Medina County Dem News

(Medina County Democratic Action Committee)

MCDAC Democratic Newsletter
September 28, 2007
Joyce V. Kimbler, Editor

Medina County JJ Dinner on October 6, 2007

The Medina County Democratic Party Executive Committee requests your presence at the Annual Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner & Silent Auction on Satuday, October 6, 2007. State Senator John Boccieri candidate for Congress in the 16th District will be the speaker. The Dinner will be held at:

Sharon Party & Event Center
6600 Ridge Rd (Route 94), Sharon Center, OH

6:30 - Party Time! Cash Bar 7:30 Buffet Dinner $40 per person / $320 for a table of eight Theme: Celebrate our local roots by bringing township/city memorabilia for display tables.

Please RSVP by September 28th by either

Making your reservation online at www.medinadems.org.
Mailing a check payable to "JJ Dinner Committee" to Medina County Democratic Party, P.O. Box 583, Medina, OH 44256
Clicking on "related document" link below to download a flyer/RSVP form
Note: Please consider making a donation of a silent auction item!

Medina County Gained Over 25% in Democratic Vote from 2000-2006

A reader sent us a very interesting Dayton Daily News article link that shows that in Medina County between 2000 and 2006, the Democratic vote as measured by the vote for Gore in 2000 compared to the vote for Sherrod Brown increased by more than 25%. The link takes you to an interactive map which you can click on to get the vote totals from all three elections for every county in Ohio. What's interesting is that the Daily News used the U.S. Senate race as a comparison. If you used the 2006 Governor's race, the swing would be even more pronounced.

One thing that really helped both Brown and Strickland was that they campaigned everywhere in Ohio and didn't "write" off counties based on their previous voting history. Both men made more than one visit into Medina County. Strickland, for example, made three trips into Medina County between August of 2005 and November of 2006. Such efforts paid off on election day.

Another thing that helped was that in both 2004 and 2006 Medina County saw a tremendous grassroots effort led by David Brown, who co-ordinated the Kerry for President campaign in 2004 and then both the Brown and Strickland campaigns in 2006. Although Kerry didn't carry the county, the experience that volunteers gained was invaluable and really helped in the 2006 election.

Dayton Daily News Article on Democratic Voting in Medina County

On Sunday, September 23,2007, the Dayton Daily News published an article that appeared on its website about Medina County going for Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland in the 2006 elections. The article quotes Medina County Democratic Chair Pam Miller and the Medina County coordinator for the Kerry campaign in 2004 and the Brown/Strickland campaigns in 2006, Medina attorney David Brown.

The article is pretty interesting, although to a certain extent it misrepresents the success of local Medina County Democratic candidates. Although the article claims that all the local offices are held by Republicans, that isn't entirely accurate. Medina County Democrats have held the Auditor's office since 1982 and have held the Medina County Prosecutor's office for all but four years since 1980. Medina County Democrats also occupy three of the county six judicial positions, from 1976 to 1996 held the Sheriff's office, and from 1980 to 1996 held one of the three seats on the Board of County Commissioners.

Putting aside those discrepancies, the article is an interesting read, and there are also links to other Daily News articles on the state of the Ohio Democratic Party. If you are interested in Medina County and/or Democratic politics, check it out.

Voinovich Chooses Bush Over Ohio's Children

The Senate voted today on the Reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Sherrod Brown voted to invoke cloture while George Voinovich voted not to invoke cloture. The motion to invoke cloture passed 69-30, more than the required 60 votes. Our guess is that Voinovich will now to try and have it both ways by voting for the bill on final passage. This way he can spin it to the press and other media that he supports expansion of the program while, in reality, he voted against Ohio's kids and for George W. Bush on the cloture motion.

Senator Sherrod Brown Votes Against Iran Resolution

The Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iraq came up for a vote on Wednesday, September 26, 2007. Although the Resolution was amended to take out some of the more egregious wording, it still labeled a unit of the Iranian Army a "terrorist" organization. As Senator Jim Webb pointed out this Resolution was never discussed in a Senate Committee and this was the first time that a branch of the U.S. Government has labeled a branch of a foreign country's military a "terrorist" organization. Many people fear that the Bush Administration is determined to drag us into a war with Iran before leaving office. Giving them any sort of justification to do so is like giving a gun to a baby.

Regula Bucks Bush on Kids' Health Insurance

Today, September 25, 2007, Congressman Ralph Regula voted against what Bush wanted and for America's uninsured children. The House passed by a margin of 265 to 159 to approve the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. This program, which Bush has pledged to veto, will expand health insurance opportunities for American children who lack health insurance.

