STRICKLAND TO MEET THE BLOGGERS: Congressman Ted Strickland, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for Governor, has committed to Meet The Bloggers on December 1. What do you want us to ask?

More at BFD.

FORTY WORDS OR LESS: Here are the four questions the Plain Dealer thought were most important to ask Cleveland City Council candidates for a special "Election 2005" section yesterday (never mind that they actually printed the wrong questions):

Mayor Jane Campbell recently launched a "zero-blight initiative" to deal with vacant housing in Cleveland. Do you feel the plan is adequate? If not, what steps would you take to deal with vacant homes?

In 40 words or less, please explain what more Cleveland can do to lure businesses and jobs.

In 40 words or less, cite specific actions you would take to reduce drug dealing and nuisance crimes such as vandalism, loud music and loitering, in city neighborhoods.

Many suburbs in Greater Cleveland are debating forms of regionalism, such as merging fire services, sharing equipment, sharing recreation facilities, creating a countywide recreation district, to reduce the cost of services. Should Cleveland be a part of these discussions? In 40 words or less, please explain why or why not.

Forty words or less? The fourth question itself is forty-nine words long. How the hell would anyone give a meaningful answer to any of these questions in forty words?

Memo to the editors of the Plain Dealer: In forty words or less, please explain exactly how you decided that the largely theoretical issue of "regional services" should take priority over the following questions for Council candidates:

As a member of City Council you would effectively control hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual "ward allocations" of CDBG and infrastructure funds. What process would you use to determine the uses of this money each year?

Do you think there should be fewer City Council members? How would you react to the current Ohio Citizens' League petition to cut the number of ward council seats in half?

Please explain the proper relationship between a City Council member and the community development corporation, if any, working in your ward.

As a Council member, would you support a new convention center plan that required the imposition of taxes on your constituents? Under what circumstances?

Next Summer, Council will be asked to approve a cable TV franchise renewal and transfer from Adelphia to Time-Warner. Do you have any concerns or proposals to bring to this process? What are your goals, if any, for telecommunications and information technology development in your ward?

Do you agree with the idea of city-imposed limits or living wage requirements on big box grocery stores being built in the city? If not, what would you do, if anything, to promote the survival of neighborhood grocery stores?

What are your plans to help the residents of your ward deal with energy costs, if any? Specifically discuss the role of the city-owned electric utility.

What are your specific plans, if any, to improve the education and income prospects of the poorest 25% of your ward's residents?

Remember, your answer will be edited if it exceeds forty words. Thanks for your prompt response.

A SEINFELD ELECTION: Kudos to Chas Rich for his point-by-point blogging of last night's mayoral debate... if "debate" is the right word. Do these two disagree about anything except what they think of each other?

This is coming off as the Seinfeld Show of elections -- an election about nothing. An election about relationship issues.

What would Frank Jackson try to do as mayor that Jane Campbell is against? What would Campbell try to do in a second term that Jackson opposes? I don't mean like who'll get a contract, who'll get a job, whose program will gain or lose funding, who'll get the mayor's ear. These questions matter intensely to lots of insiders on either side... but don't matter at all to most potential voters, whose political self-interests revolve around safety, neighborhood services, economic opportunity, their kids, their utility and tax bills. What important differences are there between the two candidates' records and promises on these basic concerns?

If this "debate" was any guide, the answer is -- no important differences at all.

Which was undoubtedly the main cause of the record low primary turnout, as well as the record low general election turnout that everyone seems to expect (present company included). If you can't tell the candidates apart, why vote?

WHO'S THE "OHIO CITIZENS' LEAGUE"? On Tuesday Channel 5 ran a story about the newest petition to reduce the size of Cleveland City Council. The sponsoring group is something called the "Ohio Citizens' League", represented in the WEWS piece by a guy named Pete Kirsanow.

