ARE ALL REPUBLICAN OFFICEHOLDERS TURNING INTO "TEA PARTIERS?" PROBABLY NOT, BUT IT LOOKS LIKE STATE SEN. OELSLAGER AND STATE REPS HAGAN & SCHURING MAY BE?

 

It is hard to distinguish between The Tea Party and the Republican Party these days.

The man who is likely to become the Republican nominee for president (Mitt Romney) to run against President Barack Obama started out as a moderate Republican as governor of Massachusetts.

As governor he supported abortion rights and took up the cause of providing universal health care for citizens of the Bay state.  Neither of these are on the radar for Tea Partiers.

Realizing that is near impossible to get the Republican nomination for anything, Romney has been working overtime to at least be palatable to Tea Partiers.  While he certainly is the the darling of Tea Partiers and Republican social conservatives, he is doing well enough to be in a virtual tie in the latest poll in Iowa which is the first in the nation primary.  He leads 23% to 22% over Michele Bachmann.

It seems that it is his health care legacy which causes him the most problem.  Tea Partiers detest what they call Obamacare more than anything else the president has done in office.

It appears to the SCPR that Ohio General Assembly Republicans (including Stark County's Scott Oelslager, Kirk Schuring and Christian Hagan) has latched onto the Tea Partiers' intense hatred of Obamacare as a way to counter the groundswell of public support that the repeal effort of Senate Bill 5 being pushed by the Ohio Democratic Party.

Senate Bill 5 (SB 5) is Republican Governor Kasich's effort to virtually eliminate meaningful collective bargaining rights for Ohio's public employees (policement, firemen, teachers and others.

At the moment appears to be heading for a political bloodbath.

Out-of-the-blue on June 15th the Republican caucuses of the House and Senate concocted a joint resolution (which requires a 60% majority) to add to the Ohio Constitution (if voters approve the measure) a provision to allow Ohioans to opt out of certain aspects of Obamacare.

The Republican idea is to get enough Tea Partiers to the polls on November 8th to deny the pro-repeal-SB5 a victory.

The Report does not believe that the Republican political tactic would have worked.  It appears that the pro-repeal folks will have about one million signatures by the time they quite collecting signatures and turn them in to the Ohio secretary of state for validation.  Only 385,245 are required.

The Republican - "let's have a constitutional amendment crowd" - fell short by 1 vote of getting the required 60% majority.

The Republicans tried hard to get that one needed Democrat to help them because the constitutional amendment route was a sure way to get the measure on the November ballot.

But they have not given up.  They have the Tea Partiers out working to collect signatures to get the anti-Obamacare measure on the ballot, to wit:

The Tea Partiers say they have 389,000 which is more than the 385,245 needed.  However, as is always the case, there are always many signers who are not registered voters or get disqualified for other reasons.  So 389,000 will not get the job done.  Tea Party officials say they will end up with about 500,000 by the final date for collecting signature (July 6th).  The question is:  will 500,000 be enough?  Perhaps not.  That is why the Republicans pushed hard to get the measure on the ballot as a constitutional amendment.

The Report thinks that Oelslager and Schuring would deny that they are Tea Partiers.  Hagan, probably not.  

For Oelslager and Schuring the congruence between their vote on SJR 1 and the Tea Partiers taking up the cause makes them at the very least willing to consort with the Tea Partiers to help Governor Kasich reach his goal of defeating the SB 5 repeal effort.

Oelslager's vote is inconsistent with his vote against passage of SB 5.  Hmm?  Makes one wonder how authentic how committed he is to seeing SB 5 repealed?

In any event the Republicans who make up the Ohio General Assembly are a far cry from those progressive types that started the Republican Party way back in 1854!

WILL HAGAN AND SCHURING HAVE REGRETS COME NOVEMBER, 2012? THE GHOSTS OF HAVING VOTED FOR SENATE BILL 5?

As the filing deadline looms on June 30, 2011, it appears that the opponents of Senate Bill 5 (SB 5) have had a massive response in the quest to place a voter referendum on the question of whether or not the people of Ohio will validate Republican Governor John Kasich's attempt via SB 5 to gut public sector unions.

A humongous 714,137 collection of signatures has been collected.  Only 231,149 are needed.

 

While November, 2012 seems to be far off, it really is not.  If the March 12, 2012 primary date holds, partisan candidates for the 2012 elections will have to be filing their petitions to run not later than December 7, 2011 which is less than six months away.

For Republican state representatives Kirk Schuirng (Jackson Township - the 51st) and Christina Hagan (Marlboro Township - the 50th), the December filing deadline will reveal the identity of the persons who will be attempting to exploit their support of and votes for SB5 as a basis of a Democratic campaign to unseat them.

 

Despite the fact that Kasich et al will put up a vigorous fight to retain SB5 via their "political action front group" - Building a Better Ohio, in certain partS of Ohio (the urban/suburban areas where public sector unions are strong), being an elected Republican state representative who voted for SB5 is likely to make one a big time political target.  Such is likely to be what is in the offing for Hagan and Schuring here in Stark County.

November, 2012 offers Stark County Democratic Party Chairman Randy Gonzalez a prime opportunity to wrestle the long time 50th and 51st Ohio House seats away from the Republicans.

Gonzalez was not only handed the plum of Hagan and Schuring having voted for the Kasich anti-union measure but will also have soon their recorded vote in favor of Kasich's budget bill which contains gigantic cuts, over the 2012-13 fiscal biennium, in local government funding.

