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Former governor said he’ll decide by the end of the month about running for the U.S. Senate
YOUNGSTOWN
Former Gov. Ted Strickland said he’ll “make a decision by the end of the month” about running next year for the U.S. Senate.
During a Monday conference call with reporters about reforms to federal subsidies he says will help the coal industry in Appalachia, Strickland, a Democrat, was asked about running for the Senate.
After saying he’d have a public announcement at the end of the month, Strickland declined to discuss the Senate run because the call was about coal and not his candidacy.
When asked again, Strickland sidestepped the question.
“I care about Ohio; I care about a lot of things. I care about coal,” he said.
Strickland added that a report released Monday on coal subsidies was in the works “long before there was any talk of me entering a political race of any kind.”
Three sources close to Strickland told The Vindicator on Jan. 30 that he called several political allies a day earlier to say he would run in the 2016 primary and spoke to high-level national donors about his decision that day. One source said at the time that Strickland would make an official announcement between Feb. 16 and 24. A fourth source has since confirmed to the newspaper that Strickland would make that announcement later this month.
Three of those sources said Monday that Strickland has said nothing about changing his mind and expect him to run for the position. The fourth couldn’t be reached.
Strickland, a former six-term U.S. House member before easily winning the 2006 gubernatorial race, would run in the Democratic primary. The party primary winner would challenge U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican running next year for a second six-year term.
Portman has lined up endorsements from about 500 Republicans, including all statewide executive-branch officeholders.
Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld announced last month he would seek the Democratic nomination for Senate next year.
Since the newspaper’s report about Strickland, national and state Republicans frequently have criticized him. The criticism is about Strickland’s leaving the state to run the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a left-leaning organization in Washington, D.C.; for his four years as governor; and for the fund’s policies on coal. While in Congress, Strickland represented the heart of the state’s coal region. Strickland lost re-election by 2 percentage points in 2010 to Republican John Kasich.
During Monday’s call, Strickland said the failure of the U.S. government to update fees for companies mining coal on federal property, including in Wyoming and Montana, is damaging the coal industry in Appalachia.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee provided a statement Monday from Christian R. Palich, interim president of the Ohio Coal Association, criticizing Strickland for his involvement with the Center for American Progress, which he says supports “the Obama administration’s war on coal.”
In the statement, Palich wrote: “Ted Strickland has always liked to claim that he supports Ohio’s coal industry, but he has done just the opposite,” and the former governor “will have a lot to answer to Ohio’s coal voters on why he betrayed the people he used to represent in Congress and why he has been getting paid by a liberal Washington think tank for the past few years to advocate policies that are bad for Ohio coal, as well as anyone who turns on a light switch.”
Portman’s campaign on Monday sent an email from Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, the failed 2012 Republican candidate for the Senate. “Strickland left Ohio in financial shambles, and he’s probably the last person we’d want to send to fix Washington,” Mandel wrote.