There's no such organization in the Cleveland phone book. Google finds nothing for "Ohio Citizens' League" but rehashes of the WEWS story and another, shorter one from Channel 3. But a search of the Secretary of State's nonprofit corporation database yields the following:

The Ohio Citizen's League was incorporated less than six months ago, in May 2005, though the name was reserved in 2004. Its three incorporators were Thomas T. George, 18605 Detroit Avenue, Lakewood; Michael E. Gibbons, 1111 Superior Avenue, Suite 900, Cleveland; and Peter N. Kirsanow, 2300 BP Tower, 200 Public Square, Cleveland.

Gibbons is Senior Managing Director and Chairman of Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, a major Republican donor, and a resident of Fairview Park.

"Thomas T. George" is Tony George, the millionaire Lakewood restaurant owner and political player (18605 Detroit is the address of his Harry Buffalo bar), who apparently lives in Westlake.

Kirsanow is a partner at Benesch Friedlander, a controversial Bush appointee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and a national activist and spokesman for Republicanism in the black community. Unlike the other two incorporators, Mr. Kirsanow lives in Cleveland, which probably explains why he's the public face of the petition campaign.

These are the guys leading the charge for less direct, face-to-face representation of Cleveland citizens at City Hall. Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

(John Ryan blogged his suspicions on Tuesday.)

POLICY MATTERS REPORT: 22,000 POTENTIAL OHIO JOBS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY

I missed it but Hypothetically Speaking didn't. Policy Matters released a study Tuesday detailing potential Ohio job creation under the national renewable energy investment plan advocated by the Apollo Alliance. More than 5,000 of those jobs could be in Cuyahoga, Lorain and Summit Counties.

The premise of these calculations is a $72 billion national investment in "50,000 megawatts of wind energy, 9,260 megawatts of photovoltaic or solar energy, 8,700 megawatts of biomass energy, and 6,077 megawatts of geothermal energy". Of course, this premise is, well, hypothetical. But the Policy Matters/Apollo study shows in detail how specific Ohio industries and counties would benefit from turning that hypothetical into a reality.

Given the unending brutal impact of high natural gas and electric bills on Cleveland consumers, and the massive flow of energy dollars out of the Northeast Ohio economy, it's remarkable that energy efficiency and local sourcing still rank so low on Cleveland's economic agenda. (For example, neither of the two candidates for Mayor is saying anything at all about these issues.) Maybe the Policy Matters report will help break the silence.

ROSA PARKS, 1913-2005

"In the prevailing myth, Parks decides to act almost on a whim, in isolation. She's a virgin to politics, a holy innocent. The lesson seems to be that if any of us suddenly got the urge to do something equally heroic, that would be great. Of course most of us don't, so we wait our entire lives to find the ideal moment.

"Parks's real story conveys a far more empowering moral. She begins with seemingly modest steps. She goes to a meeting, and then another. Hesitant at first, she gains confidence as she speaks out. She keeps on despite a profoundly uncertain context, as she and others act as best they can to challenge deeply entrenched injustices, with little certainty of results. Had she and others given up after her tenth or eleventh year of commitment, we might never have heard of Montgomery.

"Parks's journey suggests that change is the product of deliberate, incremental action, whereby we join together to try to shape a better world. Sometimes our struggles will fail, as did many earlier efforts of Parks, her peers, and her predecessors. Other times they may bear modest fruits. And at times they will trigger a miraculous outpouring of courage and heart -- as happened with her arrest and all that followed. For only when we act despite all our uncertainties and doubts do we have the chance to shape history."

Paul Loeb, "The Real Rosa Parks"

CAMPBELL CAMPAIGN E-MAIL: CHANNEL 3 POLL SHOWS JACKSON AHEAD BY 20 POINTS

The following just arrived in a "Campbell for Cleveland" email:

This evening Channel 3 will broadcast the results of their recent poll...

The results they will broadcast are fallacious. Jackson 54 - Campbell
34 and here's why.

The demographics which should be 50/50 east and west and 50/50 black
and white are:

61% east
54 % black
15% seniors
60 % under 49.

