I’ve never lived there, but I have all kinds of friends and family there. It’s sort of a quintessential midwestern town in most aspects, but its politics are more conservative than even most Southern cities its size. For instance, there were no nudie bars in Cincinnati proper for many years because of local ordinances; I think there may be one now.
On the other hand, you have Bogart’s, Graeter’s, and way more top-notch butchers per capita than just about anywhere.
Note: I live in Ohio.
Point the first: By reputation Cincinnati is the most conservative large city in the USA.
Point the second: Republican Governor Taft isn’t so much involved in a scandal as an overbearing miasma of incompetence. From investing pension funds in rare coins (what next? Beanie Babies?) to general economic fecklessness he’s down to between 15-20% approval. He is, for all intents, hors de combat on the political scene. Even the national republican party would like him to fall into a black hole and not be associated with they’re brand again. Current aspirers to the Governor’s office include Ken Blackwell, R Secretary of State and Ted Strickland, longtime Democratic member of the US House Representatives. There will be others as well.
Of course, we’re also the state that produced Jim Traficant. God help us all.
To add to the above couple of posts…
Metro Cincinnati is strongly conservative, but I don’t think it’s that people are more conservative than other conservatives. It’s just that there are more of them than usual. Also, this is the home of the giant Jesus!
However, there are such creatures known as “Democrats” in the area. Their natural habitat is basically within the city limits of Cincinnati. FWIW, last year voters in the city did repeal a law that denied protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation. If you are a liberal and living in the suburbs, though, it just might be your personal political hell.
Oh, and a friendly word of advice: learn to love the chili or you’ll be run out of town. 
Don’t forget Jerry Springer, former Cincy mayor!
I think it will only teach the monkeys to fling the poo harder next time.
I think the question to ponder is if Bush is going to be a liability to congressmen running for re-election at the midterm.
His popularity is down and in districts that are close, usually the President can show up and make a few speeches and help out. But if he can’t…
Wait, so this isn’t a thread about how the Flyers need to improve their goaltending? :smack:
carry on
The city itself is pretty Democratic. There are only two Republicans on the nine-member City Council, and the mayor is a Democrat. Like most small-town city politics, however, the elected officials are pretty much useless; they tend to play toward their own personal constituencies and spend more time hamming it up for the cameras and the papers than actually working out an agenda or consistent set of policies.
There are a total of four current local politicians who I believe are worth a spit;
David Crowley (D, Council): He owns a bar in a rather swanky hillside arts & entertainment neighborhood, but he’s a good guy. Typical overeducated liberal elite, but he’s honest.
Chris Smitherman (I [well, technically, Charterite, but you don’t need to know that right now], Council): A young financial planner, who happens to be African American. He’s something of a firebrand, and was called a “smart-mouthed little punk” by the county prosecutor for criticizing the insularity of the police department. My kind of dude.
Mark Mallory (D, State Senate): He’s not afraid to stake out actual policy positions in a legislature that’s completely hostile to his ideas. I’ve met him a few times, and he’s an incredibly thoughtful guy. He’s running for mayor, but he’ll probably lose.
Todd Portune (D, County Commission): The only Dem in a county-wide office. He’s also a pretty thoughtful guy, and isn’t afraid to vociferously defend social services or put the screws to the local power elites.
Mayor Charlie, despite being a Democrat, is a complete chump and a tool of the business community. He might as well be a Republican, but he comes from something of a local democratic dynasty. His likely successor, David Pepper, is also a Democrat. He’s the son of the former CEO of P&G, and recently proposed to raise the penalty for posession of small amounts of pot from a $100 ticket to a year in jail. Whatever.
Thanks to the miracle of political districting, the first and second congressional districs split the city itself between them, rounding out the majority of their votes with the more conservative suburbs. I’m sure depriving the Democrats of a natural constituency was the last thing on the (GOP-controlled) Legislature’s mind when they drew the map up.
Oh, and I’ve lived here all my life, and I can’t stand the chili. Well, except on cheese coneys. Goetta, however, is the shit.
What about the carabiner of doom? And the carabineer?
