Columbus area a gold mine for Democrats

When in doubt, the Ohio Democratic Party and Gov. Ted Strickland have turned time and time again to the Columbus area.

After Richard Cordray was elected in November 2008 as attorney general to the unexpired term of Marc Dann, Strickland appointed Kevin Boyce, a Columbus City Council member, as Ohio treasurer.

After some more well-known Democratic candidates said they weren’t interested in being Strickland’s lieutenant governor running mate, he offered the job to Yvette McGee Brown. She accepted and the announcement was made last month. Brown is a former domestic relations and juvenile court judge from Franklin County [Columbus].

When state Rep. Jennifer Garrison of Marietta withdrew over the weekend as the Democratic candidate for secretary of state — it’s a rather gutless move to quit a race by e-mail on a weekend — Strickland and other Ohio Democratic leaders chose Maryellen O’Shaughnessy to replace her.

O’Shaughnessy is the clerk of courts in what county? Wait for it. Wait for it. Yup, Franklin County.

O’Shaughnessy’s previous elected experience is somewhat spotty. She spent 11 years on Columbus City Council before being elected as clerk of courts in November 2008.

But she failed to win an open congressional district seat in 2000. She also lost a Franklin County commissioner race two years later.

Democrats needed a candidate to run for chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.

Party leaders reached out to a number of candidates, but announced Monday that the Democratic nominee would be Eric Brown, a probate judge in ... Franklin County.

It’s almost like Democratic officials look out their office window, spot Columbus-area Democratic officeholders and offer them seats on the statewide ticket. [Just kidding, Chris.]

There are two exceptions.

Hamilton County Commissioner David Pepper is the party’s auditor candidate, and Mary Jane Trapp of Geauga County, who serves on the Warren-based 11th District Court of Appeals, is running for a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court.

I suppose you can also throw in Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher of Cuyahoga County, who is running for the U.S. Senate. The other Democrat seeking that position is Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner of Franklin County.

But I’m writing about non-federal statewide offices.

The Republican ticket is filled with candidates from all over the state: the Dayton area, Toledo, two from the Akron area, Greene County, the Cleveland area, and a couple from the Columbus area.

So why did Republicans field candidates from all over the state while the Democrats are so focused on the Columbus area?

It was going to be difficult, for the most part, to field candidates from Northeast Ohio, the Democratic Party’s voting power base.

There’s a major Democratic corruption scandal in Cuyahoga County making that area almost toxic statewide. Republicans would have a field day with a statewide candidate from Cuyahoga County, even if that person did nothing improper.

Like it or not, the Dann scandal has made it difficult for the Valley to have a statewide candidate on the ballot.

“We screwed ourselves” is how one elected Valley Democrat described it to me.

Also, during the 2006 election, the only Democrat to lose a statewide executive office race was Barbara Sykes from Akron. She wasn’t a strong campaigner and she lost the auditor’s race to Mary Taylor of Green, a short distance from Akron.

Democratic leaders looked throughout the state for the best candidates, and kept coming back to Franklin County.

Regardless of the reasons why, the Democrats are counting on candidates who’ve won only in the Columbus area to come up big in the November general election.

Democrats enjoyed great success in the 2006 statewide executive office races with a slate of relatively unknown candidates from throughout the state. But with the current political climate and the lack of candidates from outside Franklin County, they’re going to have an extremely difficult time repeating in November what they did four years ago.