Cincinnati’s Clueless Enquirer Invisibler Continues to Ignore an Historic Challenge to an Incumbent US Senator
Note: This post will be kept at the top all of Friday.
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I wanted to rip on this over a week ago when Bronson’s column appeared, but I had heard that some improvement in the Enquirer’s Invisibler’s coverage of the US Senate race was coming.
Silly me. I should have known better.
Peter Bronson, in a February 28 Cincinnati Enquirer Invisibler column about RINOs (Republicans in Name Only), wrapped up with this question and answer:
Is DeWine threatened?
No. RINOs apparently have no natural predators in the Republican Party except Blackwell, and he’s stalking Petro.
Bronson has apparently never heard of Bill Pierce, David Smith, or John Mitchel, all of whom are listed at the Secretary of State’s web site.
Bronson’s ignorance is in a way understandable but still unforgivable — no one else at The Cincinnati Enquirer Invisibler is acknowledging the existence of DeWine’s challengers either.
They should.
Folks, I’ve followed politics around here for a bit over 30 years, and I can tell you this: I have never, ever, seen an incumbent US Senator from Ohio of either party suffer as many stinging rebukes as Mike DeWine has suffered at the hands of county endorsement groups this year. In every DeWine rebuke, the beneficiary has been challenger Bill Pierce (in Knox, Clermont, and Preble Counties; the other two challengers have as of yet had no breakthrough performances).
I also have never seen the party establishment of either party “cleverly” manipulate the county endorsement process, in so many cases, and so obviously, to ensure that an incumbent US Senator from Ohio is not further humiliated. They have even, in the case of Hamilton County, taken endorsement-process manipulation to the extreme of completely “scripting” the meeting to ensure that challengers weren’t fairly considered. Even though the scripting was exposed (including the script itself) and never disputed, the Enquirer Invisibler totally ignored it.
There’s a reason for Mike DeWine’s difficulties: He is unpopular with rank and file GOP voters. Mike DeWine cannot win the May primary if one of his challengers gains visibility and recognition as a genuine alternative with clear positions, a clear message, and authentic conservative values, as Bill Pierce is oh-so-close to doing (I have reasons for believing that Pierce is near the threshold beyond what is generally known).
All of this is newsworthy by any objective standard. Yet The Cincinnati Enquirer Invisibler has run no news about the Pierce campaign since he announced his candidacy in November, and its so-called Politics Extra blog has been similarly silent.
To find out what’s happening with Ohio’s most viable GOP US Senatorial challenger, who happens to be a hometowner, a Cincinnati news consumer has to visit the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s blog, where Bill Sloat has noticed the news blackout from over 200 miles away, and has picked up on the establishment’s attempts to avoid further humiliating DeWine.
There are still 7-1/2 weeks remaining in the primary campaign, which is plenty of time for the Enquirer Invisibler to find and appropriately cover what may turn out to be the political story of the year in Ohio (as I’ve noted, in a lot of ways, it already is). If the political reporters at the Enquirer Invisibler end up missing this story, someone at Gannett could reasonably conclude that no one will miss their absence from the paper.
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UPDATE: I should also ask others around the country who are reading this — When is the last time an incumbent US Senator of either party got taken out in a primary?
Bizzy, the last time I can think of was Smith of New Hampshire versus Sununu
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/10/primary.wrap/index.html
U.S. Sen. Bob Smith became the first sitting senator ousted in the 2002 election cycle, losing to U.S. Rep. John Sununu in the battle for New Hampshire’s Republican Senate nomination.
Smith was kind of tarnished as he’d completely ticked off the rest of the GOP and couldn’t work with them, and probably was too conservative for the general population of the state. Sununu was well known and financed.
Comment by dave — March 10, 2006 @ 5:28 am
At least one Incumbent US Senator lost
in a primary in Illinois.
Alan Dixon (D) lost to Carole Mosley Braun
(D) in a 3-way primary.
And, iirc, she, in turn, lost in one of
her re-election primaries.
I’m not sure if Peter Fitzgerald (R) who
had so little ‘establishment’ support he
declined to run in the primary would count.
His eventual replacement, Barack Obama,
cruised to victory beating a replacement
candidate when the winner of the 2004 Republican Senatorial primary had to resign.
Comment by Ted — March 10, 2006 @ 7:41 am
#1 and #2 thanks, for the examples.
#2, Moseley Braun was defeated for re-election by Fitzgerald in the general in 1998 — just confirmed in Wiki.
Comment by TBlumer — March 10, 2006 @ 9:29 am
Dear Biz,
I phoned mr.bronson, and in a polite way expressed my indignation. however, mr. bronson did not see fit to tender my call with either an email or a phone call, and I did leave both for him to use and begged him to get back to me. It seems the once powerful mr. bronson is no more than a puppet for the Gannett controlled paper. and here i thought once he had ethics. I guess it is just about the paycheck for him and he is phoning it in. pathetic. as a hockey fan, this is par for the course with the invisibler. they destroyed cincinnati hockey teams by never covering them until it was folding time. now they only cover the effort to revitalize hockey because it looks like it is going to fail. way to contribute to positivity, jerkweeds. that’s why i don’t buy the rag anymore.
Comment by Mark — March 10, 2006 @ 11:13 am
#4, your parallel to hockey is growing on me. The DeWine Challenge and big crowds at hockey games (even when there were 2 teams) are both stories happening right under their noses that they ignore (or ignored).
And you’re right about the effort to bring hockey back. I just happened to hear about it on one of the Homer talk shows in the car because I got tired of Hannity, and apparently someone’s been trying to do something for months (Robinson at the Gardens, I think). Does the Invisibler care? Nope.
Comment by TBlumer — March 10, 2006 @ 11:25 am