Always getting the short shrift, I tell ya.
You’re not that far off. Along with the rare coins, some of the funds from that Worker’s Comp Bureau were “invested” in wine and race horses.
“Invested.” Right. Gotcha. And I’m heavily invested in fast food; got a bunch of french fries stored under the couch cushions.
Is this anywhere near Ohio’s 20th district, where former hostage Terry Anderson was defeated by his Republican, incumbent opponent who had the balls to imply that he was soft on terror?
From an article on the web:
[snip] This wasn’t even Padgett’s worst. That was reserved for a flier that showed a photo of Anderson interviewing one of his Hezbollah captors years after Anderson’s hostage release. It was positioned next to an out-of-context quote from Anderson (which appeared in The Athens News in October 2001) about trying to understand the motivations of people in the Middle East, along with Padgett’s charge that Anderson is “soft on terrorism” and part of the “blame America first” crowd." [snip]
Born and raised in Cincinnati, OH. Taft is an incompetent buffoon.
I’m not in Oh-2 but I was rooting for Hackett to eke out a victory. I can’t stand when people blindly vote party lines. Argh! I’d rather vote for an honest person who I’m at political odds with over a corrupt person who waves my party’s banner. As for the next election, I won’t be voting for anyone who is close to Gov. Taft because something is rotten in the state of Ohio and it’s starting to stink up the place.
I haven’t been following the Hackett election too closely, but what’s this I hear about 4,000+ votes for Schmidt “suddenly” turning up five minutes before the election was over? :dubious:
I’ve heard no such thing, myself, and I watched pretty close. But there are some mighty twitchy sphincters in Washington tonight. This is one of the solidest Tighty Righty districts out there, and this Hackett guy ran on a “fuck Bush” platform against a ton of money and damn near did it.
This is good. Could have been better, but this is good. If Ms Schmidt had only had a bit more direct support from GeeDubya, she might have still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
GeeDubya isn’t a lame duck, he’s an albatross. A radioactive albatross.
I heard something about that on Air America today, but it was Randi Rhodes so who knows? A quick Google turns up a lot of blogs mentioning the 4,000 vote margin of victory but nothing I could see regarding shenanigans or votes suddenly appearing.
Not that it would surprise me to find out that the Republicans cheated, but I haven’t seen or heard anything other than RR.
Well, the votes did show up “suddenly,” but for those of us watching the proceedings, it was clear that a large number of votes from about 100 precincts were being hand counted, and most people recognized that they could go for Schmidt, which they did.
It had been 50/50 for a long while, so perhaps it felt to some like a surprise dumping of votes.
I agree that this is a good thing. A very good thing. It would have been icing to have actually turned the seat, but it’s still fine. Some feel strongly that without the victory, it doesn’t matter. I wonder how confused these people were by the first Rocky movie.
That would be my district down here in Marietta. You wouldn’t believe the loca TV commercials Padgett ran. Pix of Anderson backed by the flames of hell and so forth. The personal animosity was so great towards the end that during a debate here Anderson made his opening statement then said he wouldn’t share a stage with someone with so little character as Padgett and left.
My mind was actually made up against Padgett because of those ads.
Hell, I can’t believe that no one has made a Mike Heimerdinger joke yet.
Please tell me that’s the name of a major Republican honcho who’s involved in a scandal with Jeff Gannon, investigative journalist and man-ho extraordinaire. That would be better than a pony.
It would appear that Hackett’s near win is no fluke. There’s growing anger at the ongoing loss of life in Iraq, more and more questioning of whether it’s worth it, among the people of Ohio who should be most solidly behind the Bush administration.
More dead bring anguish, anger in Ohio:
Bricker, with all due respect, how can you look at such evidence of growing disaffection in one of the Republicans’ core constituencies and still be so sanguine about the 2006 elections? Unless you expect the news from Iraq to become tremendously better over the next year, doesn’t it seem far more likely that opposition to the war, and to the administration and party that got us into it, will strengthen rather than dwindling? If the Democrats put up more Hacketts to run against the Republicans, I predict a marked shift in the balance of power in Congress.