The day after Super Tuesday, Dr. Jason Johnson discusses the fall of Dennis Kucinich in Cleveland, Sarah Palin’s moves for 2012 and the lack of enthusiasm in the state of Ohio.
Dennis Kucinich
Marcy Kaptur Pulls a LeBron on Dennis Kucinich
Even though I was not born in Cleveland, Ohio, I consider myself a pseudo-expert on the city due to my years as a college professor at Hiram College (about 40 minutes from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame). And if there’s one thing that stands out about the Cleveland area, it’s the amazingly dire and depressing way that people speak about the city. Any city that promotes itself by saying “We’re Not Detroit!” has some serious self-esteem issues. All you have to do is watch “Parma State of Mind” (a cover of New York State of Mind about the Cleveland suburbs) and you have to wonder how anybody can govern a region that’s so depressed.
So you have to give credit to Marcy Kaptur, the Congresswoman who beat Dennis Kucinich in the intra-party primary on Super Tuesday for figuring out a way to tap into the Cleveland zeitgeist. She took all of that rust-belt, scratch-off-ticket-buying, chain-link-fence-using, skoal-chewing angst of Northeast Ohio and hit the former “Boy Mayor” with a radio ad he couldn’t counter.
The big knock against Kucinich was that he was a national Congressman rather than a local one. He spent a lot of time running for president twice, speaking all over the world and most recently flirting with the idea that he would run for an open Congressional seat in Washington State if things didn’t work out in Ohio.
Kaptur pounced on that faster than you can say King James, running this killer radio ad entitled “Moving Truck” where she compared Dennis to some of the most notorious folks in the history of Cleveland. Art Modell, who stole the Cleveland Browns from the city, turned them into the Baltimore Ravens and then won a Super Bowl. And, of course, everyone’s favorite whipping-boy LeBron James who gave Clevelanders seven years of great basketball, but had the nerve to leave for Miami once his contract was completed! Down to Dennis: with his eye on Seattle he fit the bill as yet another Clevelander who was about to jump ship the moment he didn’t get what he wanted.
Marcy hit the “Boy Mayor” where it hurt, and right where Clevelanders could feel it.
To be fair, this won’t stop locals from whining, complaining or bemoaning the city like God has personally abandoned them. However, unlike former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur realizes just how self-effacing and depressed her new district is and worked that to her advantage. More importantly, she managed to elevate LeBron to ‘reverse’-Kingmaker. That’s quite an accomplishment for a rust-belt Congresswoman from Toledo.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
Dennis Kuinich versus Marcy Kaptur: Ohio’s Fine Old Political Cannibals
Two of the fiercest liberals in Congress, Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur, are about to engage in one of the biggest political oophagies in recent memory.
What’s an oophagy? That’s the process wherein embryos within a mother’s uterus – let’s say a shark – all fight and eventually consume one another in a battle to see who will actually be born and who will die a horrible death never escaping the womb. Oophagies are pretty rare in nature, occurring mostly in vicious predators like sharks, some small larvae … and, yes, politicians.
Right now the state of Ohio is witness to one of the most disturbing examples of political cannibalism that we have seen in years and it’s disappointing because while both political embryos deserve to live, only one of them is going to survive.
Thanks to the highly controversial, likely unconstitutional and even politically short-sighted actions of the state Republican House and Senate all of the voting districts in the state of Ohio have been re-written in a way to all but guarantee Republicans stay in safe seats.
This is actually pretty poor form for the newly Republican state legislature because the usual political process is to use re-districting to protect long standing incumbents of either party and let the young kids and newly elected fight it out in the arena. However, in John Kasich’s Ohio the GOP district planners decided to combine two key districts, forcing two long serving Democratic liberals, Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and nationally known liberal gadfly Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland’s West Side into a political oophagy where only one will survive.
Kaptur has been representing the stretch of land between Cleveland and Detroit since 1983 and her liberal credentials and work ethic are pretty much without reproach. Along the same lines Kucinich has a long and successful career in Northeast Ohio that has liberals across the nation clamoring for his re-election.
