Hackett, a 43-year-old personal injury lawyer and Marine Reserve major who volunteered for service in the Iraq war, has little prior political experience, only having served as a city councilman in a small town. But he’s a contender in a special congressional election taking place in Ohio on Aug. 2 to fill the 2nd District seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman, who’s now serving as the U.S. trade representative.

Hackett, a Democrat, is surely the underdog. The 2nd District, which includes Cincinnati, has been solidly conservative in a state that’s thoroughly dominated by the GOP and that decided the 2004 election for President Bush. His better-funded opponent, Jean Schmidt, is well-connected and, as a former state representative, has a more extensive political résumé. But Hackett hopes his credentials — Iraq war vet and plain-spoken self-described moderate — will give him a much-needed edge.

Hackett hopes he’s part of a seismic political shift happening in Ohio — a shift driven in part by recent outrage against Ohio Republicans over a high-profile, multimillion-dollar accounting scandal that has cast a cloud over the state party and may find its first political fallout victim in Schmidt, the first major Republican candidate to face the voters since the scandal broke.

A victory for Schmidt would mean continued Republican dominance in this district that voted 65 percent in favor of Bush last November. If Hackett wins, however, it would make him the first Iraq war veteran in Congress — and would also give Democrats hope that Ohio has not gone completely and irreversibly to the GOP.

On the issues, the candidates both describe themselves as fiscal conservatives, but on the Iraq war and the so-called moral values questions, they stand in stark relief. Hackett is a critic of Bush’s Iraq war policy and believes America was led to war unnecessarily. Schmidt is a strong backer of Bush’s handling of the war. Hackett is pro-choice. Schmidt is president of Cincinnati Right to Life. Schmidt voted against gay marriage in the Ohio House of Representatives, while Hackett’s take is: “Gay marriage — who the hell cares?”

Hackett, who is married, says he doesn’t feel the need to defend his marriage through the national Defense of Marriage Act, or any other anti-gay marriage legislation. “If you’re gay you’re gay — more power to you,” he said. “What you want is to be treated fairly by the law and any American who doesn’t think that should be the case is, frankly, un-American.”

Hackett’s left-of-center views on social issues may not go over well with conservative Ohioans, and Schmidt is so far beating him financially, but last week Hackett got a profile boost when former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland campaigned with him. By bringing in Cleland and highlighting his military service, Hackett hopes to neutralize any criticism Schmidt could levy concerning his stance on the war.

Schmidt commends Hackett for his service, but believes Hackett should “stand with the president” by “supporting the Iraqi war effort and our troops that are over there,” her campaign manager Joe Braun said. (Through Braun, Schmidt declined to speak with Salon.) When asked to answer that charge, Hackett is blunt: “The only way I know how to support the troops is by going over there.” He doesn’t hesitate to criticize Schmidt’s support of the war: “All the chicken hawks back here who said, ‘Oh, Iraq is talking bad about us. They’re going to threaten us’ — look, if you really believe that, you leave your wife and three kids and go sign up for the Army or Marines and go over there and fight. Otherwise, shut your mouth.”

In spite of her endorsement from the NRA, Hackett steals some of Schmidt’s thunder when it comes to guns. Hackett says he’s an NRA member and, when asked about gun control, he answers with an old saw: “Gun control is when you point your gun and hit what you aim for.” Local pundits have noted Hackett’s macho appeal to the crossover voter (his time in the Marines, his 6-foot-4-inch frame, his blunt talk), and Hackett acknowledges this appeal is further enhanced by his hands-on appreciation for hunting and gun culture.

With only a week to go before the election, it’s hard to gauge the state of the horse race. Given his limited financial resources, Hackett says he decided not to commission any polls. Braun says the Schmidt camp has done “tracking” but declined to release any specific numbers. Braun does, however, see Hackett as a legitimate contender.

And recent ethical questions surrounding Schmidt’s campaign may work in Hackett’s favor. Among other things, Schmidt had to pay back $644 for a gift she took last fall from a lobbyist but failed to report as required by law. The lobbyist worked on behalf of the Chiron Corp., which was at the center of last winter’s flu vaccine controversy. Schmidt enjoyed a free dinner and then a free Cincinnati Bengals game courtesy of the lobbyist, but claimed she didn’t know the gift came from the lobbyist. Rather, she has said, she thought the tickets came from former Bengals quarterback “Boomer” Esiason.

Then there’s the $10,000 that Schmidt’s campaign accepted from one of Tom DeLay’s political action committees. Hackett criticized Schmidt for taking DeLay’s money. “Tom DeLay,” says Hackett, “is the poster child for corruption in Washington.” Braun dismisses Hackett’s criticism as political opportunism and says, if the situation were reversed, Hackett would take $10,000 from the Democratic leadership.

