut down Toledo’s last abortion clinic, Capital Care Network.
“FitzGerald is going to say this guy is a Republican, tied to the Republican legislature, and a Christian conservative who is part and parcel to the kind of positions the party takes nationwide on these issues,” Mr. Beck said.
He said the U.S. Supreme Court may not have done Mr. Kasich and other Republicans on the ballot this year any favors with its ruling allowing closely held corporations to cite religious objections and refuse to provide coverage for contraception for employees under the federal health-care law. - Toledo Blade, 7/14/14
It remains to be seen if the Ohio GOP's attacks over nothing will work but we can't allow them to dupe voters. This is looking like a tight race but that we can win. Click here to get involved and donate to FitzGerald's campaign:The Ohio Republican Party filed a lawsuit today to try to force Cuyahoga County Executive and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald to release information detailing his use of the county parking garage.The GOP has been criticizing FitzGerald for weeks for refusing to release key-card information detailing his county parking garage habits. The information was first requested in April by the Northeast Ohio Media Group to better understand how he balances time in the office with campaigning. FitzGerald has refused the request, saying the release of the information poses a security risk to him.
The GOP submitted a similar records request. The lawsuit was filed before the Ohio Supreme Court. It argues that FitzGerald violated Ohio's open records law by failing to respond to the party's request.
The party threatened last month to sue the county for the information. It is also seeking the key-card data from several other employees, including Clerk of Courts Andrea Rocco. FitzGerald's administration has not explained why it has not handed over information on other employees. Lauren Hitt, the press secretary for FitzGerald's gubernatorial campaign, said the request for other employees' records has not been denied. She said the records are still being reviewed.
The filing of the suit comes one day after Ohio Republican Party officials shared the stage with FitzGerald in announcing that the Republican National Committee picked Cleveland to host the party's national convention in 2016.
FitzGerald argued that he, like the governor, faces legitimate security concerns. He said he has received death threats and that and some of those cases remain open. Some of the cases, he said, date back to his career in law enforcement. He noted requests for information about the governor's whereabouts are vetted by the Ohio State Highway Patrol. - Northeast Ohio Media Group, 7/9/14