Chairman Gonzalez should be particularly motivated to find a strong candidate to take on Schuring.  He is the fiscal officer in Jackson Township and knows first hand how severely the draconian local government cuts in state funding together with the loss of revenue from Ohio's estate tax will impact Jackson.

He tells the SCPR that the losses in revenue will deprive Jackson of needed funds to maintain and enhance its first-rate park system.

However, to pull off the takeaways, Gonzalez will have to tap into the outrage at SB5 by Republican Party supporting unions, that is to say: Stark County's firefighters, the police and teachers.  Moreover, he will have to fan the fires of lost revenues with township trustees as well as city and county officials across Stark County.  One would think that his hope would be to - at the very minimum - neutralize Republican trustees, councilpersons, mayors, commissioners (including 2012 commissioner candidates) in terms of support for Hagan and Schuring.

Being handed the issues he has been will be a test of whether or not Gonzalez is up to being chairman of the Stark County Democratic Party.  

His best hope to make inroads for Democrats in 2012 is on the Hagan and Schuring races.

On countywide offices, it is a different story.  Because of the 2009/2010 Frustaci scandal, he faces an uphill battle to retain for the Democrats the sheriff's office and the prosecutor's office as well has the two Democratic commissioner seats (Ferguson and Bernabei).  

You can bet that Stark's organized Republicans will be keeping the Frustaci thing alive when it comes to the countywide races.

Conversely, will Gonzalez be able to forge the necessary political alliances with Stark County public sector unions and political subdivision officeholders in order effect a Hagan/Schuring removal from office?

Will he be able to make the spectres of their having voted to gut public unions and local government come alive in November, 2012?

SCHURING GETS HIS WAY ON RETIREMENT REVIEW. OUTCOME OF REFORM OF OHIO'S 5 RETIREMENT SYSTEMS COULD PLAY LARGE IN HIS LEGISLATIVE LONGEVITY. STATE SEN. OELSLAGER AS A MEMBER OF RETIREMENT STUDY COUNCIL COULD BE AFFECGTED TOO.

These are tough times in Ohio for anyone employed by government, especially state government.  But Columbus-centered politicians are bringing local officials (city, village, city and board of education and the like) into the fray by affecting the relationship of local employees who get state benefits (e.g. retirement) in terms of pension contribution rates and such.

Moreover, the  Republican Kasich administration has created a firestorm of controversy with it Senate Bill 5 (SB 5) which is configured to pretty much wipe out the collective bargaining rights of public employees. 

In taking the SB 5 action, Kasich has created a political fight that appears to be a Republicans versus Democrats brouhaha (at least at the state level).  The fight is going to be played out in an effort by opponents of SB 5 to get a referendum on the bill for this November's general election to have Kasich requested (passed by the Ohio General Assembly (OGA) and signed by the governor) set aside by the people of Ohio.

The only wrinkle which skews the Republican/Democrat thing somewhat is that the only unions known to frequently support Republicans (firefighters, police and teachers) are, in large part, joining Democrats to eliminate SB 5.

One such Republican is Carol Kinsey of Navarre.  She is now retired from her job as an administrator at the Canton Professional Educators Association (CPEA - the union for Canton City Schools teachers).  At last Monday's (May 9th) townhall meeting put on by state representative Christina Hagan at the Louisville Public Library, she spoke to another issue more completely tied to retirement than SB 5.  The issue she addressed was House Bill 69 and Senate 3 (which are placement bills - that is to say not likely to be the actual bills to come out of the OGA, but merely designed to hold a place on the legislative agenda until a "ready to pass" bill can be cobbled together).

What is being worked on in these bills is an increase in the amount of the percentage that employees pay towards their own retirement plan (and whether or not the plan will migrate from "defined benefits" to "defined contributions"), how long they have to work in order to collect retirement benefits, the formula by which the amount of retirement is computed upon.

Also in these bills is language to exclude persons defined out of the plans altogether because their rate of compensation is not enough to qualify for eligibility.  For example, township trustees of small townships are up in arms because of lot of them are expected to be read out of retirement benefits by the legislation being considered.

For Stark Countians this issue has particular significance because state Representative Kirk Schuring of Jackson Township (the 51st) is the chairman of the subcommittee of the Ohio House's Heath and Aging Committee (Retirement and Benefits).

Back to Kinsey.

One of the concerns of persons who will be affected by Retirement and Benefits work is that there will be a "rush to judgment" and that thorough consideration of reform of Ohio' five retirement systems will be short circuited by political considerations.

In this video, Kinsey reassures prospective retirees of these systems that Chairman Schuring is not about to be steamrolled into anything, to wit:



Will it appears that Schuring will not have to be quitting as chairman.

Today, the SCPR got a look at an e-mail from the STRS explaining that the legislation is being vetted by a study that will delay consideration of "ready to pass" legislation for some time.  Here is the key language from the STRS missive:

What comes out of the OGA could affect Schuring and Oelslager politically here in Stark County.

Should the Kasich administration's coordinated effort with the OGA (on reforming retirement benefit) end up being unpopular with the Stark County's enrollees in the five state retirement systems, it could have devastating political consequences for both Schuring and Oelslager who combined have about 50 years service in the Ohio Legislature.

It will be interesting to see whether or not the two have the strength of legislative personality to save their own political hides.

The SCPR believes they do not.  However, time will tell.