It’s Official: Only One Major Ohio Newspaper Thinks There’s a US Senate GOP Primary Race

UPDATE: Related FreeRepublic Post on the Dispatch editorial is HERE.
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The Enquirer thinks the GOP US Senate Primary isn’t worth covering, or worth the effort of rendering an endorsement (scroll to bottom for list of endorsement links).

Enquirer searches for any kind of news on the race yield mere listings of candidates and isolated stories that are all over a month old.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer didn’t endorse anyone either (link skips from state offices to Congressional races). No evidence at The Toledo Blade either. Or The Dayton Daily News.

They’re assuming it’s not a race.

This may turn out to be an oversight on the level of “Dewey Beats Truman.”

The Columbus Dispatch endorsed DeWine for the primary (about halfway down):

Mike DeWine, of Cedarville, comes to his third Senate campaign with a solid reputation for integrity and a track record of independence in a Republican-dominated Congress. Though consistent in declaring his support for most Bush administration policies, he has held his ground when his position differs from that of the most-conservative wing of his party. His brand of civility and professionalism, not partisanship, yields results.

THIS is “civil and professional”? And what exactly are those “results” ?

Bill Pierce (site, blog, contribute) shows us in his “Campaign of Principles” post that Mike Dewine’s positions don’t differ from the “most-conservative wing” (that’s Dispatch code for “extremists”); Mike DeWine’s positions differ from time-honored conservative principles most of the time. Read the whole thing.

Don’t let anyone fool you. This is a race, and Mike DeWine has only two things left going for him: Apathy and intertia. If you doubt it, click over to this FreeRepublic comment from yesterday at a post about DeWine’s outrageous criticism of Donald Rumsfeld:

I live in Ohio, I am working on the Ken Blackwell campaign. Every single GOP voter I have spoken with says they are voting for Pierce. Of course my local media is 100% behind De”whine.” As active as I am in politics, I had no idea DeWhine criticized Rummy. (Which was the intent of the media who Did NOT report on it, no doubt). Anyway…..To all Ohio conservative voters, lets send a message to RINOs and dump Dewhine.

UPDATE: Yes, I’ve seen today’s the Dispatch poll on the US Senate race. No, I don’t believe it, with good reason — simply remember how dreadfully wrong (56-point swings!) they were about the Reform Ohio Now initiatives last year. Now they’re hoping they can find representative GOP members, a smaller group, when they couldn’t even get a representative sample of the state. B,S.

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NOTE: I have endorsed Bill Pierce for Senate, and have provided nominal financial support for his campaign. BizzyBlog is a member of Blogs for Pierce.