Blackwell not a friend to blacks

http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/opinion/114733635163590.xml?ocful&coll=2

Thursday, May 11, 2006
Sam Fulwood III
Plain Dealer Columnist

"He appeals to blacks by being black."- George Will, columnist Feb. 19,2006.

Now that Ken Blackwell has become the latest in a long line of Great Black Hopes for the GOP, I expect to hear and read plenty of ignorant comments like the one above.

It's the wishful thinking that accompanied previous Republican darlings in dark skins.

Remember the presidential chatter surrounding J.C. Watts, former Oklahoma football star-turned-conservative congressman? Nobody does any more...


Don't 'right off' Blackwell yet

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/thomas_suddes/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1147250139277810.xml&coll=2

Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Thomas Suddes
Plain Dealer Columnist

Republicans last week elected Ohio's next governor - and he's a Democrat. Then, in 2010, after Ted Strickland offends everyone - as he will, by rocking the boat in Columbus - he'll be retired by the governorship-in-waiting of the GOP's Betty D. Montgomery.

That's the Fantasyland in which middle-of-the-road Ohioans revel, now that rightist voters have picked Cincinnati's J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state, to compete in November with Appalachian Democrat Strickland for governor.

Not to rock anyone's hammock, but while Blackwell's backing inside Ohio's Republican core may be iffy, he wows Ohio's biggest party - the Demagogues.


They're the people who see modern times as a conspiracy - by Jews or Masons or Catholics or gay people or, worst of all, pushy women - to blight Ohio. The way these voters look at it, if there's crab grass in suburban lawns, somebody planted it...