Finally, a Cincinnati paper ran a report last week suggesting that Fritz Wenzel, Schmidt’s media manager, was working for her campaign while simultaneously working as the top political reporter and columnist at the Blade, Toledo’s news daily and a major Ohio paper. Wenzel’s last day at the Blade was Friday, May 13. Two weeks before he left to become a political consultant, according to the report, Wenzel made scathing comments about Schmidt’s Republican primary opponents on a personal blog he maintained. The blog entries have since been pulled off the Web, and reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show that Wenzel’s company, Wenzel Strategies, was paid $30,000 on Monday, May 16, by the Schmidt campaign.

May 16 was also the day his last column ran in the Blade, but Wenzel made public his plans to start a consulting business weeks prior to that. Braun praises Wenzel’s work and denies Wenzel was working for Schmidt inappropriately. Wenzel and Braun both claim Wenzel drummed up the work for Schmidt over the weekend after he left the Blade. “I had a busy weekend,” Wenzel reportedly told the Cincinnati paper. Hackett doesn’t buy this explanation. “It’s more of the same,” he says, lumping this alleged ethical lapse in with the others. “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

It’s unclear how damaging any of these ethical questions will be for Schmidt as the campaign hits its home stretch.

At present, both campaigns say they’re going full bore. Braun feels Schmidt’s chances are good, but confines himself to saying, “We’re working hard.” As for Hackett, he knows he’s got an uphill challenge, but says he’s ready. “There’s nothing about this election that can faze me,” he says. “After Iraq, everything seems like a walk in the park.”

The Army began an investigation of Tiger Force in 1971. Despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes, no charges were ever filed against any Tiger Force soldiers or made public. The investigation was apparently killed at the highest levels of government in November 1975 — the same month Donald Rumsfeld began his first term as defense secretary under President Gerald Ford and Dick Cheney began as White House chief of staff.

In October 2003, 36 years after the fact, the Blade newspaper of Toledo, Ohio, published the first exposé of the Tiger Force atrocities. The nine-month investigation was driven by reporters Mike Sallah and Mitch Weiss (who were joined in the last month by another Blade staffer, Joe Mahr). The Blade’s series began with the receipt of several classified documents that came from the recently deceased Henry Tufts, former head of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Tufts had overseen the Tiger Force investigation and was never satisfied with the way it ended. When Tufts was forced into retirement at the conclusion of the investigation, he took the classified files with him. Upon his death in 2002, Tufts left these and other papers to his neighbor and friend, Michael Woods, who worked for the Blade’s Washington bureau.

Published when the Iraq war was at the height of its popularity, the Blade’s series drew a predictably intense polar reaction. While it did get exposure (Salon was one of the first to pick up the story), several major media outlets ignored or underplayed the story. Major metro dailies ran only short wire recaps of the series. Others, including the New York Times and the network news channels, ignored Tiger Force altogether — until the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh chastised the national media for neglecting the story. The neglect, however, didn’t prevent the exposé from winning the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Now, Sallah and Weiss have written a book — “Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War” — that tells the long story of Tiger Force through the eyes of those who lived it. There’s the horrifying story of Sam Ybarra, one of the most notorious Tigers, who killed a baby by cutting off its head. And then there are the heroes like Gerald Bruner and Dennis Stout who risked their own lives trying to keep other soldiers from committing atrocities. In the end, Sallah and Weiss give voice to dozens of Tigers, Vietnamese and their loved ones. The result is a compelling narrative that spans almost four decades and helps redefine the Vietnam War. Salon spoke to the authors by phone.

How do you explain the lingering grip Vietnam has on our national consciousness?

Mitch Weiss: There was a real divide in the country between those who went and those who didn’t. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood and those were the guys who went. On the other hand, the people who protested the war or fled to Canada went to college and were well-to-do. I think a lot of it is because of the class warfare.

Mike Sallah: As president, Gerald Ford said it was time to mend the nation’s wounds, but I’m not sure those wounds have ever healed.

Through the course of the 2004 presidential campaign, John Kerry took a lot of flak for serving in Vietnam then coming home and talking about the same kinds of atrocities you exposed in late 2003. It seems as if there’s a knee-jerk response that still polarizes people when the subject of Vietnam and war crimes is mentioned.

Weiss: It’s just amazing that we have a double standard for judging war crimes in this country. We go out of our way to condemn genocide around the world, but yet it’s OK for President Bush to basically say we can torture prisoners.

Sallah: Somehow we’re exempt from recognizing our own human rights abuses. We supposedly uphold the standards of what’s right in the world; we should be the first to recognize when we’re wrong.

After years of investigation and evidence, why were the Tiger Force atrocities buried back in 1975?

Sallah: The Tiger Force investigation was finished after the war had ended. It was the last thing our government — particularly the Nixon and then the Ford administration — wanted to become public. This was one last horrific reminder that would have kept us lingering on the war had they not buried it.

