For voters unfamiliar with the men seeking the Republican nomination - the afternoon was illuminating from the start, when first-time office seeker Victor Voinovich opened his remarks by slamming his opponent - former State Representative Matt Dolan - for sending flyers to GOP voters ...condemning 'him'.
VICTOR VOINOVICH: "You and your well-paid campaign team have wasted thousands of hard-earned Republican campaign dollars... "VICTOR VOINOVICH: WHAT'S IN A NAME? CAN A FAILED BUSINESSMAN SAVE THIS COUNTY?" Failure is when you fall down, and you don't get back up again. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind the voters that the guy who's standing here was penniless in 2003, got back up again, and he's going to do that with the citizens of this county-get back up again, and solve our problems."
The commercial realtor and CPA has never backed away from having been in bankruptcy.
Dolan, who served six years as a state representative, did not directly respond to the outburst, but instead repeatedly championed his own government experience as a prime reason 'he' should win the nomination. Neither Voinovich, nor self-financed candidate Paul Casey has ever held elected office.
Casey, who offered a reading from the Bible as his opening statement, did bring ideas to the table that few had heard before, including use of the National Guard to train citizen patrols in high crime areas of the county; and a staunch anti-regionalism stance.
He considers the Cuyahoga County budget to be bloated, and offered a radical plan to reduce what government spends.
PAUL CASEY: "We need to cut the budget. As a business owner, what do we do? Privatization is the answer. We have small businessmen and women and people in the county that are able to do these jobs, and do it more cost efficient than the government can do it. Privatization is the answer."
Matt Dolan agreed that local government here costs too much, partly because it employs too many people. He cited nearly identically sized counties that contain Columbus and Pittsburgh as prime examples. Each of those has 2,000 fewer workers than does Cuyahoga County.
Dolan called eliminating waste an attainable goal, and suggested some areas where county wide, or regional cooperation might work. Then he threw the first grenade into the General Election battle, charging that trust from county voters to allow such innovation... has been shredded by years of Democratic leadership.
MATT DOLAN: "The Democratic establishment has destroyed trust in the central public government, so you can't go to a community and say 'we can do it better'. What we can do is use the bully pulpit as a county executive to go after the faceless contracts of government. That is those contracts that municipalities, school boards, and other taxing entities enter into, that we as constituents have no direct response to."
Voinovich used similar language to support a regional approach, while also echoing the need to remove the opposing party from power. Then he extended his vision beyond Dolan's, to include wider cooperation than just in the county he seeks to represent, using a high tech example.
VOINOVICH: "We can have a regional I-T center. There's 800 different governments in this region - can you imagine if we put them all under one roof? That's four million people! But you know before it can happen - we have to develop a culture of trust in this county. We have to make sure that people believe us first. Then and only then will we be able to bring in the rest of the region."
Voinovich took heat from Dolan for his just-introduced document to redesign the county, which is quite similar, and in some places identical to, a consultant produced plan for the county that includes the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But once his '20-20 vision' plan was introduced into the conversation; he referred to it often as a blue print he would use to correct inadequacies of this area.
Casey was never directly challenged by either of the perceived front runners. The 22 year Ohio resident and Ohio University grad considers himself a conservative Republican, and laid claim to being the most conservative person in the race, but he voted Democrat in 2008 primary.
Absentee balloting is already underway. Primary Election Day is September 7.
Rick Jackson, 90.3.
