Ohio is considered a vital GOP pickup this fall, as no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning here. Our midterm election’s results send mixed signals: a $40 million Big Labor smear campaign convinced Ohioans to overturn public union reform, but we also voted 66 – 34% to block Obamacare.

Consistent with the whipsaw nature of this primary, polling mid-February suggested Ohio may be a lock for Rick Santorum. Quinnipiac registered a 7-point Santorum advantage in separate polls of likely voters completed 02/12 and 02/26. On 02/15, Rasmussen polling showed Santorum with a staggering 18-point lead, and the University of Cincinnati’s Ohio Poll conducted 02/16 to 02/26 indicated Saontorum was up by 11.

Heading into the February 22 Arizona debate, Santorum looked to be the last heir to the “not Romney” throne. Could he maintain enough momentum to roll Mitt Romney on Super Tuesday, despite Romney’s gold-plated ground game?

The debate was Santorum’s chance to shine, but he didn’t weather attacks from Romney and Ron Paul as well as he could have. I’ve been enthusiastic about zero candidates since Rick Perry dropped out; the Arizona debate finally convinced me to vote for Mitt Romney. How many other Ohio conservatives had a similar reaction to the snippy, discouraging tussle between Romney and Santorum?

In many cases, it won’t matter: Rick Santorum’s name will not be on the ballot in 3 of 16 Congressional districts tomorrow. Add to this news that Santorum failed to submit a full slate of delegates for 6 additional districts, and even a victory for Santorum in Ohio would be followed by an asterisk.

An NBC/Marist poll conducted yesterday shows a statistical dead heat. The in-inevitable Romney may yet win Ohio, in spite of himself and his campaign’s dicey consulting choices. Francesca Chambers at Red Alert Politics suggests Sen. Portman has buoyed Romney’s ailing Ohio operation in the past week. It doesn’t hurt to have enough cash to account for 80% of the total TV ad spend in Super Tuesday contests, either!

Ohio’s employment picture is brightening, but economic issues remain a huge concern here. Will Ohio Republicans take a chance on the author of Romneycare, or the guy barraged with questions about birth control? Whoever wins Super Tuesday and the eventual nomination, November in Ohio should be a contest between uniquely American ideals and Obama’s ideal America.

Other races to watch:

• Expect Josh Mandel – who is endorsed by Sen. DeMint and has already raised millions for November – to be the hands-down nominee for Sherrod Brown’s U.S. Senate seat.
• Ohio GOP State Central Committee races have been heated. The party’s ugly power struggle continues, with Chairman Kevin DeWine’s ability to work with Governor Kasich and others up for debate. If Kasich supporters win a majority of Committee seats and DeWine remains in charge, kinks in the Ohio GOP’s inner workings could damage general election campaigns.

Don’t doubt Barack Obama can be beaten in Ohio. While Kasich’s approval ratings tick into positive territory, Obama remains underwater. The idea of papering over problems with “stimulus” spending may have overstayed its welcome. And remember, Obama for America must contend with the awful record of Sen. Brown, who flaunts Obama’s worst traits like a crazed Progressive peacock.

Follow Jason on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at jasonahart.com and Third Base Politics.

For America to have any hope of averting fiscal collapse, the GOP presidential nominee will need to win Ohio in less than 11 months. Each day of Ohio Republican Party (ORP) infighting improves the odds for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown, redistributionist extraordinaire.

I’ve already given my two cents on the conflict between ORP chair Kevin DeWine and Governor Kasich, so I won’t belabor this point: DeWine should step down. I do not assume Kasich’s team is blameless, but the criticisms Ohio House Speaker Batchelder shared earlier this month cannot be discounted. Whoever threw the first stone, a public disagreement of this scope between a governor and a party chairman doesn’t leave many options.

My position was affirmed by an Ohio News Network (ONN) interview airing yesterday and covered in Friday’s Columbus Dispatch. The Dispatch story ran under the headline “Kasich’s staff used in effort to oust DeWine,” which says everything you need to know about how destructive a prolonged fight would be:

In an exclusive interview, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine revealed that members of Gov. John Kasich’s staff were used in an ongoing effort to oust DeWine as head of the party.

So now Ohio’s Republican chairman is conducting opposition research against the sitting Republican governor and using it to criticize the governor’s staff on television. This makes a great headline and terrific fodder for leftists dying to smear Governor Kasich, even though the political activity in question was conducted on the staffers’ time off.

From the ONN segment:

Jim Heath, ONN: Even if Kasich’s team receives a majority of the seats in the central committee next March, DeWine says he will not step down.

DeWine: I’m going to be the chairman of the party through January 2013.

With three years remaining in his first term, Governor Kasich has already balanced a miserable state budget without raising taxes and shown a keen ability to make Ohio more employer-friendly. Another year with Chairman DeWine is a less exciting prospect for anyone interested in showing Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama the door.

Cross-posted from that hero, RedState and Big Government.

Inconveniently for the union bosses fighting to kill Senate Bill 5, school district budget forecasts are public record. So, when the people who get rich driving up the cost of government try to blame local deficits on Governor Kasich, it’s easy to disprove their lie. Government unions have put pressure on Ohio taxpayers for years, and there are reams of data to support this fact.