Weiss: You have to look at the political climate. Even as Saigon was falling, Gerald Ford made a speech about how we had to heal our national divisions and move beyond Vietnam. Ford was getting ready for an extremely tough campaign, the economy was heading south, and he had the baggage of pardoning Nixon. If you had court-martialed one of these guys against whom there was overwhelming evidence, it would have let the whole cat out of the bag and overshadowed what Ford wanted to do.

What was it like talking to Tiger Force vets all these years later?

Weiss: The first time we contacted them, we always said, “Help us understand what it was like out there in the field.” Some vets were surprised we knew about it, but they opened up. For a lot of them, this was the first time they had talked to anyone about what they saw or did. Most of them had kept this bottled inside, so talking to us was like a therapy session. I think a lot of the vets were just glad to get it out in the open since for years they thought they were the only ones carrying around this burden. The reality is that everyone in Tiger Force was carrying around the same burden.

Didn’t one of the vets tell you after the series that he wanted to play Russian roulette with you?

Weiss: That was William Doyle. I talked to him about five or six times before the series ran and he was very candid. He was the guy who said, “If I would have known the war was going to end, I would have killed more.” He basically said you did what you had to do to survive and killing was the way — the only way — to stay alive since you don’t have to worry about people who are dead. Something in the series set Doyle off, so he wrote me a letter saying, “If you want to talk more, bring a bottle of whiskey and we’ll play Russian roulette.” I knew he was suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], so I got on the phone right away and said, “Bill, what are you drinking? I’ll bring the bottle.” That was my way of saying, “I know you didn’t mean it and I understand why you feel the way you do.” As it happened, we kept talking. I interviewed Doyle three or four more times for the book. He actually went into greater detail about his life because we’d developed that trust.

When we were reporting for the series, I tried not to think about how it affected me personally because there wasn’t time. But afterward, every once in a while in the middle of the night I’ve wondered how I would have acted had I been 19 years old in that same horrible situation with bad leadership. I can’t answer that question. Sometimes, even now, I get depressed just thinking about it.

You exposed the Tiger Force atrocities in a smaller, family-owned newspaper. Given the country’s mood in 2003, when you did your series, do you question whether bigger news outlets would have done this story?

Weiss: I doubt it. If you look at newspapers at that time, America was gearing up for Iraq and nobody was asking questions about whether we should go to war or weapons of mass destruction. There was this rah-rah fervor that reminded me of the Spanish-American War in 1898 — you know, “Remember the Maine!” — when every news outlet got behind the war. If this had come up for other newspapers — and I might be wrong — I think they would have said it wasnt a story. Or they would have said, “Its not the right time.”

Sallah: I couldn’t say it any better. The Washington Post was beating the war drum back then. Now they’ve done an about-face and started questioning the war, but they need to go back and read their own stories and editorials from that period. It did take a midsize, family-owned paper in Middle America that was independent enough to do this story.

What does that say about the state of contemporary journalism?

Weiss: You don’t want to get me started on that. With most of the news chains, they’re looking at short, community-oriented stories that shy away from anything controversial. Its just part of corporate journalism. When I was growing up in the ’70s and reading the great journalism of that time, I was inspired to believe that journalists can change the world. In this climate, I’m not sure we have many newspapers that would bring down the White House if they had the evidence. A lot of the time I see reporters who just back down and don’t ask those extra tough questions — they don’t want to challenge authority. It’s almost like they think they don’t have the right. It just drives me crazy.

Sallah: I call it “crybaby journalism.” Thats when you defer to the institutions, when you’re afraid to take on the White House because you’re afraid to be left out. It’s when you’re more of a cheerleader than a watchdog. I’m not saying watchdog journalism has gone away, but it just seems like the general thrust is not to be adversarial today.

What’s the significance of the Tiger Force revelations as they pertain to the question of leadership? Your book makes some clear connections between how Tiger Force and My Lai happened.

Sallah: The command element clearly wanted the Tiger Force unit to be a kill squad. Leadership is what keeps your troops from going over the edge. But this was leadership that fanned the flames. There was no governor on the engine, if you will. It’s an indictment of the leadership itself that they allowed this unit to go on and on when they clearly knew what Tiger Force was doing.

Weiss: There were two soldiers at the time who complained to their superiors. One soldier, Gerald Bruner, turned his gun on another soldier to keep him from killing a young kid. Bruner was told he was crazy for threatening another soldier and the complaints went nowhere.

Sallah: My Lai was 12 miles from where Tiger Force went on a rampage. If they had listened to the whistle-blowers and acted quickly to investigate these atrocities, they might have been able to avert the My Lai massacres. You had the same Army commanders in charge. They would have been made aware of it and told the rank in file, “You cannot do this.”

When reading the book and thinking about the problem of leadership in Vietnam, it’s pretty easy to think of the lessons for our own time, particularly with prisoner abuse.

