Ken Blackwell - Ronald Reagan’s Unlikely Heir

[Ryan Ruck]

Ronald Reagan’s Unlikely Heir

Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial front-runner Ken Blackwell is “Jesse Jackson’s worst nightmare.”

Ken Blackwell has just finished regaling a group of Ohio retailers with his vision of how to turn around the state’s struggling economy with a heavy dose of fiscal restraint and tax cuts. The crowd, accustomed to Republicans who tax and spend as furiously as Democrats, is rapt. But as Blackwell works the room afterward, on a warm fall afternoon in Columbus, one well-dressed woman stops him to outline her concerns. “I like your ideas on taxes,” she tells the former college football star, who at 6 foot 5 towers over her imposingly, “but I don’t like your other ideas so much”—meaning Blackwell’s strong pro-life positions and support of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. “I am not just an economic being,” Blackwell unapologetically replies. “I have a wider set of beliefs that I follow.” And then, before the woman moves away, Blackwell adds: “With me, you’ll always know what you are getting. You’ll always know where I stand.”

Right now, Ken Blackwell stands at a pivotal point in American politics. He’s taken an early lead in the race for governor of a state that was key to reelecting George W. Bush and that may well be even more crucial in picking the next American president. Moreover, Blackwell has built his early lead not by tacking toward the center of this swing state but by running on an uncompromisingly conservative platform that’s won him grassroots support from both Christian groups and taxpayer organizations—a novel coalition that makes the old-boy network in his own Ohio GOP as uneasy as it makes the state’s Democrats, who have begun a “stop Blackwell” campaign.

Ken Blackwell has so many people worried because he represents a new political calculus with the power to shake up American politics. For Blackwell is a fiscal and cultural conservative, a true heir of the Reagan revolution, who happens to be black, with the proven power to attract votes from across a startlingly wide spectrum of the electorate. Born in the projects of Cincinnati to a meat-packer who preached the work ethic and a nurse who read to him from the Bible every evening, Blackwell has rejected the victimology of many black activists and opted for a different path, championing school choice, opposing abortion, and staunchly advocating low taxes as a road to prosperity. The 57-year-old is equally comfortable preaching that platform to the black urban voters of Cincinnati as to the white German Americans in Ohio’s rural counties or to the state’s business community.

The former Xavier University football star is one of a handful of black conservatives making a stir in national politics. The group includes Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, vying for an open U.S. Senate seat in his heavily Democratic state; Keith Butler, a minister and former member of the Detroit City Council who is the current front-runner for the GOP nomination for next year’s Michigan Senate race; former Pittsburgh Steelers great Lynn Swann, running for the 2006 Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nomination; and Randy Daniels, New York’s former secretary of state, now seeking the state’s GOP gubernatorial nomination. Of this group, only Steele has the unqualified backing of both his own state GOP and the national party. Ironically, Blackwell and Co. are proving too conservative for the Republicans.

Blackwell stands apart from the group, thanks to his deep electoral experience and his very good chance of getting elected. He has already run more political races—from school-board seat to city councilman to secretary of state—than all the rest of them combined. He’s served in Washington as a HUD undersecretary and traveled the world as a U.S. ambassador. He’s chaired a major presidential campaign, been mayor of one of Ohio’s largest cities, and plotted supply-side fiscal policy with Jack Kemp. If he wins in Ohio, a state where Republicans are on the defensive after scandals that rocked the administration of Governor Bob Taft, Blackwell would not only become the nation’s first elected black Republican governor but would immediately figure as a compelling 2008 vice-presidential candidate.

“Ken Blackwell represents the only chance the Republicans have in Ohio,” says Paul Weyrich, who headed the Heritage Foundation, where Blackwell was an analyst in 1990. Weyrich, who calls Blackwell one of the few extraordinary individuals he has met in 50 years of public service, says that, without him on the ticket, Ohio Republicans “are going down the tubes big-time for what they’ve done there.”

What they’ve done since capturing the statehouse more than a decade ago is to engage in a flurry of taxing and spending that has left the state’s budget swollen and its economy deflated. Under GOP rule, state and local government spending from 1995 through 2004 rose nearly 20 percent faster than the personal income of Ohio’s residents—almost three times the national growth rate. To pay for such splurges, current governor Bob Taft, in conjunction with the Republican-dominated state legislature, heaped on some $350 million in tax increases in 2001, then followed with a host of new levies the following year, prompting the Cato Institute’s annual survey of governors to deplore his “disastrous fiscal record” and award Taft a failing grade. “About the only good news to report is that Bob Taft is term limited and cannot run for office again,” the Cato report declared.

