The Ohio Democratic Party staffs up. Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte and Pat Toomey get assists from a group tied to Karl Rove. Read on in today’s Ohio Politics Roundup.
New ODP talkers: Kirstin Alvanitakis is the new communications director at the Ohio Democratic Party. She held the same post with the Louisiana Democratic Party in 2014 and with the Michigan Democratic Party in 2012. Before that she worked for former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Pennsylvania Senate Democrats.
Also joining the ODP, as a senior communications adviser: Jennifer Donohue, who worked on Natalie Tennant’s unsuccessful Senate bid last year in West Virginia and spent five years working for Max Baucus on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Donohue will focus on federal races, including next year’s Senate contest in Ohio.
“Our ‘1618 Strategy’ is focused on making Ohio Democrats competitive every election year, securing the White House and U.S. Senate for Democrats in 2016 and achieving historic gains in 2018,” said ODP Chairman David Pepper. “Our new communications team brings a unique blend of energy, experience and expertise to the work ahead.”
Save the date: The Warren County Democratic Party has quite the bill for its spring dinner gala May 31 in Mason. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, former Gov. Ted Strickland and Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld are among the speakers.
Strickland and Sittenfeld are rivals in next year’s Senate race. Brown is backing Strickland. “This is the only county Democratic Party event where all three of these distinguished guests will appear together,” an email advisory notes.
More information is available here.
Rove to the rescue: Sen. Rob Portman, the Republican incumbent who will face Strickland or Sittenfeld next year, is getting an assist from a new nonprofit group tied to GOP strategist Karl Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC.
The radio spots, which also are being made for Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, will praise the incumbents “for backing trade-promotion authority,” Fredreka Schouten reports for USA Today. The $2 million ad buy from One Nation is “the latest indication that allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell … will invest heavily to keep the chamber in GOP hands.”
Next up in Dave Yost’s pickle jar: The Ohio auditor bragged last year that he was so full of ideas that his staffers made him track each one by dropping a scrap of paper inside a pickle jar. Here’s what shook out Monday: a plan to “start calling out public officials who he finds have abused their positions, even if they haven’t broken the law.”
Yost “told reporters that he’s preparing to begin issuing audits that accuse officials of ‘abuse’ when they take actions that the average person would find unjustifiable,”Jeremy Pelzer reports for the Northeast Ohio Media Group. “Currently, the auditor’s office only issues ‘findings for recovery’ when it concludes that an official misspent public money in violation of a law or rule. But Yost said his office has found a number of cases where public officials have abused their position but no finding for recovery can be issued.”
Consumption junction: Ohio Gov. John Kasich, eager to solidify his credentials as a fiscal conservative as he moves closer to a run for president, got some help Monday from Art Laffer, a past adviser to Ronald Reagan and the father of supply-side economics.
“Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s tax proposal is a winner that builds upon the dramatic improvements he has made to Ohio public policy so far,” Laffer and an associate write for Forbes. “Consumption taxes (e.g. sales taxes) are preferable to income taxes because sales taxes are broad-based by default and do far less harm to incentives to work and produce. When tax bases are very broad, tax rates can be extremely low and yet raise enormous amounts of tax revenue at minimal cost to the economy.”
Randy Ludlow of the Columbus Dispatch reports that another supply-sider, Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, is scheduled to testify today on Kasich’s state budget and tax plan before the Ohio Senate’s Ways and Means Committee.
Loretta Lynch in Cincinnati today: The new U.S. attorney general “will kick off a national community policing … as the Obama administration pushes to reform policing practices and improve frayed relations between law enforcement agencies and the minority community,” Deirdre Shesgreen writes for the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Lynch’s visit will highlight Cincinnati’s collaborative approach to policing – with its emphasis on dialogue with city residents and efforts to quell protests before they spiral.”
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