Ohio’s Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner Richard Cordray, facing a strong challenge from former Cleveland mayor and congressman Dennis Kucinich, struck a militantly populist tone Tuesday morning, telling a gathering of union leaders and county and city officials that he’s “outraged” about the “plundering” of local government budgets and services triggered by GOP tax cuts.
“They’re making themselves look good and leaving you holding the bag,” he said of Ohio’s Republican governor and legislature. “They’re always telling you to tighten your belts without touching their own.”
Sitting around a conference table in an ornate historic union hall, Cordray scribbled notes and listened intently as the group of school board members, teachers, city council members and firefighters described the woeful state of their counties’ courts, public schools and public transportation systems.Cordray then slammed Republicans’“mania” for cutting taxes — including the repeal of Ohio’s estate tax in 2013 — which he said has left local governments unable to provide basic services to their poorest residents.
“They’re making very calculated political judgements about who they can hurt and who they can help based on who are the Republicans and who are the Democrats, without regard for who are the citizens who we’re all supposed to serve,” he said. “They’re helping the folks at the top and hurting the folks at the bottom in very tangible ways.”
“As governor, I promise to work with you all. I won’t try to make the state look good at your expense,” he vowed. And if the legislature continues down its current path of tax and budget cuts, he added sternly, “there will be vetoes.”
“The one thing I can do that I don’t know if there is another Democrat in Ohio who could run for office and do, is that I can reach out to people who voted for President Trump,” Kucinich said in a pitch to Ohio voters on Fox News, the conservative network where he’s appeared as a Democratic pundit — and at times, as a defender of Trump’s populist economic message — after losing a congressional election to Rep. Marcy Kaptur following a redistricting plan that consolidated their districts.
On the one hand, how to reach Obama-to-Trump voters in places like Ohio or Wisconsin has been an open question for Democrats in the wake of the 2016 election.
On the other, Kucinich’s defenses of Trump (earlier this year, for instance, he affirmed the ideathat the “deep state” existed and had tried to undermine the president), and his calls for a primary challenger to Barack Obama, have frustrated more mainstream Democrats. “Kucinich has been able to duck a lot of these arguments because Ohio Democrats weren't watching Fox News when he was on,” said one longtime Ohio Democrat.
His two meetings with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad — including a trip to Syria with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard last year — are a seen as a potential major liability in a general election, however. While Kucinich has long been an anti-interventionist and a critic of the US wars in the Middle East, his willingness to meet with Assad is highly unusual for an American politician, against the backdrop of chemical weapon usage and the brutal conventional campaign waged by Assad in Syria’s civil conflict.
In other words, some Ohio Democrats are skeptical that if he were the party’s nominee that he could turn out the voters the party depends on in November, even if he might pick up some crossover voters.
Also, this doesn’t look good for Kucinich:
After initially not disclosing who paid him to give speeches in 2017, former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich filed an amended ethics disclosure showing he was paid $20,000 by a group sympathetic to the Syrian government.
Syria's President Bashar Assad has been accused by multiple intelligence agencies of using chemical weapons on his own people in the long-running Syrian Civil War.
The revelation comes when Kucinich has been dogged by his connection to Assad, whom he met with in 2017, in the gubernatorial race. Kucinich, a longtime critic of American involvement with foreign conflict, has questioned whether Assad used chemical weapons.
Kucinich's ethics filing shows a payment of $20,000 from the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees. Paul LaRudee, treasurer for the organization, described the group as an umbrella nonprofit for other nonprofit organizations.
Among those is the Syria Solidarity Movement, which LaRudee said provided funding for Kucinich to attend the European Centre for the Study of Extremism.
LaRudee described the group as a human rights organization, but the group's website includes multiple posts supportive of the Syrian government.
New primary polling shows Richard Cordray leading the Democratic primary for governor and Republicans in the state garnering high disapproval ratings from within their own ranks.
The 1984 Society, a political group of former Ohio Senate employees, commissioned polls for both the Democratic and Republican primary. Neil Clark, a Republican lobbyist and 1984 Society board member, said the poll was the second in a set the group was commissioning to give lobbyists and business people a better sense of where to spend their money or who to support politically.
The 1984 Society is planning two more general election polls, one in the summer and one in the fall.
The group also commissioned a poll in January that included both primary and general election matchups. The April poll looked only at primary matchups and intraparty approval ratings.
The Democratic poll surveyed 500 likely Democratic primary voters and has a margin of error of 4.38 percent, while the Republican poll measured 502 likely Republican primary voters with a margin of error of 4.37 percent. Both polls were taken from April 4-7.
Though the Democratic survey doesn't show Cordray running away with the race just yet with more than half of respondents still undecided, 27.5 percent of respondents said they were voting for Cordray in the Democratic primary. Former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich came in second with around 13 percent.
The Democratic poll included all of the candidates on the May 8 primary. Kucinich and Cordray were the only two to register in the double digits, with state Sen. Joe Schiavoni at 5 percent and former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O'Neill, Larry Ealy and Paul Ray all having less than 5 percent.
