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Redfern stands by his man
On the side
Surprising result: When I initially saw the results in the 13th Congressional District I was surprised that U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, received only 68.45 percent of the vote. The reason for my reaction was Ryan was running in a heavy Democratic district against a Republican with no name recognition who did next to no campaigning and a write-in candidate in even worse shape.
Ryan got 78.15 percent of the vote in 2008 and 80.25 percent in 2006 so I expected a bigger win this time.
However, among the 15 House members who faced competition in last week’s election — U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-7th, ran unopposed — Ryan had the second highest vote percentage.
The only member of Congress from the state to have a higher percentage than Ryan was Cleveland’s U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-11th, with 79.2 percent of the vote in likely the most Democratic district in the state.
When the 419 area code phone number showed up on my cell last Friday, I knew it could be only one person — Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern.
I knew that for two reasons. One, he’s the only person I know with that area code who would call me on my cell. Two, it came on the same day as my column in which former ODP Chairman Harry Meshel ripped into Redfern calling him “a clown who helped ruin the state Democratic Party” and a “pip-squeak.”
To Redfern’s credit, during our lengthy talk he only took a couple of subtle digs at Meshel, who has a political grudge against him dating back 20 years ago.
An article with Redfern’s comments ran in last Saturday’s Vindicator, but there was more we discussed that wasn’t included in that piece that deserves to be written, so here we go.
Redfern doesn’t regret having Ed FitzGerald run as the party’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee even though he had the second worst vote percentage for a Democrat at the top of the ticket in the state’s history. (Interestingly, the worst was Robert Burch in 1994 when Meshel was chairman.)
“Probably on paper [FitzGerald was] one of the best [gubernatorial candidates] that we’ve seen since Dick Celeste first ran in 1978,” Redfern said of FitzGerald, who received 32.9 percent of the vote. Celeste lost the race in 1978, but won in 1982 and 1986.
“Money was the problem,” Redfern said of FitzGerald. “To call strangers for eight hours a day and ask for $1,000 is a miserable, difficult task. He was unwilling to do that.”
After the results of last week’s election were done, the ODP sent a two-sentence quote from Redfern saying he was going to resign in mid-December. Redfern said he hasn’t decided when he would leave, but he would remain as a consultant to help the party when a new leader is selected. Also, he said he would gladly serve as a state co-chairman for Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president in 2016.
As for returning to politics, Redfern said, “Don’t count me out.”
Redfern said he doesn’t have to resign as chairman as he was re-elected earlier this year to a four-year term, but decided it was time to go.
He contends he and his wife have been thinking about getting out of politics for about 18 months. But that doesn’t explain why he ran for re-election to his Ohio House seat and his wife, Kim, ran for a seat on the Ohio Board of Education. They both lost.
Redfern said he lost his state representative race because instead of concentrating on that, he “was traveling the state on behalf of Democrats.”
While acknowledging the statewide losses in 2010 and this year, Redfern said he had great victories at the school-board and city-council levels to Congress to the White House.
Redfern is the only Ohio Democratic chairman in history to serve when the party’s presidential candidate carried this state twice with more than 50 percent of the vote. He also said he helped elect Sherrod Brown to the U.S. Senate in 2006 against incumbent Republican Mike DeWine and beat back the 2012 challenge from GOP Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who had more money in his campaign two years ago than any other Senate candidate in the nation.
Redfern wasn’t involved in strategic decisions by the Barack Obama and Brown campaigns, but handled his responsibilities — essentially being an attack dog critical of Republican opponents — very well, according to those with intimate knowledge of the campaigns.
He had to be “pushed and shoved at times” to do certain things, but he always did what was asked of him, one of the sources said.