A Democratic advisory team spent two days in Columbus this week as part of its process in making a decision on where it will hold its national convention in 2016. People on both sides of the same sex marriage issue showed lots of emotion this week in Cincinnati as an appeals court heard six cases from Ohio and three other states.
Ed FitzGerald comes into August facing a tough fight in the polls and in fundraising. But the Democratic candidate for governor now has a new challenge - explaining why police in Westlake west of Cleveland checked out a car in a dark parking lot at 4:30am, and found FitzGerald and a woman from a delegation from Ireland. FitzGerald and the woman both say nothing was going on, he wasn’t cited for any illegal activity, and he's said it's dirty politics dredged up by Republicans. But since then, a records check has shown that the Cuyahoga County executive had only a temporary driver’s permit then – and that he didn’t have a permanent driver’s license for a decade before that. What does this controversy mean for the future of the FitzGerald campaign? Two longtime political strategists have share their thoughts. Greg Haas was the Ohio Coordinated Campaign Director for the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1992 and has run local and statewide campaigns as well as that of former Gov. Richard Celeste, and until last month he was the chair of the Franklin County Democratic Party. Mark Weaver has been an advisor or consultant to several Republican officeholders, including former President Ronald Reagan, former Sen. Mike DeWine and AG Betty Montgomery. He also teaches law at Ohio State University and the University of Akron, and is the president of the media relations and advertising firm Communications Counsel.
The state has settled a controversial lawsuit with 270,000 Ohio small businesses who had won nearly a billion dollars in two previous rulings against the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. But that system’s different now with this lawsuit and the settlement, which brings only half of what the businesses had won in previous rulings but also brings some changes. Attorney James DeRoche, who represented the businesses, explains the settlement. And Bureau of Workers’ Compensation administrator and CEO Steven Buehrer has a response as well.