2nd District (OH) Primary Prattle (060405)

Today’s tidbits:

• Enquirer covers Forum with no substance: As of early this afternoon, the Enquirer’s coverage of the Forum last night, eleven days before the election, was this local brief about who wasn’t there (DeWine). No mention of a single thing any candidate said, though an Enquirer reporter was there last night. Thanks for nothing, guys.This is why candidates know they can do an all-style, no-substance shtick campaign and pull if off, because the local press is mostly so lax they don’t matter. It’s also why the blogs, to the extent possible, have to take up the (considerable) slack.
• Enquirer disses BizzyBlog: The Enquirer has a story by Nick Juliano of AP on bloggers covering the race. Its focus is almost entirely on “progressives” covering (mostly) the Democrat side. Since Juliano interviewed me earlier this week for his story, I e-mailed him and asked if the Enquirer printed his whole piece. Turns out, no. He sent me to a Canton paper(!) (link requires free registration) that carried the additional paragraphs the Enquirer snipped (thanks AGAIN for nothing, Enquirer guys). Here are some of them (June 6 update — a Lexington (KY) TV Station manages to carry the whole thing; I guess there must be a bandwidth shortage at the Enquirer):
  

  Tom Blumer runs www.bizzyblog.com, which started with business commentary. Lately he has used it to voice his conservative commentary on the race.

  “That’s the benefit of following the race now versus 10 years ago,” he said. “If you are a person pressed for time or with a lot of other things going on you can put out your opinions and hopefully have a little bit of influence.”

  Some of the candidates, including Republican Bob McEwen and Democrat Victoria Wulsin, also have started their own blogs.

  Whether blogs will continue to be a presence in local elections remains to be seen. In the wake of the 2004 general election, national blogs still continue to be an influential means of communication.

• And where do I go to get local coverage of campaign spending? If you guessed NOT The Enquirer, go to the head of the class. The Dayton Daily News (links require free registration) had it last night (the money will be blogged when the detail of individual contributions is known).
• Dayton Daily News endorsements: While we’re on The DDN, which mostly endorses Democrat candidates in two-party races, it has endorsed Democrat Hackett and Republican DeWine. The other GOP candidates will be sending The DDN their thank-you notes for the DeWine endorsement shortly.

  On the GOP side, The DDN only evaluated DeWine, McEwen, and Schmidt, and figured the rest are too underfunded. They should have looked at their own column on the FEC filings, because there is a surprise or two in there.

  On the Dem side, The DDN spent almost all of its verbiage on Hackett and a sentence or two each on the others. Their endorsement makes it clear, as noted earlier by BizzyBlog, why the GOP would be foolish to take Hackett lightly:

  Mr. Hackett went to Iraq not because he was already in the Marines. He had been out for years. He signed up again to serve there. He’ll go again if he isn’t elected.

  His experience and perspective on the war could be useful to Congress. He feels strongly that training a 140,000-member Iraqi military is a prerequisite to this country leaving. And he believes that the president has not assigned enough people to that task and is not saying how difficult it is.

  He believes the war was not smart, because it requires the U.S. military to build a nation, which is not its specialty.

  Mr. Hackett is an articulate, down-to-earth exponent of moderate Democratic views.