Dep. Chairman DeWine on Ohio

From John Gizzi at Human Events:

“It’ll be very close, but John McCain will win this thing,” Ohio’s Republican Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine told me without hesitation on Monday afternoon, “Put that down. He carries Ohio in a close race, probably by less than 100,000 votes [George W. Bush went over the top and was re-elected after he won Ohio over John Kerry by about 118,000 votes in ‘04].”

For all the talk of McCain having no “ground game” or an “infantry” that was disorganized, DeWine flatly says that’s not the case in his state. In his word, “the get out the vote operation here is nothing short of amazing. We’re blowing the doors off the other side and the we probably have 50 percent to 70 percent more volunteers here and better technology than we did for Bush-Cheney in ’04. We’ve far exceeded our expectations and, I’m not ashamed to say, we’ve outperformed Florida.”

A former speaker pro tem of the state House of Representatives who will succeed twenty-year State Chairman Bob Bennett early next year, DeWine noted that four rallies with Sarah Palin Sunday (Canton, Marietta, Columbus, Owensville), “were nothing short of amazing -- filled up with no problem.”

If there is anything that “keeps me up nights worrying,” DeWine said, it is Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Bruner. According to the deputy chairman, “she is doing everything she can to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Republican voters.”

Read the whole article for insight on Virginia as well.