Spin Us For Tonight's NewsNight Akron

Tonight's NewsNight Akron show on PBS 45/49 (that's Western Reserve Public Media for those of you paying attention to the latest news releases, otherwise it's still channel 45 or 49) is an hour long with plenty of bloviating on last Tuesday's results.


It's Eric standing guard as anchor and likely playing referee as Jody Miller, Steve Hoffman and I bat around the election results that are and the races that were.


Here's some of what I expect will be the highlights -- or lowlights, take your pick:

- Issue 8's failure. We'll probably spend quite a bit of time on Mayor Plusquellic's outburst that his opponents deserve a "special place in hell" for misleading the voters. I expect that'll be Steve's take, since Plusquellic mentioned Steve by name as his justification for wishing the powers of Hell take those who dared to question his Akron Scholarship Plan. My take: put some ice on the bruised ego and work with instead of against people for a change. They agreed all along a scholarship plan was worth pursuing, they just didn't like all the strings attached and flushing public control over the sewer system to pay for it. Even the most successful quarterbacks need to pick themselves up off the field and try for the end zone again. If this issue truly was about building a scholarship plan, there should be plenty of room under the tent as long as winning the game is a team effort;


- Republicans took a kicking in most of the legislative and executive races they were looking to win; the Moran-Nero race was closest thanks to that district spreading out to make up one of two truly balanced seats by partisan label in the county. I suspect we'll also have some thoughts on just how Al Brubaker proved the third time was the charm in beating Greg Bachman -- or did Bachman beat himself in the County Engineer's race?


- There is a flip side to the GOP licking on page one; when it came to page two of the ballot they were clearly the victors in securing control of Summit County courts, with gains in Common Pleas court to give them control over the judiciary and the patronage jobs that come with it. The feature race will likely be the down-to-the-late-wire race between Probate Court incumbent Judge Bill Spicer and Common Pleas Judge Elinor Stormer. For what it was worth (and based on hundreds of thousands spent on these races for judge, it's worth much to both parties) Spicer can thank the election night counting gods for keeping Cuyahoga Falls and other northern districts late to the count because northern Summit really pulled his keister out of the fire;


- Alex Arshinkoff's in the crosshairs again as State Senator Kevin Coughlin was quick to call the 2008 General Election a failure. I'm sure Jody will agree and maybe Steve and Eric, too. Given the weighting of the Moran-Nero district it was perhaps the most competitive head-to-head race and they may have a point there, but Arshinkoff's support of the judicial ticket clearly was a win for him. I'd also note Coughlin and the New Summit Republicans (now the Dump Alex Anyway Party) were pretty scarce in terms of public money and bodies making calls at phone banks. They'll argue they see no reason to help Arshinkoff...he'll argue they're letting their hatred of him get in the way of constructively helping candidates on the ballot. How did Summit stand up compared to Stark? Lake? Geauga? Portage? Medina? How realistic can you expect the local party to impact the race when you start out the day 100-thousand votes behind?


- With all the talk on the huge turnout, the early voting proved to be the big winner even though the actual number of ballots cast statewide was actually lower than when Bush beat Kerry in 2004. From a political wonk point of view, the real change right off the bat isn't what we're being sold from Washington but how the marketing of ideas and candidates changed with vote blocs able to steamroll the results with the first pass of absentee counts. It fundamentally changes of the rules; Obama took local Democrats with him into the 21st century of campaign tactics, and it'll be interesting to see if Republicans can learn from the whuppin' in forcing their own change in two years with an electorate demographic (young people) not necessarily known for brand loyalty. Generations still revere FDR; a generation put JFK into sainthood and another generation fueled the Reagan Revolution. Will Obama's power extend to those levels?


On tonight's show, I think a nice addition: Kyle Kutuchief and Ben Keeler (those blog guys on Ohio.com and elsewhere -- they're in my blogroll on this page) will join us for their own take. Kyle bleeds blue, Ben still loves Red (with the exception of Alex) and it should be lively. Nice to see NNA get with the times and expand the voices to include those relatively new to the game but the future of it.


We tape at 6:15p; feel free to shoot me your thoughts eesposito@rcrg.net this afternoon and I'll try to work them in, even if I think they're crazy. After all, I'm not the one who thinks there's a special place in hell reserved for people who disagree with me.