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Strickland, Columbus mayor split support; nomination duel might bring bad blood to surface
By Dennis Willard
Beacon Journal columnist
Published on Sunday, Feb 10, 2008
COLUMBUS: The battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is reopening old wounds in the Ohio Democratic Party, and the tension, with race a factor, is only going to increase by the March 4 primary.
The Clinton and Obama camps in Ohio are divided along lines representing a rivalry dating back to the governor's race and the fight at the Ohio Democratic Party convention in December 2005 to elect a chairman.
Gov. Ted Strickland and his organization support Clinton.
Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman's team is leading the charge for Obama.
Recent history between Coleman and Strickland is not good.
Coleman, an African-American, was front-runner and at one point the lone candidate for governor in early 2005, especially after Strickland announced he would seek
re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Coleman coronation.
Major contributors and large unions lost confidence in Coleman. They correctly sensed it was the year of the Democrat, but they believed Strickland was the better man for the task.
Start of divide
In November 2005, Coleman dropped out of the race, just three weeks after his wife, Frankie, pleaded guilty to drunk driving and a mere week after Chris Redfern — who was aligned with Strickland — announced he was going to run for chairman of the state party.
Many on Coleman's campaign team believed he had been abandoned and that his race was at the heart of the matter. Strickland supporters vehemently denied accusations that a whisper campaign was launched against Coleman that implied an African-American Democrat could not win against an African-American Republican, J. Kenneth Blackwell.
The Democratic nominating convention in December 2005 demonstrated the widening rift between Strickland and Redfern, on one hand, and the Coleman backers, including a number of black large city mayors, on the other.
Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin oversaw a multihour debate that was so heated and crowded with bickering Democrats that the local fire marshal was called to the scene. Redfern won the contest, but both sides went away nursing wounds and harboring grudges.
Six months would pass before Coleman, McLin and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and other African-American leaders like U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Cleveland, would formally endorse Strickland.
Their reluctance to embrace Strickland had become an ongoing source of embarrassment.
Harmony short-lived
Strickland made a smart move after being elected. He appeared to be following the maxim ''keep your friends close and your enemies closer'' when he named Coleman to head his transition team.
But a new fissure opened between Strickland and Coleman within six months.
Frankie Coleman was given a job at the Ohio Department of Development, but she wasn't showing up for work or she was leaving early. After embarrassing stories appeared in the newspaper, Strickland asked the Ohio inspector general for a formal investigation. Frankie Coleman resigned and sought treatment for alcoholism.
Now, with less than a month until the primary, and Ohio for the first time in generations in a position to influence the Democratic Party nomination, Coleman and Strickland are again on opposite sides.
Strickland has campaigned for Clinton, traveling to Iowa to help her in the caucuses, and his name has been mentioned as a potential running mate.
Coleman endorsed Obama last year, and the mayor was front and center when the candidate's campaign threw a kickoff rally on Feb. 2 in Columbus.
The race again pits Strickland on opposite sides of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, an organization of 17 African-American state legislators who support Obama.
Rift with black caucus
Strickland went against the wishes of the black caucus last year when he pulled his support and forced Barbara Sykes to resign as chairwoman of the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.
Sykes had refused a request from the governor to delay moving forward on a new commission policy that would have ordered small businesses to provide 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave to women with a doctor's order.
Clinton does have support from African-American leaders, the most prominent in Ohio being Tubbs Jones.
But mention that to members of the black legislative caucus and they privately state that African-American officials who do not support Obama are out of touch with their constituencies, and that black voters will demonstrate in Ohio, as they have in other states, that they will not follow any leader who opposes Obama.
None of this would matter if, as in previous years, the nomination was signed, sealed and delivered before primary polls opened in Ohio.
But the state will play a large role in this primary, possibly determining the nominee.
And it is against the backdrop of the divisions within the Ohio Democratic Party that the Clinton and Obama campaigns roll into the state.
At the rally to kick off the Obama push in Ohio on Feb. 2, Coleman told the crowd that this was a ''unifying moment.'' Obviously, he wasn't talking about the Ohio Democratic Party.
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
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COLUMBUS: The battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is reopening old wounds in the Ohio Democratic Party, and the tension, with race a factor, is only going to increase by the March 4 primary.
Get the full article here.
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