Voinovich and the Internet

This is bound to get me email from certain quarters, but I found this rather interesting... David All used to work for George Voinovich:

After graduating, All landed a job as campaign manager to Ann Womer Benjamin, who was running against Democrat Tim Ryan for James Traficant’s old seat in Ohio’s 17th District. “It’s not like I knew what the hell I was really doing,” laughs All. But through the campaign he found his strength: communications. “I could always find the hooks to get the press interested,” he says, and he certainly got them interested, earning press coverage at a 5:1 ratio to Ryan. Although they lost the race, All had captured the attention of Ohio Senator George Voinovich.

After a two-year stint as deputy communications director under Voinovich, working as an “off-the-record guy” and fine-tuning his writing skills, All became the communications director for Congressman Jack Kingston (R-GA), the vice chairman of the House Republican Conference. Since Kingston was beloved by his constituency, he gave All a great deal of autonomy in his work. All utilized a different approach than his colleagues—he included his instant message screen name and personal cell phone number in his signature line, allowing the media to contact him whenever they wanted. “You have to be accessible,” he explains.

Ahh, what could have been... While things have certainly gotten significantly better for me personally, I wonder if constituents are still having problems getting a response from Team Voinovich.

WMD has been one of the few blogs willing to state for sure that Voinovich is running in 2010 (much to our chagrin), such a campaign would be greatly enhanced with the skill and savvy that someone like David All could provide. At least, we might get a shot at a coherent and consistent message from the senior senator.

One of my biggest problems with Voinovich is his total lack of "fire in the belly" for any issue in particular. He can always be counted on for stabbing conservative Republicans in the back and waffling on virtually every issue on the table. Voinovich needs to repair his image with conservative Ohioans and while I will admit that it appears as if Team Voinovich is reaching out, I wonder if it is enough. I suspect that it is not...and if Voinovich goes in to 2010 without having fixed the damage, he will lose to whichever socialist the Ohio democrats put on the ballot.

But, Voinovich has time to fix it. Will he?