Weiss: The parallels are that commanders knew there were soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners and they basically allowed it and encouraged it to happen. The one thing we always hoped is that somebody would have studied the Tiger Force case in order to help prevent these kinds of abuses from happening again. When you look at what’s going on in Iraq right now, almost from the very beginning soldiers have been harassing civilians because they “dont know who the civilians are vs. the insurgents.” It creates an abusive culture that feels normal.

Sallah: The leaders have to play a strong role in controlling the troops and keeping them from crossing the line, but they clearly failed in Vietnam and they clearly failed in Iraq. Youre getting atrocities in Iraq right now. For instance, the Pentagon is investigating an incident from last November where some Marines were accused of killing 15 civilians after a roadside bomb went off. The soldiers allegedly got frustrated then went into a home and mowed down unarmed men, women and children. These things are going to happen in war, but you have to have a strong command structure to keep abuse from becoming systemic.

Bush and Rumsfeld came out after Abu Ghraib and made some comments, but at the end of the day they only really went after the grunts. The same thing happened with My Lai where everybody just said, “Well, it’s Lt. Calley — he was an aberrant soldier.” In fact, it went up higher, but the only person convicted of killing 500 Vietnamese villagers was one lieutenant. That’s the kind of military justice that occurs all too often. To this day the military won’t release the records of the Tiger Force case; we got them, but we didn’t get them from the military. Airing this stuff could help them become more accountable by creating some kind of institutional memory that helps establish safeguards. Without this, they’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes. The longer the current war goes on, you’re going to have another whacked-out, crazy platoon that goes over the edge and you’re going to have the military bury the case. Then, 20 years from now, another paper in Middle America is going to find the case and report it. And it’s the same story over and over.

Would you explain how Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney might have been involved in the Tiger Force coverup?

Sallah: War crimes were a paramount concern to our government at the very top levels because they didn’t want any more My Lais. The Tiger Force investigation started in 1971 and grew very large. So, starting at the end of 1973 during Nixon’s presidency, there was a policy instituted where the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division would send regular summaries of the Tiger Force investigation to both the Pentagon and the White House. In fact, Nixon made John Dean the liaison between the White House and Army CID.

Weiss: After Nixon’s resignation, the reports continued. Once Gerald Ford took over in August 1974, Donald Rumsfeld became the White House chief of staff. Then, in November 1975 — the same month the Tiger Force investigation stopped — Rumsfeld began his first term as secretary of defense. At the same time, Dick Cheney took over for Rumsfeld by becoming Ford’s chief of staff. Prior to that, Cheney had a role as a White House staffer. I’m not sure about Cheney’s connection, but it’s hard for me to believe he didn’t know.

After you broke the story of Tiger Force in fall 2003, the government supposedly reopened the investigation to determine what should be done about the crimes and why the investigation was mishandled in the first place. What’s the status of that two-and-a-half years later?

Sallah: The last thing we heard was that the Army appointed a special judge advocate general to review the case and make recommendations. He made a recommendation that they bring back James Hawkins, who was an officer in Tiger Force, and that Hawkins be charged. The recommendation was disregarded and the status is unclear. It’s not that there’s a lack of evidence.

Realistically, is the investigation over?

Weiss: Realistically, it’s dead — this is the Bush White House. Could you imagine this administration recalling a soldier 40 years after a crime? It’s one thing when we deal with Cold War cases or civil rights killings from 50 years ago. We’re willing to do that, but I cannot imagine the Bush White House saying, “Gee, there’s overwhelming evidence. Let’s do it,” and charging these old soldiers. It would be political suicide for the president who’s already in the midst of an unpopular war — the same president who has said we have to support our troops at all costs.

After three years in Iraq, how much more willing do you think people are to hear the lessons of the Tiger Force story?

Weiss: The climate has changed. In October 2003, we still had pictures of Bush on that aircraft carrier with the “Mission Accomplished” sign. While we were starting to get some insurgency, there really wasn’t much. So, when we published the newspaper series, some people called us unpatriotic — we heard, “Why are you bringing this up?” you know. I think now people will be a little more open because what we’re saying rings true and they’ll see the striking parallels with what’s going on in Iraq.

My brother fought in the infantry in Vietnam. I love him more than anything. When he went, he was this happy-go-lucky guy but he came back and was a different person for years. After he read the series, he told me it was the right thing to do. He told me that no one in his unit committed these kinds of war crimes but, if they had, he would have been the first to try to stop it. My brother thought it was important to tell the story so it doesnt happen again.

Sallah: One thing our book does that the newspaper series couldn’t do is that it tells the story through the eyes of the soldiers. We were limited in the series to showing that soldiers crossed the line and committed atrocities; the book shows the human tragedy that happened on both sides. Without excusing the atrocities, the book takes a sympathetic look at the Tiger Force soldiers and the impossible position they were put in.

Weiss: It was just a dark story. You look at what happened to the Vietnamese villagers and it’s just a tragedy. On the other hand, you look at what happened to the soldiers with the guilt and the PTSD; very few Tiger Force soldiers lived what you would consider a normal life. Your heart goes out to them but, at the same time, you cant excuse what they did. There were clearly no winners anywhere in this story.

