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State Democrats lack unity
On the side
New district director: U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-6th, has promoted Sarah Poulton to be his district director following the departure of Jackie Stewart who previously had that job.
Poulton, who used to work for The Vindicator, has been with Johnson since 2011, starting as a field representative. She was most recently Johnson’s director of constituent services and served as his campaign manager in this last election.
“Sarah has been a member of my team since the beginning, and has worked her way up through the ranks — excelling with each additional opportunity and responsibility that she’s been given,” said Johnson of Marietta, who won his third two-year term in the U.S. House last month.
Time for some R&R: I’m out of the office for the next couple of weeks vacationing in beautiful Austintown. That means no columns from me for the next two weeks.
While Ohio Democrats came together to unanimously elect David Pepper as its next chairman, the party is hardly united.
Last month’s election for Democrats in Ohio was among the worst in its history, and now Pepper has to somehow bring the various factions together to make the party relevant again.
As I wrote last week, some Democratic leaders wanted Sharen Neuhardt — the party’s lieutenant governor candidate in last month’s nightmare election — to get out of the chairman’s race so as not to publicly embarrass her and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.
That’s because for about two weeks before the vote it was obvious she had no chance to win despite Brown, the state’s best-known elected Democrat, not only backing Neuhardt, but whipping votes on her behalf — without much success.
If it had gone to a floor vote, Neuhardt would have been lucky to get 40 votes from the party’s 148 executive committee members. Brown’s involvement bothered and even angered some in the party.
They accused him and Neuhardt of strong-arming executive committee members and complained Brown’s only financial contribution to the party’s ticket, that was swept again by Republicans, was $100 to Connie Pillich, the failed treasurer candidate. In comparison, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars from his political action committee to his state party and GOP candidates.
Those close to Brown say he tried in good faith to help the party after last month’s disastrous election because he saw problems and wanted to get involved. They also dispute the strong-arm accusations.
Despite being politically savvy and popular with Democratic voters, Brown’s lack of interaction with a number of executive committee members — he is a member by nature of his position — made his efforts to gain support for Neuhardt difficult.
Brown couldn’t get any of the four Ohio Democrats in the U.S. House to back Neuhardt; three of them, including Tim Ryan, openly backed Pepper.
Brown had previously backed Denny Wojtanowski to run the party, but he quickly withdrew from consideration after some Democrats complained about his past lobbying work for and contributions to Republicans.
Regarding Brown’s lack of personal political donations, his supporters say he sent out contribution requests for the statewide candidates to his extensive email list of backers, and that raised money from people those candidates could never reach.
As for Neuhardt, her exit from the chairman’s race was hardly graceful.
While she praised Pepper, the party’s failed attorney general candidate last month who also lost the auditor’s race in 2010, and Nina Turner, a state senator who lost last month’s secretary of state’s race and who Pepper said will have an active role in the party, Neuhardt sharply criticized party officials for $2 million in debt from most, if not all, executive committee members and other questionable financial decisions.
Outgoing Chairman Chris Redfern said the debt is from mortgage on the party’s headquarters, and it’s certainly not a secret.
Brown didn’t attend the committee meeting as the Senate was in session at the same time.
A video message from him played at the meeting had its issues, and ended up being just Brown’s voice with no picture.
Neuhardt, who’s said she’ll never run for office again, attended the meeting, but stood the entire time. Perhaps it was because she doesn’t have a seat at the table.
In time, this will be largely forgotten. But it’s a lesson for all that politics can be a messy business.