Jennifer Brunner, a Democratic election lawyer and former county judge who is running for secretary of state, sniffed about Blackwell's conduct, "If you're going to umpire the game, you can't wear a jersey of one of the teams." During an interview in her law office, she spoke about how Blackwell's unabashed partisanship fostered conspiracy theories about the accuracy of the state's 2004 presidential returns. "What it did was to undermine people's trust in the process," she said. "So when you had a 70 percent turnout as you did in the 2004 presidential election -- and things went wrong as they were bound to with that turnout -- people started ascribing all kind of underhanded things ... because Blackwell set the tone that he was trying to sway the election."
Ted Strickland embodies a series of theories about how the Democrats can assemble 21st century electoral majorities. Strickland is, in a sense, a walking market test of Democratic branding, which is apt since Columbus is one of the leading consumer test markets in the nation. In pointed contrast to, say, John Kerry, Strickland is running as a pro-gun candidate, with unmistakable rural roots. He has no problems talking often and publicly about his religious faith and the liberal values that he derives from it. As Strickland, an ordained United Methodist minister, put it in an interview, "I am not going to cede ownership of, so to speak, the faith community to Ken Blackwell."
This explains why the Strickland campaign confounded political expectations earlier this month when it launched a radio ad campaign on Christian stations with the candidate delivering this untraditional Democratic message:
"In the Old Testament book of Micah, we are asked this question: 'What then is required of us?' And the answer: 'To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God.' Throughout the course of my life as a United Methodist minister, a teacher, a child-care administrator, psychologist, congressman and husband, I have tried to follow this biblical admonition."
During an hourlong interview Saturday morning in a crowded family restaurant just east of Columbus, the soft-spoken Strickland radiated passion when he began talking about how conservatives like Blackwell have hijacked religion. "I believe that much that is presented as Christian faith today borders on apostasy," he said. "Because they have taken the broad, wonderful message of the Christian faith and they have diminished it and narrowed it and made it into something that is an anemic reflection of what Jesus thought."
Strickland, who will turn 65 next month, projects a sense that the fires of the standard politician's ambition have banked a little. "I'm a little more mature," he conceded. "A little more thoughtful than I was a decade ago. I think this is a serious business. I am not a sound-bite candidate ... I want to be a substantive, thoughtful, problem-solving, unifying governor. I take this seriously and it is perhaps reflected in my demeanor."
Dressed in the standard political regalia of a dark suit and crisp white shirt, Strickland limits his flash to two oversize rings that he wears -- one that his wife made out of his original temporary congressional ID pin and the other his high-school graduation ring. Strickland is the kind of candidate who will ask a reporter, long after a discussion of his reputed blandness is over, "So, do you think I'm dull? I'm really not."
But in person Strickland may be invisible. Even though we sat at a circular center table at Paul's Restaurant, not a single voter wandered over to shake Strickland's hand or even seemed to notice the likely next governor of Ohio. When Strickland left the restaurant, I caught a man of retirement age asking his wife in puzzlement, "Who was that?"
Despite the poll numbers, there are prominent Ohio Democrats who worry that Strickland may be taking the bland Mister Rogers approach a bit too far. "He's up 10-15 points because no one knows who he is," said one Democratic critic. "Strickland has been pretty much unchallenged. He has no identity. He's had a free ride." Carlo LoParo, Blackwell's press secretary, makes a similar point with an added talking-point edge. "Strickland's first problem is that 70 percent of Ohioans don't know who he is," said LoParo. "And the second problem is that when they find out who he is, they will see that he doesn't share their values."
But tarring the affable Strickland with the standard Republican epithet of "liberal, liberal, liberal" requires a heavy investment of money. And even well-placed Republicans privately worry that the Dispatch poll may permanently kill Blackwell's fundraising potential, as all the follow-the-winner money gravitates to Strickland. True, an appropriately grateful Bush is coming in on Aug. 2 for a Blackwell fundraiser. Unless his poll numbers improve, however, that presidential swag may be the last major cash infusion Blackwell sees before November.
It may be premature to turn the lights out on the Blackwell campaign, especially since the Democrats have not won an Ohio gubernatorial race in two decades. As Strickland shrewdly put it, "I think there are two things that Ohio Democrats feel right now -- hope and concern. They feel hope that we can win. And I think they feel concern that the other side is so determined to hold onto power that there's going to be a hellacious fight and that we could lose it."
But for the moment, at least, Ohio voters seem ready to prove that, yes, it is possible for Republicans to go too far in their quest to un-separate church and state.
About the writer
Walter Shapiro is Salon's Washington bureau chief. A complete listing of his articles is here.
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