Not surprisingly, Ohio’s economy has been one of the nation’s feeblest. In the last decade, the state’s private sector has added only about 147,000 jobs, a mere 3.4 percent growth rate, compared with a robust 12 percent nationwide. Ohio also lays claim to one of the slowest population growth rates of any state, and one of the highest rates of migration of its citizens elsewhere in the country. “We have become one of the leading repopulators of other states,” Blackwell says.

Though Ohio’s decline has been steepest in the last ten years, the state has been on a downward arc for more than three decades, transformed by both Democratic and Republican administrations from one of the country’s lowest-taxed states to its current high-tax, slow-growth model. Ironically, the man now bidding to reverse the state’s course has been on exactly the opposite ideological arc. Coming of age in the 1960s, Blackwell tilted toward the radical activism of that era. Sporting an Afro and a dashiki, he headed the African-American student association at Cincinnati’s Xavier University, attended Martin Luther King’s funeral as the school’s representative, and studied the organizing principles and confrontational politics of Saul Alinsky, founder of the far-left Industrial Areas Foundation. A football star with an athletic scholarship, Blackwell took a break from activism after college to try out for the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys, but when the team tried to turn the linebacker into an offensive lineman, Blackwell turned his back on a three-year deal to play pro ball and returned to Xavier for graduate school. He leaped into the political arena, running for the local school board in a race that he narrowly lost in 1977. He took time out to marry his high school sweetheart, Rosa, who after 35 years in the Cincinnati school system rose last year to become its superintendent, successfully leading it off Ohio’s list of most troubled school systems by year’s end.

Her husband fashioned his first winning coalition in politics when he started to reject the Left’s nostrums because they conflicted with his own family-inspired beliefs. By the mid-1970s, he already opposed forced busing as a solution to black educational problems, because he doubted that black kids needed to sit next to white ones to do well. Noticing how white parents took advantage of Cincinnati public schools’ open enrollment policy, which allowed talented kids to select schools outside their districts, Blackwell became an early advocate for school choice. Mindful that many families in public housing seemed stuck there, Blackwell began to worry that government programs to help the poor were instead breeding dependence, and he became one of the few black political leaders of the 1970s to preach that the responsibility for rising out of poverty rested with the individual, not the government.

Carrying this message around Cincinnati, Blackwell attracted white liberals ready to embrace an attractive and eloquent black candidate, blacks who identified with his message of social conservatism and personal responsibility, and conservatives who saw him as an unexpected ally. This broad-based support won him a seat on the Cincinnati city council in 1977 as a member of the Charterist Party, a 1920s-style progressive reform organization. The council’s only black at the time, Blackwell was elevated to mayor two years later by council members, in a era when they, not voters, elected the city’s top official. On Blackwell’s first day in office, 11 people died in a mad stampede at a Cincinnati rock concert; the 31-year-old mayor earned instant credibility for his clear-headed response to the crisis and its aftermath.

Blackwell’s unusual political profile began attracting attention outside Cincinnati, too. He met then-congressman and former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jack Kemp through the NFL’s alumni association—though, he points out, “Kemp played for 13 years, and I played for about 13 minutes.” Blackwell traded ideas with the future Housing and Urban Development secretary on using the private sector to spur inner-city redevelopment, and Kemp steered Blackwell to others who helped refine his thinking, including Reagan White House staffers. While he debated whether to leave the Charterist Party to become either a Democrat or a Republican, Blackwell got an invitation to visit Reagan in the White House, where the president told Blackwell the story of his own political conversion. “I walked out of there knowing that I was going to join the party myself. It was clear to me that I stood a better chance of following my principles as a Republican,” says Blackwell.

One of Blackwell’s principles, handed down from his father, is that opportunity is something you have to grab for yourself, because it won’t be handed to you by government or anyone else. Since becoming a Republican, Blackwell has sharpened that principle into a coherent set of ideas on how to spur economic development and create opportunity in the private sector through cutting taxes and regulation. One lesson that Blackwell particularly remembers his father preaching is the importance of owning one’s own home—something that the elder Blackwell never achieved. Serving as Kemp’s undersecretary at HUD, Blackwell touted recommendations to spur affordable housing development in cities not through government subsidies but by eliminating regulatory barriers to building, streamlining zoning codes, and changing federal grant programs to encourage states and cities to reduce their own land-use bureaucracies.