This is from a Baltimore Sun article about this bill:

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), pressing for passage of the bill today says: "This is all a matter of priorities. And we can see what the president's are...Each day we spend $333 million on Iraq. That's over 23 times what we currently spend on children needing health care every day. For one day in Iraq, we could cover the healthcare of over 256,000 American children.

The message that Democrats ought to send is real simple: Republicans like Bush and House Minority Leader John Boehner care a lot more for Iraqis and their security than they do for America's children. It is a very simple message to send and it is true.

Rush Limbaugh Calls Anti-War Soldiers Serving in Iraq "Phony Soldiers"

So how many Republicans in Congress who muscled through a resolution in both Houses condemning the Move On ad about General Petraeus will rush to support a resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh? On September 26, 2007, Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, in response to a caller, referred to soldiers who are serving in Iraq and who are against the war as "phony soldiers." Of course, these "phony soldiers", some of who have died in combat, have done somthing that Rush has never done and that is serve in the armed forces of our country.

This, of course, will be either ignored by the media or excused by them because, quite frankly, they are afraid of Rush and his moronic followers, the infamous "dittoheads." Far easier to pontificate and bluster over an ad in the New York Times. Democrats need to push Congress to pass a resolution condemning anyone who attacks the service of any member of the armed forces serving in Iraq. Want to take bets on how Republicans like John Boehner will vote on that resolution?

MCDAC Newsletter Doing Well

This entry is going to be somewhat self-congratulatory. MCDAC puts out a weekly newsletter called the MCDAC Democratic Newsletter. It goes out to about 1300 email addresses per week. We use a product called Campaigner which is produced by Got Marketing.

Recently Got Marketing released a new version of Campaigner. This new version allows us to compare how our newsletter is doing to other newsletters put out by Campaigner. We analyzed the last 10 newsletters and found out that we did better in all categories than the average newsletter produced by Campaigner.

The categories included percentage of newsletters delivered; percentage opened; percentage where a link was clicked on by a reader; and percentage of readers who unsubscribed. We are happy with this result and wish to thank all our readers.

Did GOP Put the Fix In for 2008 Elections in Ohio?

McClatchy Newspapers put up a story dated Wednesday, September 26, 2007 on whether voting law changes made in Florida and Ohio, the two states with questionable voting for the 2000 and the 2004 elections, will hold down the Democratic vote in 2008. The article wonders whether the Ohio voting law changes will result in voter "caging" in 2008.

Voter caging goes like this. An organization, say the state GOP, engages in a targeted mass mailing aimed at lower income voters. Studies have shown that such voters are more likely to move and not have forwarding addresses. If the pieces sent out in the mass mailing come back as non-deliverable then that fact is used as the basis for voter challenges in a general election. The intent is to drive down the voter turn-out in Democratic areas by tying up the polling places with challenges on the day of the election.

The article notes that a change made in Ohio law in 2006 requires each election board to send out a non-forwardable notice to every voter on its rolls 60 days before an election. This is sent out at county expense. Because it is a public document, it can be obtained by anyone seeking to challenge voters on election day. This means, as Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner points out, that effectively counties are paying for obtaining data that could be used in a voter caging project.

One of the enduring myths promulgated by Republicans is that there are hordes of low-income and minority voters illegal voting in elections. Never mind the fact that there is almost no evidence of such activity, they believe it. Therefore they justify laws like the change made in Ohio as being a measure to combat election fraud. If it has the supposedly "unintended" effect of suppressing voting by Democratic leaning groups, well that is just the price that has to be paid for election integrity.

Now, of course, it is possible that the McClatchy article raises concerns that aren't justified. The change in Ohio's law, for example, took place in 2006 and there were no reports of widespread challenges in last year's election. Then again, GOP efforts to suppress voting are usually reserved for presidential elections. When asked by McClatchy whether the Ohio GOP would engage in voter caging in 2008 a spokesman for the party refused to comment.

This is why we believe that Democratic organizations should encourage the use of absentee ballots in Ohio. The GOP believes that their voters are more likely to vote absentee than are Democratic voters. Therefore, when they passed the Ohio voting changes in 2006, they made it relatively easier to cast an absentee ballot than a regular ballot. One change, for example, was to allow anyone to vote absentee without stating a reason. This means that Democratic organizations could obtain absentee ballot applications, distribute them to their voters so that they could vote before the election and avoid efforts to tie up polling places on election day.

Other articles from the MCDAC blog can be read at http://www.mcdac.blogspot.com

The MCDAC Newsletter is published by the
Medina County Democratic Action Committee
Joyce V. Kimbler, Treasurer
P.O. Box 1213
Medina, OH 44258
Email: joycekimbler@medinacountydemocraticactioncommittee.org
On the World Wide Web at http://www.mcdac.org