2nd District (OH) Congrressional Race–A (Relevant) Blast from the Past on Bob McEwen

June 3, 4PM Update: NixGuy lifts and posts the graphic. Go for it, everybody.
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Note: Bolds are mine. The original column is not available online, and was obtained from library microfilm. No other commentary is necessary. Excerpts from that column are presented for education and discussion purposes. And remember, I didn’t write this.
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From: The Cincinnati Enquirer; Sunday, March 21, 1993; Page B-8/Metro

Howard Wilkinson on Politics

Some people just have to learn the hard way.

…..people told Bob McEwen not to do it–not to run for another seat in Congress three months after being booted out of his old one.

State party leaders told him. Friends–political allies….–told him.

He did anyway, and Tuesday, he ran into an electoral buzz saw–the Second District special primary election, which he lost to Cincinnati lawyer Rob Portman, favorite of the Hamilton County GOP.

So now, the 43 year-old McEwen–who has held elective office in Columbus or Washington since he was 24 years old–has lost two congressional elections in about five months.

McEwen lost his seat in Congress last fall in an upset that probably stunned even the man who beat him, Democrat Ted Strickland of Lucasville.

In retrospect, though, it’s not so surprising.

McEwen dragged several 500-pound albatrosses around his neck…. He had 166 rubber checks in the infamous House Bank Scandal. He had traveled at taxpayer expense to more exotic climes around the world than anyone since Marco Polo.

McEwen’s political friends told him those issues, the stuff of a politician’s worst nightmares, would rise up again and bite him if he decided to come down to the Second District….

But running is what he does.

….the advice from political friends was to bide his time, wait for the memory of 1992 to fade and take a stab at winning back his old seat in 1994.

But he didn’t take the hint….

And McEwen is now saying what southern Ohio Republicans never thought they’d hear–that he probably won’t run for anything.