Now the 43-year-old personal injury lawyer and war vet is gunning for Capitol Hill again, channeling his bravado into a 2006 run, launched officially on Monday, against Ohio’s two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine. Some of Hackett’s political rise can be attributed to ongoing ethical scandals that have rocked the Ohio GOP — including Gov. Bob Taft’s recent guilty plea for accepting illegal gifts. Hackett’s volunteering to fight in Iraq, landing him in perilous locations like Fallujah and Ramadi, no doubt also earned him respect — as have his candid criticisms of a war increasingly unpopular with Americans.

But perhaps most important is how Hackett conveys the kind of straight-shooting image that Democrats have been struggling so mightily to regain. He doesn’t hesitate to endorse same-sex marriage, decry right-wing religious zealotry or, as an NRA member, disagree with other liberals about gun control. In a wide-ranging interview, Hackett spoke with Salon about withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, rethinking the failed war on drugs, reviving the progressive side of the party, and more.

In your congressional race, your opponent praised your service but said she thought you should “support our president” with regard to the war. What do you say to people who fault you for criticizing a war you volunteered to fight?

This is the United States and freedom of speech and freedom of political dissent are what make this country great. I served and I’m entitled to speak my mind. I back the president to the extent that I was willing to fight in his war — and I did it voluntarily and happily, and I’d do it again.

You supported invading Afghanistan, but you’ve said you think we went to Iraq based on lies. You do agree with the president, however, in that you don’t think we can “cut and run.” What would you do differently in Iraq?

First of all, if this president wanted to succeed in Iraq, the first thing he would have done is listen to the generals in the very beginning when they said it would take more than 150,000 troops. General Shinseki said that and was summarily fired. That was before the invasion of Iraq.

But what would you do now?

If I were the president, I’d tell the military to figure out how we systematically and in organized fashion get our troops out of there, because the war’s over. It’s not going to get any better.

When you ran for Congress, you favored better training for Iraqi forces. Now you’re saying we should get out?

There are two options: Increase troop strength or train the Iraqi military with a match of one American soldier for every Iraqi soldier. That’s not going to happen. Everybody knows that, so if we’re not going to train the Iraqi military, let’s quit spending our money and spending our lives.

Here’s the problem: We’ve been there two-plus years and there’s nothing objective this country can point at and say, “This is what we’ve improved since we’ve been over there.” The infrastructure is worse — the electrical grid, the water grid, the sewage grid, the road system. All that infrastructure is worse today than when we got there two-plus years ago.

The Bush administration says there’s progress.

Bullshit. I’ve been there. There’s no success unless you call painting schools success. We’ve painted a lot of schools.

Let’s talk about the so-called moral values issues that you say spurred you to run for Congress last summer. You were upset about what you called Republican grandstanding on Terri Schiavo, abortion and gay marriage.

Why are these the No. 1 issues in the United States when we’ve got an economy which is in even more dire danger of reaching rock bottom than it was when I embarked on the congressional race? Frankly, these social issues are simple and straightforward. I’ll be happy to take each one individually. Gay marriage and gay rights: I’m fond of saying, “Who cares?” The debate is about whether or not American men and women can walk into a courthouse and get equal treatment under the law regardless of their sexual preference. Anything less than that is un-American.

And abortion?

It’s bad — nobody thinks it’s good. The question is: “What do we do to eliminate it?” Period. The only thing that’s going to eliminate it is education, not religious fanaticism. Until education eliminates it, it must remain safe, legal and rare [as possible].

And the right-wing uproar over Terri Schiavo?

Outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. And most Americans agree with that. The only Americans that don’t are religious fanatics. They’ve got more in common with Osama bin Laden than I’ve got with them.

You sound like someone who could be held up as a liberal champion. Still, your position on guns is probably upsetting to doctrinaire liberals. How do you reconcile your position on gay marriage and gun control?

I don’t need Washington, D.C., or the government in my private life. Period. I don’t need them to dictate to my wife the decisions she can make with a doctor. I don’t need a Washington politician to tell my neighbors what they can do in the privacy of their bedroom. And I don’t need Washington politicians to tell me what guns to keep in my gun safe.

John Edwards’ “two Americas” theory was central to the Kerry-Edwards campaign last year. After the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, do you subscribe to this theory?

I look at it like there’s one America. We’re all in the same boat. We all have responsibilities. Those of us who’ve enjoyed success in life have a responsibility to give back to this country. And we have a responsibility, frankly, in a Christian sense — or, for that matter, in a Muslim sense or a Jewish sense — to take care of those who are less fortunate and make sure they get by. If that’s what Edwards means by “two Americas,” yeah, I subscribe to that. I perceive the religious fanatics in the Republican Party as socially irresponsible in many ways and that’s one of the ways they’re socially irresponsible — that they are unwilling to help those who are less fortunate.