Serving on the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform in the mid-1990s, Blackwell became a passionate advocate of a simplified tax code and co-edited a book with Kemp, entitled IRS v. The People: Time for Real Tax Reform. So much significance did Blackwell eventually come to attach to tax reform that he agreed to chair Steve Forbes’s 2000 Republican presidential primary campaign, centering on Forbes’s flat-tax proposal. “Ken is an experienced fighter in the political trenches, but he also thoroughly understands the ideas he’s fighting for,” says Forbes. “That’s a very rare combination in politics.”

As Blackwell rose in the national Republican Party, he won greater attention from the Ohio GOP, though the state party quickly discovered how much Blackwell’s Reagan Republicanism diverged from its unreformed country-club Republicanism. In 1993, Governor George Voinovich appointed Blackwell to fill Ohio’s vacant treasurer’s post, and the next year voters elected Blackwell to that position, making him the first black to win statewide office in Ohio. Four years later, he was elected secretary of state—after forgoing a run for governor at the request of Ohio’s Republican Party chairman, who wished to spare Taft a primary battle.

In the midst of his rise, Blackwell has struggled to push the Ohio GOP rightward, becoming one of its sternest critics. He bitterly opposed Governor Voinovich’s attempts to raise the state sales tax, then successfully campaigned against a ballot initiative designed to increase the sales tax after Voinovich’s effort failed in the legislature. Though many state GOP leaders supported the tax-hike initiative, 80 percent of Ohio voters rejected it. (Voinovich, now one of the U.S. Senate’s so-called Republicans In Name Only, is today’s leading national embodiment of Ohio-style Republicanism.) Blackwell’s successful opposition to his own party sparked an all-out war on him, with Republican House Speaker Larry Householder’s staff even circulating a 109-page plan for destroying Blackwell politically. The hyperbolic language of the report labeled Blackwell “the Enron of Ohio politics, propped up and overvalued, a fraud,” prompting Blackwell to respond that the report displayed so much hate on the part of its authors that “I pray for them and for us.”

In a state where he’s often at war with his own party as well as the Democrats, Blackwell has developed a combative political style, sharpened by his quick wit. Drawing a clear distinction between his platform and that of one of his GOP opponents in the Ohio gubernatorial sweepstakes, Attorney General Jim Petro, Blackwell says, “Jim is the Al Gore of Ohio. He wants to reinvent government. I want to shrink it.”

Responding to GOP criticism that he’s too conservative to win in a “50-50 state,” Blackwell argues that “voters don’t want 50-50 leadership.”

In the face of opposition from within both of Ohio’s major parties, Blackwell, a National Taxpayers Union board member, is running a singular effort to energize Ohio’s taxpayers for the 2006 elections by stoking their anger over the state’s tax-and-spend ways. He has collected enough signatures to put an initiative on the 2006 ballot to limit Ohio’s spending growth to inflation plus population increase. After a decade in which Ohio’s state spending increased by 71 percent, one of the fastest growth rates among the states and some two and a half times faster than inflation plus population growth, a poll last year found strong voter sentiment for fiscal restraint. Nearly eight out of ten Ohioans polled said that they favored constitutional spending limits, while 86 percent said that the state should solve its budget shortfalls with spending cuts, not tax hikes. Blackwell calls his constitutional amendment to limit spending “a reasonable diet for an obese government; we’re not proposing something as radical as stomach staples, just a low-carb menu.” Still, much of the state’s GOP leadership opposes the amendment, as does the Democratic Party and the state’s public-sector unions and social-services providers.

Blackwell would use the breathing room that a slower-growing budget would provide to cut Ohio’s tax rates to ignite economic revival. Blackwell begins his standard stump speech before business and taxpayer groups by arguing that both capital and residents flow to low-tax states: Ohio, he points out, is now challenging high-tax states like New York and New Jersey for the lead in driving away citizens. “For 229 years, Americans have protected their own interests and lowered their taxes by moving across state lines,” Blackwell says. “In every 24-hour period, on average, 250 Ohio residents move to Florida alone.” To combat this drain, Blackwell is proposing a single-rate, flat income and corporate tax rate, a rollback of the 2003 sales-tax increase, and the elimination of Ohio’s estate tax.

