"Reform" Ohio Issue (2 - 5) - Once again, George Soros wasted money on Ohio. I agree with Bizzy when he said that whoever was doing the polling for RON should have a tough time finding work...maybe they were the same folks who did the exit polling in the POTUS race... Defeating these issues is the big story of the day. Once again, Democrats in this state have shown themselves to not be able to win elections without chicanery.
Mayor of Fairfield: My guy Dirksen appears to have won by a single vote...MY VOTE. Expect a recount...
Fairfield City Council: I was supporting only one candidate, Jeff Holtegel, and he lost. Tim Abbott appears to be a good candidate as well. Abbott won the most votes with the other two seats going to Tim Myers and former School Board member Mike Oler. I don't know much about Myers, but if Oler runs the city like the school board, we can expect more tax issues on the next ballot...
Fairfield School Board: I supported two candidates: Arnold Engel won. Eric Rivera did not. The other two seats were won by Mark Mooris and Dan Murray who ran as a coalition with Eugene Ball (who came in fourth, just missing a win). Engel's win is important because I think Fairfield's schools are spending like Congress has been spending...Engel should put a stop to that assuming he can build a coalition with other school board members.
The Issues: Butler County voted NO on state issues 1 - 5... We did our part. Third Frontier Part Deux (Issue 1) was defeated in Butler 53% to 46%. "Reform" Ohio Now took a serious beating in Butler...Issue 2: 67% to 32%; Issue 3: 72% to 27%; Issue 4: 76% to 23%; Issue 5: 75% to 24%. This is a conservative county!
Issue 6 was a 1.3 mill levy for "senior services". It passed 53% to 46%. I have no idea what "senior services" is and the campaign for it didn't bother to shed some light on the subject. I voted "NO", but like I said, I have no idea what services this levy is supposed to support.
Issues 24 - 29 were all a .1 mill levy reductions. They all passed. This is a symbolic victory for conservativism because the way Fairfield works, a ballot measure to reduce school levies could only be voted on once every so many years. The pro-school-levy folks put these on the ballot so the "damage" could be minimized. This was the stealthiest campaign of this election cycle...if you weren't reading the Fairfield Echo or WMD, you weren't even expecting these to be on the ballot.
Lessons Learned: (1) Stealth campaigns on issues do work. The reason why RON went down in flames was because once the light was put on who was behind the initiatives, people started asking serious questions. There was no way to escape this situation with RON, but Fairfield Issues 24 - 29 were the standard by which stealth campaigns should be run. Not even the Citizens for Accountability and Responsibility in Education (CARE) had a position on these issues...of course, Arnold Engel, CARE's honcho, was busy trying to get on School Board.
(2) Ohio really doesn't like George Soros.
(3) ...or his buddies...
(4) When Taft Republicans do something dumb, the conservatives have to mount a better campaign. Granted, we had bigger fish to fry, but Issue 1's passage is a step in the wrong direction for Ohio.