What do you propose to help solve our looming energy crisis?

First of all, leadership starts at the top. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw President Bush, with this great anguish and difficulty, asking Americans [in the wake of Katrina] to consider conserving their energy consumption. Conservation is a part of the solution. Also, we need to spend the money to fund the research to come up with an alternative source of energy to fuel our cars and electrify our houses, and our industry. That can be done. I’m not a scientist, but I have confidence in the United States. We had the Manhattan Project and we put a man on the moon; I’m absolutely confident we can come up with a way to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependency on petrochemicals. But until that happens, we should be asking Americans to buy fuel-efficient vehicles. And we should be asking the American automobile industry to produce fuel-efficient vehicles.

What about the environment?

First of all, I wouldn’t drill in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. That oil isn’t even going to be online for another 10 or 11 years. And I would enforce all of the EPA laws this administration is working overtime to dismantle. There’s a lot of money to be made in setting [good environmental] standards, in developing fuel-efficient vehicles and vehicles powered by alternative fuel.

What do you think of the drug war as it’s been “fought” for the last 30 years? What would you do differently to deal with the drug problem?

Obviously the drug war is not working. With many Republican and Democratic administrations their solution is to build more prisons and put more people in jail. I’m not comfortable saying legalize it, but I think there needs to be an honest discussion about providing money to educate people and to treat people who have an addiction. Many Americans ask why we have to get touchy-feely about this. Well, I’ll tell you why: because we’re spending billions and billions of dollars to warehouse people in jail, and that ain’t workin’.

You’ve described yourself as a fiscal conservative. How would you bring that to today’s Washington?

We’ve got to cut the pork. There’s some congressman up in Alaska who wants to build a $50 million bridge to nowhere. That’s just one example of thousands. We subsidize large corporations, give them tax breaks, and they ship our jobs overseas.

Decrying bad spending is a favorite pastime in politics. Can you elaborate about what else you consider to be misspent funds?

Well, let’s look at all the countries we spend billions to support who don’t deserve our support. They don’t deserve it because they’re a threat to the United States — their governments are dictatorships and they’re not productive members of the world community. Take a look at Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and lots of others.

What do Democrats need to do to win and get the country back on track?

Stand up and fight for what they believe in and not be afraid of it. I think [there's been] a failure of ideas, a failure of leadership and a failure of having a message to convey. I’m harshly critical of the Democratic leadership to the extent that they stood by and had no critical comment or discussion leading up to their OK’ing the war in Iraq.

Does the Democratic Party stand for progressivism anymore?

There are pockets within the party that do. The constituents and the grass roots and the people out here in Ohio stand for that. I think they’ve been let down by their leadership.

Do you count yourself among the party’s progressives?

Sure, if “progressive” means standing up for the things that made this country great. If it means fighting for working Americans, fighting for an economy that allows working Americans to survive and provide for their families, and if it means demanding a rational discussion about how our military is used or misused … If that’s what progressive stands for, yeah, you bet I’m progressive.

The paper also divulged that Noe had been placed under federal investigation for allegedly laundering money — perhaps state money — to the Bush campaign. The Blade’s initial reports on Noe started a chain reaction of related scandals for Ohio’s dominant Republicans. Recently, Gov. Bob Taft pleaded no contest to accepting several gifts from influence peddlers — including Noe — without reporting them, as law requires. Noe is currently the subject of 13 investigations.

In November 2004, Lucas County was among the most hotly contested areas in the most hotly contested state. Kerry won the county by 45,000 votes, but George W. Bush went on to win Ohio by less than 120,000 votes, which swung the election for him.

But Bush’s reelection may have been made possible by a Blade reporter with close ties to the Republican Party who reportedly knew about Noe’s potential campaign violations in early 2004 but suppressed the story.

According to several knowledgeable sources, the Blade’s chief political columnist, Fritz Wenzel, was told of Noe’s potential campaign violations as early as January 2004. But according to Blade editors, Wenzel never gave the paper the all-important tip in early 2004.

Wenzel says that he heard allegations of Noe’s misdeeds only in spring 2004 and that he promptly informed his editors of them.

Wenzel, who worked for years as a GOP political operative in Oregon before the Blade hired him, quit the Blade in May 2005 to take a job as a paid political consultant to Jean Schmidt, the Republican congressional candidate who in August narrowly defeated Democratic challenger (and Iraq war vet) Paul Hackett.

Of course, no one can say for sure whether Ohio voters would have cast their ballots differently if they had known about allegations that Bush’s campaign boss in Toledo was hijacking money from the state to keep the campaign humming. But native Ohioan John Robinson Block, publisher and editor in chief of the Blade, which endorsed Kerry, thinks it’s a strong possibility. Had the “Coingate” scandal blown up before the election, Block says, “most Republicans I know agree that Kerry would have won Ohio and won the presidency.” Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat whose district includes Toledo, feels the same. “I think it would have tipped the election,” she says.

