Ted Strickland for President

After this disaster, I'd like to offer a suggestion. I think all progressive Dems should try to draft my former Congressman, Ted Strickland, serving Ohio's 6th District. Check out his page at www.house.gov/strickland/

He's a former minister, a psychology PhD, and he's from Ohio. I don't need to tell anyone how important being from Ohio is as far as electoral votes are concerned. The 6th District was represented by Clarence Miller for around 30 years. Miller was a hard core Republican in the Jesse Helms mold. Strickland won by being three things:

1. A former minister who isn't afraid or ashamed of his faith;
2. An articulate guy who connects with voters a la Bill Clinton;
3. He's very pro-Second Amendment..probably the most pro-gun Dem in Congress today. That's important when trying to win over a few "red states" where gun ownership is sacrosanct.

Just a thought.

but I haven't heard that.

on the floor of the House. You would have had to have heard it.

He was from northern Ohio. Strickland's district is really a tough one for a Dem -- he ran for that slot for years and years before he finally managed to win it.

I used to, too -- most of my family that's still in Ohio still does.

How is Strickland on reproductive choice? I knew he wasn't anti-gun, but I can kind of compromise on that to an extent. I have to tell you, though, if he's also anti-choice, you'll have a hard haul getting me, let alone serious blue-state Dems, to support him.

If I remember correctly, he's against federal funding for abortion, but he supports Roe v. Wade. Check out his web page to find out for sure.

Yeah...lived in Athens for years.

He may just have given up on the one my family lives in -- they're closer to Cincinnati than that. He ran several times in District 2, I think, back in the '80s. The guy who ran against him, a Republican who'd held the slot for decades, kept up a constant whispering campaign that Ted was gay. Now I understand how he got elected -- I'd think Athens would have enough Dems, with the college, to get him in.

I don't know if he moved a district over, or if they gerrymandered them after I left home and moved away, or what. Still, I'm quite familiar with Ted, I've known some people who knew him personally over the years who thought a lot of him.

He's had to do a balancing act winning a congressional seat as a Democrat. If memory serves me correctly, he lost in his first bid for re-election in the early 1990s. Then, he ran again and won. In his first couple of elections, he won by 51-49 percent margins. Lately, he's been winning by more comfortable margins, to the point where he was up in NW Ohio to denounce NAFTA about two weeks before this election.

He's also a psychologist. When the riots broke out at the Lucasville maximum security prison around 10 years ago, he was called to help settle things down.

He's very personable and understands people issues. He needs the name recognition beyond southern Ohio to have a snowball's chance to consider running for president.

to get his name out there! Of course, he may not want the job...:-(

He lost his first bid for re-election to Frank Cremeans--who was such a moron he even makes Bush look like a brainiac! He defeated Cremeans after he served only one term, and has been in the House ever since.

Personable and honest...rare for a politician.

Yeah, the 6th District was changed. It now runs from Marietta up along the Ohio river to Steubenville.

I used to live in Clermont, and thought I remembered getting to vote for him once when he was able to win. Unfortunately (for the Ohio GOP, that is), they couldn't gerrymander him out of winning, I guess. They messed up my district here in southern Montgomery County so bad, I imagine we won't get another Dem in here for at least a dozen years, until Mike "Goodhair Junior" Turner's karate-instructor history catches up with him and he gets hooked on Oxycontin for back pain or something.

We BADLY need a statewide elected officer in Ohio, and with Bob Taft's popularity really low, could Strickland fit the bill?

Kucinich is way too left to be a viable gubernatorial candidate.

I'd rather see him as president, but governor would give him a higher profile and prepare him for a possible run for the presidency.

We've discussed this over in the Ohio forum, before. I think Eric Fingerhut's really gearing himself back up already to make a run for DeWine's seat, when he's up for re-election. He's got a better chance to take DeWine out than he did Voinovich -- Voinovich has too high a profile in Ohio for a first-time candidate at that level. Fingerhut is a state representative, and he didn't give that up to have a go at Voinovich, so he's one of the minority Dems (I think they picked up a seat or two, though), but it doesn't seem to ruffle his feathers any to be in the minority in the statehouse.

Yeah, that's actually not bad. Ted would have to hit the bricks in the next six months to have any hope of getting his name out enough -- I'm hoping against hope that the Ohio GOP tells Ken Blackwell to take a hike, Jim Petro runs for GOP gov candidate, and Blackwell runs as an independent. He disenfranchised a lot of the voters he'd have had to hope to get, to win in a state where a certain percentage of the southern voters won't vote for a 'man of color.' His dancing around trying to suppress the vote this time will mess him up enough that about all he could hope for is to be a spoiler for the GOP-endorsed candidate the next time around. I hope.