NY Times - In the race for Governor, all sides agree on the need for change

(The New York Times)COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 14 - In a state where the governor has been caught up
in a corruption scandal and where the only thing leaving faster than
manufacturing jobs is young people, candidates for governor are jockeying
for the mantle of reform.

"The zeitgeist is clear," said the likely Democratic nominee, Ted
Strickland, a six-term congressman, before a packed room of donors the other
day at a bar in downtown Columbus. "People in this state want change.
They're tired of scandal. They want to turn things around, and that's just
what we are going to do."

The next day, at a breakfast gathering of young professionals, the
front-runner in the Republican primary, Secretary of State J. Kenneth
Blackwell, sounded a similar note.

"We rank 47 in job creation," he said. "Venture capital has increased around
the country by about 10 percent but dropped in Ohio by the same amount.
We've fallen on real bad times, and I want to change that."

Ohio is widely viewed as a bellwether for the 2008 presidential contest. No
Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying the state, and many
Democrats say the first step to larger ambitions is to break the 16-year
Republican hold on the governor's mansion. Primaries for governor will be
held on May 2.

Polls give Mr. Strickland a slight edge over either Mr. Blackwell or the
other Republican candidate, State Attorney General Jim Petro. But pundits
are keeping a particularly close eye on Mr. Blackwell, who, in an effort to
unify fiscal and religious conservatives, is melding his strong opposition
to abortion and same-sex marriage with an aggressive plan to control state
spending. An African-American, he also hopes to win black votes that usually
go to Democrats.

For their part, the Democrats hope to cash in on growing frustration with
Republican scandals in Columbus and Washington.

"The governor's race is going to be the Democrats' first real test of their
'culture of corruption' argument, which they're using in races throughout
the country," said John C. Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of
Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "It may not work everywhere,
but if it's going to work anywhere, it's going to be Ohio."

Term limits forbid Gov. Bob Taft's re-election, though the chances he would
have run otherwise are uncertain at best: Mr. Taft, son of a United States
senator, grandson of another and great-grandson of President William Howard
Taft, pleaded no contest in August to charges of failing to report thousands
in gifts to him.

The charges stemmed from an investigation of Mr. Taft's friend Thomas Noe, a
coin dealer and prodigious Republican fund-raiser who in the past has
contributed to both Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Petro. In February, Mr. Noe was
charged with stealing at least $1 million from a coin investment that he
managed for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, and his trial, which
promises to keep the scandal on voters' minds, is scheduled for August.

"We've had an inept, incompetent, corrupt and sometimes criminal political
leadership," Mr. Strickland said at the recent fund-raiser, "and in '06,
with your help, we will give Ohio back to the people of Ohio."

Another issue is demographics and the economy. State officials estimate that
Ohio has lost more than 175,000 manufacturing jobs in the last 10 years and
that an average of 65 people ages 25 to 39 leave the state every day. Mr.
Strickland says he wants to make Ohio more competitive through investments
in broadband networks, and has proposed using unspent federal welfare money
for a $50-million-a-year expansion of state-financed preschool.

The congressman, an ordained Methodist minister, also says his experience
representing a conservative district makes him equipped to move Ohio into
the blue column.

His Democratic opponent, former State Representative Bryan E. Flannery, is
trailing him by more than 40 points in the polls. But so far Mr.
Strickland's biggest asset has been the acrimonious battle unfolding between
the Republican candidates, whose war chests are nearly as full as his. [On
April 20, the secretary of state's Web site said Mr. Strickland had raised
$4.1 million since January of last year, Mr. Blackwell $3.8 million, Mr.
Petro $3.4 million, and Mr. Flannery $146,000.]

A former college football player, Mr. Blackwell is an imposing figure who
seasons his speeches with references to his up-from-poverty past. ("And who
would have imagined that the kid whose job it was to say 'peanuts here, get
your fresh roasted peanuts' in front of the stadium would one day become a
partial owner of the Cincinnati Reds?")

Mr. Blackwell leads Mr. Petro in the polls by about seven points and has
been hammering him in speeches and television advertisements, saying that he
has failed to offer a plan to control spending and that he only recently
became an opponent of abortion.

Mr. Petro, the state auditor for eight years before becoming attorney
general, replied in an interview: "Ken Blackwell's claims are just goofy.
I've always been a reformer, and I've been the one promoting real
cost-saving methods while his office was spending far in excess of any other
in the state."

Mr. Petro has proposed eliminating 11,500 state employees through attrition
and early retirement, a step he says would save about $1 billion a year.
That money would be used, he says, to reduce in-state tuition at Ohio's
public universities, which is about 50 percent higher than at public
universities in neighboring states. He has also tried to win over
evangelicals in recent weeks by running advertisements in which, holding a
Bible, he talks about his faith.

Further, he has won endorsements from the state's largest newspapers, mostly
in reaction to a proposed constitutional amendment, offered by Mr.
Blackwell, that would limit annual state and local spending increases to 3.5
percent or the sum of the rates of inflation and population growth,
whichever was higher. Critics, including Senators Mike DeWine and George V.
Voinovich of Ohio, both Republicans, say this would straitjacket state and
local governments' ability to finance needed programs.

Mr. Petro has proposed an alternative amendment, which he says would not
affect local governments, to limit state tax revenue to 5.5 percent of
Ohioans' personal income.

Whatever the endorsements, "Blackwell has a formidable grass-roots and
church backing," said Dr. Green, the Akron political scientist, who
estimates that 25 percent of Ohio voters are Christian conservatives. "The
test will be whether he can get them all to the polls now, and again in
November."