The Arshinkoff-bashers will be churning over today's ruling from the Ohio Supreme Court with a split decision on issues raised by the Summit County Board of Elections musical chairs that left the longtime party chair in the cold -- just not on the sidelines as his opponents were hoping.
The ruling (here in .pdf form) isn't exactly the overwhelming endorsement for either side, but it is pretty clear even those in dissent seem to have been taken aback by the level of partisan participation Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner based her decision on when she yanked Arshinkoff from his seat on the BOE, then refused to seat the local party's hand-picked replacement. One could smell this kind of decision coming when the Court ruled earlier this year that her video deposition in this case, no matter how unseemly, would be fair game for the media and political watchers.
In point of fact, it gave Arshinkoff and his supporters exactly the kind of boost they needed when he marshaled his troops and turned aside the effort of Varian and State Senator Kevin Coughlin to give him the boot. As I noted in our earlier coverage on AkronNewsNow, one delegate to the Tangier Tango even thought Democrat party boss Wayne Jones was on the GOP ballot. He was there to vote against Jones; in a way, he did.
The establishment GOP'ers didn't get everything they wanted; they DO get Brian Daley on the local board, where he can establish his own credentials for Brunner to fume over rather than depend on Jones' hand-picked hit piece hand-delivered in "anonymous" fashion by one of Brunner's own representatives. The GOP does NOT get to turn back the clock on the seven firings that came immediately following Varian's ascension to the seat he's now been denied as the Supremes rule he was acting with the power of the law, even though he shouldn't have been there.
The forecast for the Board of Elections: Bryan Williams remains as Deputy Director without the shadow of Varian's vote with the Jones Gang to dump him. Expect more musical chairs in the ranks as Summit County's in-power Republicans work to re-establish their turf back in the BOE (which is exactly what the Varian-led reformers were doing when they started moving chairs) because those jobs are considered plum political patronage.
Expect more yowling among the various GOP factions and in-fighting for the biggest reason of all: November's not looking very pretty for the GOP, even to the point of supposed memos from the Obama camp showing strategy to win without the Buckeye State. If we're that much in the bag, one of the few things local Republicans have left to fight for is themselves.
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Dear Friend,
ReplyDeleteOhio is in trouble. I recently visited with young professionals in Cuyahoga
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The 2010 election is important for our party, as well. Like Ohio itself,
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Kindest regards,
Senator Kevin Coughlin