The senior number is ridiculous. Seniors and over 50 year olds are the
largest voting blocks.

Our internal poll completed last week showed the race dead even.

Actually, SurveyUSA's polling for Channel 3 was extremely accurate in the primary.

Update: The WKYC poll story is now posted here. The full results are here. It's easy to see why the Campbell campaign reacted so defensively. If these numbers are even approximately accurate, the Mayor is fried.

If Jerry Austin has a poll that looks "dead even" and wants to argue methodology, he'd better release the whole thing right now.

HEY BRENT, IS THIS EAST 110TH OR WEST 110TH?

The Plain Dealer's ponderous editorial endorsements in Cleveland Council races might carry a little more weight if they could just get the ward numbers right.

Kevin Conwell represents Ward 9.

BRAIN DRAIN OR BRAIN BOTTLENECK?

For the last few weeks I've had the pleasure of working with a group, led by County Treasurer Jim Rokakis, that's looking into a possible county college loan initiative. Recently we asked NODIS, the local census gurus at Cleveland State, to run some crosstabulations on county residents' college enrollment by household income. Here's what we got back: According to the 2000 Census, among all 17 to 25-year-old county residents with high school diplomas or GEDs but no college degree, only 37% were currently enrolled in college.

Here are the percentages by household income range (local households only -- out-of-county residents living in dorms here are not included.)

I was astonished by these numbers, especially for the kids from upper-middle-income homes ($60,000+) who seem to be blowing off higher education by a 55%-45% margin. But my college-age kids were not surprised at all -- especially the Hathaway Brown graduate who left Kent State after a year and has recently been delivering pizzas to make her car payments while waiting to start a phone gig at Progressive. And Rokakis gave me a copy of an article from the November Atlantic Monthly (of which only the first few paragraphs are on line) containing this chilling factoid:

If you hope to obtain a bachelor's degree by age twenty-four, your chances are roughly one in two if you come from a family with an annual income over $90,000; roughly one in four if your family's income falls between $61,000 and $90,000; and slightly better than one in ten if it is between $35,000 and $61,000. For high schoolers whose families make less than $35,000 a year the chances are around one in seventeen.

Hmmmmm. Now I know that the Northeast Ohio Post-College Brain Drain has become an article of faith, if not dogma, for the keepers of our civic religion. And I'm really not looking to get heretical (again!) just for the sake of wearing those cool thumbscrews. But... is it possible, just possible, that our region's shortage of college graduates would be best addressed by getting lots more of our kids into and through college, rather than desperately attempting to hold onto a few more of those who've made it?

Is it possible that our real problem is not the Brain Drain after all, but a Brain Bottleneck somewhere between high school graduation and that next diploma?

Just wondering.

WHILE I WAS GONE: Brewed Fresh Daily is still rebuilding from whatever hit him in the wake of Hurricane Copfer and Hurricane Rokakis (I missed the Meetup so I'll probably never know), but his commenters have been conducting a graduate seminar in Cleveland city contracting for the last couple of days.

SPORTS BLOGGERS: Frank Lewis at the Free Times asked me in an email if I know of any good Cleveland sports bloggers. Of course I know Tim Russo's Cleveland Scores and Chas Rich's Pitt Sports Blather, but otherwise I find myself at a loss for links. Ideas?

Update: Jeff Hess sent me an email to report that he couldn't post a comment here. Sure enough, enetation is screwing up again. Jeff wrote: Don't forget Tony Montana at Blast Furnace. I love his sports writing and I hate sports.

Anybody else with a favorite sports blog link? Here's my email. Thanks!

RYAN HITS THE BLOGOSPHERE RUNNING: After a couple of stumbles on the Blogger learning curve, John Ryan seems to have found his "Publish Post" key. The Cleveland AFL-CIO leader's new blog has entries about a Plain Dealer carrier who's no longer on the route, a Cleveland Heights candidate who lost her labor endorsement -- and a heads-up about a public meeting on sites for the proposed Convention Center.