To counter claims that spending limits and tax cuts would starve essential services, Blackwell is also proposing a host of government efficiencies. He likes to point out that when he served on a committee at his alma mater, charged with making Xavier’s operations more cost-effective, one recommendation was that the school contract out its food-service operations, then being run by the Jesuits. “We pointed out to the Fathers that they were good at prayer and teaching but not food service, an idea that was not popular with them at the time,” Blackwell says.

He promises to make the same kind of tough decisions about Ohio public spending, and the cornerstone of his agenda is a constitutional amendment that he is trying to get on the ballot to require public school systems to direct at least 65 cents of every education dollar into the classroom, instead of the 57 percent that now gets there—the fourth-worst performance among states. Blackwell has teamed up with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com and founder of First Class Education, to promote the so-called 65-cent solution, which would funnel an additional $1.2 billion into the state’s classrooms.

Despite this broad fiscal agenda, Blackwell says that his candidacy is about more than taxes and spending. His early lead in the 2006 gubernatorial race is as much a product of support for his cultural agenda from the state’s increasingly active religious organizations, an agenda that places him even further out of step with the Ohio GOP than his fiscal agenda. He strongly supported a 2004 ballot initiative defining marriage as between a man and a woman, vigorously opposed by most key state Republican figures and by some business groups, who clearly misread voter sentiment. The initiative, pundits say, sparked record turnout in the 2004 election, drawing out Christian voters and other cultural conservatives, who helped give President Bush a 119,000-vote margin in a state where the race seemed much tighter. The amendment had far broader appeal than the president did: it attracted half a million more votes in Ohio than Bush and won with a 62 to 38 percent margin.

Since then, leaders of several largely white Christian groups have lined up behind Blackwell’s bid, including the head of the Ohio Restoration Project, Pastor Russell Johnson. The project aims to recruit some 2,000 pastors statewide and register some 500,000 new voters for 2006. Johnson hopes that by vigorously supporting Blackwell, he will help tilt the Ohio GOP rightward. “The Ohio Republican Party is out of step with its base,” he says, pointing to the lopsided 2004 vote in favor of the marriage amendment, which 73 percent of GOP voters supported. “Ken Blackwell is closer to the values of the rank and file than those who now run the party.”

It hasn’t hurt Blackwell’s reputation with the rank and file that his deep religious convictions have drawn fire from noted liberal interest groups, winning him some extraordinary publicity. Several years ago, he opened a meeting with state employees by asking them to pause for a moment of prayer and reflection, prompting a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union. What particularly irked the ACLU was that Blackwell actually seemed to be in earnest: he didn’t “want them to just go through the motions of praying,” the ACLU complained, “but wanted it to be a sincere and thoughtful prayer.” After the well-publicized episode, Blackwell asked state employees in his next meeting to sing “God Bless America” before getting down to business.

Such incidents play well with Blackwell’s typical voter—a “German-American farmer from rural Ohio,” he says. The truly intriguing question, however, is: Can Ken Blackwell, running for governor on the same kind of platform, also attract African-American voters? If so, he will assemble a powerful and unusual coalition of middle-class taxpayers, Christian conservatives, and minority voters. Blackwell is fond of pointing out (as others have) that there is considerable overlap among these groups, especially since many blacks have entered the middle class and are socially conservative; indeed, polls show that African-American voters backed the Ohio marriage amendment in about the same proportions as other voters. When he speaks to black groups, Blackwell emphasizes his cultural positions as well as the common stake that all citizens have in the country’s economic success, something that today’s crop of civil rights activists rarely acknowledge. Speaking before an Ohio NAACP chapter several years ago, Blackwell quoted Booker T. Washington on the shared destiny of blacks and whites: “We are one in this country. We rise as you rise. We fall when you fall. . . . There is no power that can separate our destiny.”

Blackwell is betting that many black Americans may be ready for a candidate, like him, who doesn’t preach victimology and doesn’t see the world almost entirely in racial terms. Blackwell is a post-racial, post-civil rights campaigner; race rarely enters into his speeches and is barely a part of his political platform. And even when Blackwell does address racial issues—the achievement gap between black and white students, for instance—it’s to tout free-market solutions like vouchers and charter schools. So far, this approach has resonated with black voters, attracting 40 to 50 percent of them in his statewide elections, even though he runs on the GOP line. And his strong support of Bush in 2004, analysts say, helped the president double his black vote in Ohio over the 2000 election. Bush won 17 percent of African-American votes in Ohio in 2004, compared with 11 percent nationally.

