My spies in Columbus tell me that State Senate Majority Leader Tom"I campaign as a conservative but did you know I retroactively raised your taxes"Niehaus is trying to play kingmaker in the race to succeed him in his Senate district. Niehaus is term limited by law and cannot run again. Niehaus is heavily pushing state Rep. Joe Uecker over popular state rep. Danny Bubp. The reason? Old grudges. Mr. and Mrs. Niehaus for some reason don't like Danny Bubp because they think he supported Jean Schmidt in their old primary race for State Senate. In fact some people say it was Tom Niehaus that convinced Brown County GOP chair Paul Hall to run against Danny Bubp a few years ago, despite Bubp's overwhelming popularity in Brown, Adams, and Clermont Counties among others in Bubp's district.
Niehaus just needs to get out of politics. Some of the things I have been hearing Niehaus is doing to help Uecker are just dirty pool. Word has it Niehaus is steering Uecker to where the Senate lines are going to be redrawn based on insider info. Also, Niehaus is giving Uecker, who until recently was never seen nor heard from in Brown County, the lists of places to go to get votes, as in festivals and such. In fact, Niehaus has been hard at work in Brown County to undermine Bubp. Whispers tell me that Niehaus has given his disciples a line to use with people: "What has Bubp done for Brown County?"
Well, my initial response is: what has Joe Uecker done for Brown County? Until this seat became open, most people had never heard nor seen Joe Uecker. And Joe Uecker hadn't spent much time in the county, either. This can be demonstrated by what I witnessed and later had confirmed by others. Uecker was down for the annual Ohio Tobacco festival in Ripley. I happened to be driving home from there at the same time as Uecker and I followed him. He made an odd turn off of rt 68 going north to be heading to where he said he was going, back home to Clermont County. Well, I stopped for a minute at the same spot and waited. Sure enough, here came back Joe Uecker back onto 68, and he went down the road after getting lost. For someone who at the festival claimed he had been through there "many times" he seemed to get lost easily.
However, the question remains. What has Danny Bubp done for Brown County? I am going to be investigating this and getting back to you, the loyal readers of WMD. Here is what I know: Joe Uecker has done ziltch for Brown County until he decided to run for this Senate seat. I know that Tom Niehaus is a bitter hack who retroactively raised my taxes, and who may be putting the futures of the employees of the largest employer in the county into jeopardy. Tom Niehaus needs to man up and go off into the sunset, and let the two primary opponents have a clean race without the need to try and manipulate things and play kingmaker. For someone who talks about how he is not a politician, Niehaus certainly acts like the consummate dirty politician.
Stay tuned........