The story of how Wenzel learned about the alleged violations, and why he allegedly sat on the information, reveals a Toledo political scene right out of “Peyton Place,” complete with a cast of backstabbers. It begins in January 2004, when Tom Noe’s wife, Bernadette Noe — who chaired the local Republican Party and sat on the Board of Elections — approached Lucas County prosecutor Julia Bates, a Democrat. Bernadette Noe raised ethical questions about Joe Kidd, a well-connected Republican who was then director of the Board of Elections. She told the prosecutor’s office she suspected Kidd was receiving money from Diebold, the now-notorious manufacturer of voting machines. Bates says that Bernadette Noe’s source for the allegations was Joe Kidd’s estranged wife, Tracy, with whom Bernadette practiced law. Bates says it’s possible that Bernadette’s allegations against Kidd were motivated by sympathy for her friend Tracy.

Paula Ross, a former Lucas County Democratic Party chair, who also sat on the Board of Elections, confirms that Bernadette Noe went to the prosecutor to tarnish Kidd. Ross says she talked with both Bernadette and Kidd. In January 2004, Ross says, “I was contacted by Bernadette, who made allegations about Joe. I then spoke with Joe, who assured me that the allegations were false. He believed he could persuade Bernadette to stop making these false allegations because he had information about [Noe and her husband] that could put them in jail.” The information, says Ross, was that Tom Noe was laundering money to the Bush campaign.

Kidd retaliated against the Noes by going to Wenzel, in January 2004, according to a Toledo Republican Party insider familiar with the affairs of the Board of Elections, and sources familiar with the Blade. Kidd told Wenzel that Tom Noe was illegally funneling money to the Bush campaign and also running a questionable coin investment with the state. Sources confirmed that Kidd told them he had this conversation with Wenzel. Kidd would not comment for this article.

Bates, the Lucas County prosecutor, confirms that Kidd came to her in March 2004 with an outline of Noe’s campaign money laundering, and that it was crucial in helping her office ultimately build a case against Noe. The prosecutor won’t say if Kidd himself took Noe’s money and gave it to Bush, thus laundering it (that is, making it a legitimate campaign donation). But she does say that, upon first glance, she found it “interesting” that he gave $2,000, considering he was a civil servant on a modest income. Other sources say that Kidd, along with several local Republican officials, did in fact launder money. This summer, Kidd testified in front of the federal grand jury convened to investigate Noe’s alleged money-laundering scheme. Bates says her office considered offering Kidd immunity in exchange for help building the case. “We thought the key was Joe,” says Bates, so she encouraged him to get a lawyer and produce all the evidence he could. Kidd, who was also being investigated for the allegations Bernadette Noe made against him, cooperated.

Wenzel declined to be interviewed for this story. He responded with this general statement issued through attorney Mark Berling, who formerly sat on the Lucas County Republicans’ executive committee: “When a source conveyed an allegation about Tom Noe’s possible involvement with campaign finance irregularities in the spring of 2004, I promptly informed Blade editors about what I had been told.”

But Blade editors deny that Wenzel ever informed them about the allegations. The Blade’s special projects editor, Dave Murray, who was Wenzel’s assigning editor at the time, says Wenzel would have come to him with any such information about Noe. But, Murray says, “he never came to me, and, as far as I know, he never came to other Blade editors.” Speaking for the other Blade editors, assistant editor LuAnn Sharp says no one recollects Wenzel turning over any such information. (Full disclosure: This reporter once applied for a job at the Toledo Blade.)

Blade editor in chief Block and other editors say they don’t believe that Wenzel intentionally sat on the story.

Both Wenzel and his son had personal relationships with the Noes. In March 2004, Wenzel’s son, P.J., was elected to the Lucas County Republican Central Committee. At the time, Bernadette Noe still chaired the Lucas County Republican Party. From April 15, 2005, to the end of May, P.J. Wenzel was on the payroll of the Ohio Republican Party. The Noes also attended the younger Wenzel’s wedding.

A month before Wenzel left the paper, at the Lucas County Republicans’ annual “Lincoln Day” dinner, Bernadette Noe made a speech in which she announced Wenzel would be leaving the paper for his consulting business. She wished him well at the dinner, which was attended by all three Republican gubernatorial candidates.

As the Blade’s chief political writer, Wenzel reported and commented on politics. He also ran his own Web site, heartlandpolitics.com (whose homepage says it is “temporarily out of commission”), which he touted as offering in-depth analysis of northwest Ohio politics. Democrats charged that Wenzel’s reporting was biased toward Republicans. The Blade’s ombudsman, Jack Lessenberry, agreed: “At times I felt that his reporting was slanted to favor Republican positions or Republican candidates,” Lessenberry says.

