Two Crucial Under-The-Radar Races

While we have all been thinking about the Senate and House, there are elections taking place that will be just as important in deciding our future.

For example two in Ohio. Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland you say? Well, they are both fantastic candidates, but those races are done deals unless the GOP steals them in broad daylight. Because that is what it would take to erase leads of 30 and 20 points, respectively (as for Ted Strickland, I will write another piece here in the future discussing how he is the perfect new face for the Democratic Party).

No I am talking about Jennifer Brunner and Mark Dann. You haven't heard of them you say, well now you have. Brunner, the former deputy director of the Ohio Secretary of State's office when Sherrod Brown held the position, an experienced judge and former attorney for the Ohio AFL-CIO is leading in her race to become Ohio Secretary of State. While Mark Dann, who as a state senator sued the corrupt Taft Adminstration--which is more unpopular than the Ebola Virus--is also ahead in his race to become Ohio Attorney General. But they are not yet over the finish line.

Both of their opponents, Greg Hartmann (for SoS) and Betty Montgomery (for AG) come from the corrupt Taft Machine, that has seen Governor Taft convicted of graft and a top Republican fundraiser, Tom Noe, go to jail for "misplacing" rare coins in which he chose to invest Workers' Compensation funds (I am sure he misplaced them all the way into a bank account in the Grand Caymans). Hartmann also assisted lunatic current Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell, in his jihad to purge poor and minority voters in 2004. Montgomery supported the virulently anti-gay state constitutional amendment (that even Taft, DeWine and other conservatives opposed)...while living with...let's call them...some self-loathing issues.

We must never have the Blackwells and Katherine Harris', people actually crazier than an Edgar Allan Poe character, running our electoral machinery again. What happens in Ohio will effect the entire country, as perhaps the most important swing state.

And what will happen if we elect Brunner and Dann? Well we'll have people of the utmost integrity in positions that are important to the health of our republic, for one. Let me quote future AG Mark Dann for you, to try and explain: "...let me be clear. When I am Attorney General there will be a new sheriff in town in Ohio. If Karl Rove himself comes to Ohio to commit an election violation I will put him in jail."

So make sure you get out there and call, knock, poll-watch and do whatever necessary to make sure we win these two seats. We have fantastic Democrats we can be proud of. And the alternatives may lead us to another banana-republic election in 2008.