With that kind of track record, Blackwell has become a growing target of left-wing blacks like Jesse Jackson, aghast that the first black governor of a major midwestern state might actually turn out to be a conservative who doesn’t trade on race. Though Blackwell has yet to suffer the kind of indignities of Maryland’s Steele—pelted with Oreo cookies in his campaign appearances—black Democrats have dismissed him as an opportunist for joining the GOP and accused him of trying to “disenfranchise” blacks to help elect George Bush president. In the midst of the campaign, one Ohio Democrat compared Blackwell to a “children’s Transformer toy,” because he wore an Afro in college and today is a conservative. Jackson showed up in the state just before the 2004 vote and denounced “beneficiaries of our work engaging in election schemes to undermine the right to vote,” a reference to Blackwell’s role as the state’s chief election officer. Mindful that many people found it hard to swallow the notion that a black was disenfranchising other blacks, Blackwell shot back, “I am Jesse Jackson’s worst nightmare.”

Blackwell’s opponents hoped that the 2004 elections would undo him, but instead his assured performance as the state’s top election official buoyed his prospects. Prognosticators warned that Ohio would be “the new Florida” in 2004—a state where a close tally and voting problems would throw the presidential race into doubt and then into court. Indeed, after the election, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, everyone from high school students to professors, civil rights lawyers, party activists, and journalists descended on the state to pore over election records, many of them “looking for a smoking gun,” in the newspaper’s words. But although the state had an unusually high 70 percent turnout, and though long lines prompted Blackwell to order some polling places to stay open well after the announced closing time, recounts showed that the vast majority of ballots were counted correctly, and only the most extreme conspiracy theorists tried to press the case that Republicans had somehow stolen the race. Ohio voters in particular seem unimpressed by such claims. A host of national left-leaning groups poured money into the state’s 2005 elections backing ballot proposals to diffuse some of the power of Blackwell’s office and to change state election procedures, ostensibly to “cure” some of the problems from 2004. But Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected the proposals, against which Blackwell had campaigned vigorously.

Heading into the 2006 elections, Blackwell is clearly on a roll. But as the election draws closer, he will have to deal with increasingly insistent accusations from within his own party that he is too conservative for Ohio, while Democrats, public-employee unions, and social-services advocacy groups try to paint him as an extremist. Indeed, already signs of how the campaign will play out are visible in the state’s mainstream press, which celebrated Blackwell’s early successes as an up-and-coming black politician but now increasingly dismisses him as outside the political mainstream. The Cleveland Plain Dealer praised his appointment as treasurer as a “stroke of genius” in 1994 and said that Governor Voinovich “could scarcely have found a better candidate,” but a Plain Dealer columnist recently sneered that Blackwell’s supporters are “far-right religious zealots and anti-tax fanatics,” while the Akron Beacon Journal has branded his ideas “reckless” and said they would destroy the state. The local press’s favorite mantra is that Blackwell is the “darling of right-wing conservative” leaders nationally, as if his campaign represents some plot to hijack the state. “This is what happens to you when you are a politician like Ken, who is more interested in change than in playing along with the old-boy network,” says former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich, who enlisted Blackwell to serve on one of his advisory groups in the mid-1990s. “Ken Blackwell is a guy who pursues big ideas.”

Blackwell’s biggest idea to date is to attempt finally to bring the Reagan revolution to Ohio, opposing not only the Democratic Party but also much of the power structure within his own state party. If he succeeds by building the kind of broad political coalition that has worked for him in the past, Blackwell may not only transform Ohio but also point the way forward for Republicans nationwide.

Believe me, Ken Blackwell is the real deal!

I ran into him while servicing an ATM one evening at a BP gas station in northern Cincinnati. Went up and introduced myself and told him I hope he was going to be running for Ohio governor as we needed someone of his caliber in office (this was before he had announced he was in fact running) and wished him the best of luck. He thanked me and said that he was indeed going to be running and hoped to win decisively.

One thing I took note of (and always do when meeting or talking to new people and openly wearing my sidearm) is that he was very comfortable around my firearm. I am always leery of people that are afraid of my firearms, especially politicians.