The numbers, if accurate, are welcome news to Cordray in a crowded primary where 35 percent of the vote could grant a candidate the nomination. Recent polling from another firm showed a tied race between Cordray and Kucinich.
Cordary’s former boss has been on the campaign trail reminding voters he’s the real populist:
In front of a large college crowd, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray got a boost today from Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive favorite.
Warren came out to tour Columbus and Cincinnati with Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she created under President Obama. At the Newport Theater, near the campus of Ohio State, Warren said Cordray stood on the side of students and hard-working Ohioans.
“Wall Street banks hate everything that Rich stands for and they will stop at nothing to prevent him from becoming your next governor," Wareen said. "But they have underestimated one unshakable truth. They’ve got money and they’ve got power, but there’s a whole lot more of us than there is of them."
Cordray has touted his experience at the CFPB, which he left to run for Ohio governor, as a major credential in this race.
"When we were working at the Consumer Bureau, we were working for everybody in this room and everybody in this state and everybody across the country," Cordray said. "And our job as we understood it was to stand on your side and see that you were treated fairly and when people wrong you to try and make it right."
Cordray also has a brilliant ad campaign strategy:
Facing a tight Democratic gubernatorial primary race against former congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, Ohio's Richard Cordray hauled out his biggest weapon for his first TV ad: Barack Obama.
As president, Obama named Cordray to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is considered a major element of Obama's legacy and which Cordray led for nearly six years.
The ad begins with the January 2012 Shaker Heights rally where Obama announced his recess appointment of Cordray, in defiance of Senate Republicans who were blocking his nomination. (Cordray won Senate confirmation the following year.)
While the clip is labeled as being from 2012, Obama's speech still has the feel of a present day campaign rally when he says, "The financial firms have armies of lobbyists in Washington looking out for their interests. You need somebody looking out for your interests and fighting for you, and that's Richard Cordray."
The ad makes sure to include the moment when Obama put his arm around Cordray. Obama hasn't endorsed a candidate in the primary, but Cordray's political consultants surely believe this is the next best thing.
And Cordray has been laying out his agenda for Ohio:
Richard Cordray, a Democrat running for governor, outlined a plan for universal pre-kindergarten on Monday, with plans to obtain some of the funding for the program from diverting money that currently goes to online charter schools.
Cordray, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said state investment into early childhood education made sense both fiscally and morally. But his plan to divert funds from online charter schools - such as the now-closed Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow - are part of a broader strategy by Democrats to overhaul the education system in the state.
Early childhood education is imperative to the future of Ohio - especially as the economy changes and requires a more educated workforce, Cordray said.
"If we don't do that, we will fall behind," he said. "We will not compete with the rest of the country. We will not compete with the rest of the world. And we will pay the price in a lot of young people's lives that will go in wrong directions and their lives will become wasted.
The main plank of the plan includes establishing a "Local Educator Support Hub," at the state level, which would include support and assessment on the best ways to expand access and enrollment in pre-K.
Meanwhile, over on the GOP side:
The May 8 GOP primary for governor is shaping up as one of the nastiest intra-party battles in recent years.
Across Ohio, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor is on a “made tough” tour, pushing her conservative credentials while Attorney General Mike DeWine is branding himself as a “rock solid conservative” and throwing shade at Taylor, calling her a slacker and using the phrase “lock her up.”
Taylor doesn’t hesitate to punch back. At the Ohio GOP endorsement meeting, she labeled DeWine a career politician and even took a swipe at his wife Fran’s tradition of baking pies and handing out cookbooks.
“Mary Taylor walked up there and made a personal attack on my wife and made a personal attack on me. I think that’s unfortunate,” DeWine said, adding that he is willing to take down any ad mentioning Taylor by name if she does the same.
Taylor said of the acrimony: “Mike DeWine’s campaign has been focused on personally attacking me and slandering me and that’s because he cannot defend his liberal record while he was in the U.S. Senate.”
She has said she won’t vote for DeWine in November if he is the party’s nominee for governor.
DeWine made headlines again last week when he went public with the advice he gave Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, who disclosed during an interview with the Dayton Daily News that he had hired a private defense attorney because the FBI was questioning his activities. DeWine said he called Rosenberger and urged him to resign if he had done anything wrong. Rosenberger did resign, causing several Democrats to pounce, saying DeWine shouldn’t have intervened during an ongoing investigation.
Taylor, too, used the occasion to take a shot at DeWine and what she called the “good old boy network.”
“This is what the Swamp looks like,” she wrote in a statement. “And this is what I am going to erase in state government. While I agree with the Speaker’s decision to step down, there are still many unanswered questions. The first of which is what did Mike DeWine know that prompted his Friday call to the Speaker’s office?”
Let’s let them duke it out. In the mean time, let’s help a real populist win the May 8th primary and become Ohio’s next Governor. Click here to donate and get involved with Cordray’s re-election campaign.