SEIU ENDORSES JACKSON; VERY BAD NEWS FOR CAMPBELL

Boy, talk about missing the point of your own story. This morning's PD headline was "Campbell wins backing of failed candidates", and you had to read two-thirds of the way through to reach the real news:

Jackson was far more interested in winning over the Service Employees International Union, which has 7,500 members in the city. The union endorsed Jackson because the rank and file members believe Campbell has ignored their concerns and possesses the leadership of a "weather vane," union chief Dave Regan said.

He cited Campbell's support of a city retail development that includes a Wal-Mart store and her failure to intercede on the union's behalf during tough contract negotiations with the Cleveland Public Library.

"People feel at best, they have been taken for granted," he said.

SEIU supported Campbell four years ago, as a member of the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, which actively campaigned on her behalf.

SEIU has since left the labor federation, which voted Wednesday night during a two-hour meeting not to endorse a mayoral candidate.

... Regan said the union planned to contact its members by phone and mail and use the union's Columbus and Cleveland phone banks - capable of contacting 200,000 households a day - on Jackson's behalf.

Back in December, I wrote the following:

Unless it comes with unprecedented labor and community protection agreements (and I stress the word unprecedented, as in "highly unlikely"), a Wal-Mart in Steelyard Commons will become one of the most important issues in the mayoral election next year and may well cost Jane Campbell a second term.

This prediction hasn't seemed very prophetic up to now, largely because the national split in the AFL-CIO this Summer separated the two big anti-Walmart unions (SEIU and UFCW, the United Food and Commercial Workers) from the Cleveland Federation of Labor's political decision-making, effectively removing the central labor body -- and its issues, including Wal-Mart -- from the mayor's race. But SEIU's decision to jump in on Jackson's side may make me look a whole lot smarter.

The AFL-CIO's phone banking and doorknocking was a huge factor -- many people think it was the factor -- in Campbell's 2001 victory. (Indeed, the absence of labor's field operation from this year's primary was probably a significant factor in the pitiful blue-collar turnout.) SEIU, with a big active membership in the city, East and West, and its own sophisticated phonebanking setup, was a major part of that 2001 AFL-CIO effort.

Now SEIU's people and resources are with Jackson. They've got the technology, they've got the troops, and they've got plenty of time to use them effectively. And in this new post-AFL-CIO world, they have every reason to go all-out to prove they're the baddest players in town.

Especially in light of the tiny primary turnout, an effective union operation calling thousands of blue-collar voters all over town, giving them a push and a clear ten-word rationale to vote for Jackson, ought to be Campbell's worst nightmare. But it's no dream; it's about to happen.

The only way this could get worse for the Mayor would be for the UFCW -- which left the AFL-CIO with SEIU, is even more pissed off about Steelyard Commons, has thousands of its own members in the city, and has serious phone-banking abilities of its own -- to join the Jackson campaign too. Stay tuned.

UPSCALING CLEVELAND POLITICS, PART 2

Well, not really. I promised to continue this line of thinking Tuesday so of course it's turned into a bigger deal than I thought, it's Thursday, I'm still digging around in the data and thinking about it, and meanwhile I haven't posted anything else. So... the second installment of "Upscaling" is officially rescheduled until Monday.

Will it be worth waiting for? Who can say?

UPSCALING CLEVELAND POLITICS, PART 1

Right Angle Blog catches a piece on the Channel 3 website Friday bragging about their polling on the primary. Well, WKYC's got a right to brag; their election-eve SurveyUSA poll really, truly nailed the final results. But I'm still very curious about the likely voter sample, which was heavily skewed toward voters who've gone to college, compared to the city's adult population as a whole.