Kucinich was once dubbed the “Boy Mayor” for ousting a Republican incumbent in 1977 to become mayor of Cleveland at only 31 years of age. Later in life he entered Congress in 1996 and has run for president in both 2004 and 2008. Now both of these candidates and their constituents face an uncertain future as these two left wing predators tear each other apart to see who gets to represent an incredibly safe democratic District for the next few decades. Kaptur has already accused Kucinich of coordinating his campaign with a Super PAC out of Texas that has run ads on his behalf, while he has accused her of not paying taxes and supporting Bush’s wars. Neither of these charges really hold much water, but the fact that they are being lobbed says a lot about how serious these contenders are.
No party is strong enough to stop two competitors from devouring each other if that’s what it takes to win.
On next Tuesday’s primary we’ll see who eventually survives this battle. As of right now, polls suggest the race is pretty close. Unlike Kaptur however, Kucinich has another plan if he loses. There has been a drive to get him to run for Congress out of liberal Washington State and his campaign has not entirely squelched rumors that he would enter that race if things don’t go well for him in Ohio. Can an Ohio Congressman be born again in Washington State? Unlike oophagies in nature, our political cannibalism has been known to give people second chances, so we’ll wait and see after next Tuesday.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
WCPN: Jason Johnson on Ohio Congressional Redistricting
Hiram College professor Jason Johnson discussed the impact of an Ohio Congressional Resdistricting proposal recently proposed by Buckeye State Republicans on a recent edition of The Sound of Ideas on Cleveland NPR affiliate WCPN.
There’s been a change of heart by 10th District Congressional Representative Dennis Kucinich, who now says he may stay in Ohio after all. The 15 year congressman says he was surprised by the GOP-proposed congressional map which was released yesterday… and did not eliminate his Cleveland-based district. The still unapproved proposal would instead create a new district along Lake Erie, forcing a likely face-off between Kucinich and current 9th District Representative Marcy Kaptur, of Toledo. The newly drawn map of Ohio’s congressional districts, with 16 seats instead of 18…. is designed to give the best advantage to Republicans, who dominate every branch of Ohio government. Overall, each party winds up losing one of the two seats the state lost after the 2010 census showed big population shifts to southern states. Jason Johnson is a Political Science Professor at Hiram College. He spoke with ideastream’s Bill Rice about what Republicans hope to accomplish with the new district boundaries. The newly drawn map of Ohio’s congressional districts, with 16 seats instead of 18…. is designed to give the best advantage to Republicans, who dominate every branch of Ohio government. Overall, each party winds up losing one of the two seats the state lost after the 2010 census showed big population shifts to southern states. Jason Johnson is a Political Science Professor at Hiram College. He spoke with ideastream’s Bill Rice about what Republicans hope to accomplish with the new district boundaries.
Click here to listen to Jason Johnson on WCPN segement “Implications of New Congressional Map for Northeast Ohio.”
Akron Beacon Journal: Kucinich, Sutton Vulnerable in Congressional Redistricting
Hiram College professor Jason Johnson was quoted in the Akron Beacon Journal about the threat posed to Representatives Dennis Kucinich, Betty Sutton and other Northeast Ohio Democrats following the loss of two Congressional seats in the 2010 Census.
If Republicans are aggressive, they might decide to combine Sutton’s and Kucinich’s districts, said Jason Johnson, a political science professor at Hiram College.
Kucinich might not “play that well” in Sutton’s district, and voters in Kucinich’s district might not be that familiar with Sutton, Johnson said.
“They would have a chance of knocking out her or him,” he said. “She’s more likely to get knocked out. This would drag him away from Cleveland and give him less of a platform.”
Johnson predicts the GOP will focus on Northeast Ohio — and the districts Sutton, Kucinich, Tim Ryan and Marcia Fudge hold — because this area is “solidly blue.”
Read the full story at “Ohio to lose two congressional seats.”