OhioNews Bureau

COLUMBUS, OHIO: With the Ohio GOP meeting Saturday to screen candidates to challenge already-announced Democratic candidate Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray for Attorney General (AG) in November, Statehouse insiders are wondering whether Maureen O’Connor, a sitting judge on the Supreme Court of Ohio, will forgo running for a second term by switching to the contest for AG, thereby enabling former two-term Auditor and AG Jim Petro to have a chance to wear the black robes of the high court spot he has long coveted, or be open to an appointment to another post that hasn't been identified yet.

With Cordray already the presumptive nominee of the Ohio Democratic Party, which will meet Saturday to nominate him to run for AG in the fall, after the post becoming available in the aftermath of the resignation of Marc Dann, a Democrat who won in an upset over a Republican candidate who odds makers widely favored to win the seat in 2006, and the announcement today that Delaware County Republican Prosecutor Dave Yost has withdrawn from being considered, the rumor rampaging across Capitol Square that O’Connor, who is nearing the end of her first six-year term and who may switch races to run for AG, thereby clearing cueing up Petro, who declined to run for a third term as AG, and who may also be looking for an appointment to another post, possibly by the Bush White House, is compelling and newsworthy notwithstanding it being wafted along by the winds of rumor.

The stakes at hand for Ohio Democrats is that if Cordray, elected in 2006 in a rising tide of ballot box victories that swept out most of the state’s Republican statewide officeholders who couldn’t snuff out the odor of partisan scandals that clung to them, wins, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland can fill his post of Treasurer with another Democrat, likely Hugh Quill, a former Montgomery County auditor who heads up the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, while if he looses, he keeps his seat until 2010 when its up for grabs again.The stakes for O'Connor and the Ohio GOP are problematic. She currently makes $141,600 on the court and would have to take a $40,000 pay cut to become attorney general. If O'Connor does decide to run for AG, she will have to immediately resign from the court, permitting Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, to appoint a replacement to the all-Republican court. Aug. 20 is the official deadline to nominate candidates to run, although Republicans hope to make their choice Saturday, even though that is not their final deadline.
 

O'CONNOR: COMBATIVE, DEFIANT, FORMIDABLE

O’Connor, who hails from Summit County in northeast Ohio and who was elected in 2002 after serving as a county prosecutor and judge there and as Lt. Governor under George Voinovich, now Ohio’s senior US Senator, has been closely aligned with business interests, who in turn have helped fund her winning campaign to sit as one of the seven members of the all-Republican high court.

Her Democratic challenger this year would be Judge James Russo, a Cleveland Court of Common Pleas judge, who has set his sites on defeating her in November.

Petro has long been rumored to want to serve on Ohio’s high court. He has been forced into private practice for the last two years, after loosing a contentious partisan primary battle for governor to then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who went onto to get clobbered by Strickland in what was said to be the worst defeat by a candidate running for governor since the early 20^th century.

The allegation that the all-Republican high court has been taken over by “spending my special interests,” as Russo and others claim, and that she is beholden to the insurance industry in particular, could be target-rich territory for Russo, his campaign and for the Ohio Democratic Party, which is expected to do what it can to help him end the all-Republican domination of the court, the first of its kind in 38 years.

Shining the spotlight on individual court members like O’Connor and rulings she’s been a party to that appear to make a case that the black robes are not that neutral when cases involve campaign contributors who make their court campaigns possible, The New York Times ran an article in 2006 that showed its research revealed that the court routinely favors those providing “hefty campaign contributions.” The not so subtle sidebar was that Ohio’s Supreme Court rulings seem to favor “the highest bidder.”

O’Connor, batting that accusation to the curb, responded in a stark and combative tone that campaign money doesn’t affect her. Repeating the all too pervasive mantra of Republicans who sought to take over the judiciary at both state and federal levels, O’Connor said she “will not legislate from the bench.” Those magic words, as SCO Justice Paul Pfeifer referred to them as, netted her over $1.7 million in campaign contributions for the court, even though she had only served as a judge in Summit County for around two years.

With the help of go-to givers like David Brennan, a big hitter campaign contributor, and insurance companies, who railed against the rise of insurance premiums due to excessive damage claims, O’Connor moved up to the high court.

Petro, who in 2006 used his faith as a guide star to rise above the winner take all political attack machine Blackwell used again him, got thumped by Blackwell, who has also used his Christian faith as a sword of vengeance against his Democratic opponents.

PETRO: FAITH MONGER NOT WITHOUT SIN

But Petro, too, is not without sin, as he has been accused of being personally involved in pay-to-play politics, as revealed in an article in The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer that reported his was personally soliciting campaign contributions as AG in exchange for State special contracts with Summit County attorneys.

The article reported that “two prominent Republican lawyers said their law firms lost virtually all their state legal business after they refused to donate to Attorney General Petro’s campaign.” Such news involving partisan quid pro quos between Petro and lawyers and their firms had popped up over two years, the article said. Blackwell made similar claims of Petro, based on special counsel work that needed approval by the Ohio Controlling Board, a bipartisan legislative panel that reviews the state spending of various agencies.