Since SurveyUSA's predictions were so accurate, it's reasonable to infer that their sampling was accurate too. Both their samples of self-identified likely primary voters (just before the election and a week earlier) had the same education breakdown: 15% had been to grad school, 17% had four-year college degrees, 28-29% had some college experience, and just 40% had never attended college. As a sample of Cleveland voters this is remarkable, since in the 2000 Census only 35% of college-age city residents had attended college at all, only 15% had degrees of any kind, and two-thirds said they'd never gone past high school.

Has college education become the major factor defining "likely voters" in low-turnout Cleveland elections? Is the educated minority of city residents taking over the role once played by senior citizens -- the role of core voters who will always show up, no matter what?

Well, here's an interesting chart comparing two sets of percentages -- the percentage of people age 25 and older in each ward who've attended college (Census 2000), and the percentage you get by dividing each ward's votes in the very high-turnout November 2004 election by its votes in the very low-turnout election last Tuesday.


With a few striking exceptions, the two percentages follow similar patterns from ward to ward. A higher percentage of college-educated residents tends to coincide with a higher percentage of November voters who also turned out last week.

At this point you may be thinking "Well, du-u-u-h. Of course college-educated voters are more likely to show up at the polls than less educated voters! Isn't that true everywhere?"

That's one reasonable way to look at it. But here's another possibility:

Most people go to the polls only when they have a reason to go -- something or someone they specifically want to vote for, or against. Last November a historically high number of Clevelanders of all education and income levels, more than 170,000, turned out to vote for Kerry against Bush. (Kerry won every single city precinct.) Last Tuesday, only 30% of that number -- apparently the most educated 30% -- found the mayor's race similarly compelling.

Could this be because none of the candidates were making a serious effort to talk to the less educated 70%... the poor and blue-collar majority of the city?

More about this tomorrow.

NOT BEANBAG: If Paul Hackett wants to show that he's got the smarts to be a statewide political player after one losing Congressional race, this is a strange way to go about it.

"Sherrod Brown told the candidate three weeks ago that he was not entering the race, so the campaign was surprised at Sherrod's indecisiveness and change of heart," said Michael Brautigam, an adviser to Hackett. "Sherrod's entry into the race is not only dishonorable, it's disloyal to the Democratic Party and to democratic ideals."

What's an "adviser" to Hackett? Is that the same as a "spokesman"? Or is Brautigam just a loose cannon that Koff and Auster dug up for a quote? Who knows? But one thing is certain: If Paul Hackett is encouraging his "camp" to give newspaper reporters quotes that use words like "indecisiveness", "dishonorable" and "disloyal" to describe other Democratic candidates, then the former Milford City Councilman is not ready for prime time.

Maybe Hackett has a right to be pissed off at Brown. Maybe Brown unwisely promised him personally that he'd stay out of the race and give Hackett his support (as opposed to just making supportive public pronouncements). Maybe Brown failed to call Hackett first when he changed his mind. Maybe this caused Hackett to spend some capital or burn some bridge that he shouldn't have, in retrospect. Maybe Brown owes Hackett a big apology. I don't know.

But Brown does not owe Paul Hackett -- who has never won a major election of any kind -- the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. He does not owe Hackett the top of the Ohio Democratic ticket, in a year when Democrats have a real shot at success. And after today's PD story, I'd say Brown no longer owes Hackett the time of day.

Politics ain't beanbag. If Mr. Hackett and his devotees are convinced that he's the guy to beat Dewine, they can demonstrate it by fighting and winning a statewide primary election. If they don't think they can pull that off -- and it's pretty clear that they don't -- then what makes them think their guy can take Dewine?

EAST SIDE WARDS SOLID FOR JACKSON, REST OF THE CITY UP FOR GRABS: I don't think the mayor's race is close to over. A month is a very long time, and there are about 119,000 Cleveland residents who voted in a presidential election just eleven months ago, but didn't show up to vote on Tuesday. That's an awful big stack of wild cards left to be played in this game.

