The Questions Grow, As Do The Number of People Who Need to Be Questioned, in Ted Strickland’s Late-1990s Hiring Controversy

As the Scandal Widens:

It’s not just “What did Ted Strickland know and when did he know it?” (that question is essentially answered already.)

Now there’s more — lots more:

Evidently, in the last weeks of the 1998 campaign when Strickland was anonymously tipped off regarding the sexual offenses of this top employee, criminal arrest records were also sent to a wide range of Ohio Democratic Party officials. In the new e-mail, Ohio Concerned Citizen makes this charge:

“This was not a simple note. Strickland received the same package of information that was sent to all the Democratic chairs, all the Democratic officials on the ballot in his district, all of Strickland’s big campaign donors, news media, etc.”

This accusation suggests a broad-based cover-up was under way within Ohio’s Sixth Congressional District Democratic Party and very possibly beyond. Previously, we had assumed that only Strickland had the information. Now, it appears several key Democratic Party officials had the opportunity to confront Strickland with police reports to demand he take action to remove a convicted criminal sex offender from the top of his re-election campaign.

The apparent desire to cover up the incident and protect the Strickland campaign extended not only to Ohio Democratic Party officials, but to top campaign contributors and to the news media.

Now it’s obvious that at least these additional questions need to be asked:

• What did “the Democratic chairs, all the Democratic officials on the ballot in his district, and all of Strickland’s big campaign donors” know, and when did they know it?
• Why, as it appears, did they do nothing about it?
• What news media members failed to follow up on what they received?
• Now that the stakes are so much higher than in 1998, when many in the media may have believed that no one would be interested in the facts about about a matter involving an unimportant and uninteresting congressional race, how many of those same news media members are STILL covering for Ted Strickland, refusing to report what some of them must surely know is true, and failing to follow up on new information?