Red-State.com on Petro Campaign

From Michael Meckler's Red-State.Com

http://red-state.com/1105/112905.html

 

 

November 29, 2005

Republican insiders are scratching their heads trying to figure out what attorney general Jim Petro is doing in his bid to become the GOP gubernatorial candidate next year. Does Petro intend to portray himself as a conservative? If so, why did he call secretary of state and rival candidate Ken Blackwell "an extreme right-winger" in an interview last week with David Skolnick of the Youngstown Vindicator, and imply that auditor Betty Montgomery, the other major candidate for the Republican nomination, needed to drop out of the race so that moderates could rally behind him? If Petro intends to campaign as a conservative, why did he suggest last week to Mark Naymik of the Plain Dealer that he might end up with a new lieutenant-governor running mate to replace conservative Hamilton County commissioner Phil Heimlich?

Then again, if Petro intends to campaign as a moderate, why is his new TV ad touting his opposition to abortion and gay marriage and claiming that the Bible and faith direct his decision making? If Petro wants to be perceived as a moderate, why did he fashion his own version of a constitutional amendment to limit state government spending after Blackwell already worked through the petition process to place a tax-expenditure limitation (TEL) amendment on next November's ballot?

The inconsistency of message is only the latest in a Petro campaign that has been full of missteps since Election Day 2004. In the immediate aftermath of President Bush's re-election, Petro had the campaign cash and the political endorsements to make him the clear frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. He also had several natural advantages over his two main rivals. Petro lacked the high negatives that Blackwell had because of the secretary of state's involvement in the contentious presidential election; and Petro's switch from pro-choice to anti-abortion put him within the mainstream of the Republican party, as opposed to Montgomery's consistent pro-choice position.

But as soon as the gates opened for the 2006 race, Petro stumbled. On Thursday, November 4, 2004, Petro held a meeting with his staff at the attorney general's office at which he told a joke about being kissed on the cheek by men while on the campaign trail, but that with the passage of Issue 1 -- the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Ohio -- he didn't have to worry that the kiss would lead to anything more serious. Or something to that effect. The exact wording of the joke has never been resolved, and it seems to have been an off-the-cuff remark, but a gay staff member was offended and went to the media.

Petro then had to do damage control by publicly apologizing to gay-rights groups. The apology only reinforced the skepticism of religious conservatives toward Petro, since the attorney general had opposed the anti-gay marriage amendment. So Petro ended up angering both moderates and conservatives, when if he had only kept to the business at hand at his staff meeting and not tried to make a lame joke, there would have been no controversy at all. This early and minor incident, however, has been emblematic of the entire campaign.

Petro supporters maintain that the attorney general's current problems are, to a large degree, due to governor Bob Taft's ethics woes. They blame the unpopular Taft for causing the the public to sour on all establishment Republicans like Petro, and allowing Blackwell, who has long been a Taft critic, to reap the benefits and jump into the lead in the GOP primary. As Taft's ethics convictions fade into history -- so Petro's supporters maintain -- voters will return to the perceptions of the candidates they had back in the summer of 2004, when Petro appeared to be the frontrunner.

The difficulty with accepting this scenario is that many of Petro's problems have been self-inflicted. Petro was slow to respond to the ethics scandals at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, and the later zeal he has shown in investigating and prosecuting has not erased the initial perception that he was off-the-ball when the problems first arose. His inordinately early choice of a running mate struck observers as a sign of desperation. And why Phil Heimlich, someone who was not generally reckoned as ready for statewide office and who is best known as a cultural conservative opposed to casino gambling and legal status for homosexuals?

Petro should have portrayed himself as the unifier, the only Republican who could gain support from both moderates and conservatives. He should have been producing policy paper after policy paper, touting himself as the "candidate of ideas". Instead, he trotted out a state-government reorganization plan similar to those that had been kicking around Republican circles since the 1980s and which then-governor George Voinovich failed to get implemented in the early 1990s. This is not to say that the plan does not have merit, but for months it remained the only proposal Petro was promoting. Now Petro has his "Citizens' Amendment for Prosperity", which will require approval by the state legislature to get on the ballot, but the perception is that his amendment is merely a pale reaction to work Blackwell has already done with his TEL amendment. There appears to have been very little thought given to policy development by Petro's campaign during the past 12 months.

Now Petro is compelled to start burning his cash with expensive television advertising six months before the primary in order to resurrect his campaign, but the message in the ads isn't always jibing with what Petro is telling the media in interviews. Conservatives have by and large made up their minds about the 2006 gubernatorial primary: they are supporting Ken Blackwell. Notwithstanding the television ads, Petro seems to have come to the same conclusion. Petro is going to have to start presenting a consistent message as an open-minded, common-sense thinker in the mainstream if he is to have any chance at all of becoming governor.

Many Republican observers -- even those who have publicly pledged their support to Petro -- will privately say that it's already too late, that Petro squandered his chance, and that Montgomery would make a better candidate for moderates to rally around. I have even heard the rumor -- though the source was from outside Republican circles -- that Petro may, in the end, leave the governor's race and file for re-election as attorney general. I don't put much credibility into that rumor -- if one of the big three Republicans drops out, it is most likely to be Montgomery -- but the fact that such a rumor is circulating is a sign of the perceived feebleness of Petro's campaign, despite the more than three million dollars he has already raised.

Five months remain until the primary, and that's a long time in politics. By spending his money properly and keeping to a consistent message, Petro could turn into the "comeback kid" and win his party's nomination for governor. But it would have to be an almost miraculous comeback.