Even so, the picture below can't be encouraging for the Campbell campaign:

Note that Jackson got more than 50% of the primary votes in every ward from 1 through 10, the largely Black wards which collectively cast half of all votes citywide. Campbell led Jackson in Wards 12 through 21 (except for a virtual tie in Ward 19), but she failed to pull a majority anywhere and ran behind "Other" in every West Side ward (13-21) as well as Collinwood (11).

In other words, Jackson's main base of support looks solid, while the rest of the city looks very much up for grabs. This is very daunting arithmetic for the Mayor, no matter how the turnout grows in November.

(The percentages in the chart are calculated from ward vote totals reported in the Board of Elections's "Unofficial Canvass Report" on Tuesday's election, posted yesterday.)

SHERROD'S IN THE RACE: If both Josh Marshall and democracy guy say it, it must be so.

PHILADELPHIA: CITYWIDE WIRELESS BROADBAND BY THIS TIME NEXT YEAR

From yesterday's Philadelphia Business Journal:

Internet service provider Earthlink was chosen by Wireless Philadelphia Monday to deploy a high-speed wireless network to serve the city's 135 square miles.

Under the terms of the proposal no city or taxpayer dollars will be used. Earthlink, which is partnering with Motorola (NYSE: MOT - News), Canopy and Tropos Networks, will cover all of the costs of constructing, deploying and maintaining the network, which will be fully operational by the fourth quarter of next year.

Earthlink will rent space on the network to multiple Internet service providers and community organizations, such as colleges, who in turn will sell high-speed Internet access to city residents for about $20 per month and $10 per month for lower-income households, Dianah L. Neff, chief information officer for Philadelphia, said. Occasional access for business travelers and visitors to the city will also be available for a fee and free access will be available in some parks and public spaces.

Wireless Philadelphia, a city-created nonprofit organization, will receive a portion of the fees collected by Earthlink, which it will use to support programs addressing the digital divide and economic development, Neff said.

More at Wireless Philadelphia's website.

(Thanks to Phil Shapiro for the heads-up, via the CTCNet members email list).

TURNOUT

I voted at 2 p.m. at precinct 15F, at Denison Elementary in the Archwood-Denison area. There are 1,047 registered voters in 15F. I was voter number 54.

The election judges said the trickle of voters looked just like the school levy in August. Total ballots cast in that election: 87.

I think they may be exaggerating a little, but it still looked awfully slow for a beautiful day, with hotly contested primary races for both Mayor and City Council.

Update: Apparently this is the story all over the city.

Update: My 8:30 instant analysis, with Jackson holding 50% of the 5400 votes counted so far... low turnout favors the guy with a turnout campaign. That's Jackson. He'll be the big fish in tonight's little turnout pond.

Final comment: My precinct's election judges weren't that far off. The citywide turnout today was only about 53,000 -- much closer to the 43,000 who voted in August's levy election than to the nearly 85,000 who showed up for the mayoral primary four years ago. In my ward, Ward 15, only 3,200 people cast ballots in the very tight, very visible Council primary... barely 500 more than turned out for the "invisible" school levy.

Both Jackson and Campbell need to think long and hard about why this campaign is connecting with so few Cleveland citizens.

(Speaking of that tight Ward 15 Council race, it had one of the few surprising results of the evening. Former Old Brooklyn CDC director Brian Cummins, running his first race with no significant outside allies or endorsements, edged out the very campaign-savvy (and labor-endorsed) Rick Nagin for second place behind incumbent Emily Lipovan Holan. The totals: Emily, 1,060; Brian, 814; Rick, 693; four other candidates combined, 670. This'll be one to watch in November.)

BROWN BACK IN DEWINE RACE? More on this from Daily Kos yesterday. Kos quotes the National Journal's "Hotline":

Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-13) spokesperson Joanna Kuebler, on Brown's previous statement he would not run: "His statement has not changed at this time. However, Congressman Brown continues to be asked by state and national supporters to run for the United States Senate in Ohio. Personal and professional obligations have changed since his initial decision. He is consulting with supporters and his family about a possible run" (Hotline reporting, 10/3).