The Noe story is not the first time Wenzel has been suspected of conflict of interest. During the 2004 election season, Wenzel worked simultaneously for the Blade and for Zogby International, the polling firm. President and CEO John Zogby said that Wenzel worked for the company as a “senior political writer” between roughly May and October 2004. The work he did for Zogby acknowledged that Wenzel was a political reporter for the Blade. But in at least four columns he wrote for the Blade at the time he was working for Zogby, Wenzel cited Zogby polls without disclosing his affiliation. John Block expressed surprise and concern that Wenzel cited Zogby without disclosure: “He shouldn’t have cited Zogby. I have to say, that’s the first I’ve heard of that.” According to Bob Steele, a journalism professor specializing in ethics at the Poynter Institute, the problem goes beyond Wenzel’s failure to acknowledge the relationship. Steele points to a question of “competing loyalty,” and says, “To disclose his connection to Zogby alerts readers to that conflict of interest and competing loyalty, but that disclosure doesn’t make the problem go away.”

In spring 2004, while Lucas County prosecutors began to investigate Noe’s campaign irregularities, the Blade, without Wenzel’s scoop, remained in the dark. Assistant editor Sharp says that the Blade’s editors and reporters received worthwhile tips about the Noe campaign finance improprieties “around September.” Prosecutor Bates, whose daughter and son-in-law are Blade reporters, says she can’t remember anyone from the paper coming to her about the investigation until then. “I don’t recall any official inquiry until [Blade reporter] Mark Reiter came to me in early fall,” she says. Bates says that was right around the time she was obliged to turn over the investigation to federal prosecutors, which made it much more difficult for reporters to unearth information. At any rate, it was only a few weeks before the election.

On April 3, 2005, the first Blade story about Noe and the coin investments appeared. With the Blade’s aggressive reporting, the story quickly gathered state and national attention, but Wenzel, who was still at the Blade, never wrote anything about it in the paper. Additionally, he never wrote about it in the many posts on his personal blog. Sharp says the Blade did not restrain Wenzel from writing about Coingate.

Although he never wrote about Coingate, Wenzel did blog on his Web site about Bernadette Noe and the Lincoln Day dinner on April 14. Although this was 11 days after the Blade published its first Coingate story, Wenzel failed to mention one of the biggest political scandals in Ohio history. Instead, Wenzel fawned over Bernadette Noe. “Also not fading is former GOP chairman Bernadette Noe. She was honored last night for her service to the party, then held up a copy of yesterday’s Toledo Free Press, reminding those present to check out her new column (Great picture, Bernie!). But that’s not all. A new television talk show and radio program are in the works. Talk about multi-tasking.”

After leaving the Blade on Friday, May 13, Wenzel officially went to work the following Monday as congressional candidate Jean Schmidt’s media consultant. Schmidt, a Cincinnati-area Republican who formerly headed Cincinnati Right to Life, was running for Congress in the most staunchly conservative corner of the state. Wenzel’s company, Wenzel Strategies, received $30,000 from the Schmidt campaign that Monday and another $30,000 a week later. His role was to handle media issues in the hotly contested special election.

News organizations, including Salon, have questioned whether Wenzel was already working as a consultant for Schmidt prior to leaving the Blade, which would constitute an obvious conflict of interest. As early as May 3, Wenzel wrote blog entries about the Schmidt race and made disparaging remarks about Schmidt’s primary opponents on his Web site. Regarding Pat DeWine, one of Schmidt’s primary opponents, Wenzel wrote: “DeWine also has personal problems. He left his wife when she was eight months pregnant with their third child to take up with another woman. You could say he thinks so much of family values that he has decided to start another.”

Wenzel’s blog entries were pulled from the Web shortly after his ties to the Schmidt campaign came under scrutiny, but Wenzel denies he was working for Schmidt and the Blade simultaneously. He reportedly told a Cincinnati paper that he had a “busy weekend” drumming up Schmidt’s business right after he left the Blade.

Block, the publisher and editor in chief, says he has confidence in the integrity of Wenzel’s overall tenure at the Blade, but doesn’t believe Wenzel kept the Schmidt job separate from his time at the paper. “You don’t just leave on one day and then immediately set up your consulting business,” Block says. “I think that in his final period at the Blade, it was getting close to a conflict of interest. I’m not going to deny that.”

In October 2004, Bates turned her investigation into Noe’s campaign irregularities over to the U.S. Department of Justice. That was three weeks before the election, not enough time, Bates says, to affect the outcome.

The Coingate scandal continues to grow. The Blade still diligently hounds the story amid growing revelations about the Noes and Republican problems statewide. Wenzel is basking in political success, having helped take Schmidt from being an outside contender in the primaries to sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives. Ohio government is still thoroughly dominated by Republicans, but, as Blade editors and Democrats are quick to note, that might soon be changing, thanks to the scandal. What won’t change is that Coingate never got reported in 2004, and George W. Bush won the presidency.