My previous post listed 21 Ohio school districts whose October 2010 forecasts warned of 2015 deficits amounting to $1,200 – $1,500 per resident. As I noted, those districts aren’t the worst examples:

• Beavercreek City School District: $1,827
• South Range Local School District: $1,742
• Mason City School District: $1,689
• Adams County/Ohio Valley Local School District: $1,678
• Wilmington City School District: $1,652
• Strongsville City School District: $1,593
• Little Miami Local School District: $1,576
• Warrensville Heights City School District: $1,529

Based on Census Bureau records, every resident of these 8 districts would have to pay more than $1,500 to cover projected deficit costs – and these are not outliers. In 2010, just over 600 school districts submitted five-year forecasts to the Ohio Department of Education. More than 450 districts forecast deficits amounting to at least $100 per resident.

If the union smear campaign wins and Issue 2 is defeated, what options will elected leaders have for dealing with these deficits? Massive tax hikes, widespread layoffs, severe program cuts… or all of the above. Government union reform will restore a little power from unabashed class-warriors to the local officials we elect. Vote Yes on Issue 2!

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero.

I am a public employee. Thankfully I’m classified as Administrative / Professional staff, which means I don’t have to worry about being forced to join a union or pay “fair share” fees. Like all public employees, I’m an individual, and should be treated as such.

I am an inconvenience to We Are Ohio. Ohio’s government unions enrich themselves by taking money from government workers… the last thing they need is an informed taxpayer pointing that out.

Refer to the reaction of union front group “Join the Future” to the video I posted Tuesday morning:

If you’ve not seen it, check out my video matching union boss hysterics with union boss pay. At no point do I “attack public workers.” Watch closely, also, for the “bitterness” and “unhinged anger” I’m accused of by the official Twitter account of an official union mouthpiece.

The unions don’t want you to know Senate Bill 5 offers commonsense reforms to Ohio’s broken government union law. That’s why self-proclaimed Advocates of Public Workers attack me, a public worker, every time I try to inform fellow Ohioans about the need for government union reform.

Here’s another thing you’ll never hear from the unions: don’t take my word for it. Review We Are Ohio’s arguments, and then ask which line of Senate Bill 5 endangers police & firemen; which page slashes teacher wages; which section renders elected officials unaccountable to the voters who pay public workers’ salaries.

Because unions are heroes, any criticism of unions is villainy. If this is an accepted truism, questions about union boss pay, raises disconnected from merit, the madness of last-in-first-out, and the need for sustainable benefit plans are unimportant. No wonder Senate Bill 5 supporters are libeled daily!

The troubling thing is not that government unions lie, but that they scarcely do anything else.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero and Third Base Politics.

Not that it matters to the handout-junkies and bureaucracy-lovers who make up the Democratic Party’s base, but the House has passed a second bill to extend the federal debt ceiling. In case you’ve forgotten, the House is controlled by the Grand Old Party of No, and the world is going to end if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by Tuesday.

Here’s the president’s Treasury Secretary on the need for an extension that runs through Obama’s reelection campaign:

“The most important thing is that we remove this threat of default from the country for the next 18 months,” Geithner said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “You want to take this out of politics.”

Emphasis mine; this could be the Freudian slip of the year. Democrats don’t want to take the politics out of the debt ceiling fight – they want to take the debt ceiling fight out of the nation’s political conversation. Eventually, voters will realize President Obama’s fix is higher taxes, and Senator Reid’s fix is gutting the military.

Isn’t it funny how, time and again, the adults in Washington demand policies identical to the far left’s? Let’s review:

• World ends without debt ceiling increase
• House Republicans pass Cut, Cap & Balance bill
• Reid, Obama say Cut, Cap & Balance is DOA
• Obama pushes for tax hikes
• Reid suggests slashing defense spending
• House Republicans pass Budget Control Act of 2011
• Reid, Obama say Budget Control Act of 2011 is DOA

As I said this morning, compromising sucks when the other side is nuts, but this is what House Republicans have to deal with.

A debt ceiling compromise beats the prospect of a second Obama term by a landslide the size of Texas. I’m glad Congressman Stivers, my representative in the House, voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011. I’m glad Speaker Boehner, my parents’ representative, worked to create a bill the shameless demagogues in the Senate and White House might be forced to pass.

Official releases on the Budget Control Act of 2011 follow. From Stivers:

“I supported Speaker Boehner’s bill because it cuts spending and changes the way that Washington works. It puts caps on spending and moves America toward a balanced budget. A default could result in economic disaster including higher costs for car, student and business loans as well as mortgages; it could result in lower stock prices; higher gasoline and import costs and higher unemployment. This scenario is unacceptable and moving forward Members of both parties need to work together toward reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling to prevent a default.”

From Boehner:

Thanks in part to your support, this evening the House passed an important bill to cut trillions in spending and end our debt limit crisis.

It’s the second time in the last two weeks that the People’s House has spoken. Twice now, we’ve passed legislation to cut trillions in government spending, avoid a job-crushing national default, and advance the cause of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

In contrast, Washington Democrats have done nothing. They refuse to put a plan on the table. In fact, it’s been 821 days since the Democrat-run Senate has passed a budget.

Let me be clear, our bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a positive step forward, carefully negotiated in a good faith effort to find a solution to the current crisis.

Now it is time for the Senate to act. The Senate must pass the House bill and send it to the President for him to sign into law. There is no excuse for inaction.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero and Third Base Politics.