Kos thinks Sherrod's off-again-on-again action is "weird". Nuthin weird about it. As democracy guy points out, polling that shows Paul Hackett leading Dewine, while undeniably a tribute to Hackett's rising star, basically means Dewine is in big, big trouble against any opponent. Brown can read polls, too. Plus Kuebler's assertion that Sherrod "continues to be asked by state and national supporters to run for the United States Senate" is not the usual hot air in this case; a lot of Ohio Democrats have been just as antsy as me about his choice to sit this one out.

So there might be a Democratic primary in 2006. So much the better. All the candidates can use as much early statewide exposure as possible, especially Hackett, Strickland and Coleman. The bigger the suspense, the bigger the headlines in May and June.

Run, Sherrod, run!

SAY ANYTHING: Ward 21 Councilman Michael Dolan at the Steelyard Commons groundbreaking, as quoted by Ohio News Network:

Councilman Michael Dolan believes Wal-Mart will be good for the economy, give customers more choices and maybe cater to unions.

"This is a union-built project. I have every confidence if we put our minds, hearts and souls into sending the right people to work here, we'll be able to convince Wal-Mart they ought to be a union shop," says Dolan.

Dolan also expressed confidence that we can convince Microsoft to adopt open-source licensing, the People's Republic of China to recognize an independent Taiwan, and al Qaeda to embrace Satyagraha.

NEW WKYC POLL: STILL OVERSAMPLING COLLEGE GRADUATES, STILL IGNORING PATMON

WKYC has just posted a last-minute repeat of its SurveyUSA poll on the Mayor's race. It shows Jackson at 35% (up 5%), Campbell 26% (up 3%), Draper and Triozzi effectively tied at 10-11%, Lynch at 8%.

The new poll's crosstabs still show a "likely voter" sample that's way better educated than Cleveland's voting-age population.

And it still fails to ask voters about Bill Patmon by name.

SHERROD BACK IN THE SENATE RACE?

Via Josh Marshall via democracy guy, a new Washington Post blog says Congressman Sherrod Brown may be reconsidering his decision not to run for Mike Dewine's Senate seat.

If true, it's very, very good news.

MY CANDIDATE'S CAMPAIGN PROMISES: Well, gang, primary voting starts in twenty-three hours and I still don't know which mayoral candidate I'll vote for.

Mostly this is because no candidate has made any of the campaign promises that would matter to me.

No candidate has said: "It's none of my business where people shop, but everyone knows Wal-Mart maintains its low prices by systematically scoffing at Federal labor law, knowing that the law won't be enforced by the Feds. As Mayor I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in our community by Wal-Mart or any other company. I'll instruct the Law Department to evaluate all complaints of unfair labor practice by Wal-Mart and other non-union retailers in the city, and look for ways to support those that are legitimate. And I'll push City Council to amend the city's Fair Employment Wage Law to include major retailers like Wal-Mart, before we consider any more big box retail developments."

No candidate has said: "This City signed up more than 30,000 new customers for Cleveland Public Power in the '90s by promising they'd pay lower electric rates compared to CEI. We are breaking that promise every month. As Mayor, I intend to make good on it. I will reduce Public Power's residential rates by at least 20% in the next four years."

No candidate has said: "The most important economic development issue for Cleveland is the education level of our work force. For fifteen years we've been measuring our development success by the number of vacant lots we've turned into new homes. It's time to start measuring our progress by the number of our working-age residents who go to college. If elected, I'll make sending Cleveland to college my top economic development priority... higher on the list than a new convention center." (Frank Jackson came closest by calling for two years of free college for city residents in a PD op-ed back in May, but has not repeated this since.)

No candidate has said: "Twenty-first century technology is just as important for neighborhood development as it is for downtown and regional development. As Mayor, I'll put low-cost broadband Internet access high on my citywide neighborhood development agenda."

Those are a few of the promises my candidate for Mayor would be making... if my candidate was running.

Nevertheless, I'll see you at the polls.