I would go so far as to say that he would even make an excellent candidate for president one day. He's very conservative and has the right mindset about what government is supposed to do (not much!).

[Ryan Ruck]

Senior Montgomery Advisor Endorses Blackwell

Alex Arshinkoff, senior policy advisor to Betty Montgomery’s gubernatorial campaign and an influential leader of the Ohio Republican Party, today endorsed Ken Blackwell for governor immediately following Montgomery’s withdrawal from the contest.

“I am personally pleased with Alex’s endorsement,” said Blackwell, “and am looking forward to welcoming many, many other Montgomery for Governor supporters into our campaign.”

“Alex has a deep and valuable understanding of the Ohio political process,” said Blackwell. “As our new Campaign Co-Chair, he adds to our already strong network of supporters and gives my campaign even more momentum as we enter the home stretch before the February 16 filing deadline.”

Arshinkoff added, “As recent events clearly indicate, Ken has created the campaign team and strategy to win the primary and the general election, and it’s time for those of us who care about the future of our party and our state to join his campaign.

“As Betty so graciously demonstrated this morning, pride or personal ambition can not be allowed to overwhelm the Party’s need to unify behind a single, strong candidate: Ken Blackwell,” Arshinkoff concluded.

Arshinkoff currently serves as chairman of the Summit County (Akron) Republican Party and has held this position for 28 years. Arshinkoff is a long-time advisor to and chair of statewide campaigns for then-Governor George Voinovich (1991-1995) and U.S. Senator Mike DeWine (1995-2002) and is one of the most formidable fundraisers in Ohio for local, state and federal candidates. He is one of the longest-serving county chairs in the nation, and is widely regarded as one of the most successful GOP county chairs in the state. He was the first major Ohio supporter of President George Bush in the 2000 presidential primary process.

Blackwell leads in primary and general election match-ups in all recent polls (including his opponents’), raised more money than all other candidates in the last filing period and has a grassroots network of more than 10,000 supporters across the state.

[Ryan Ruck]

Blackwell Endorsed by J.C. Watts, National GOP Leader

J.C. Watts, former Oklahoma Congressman and national Republican leader, added his personal endorsement to Ken Blackwell’s gubernatorial campaign today.

Watts endorsed Blackwell, saying, “Ken is a true conservative, who will protect the family and the taxpayer in everything he does as Governor. And, as a personal friend, I know Ken doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk. He is a good man whose faith guides his every action and speaks the truth without reservation.

“We can count on Ken to be a strong leader who will move Ohio forward. He will be a great Governor for Ohio, and a leader for the National Republican Party as well.”

Blackwell responded by thanking Watts for his endorsement saying, “J.C. has been my friend and a co-advocate for conservative values for years, and I am grateful for his sincere support. I look forward to working with him on this campaign, and on many others to elect Republicans to state and local offices across Ohio.”

Watts is Chairman of GOPAC, the national grassroots support organization for state and local Republican candidates, and a former four term Congressman from Oklahoma and Chair of the House Republican Conference, the fourth-highest ranking member of the House Republican leadership.

Blackwell is the clear leader for the GOP nomination, receiving support from 40 out of 54 county organizations that responded to a January, 2006 Ohio Republican Party survey. The Secretary of State also enjoys a ten per cent lead over GOP rival Jim Petro in an independent Ohio Republican Party poll, reported the highest GOP fundraising totals in the last campaign finance period and has an organization with more than 12,000 grassroots supporters statewide.

[Brian Baldwin]

I hope he wins there Ryan. We need every conservative Governor, Senator, Congressman, and Representative we can elect if we're to even have a slight chance to win the upcoming wars. If the Dems get too entrenched in too many of the political seats around this country we're lost.

[Ryan Ruck]

Ohio's Blackwell Leading by 11 Points

If a new poll is any indication of his vote-pulling power, Ohio's Ken Blackwell will be his state's next governor.

A new Columbus Dispatch poll shows that Ohio's secretary of state, credited with helping President Bush carry Ohio in 2004, has a commanding 11-point lead in his state's GOP gubernatorial primary race, and even leads by 12 points in his opponent's former stronghold.

According to the Columbus Dispatch poll, however, while Blackwell's opponent, Attorney General Jim Petro, is far behind, nearly a third of Republican voters remain in the undecided column. Theoretically, Petro could still win, but he would have to win two out of every three of those undecided voters just to draw even with Blackwell -- and do it in a mere five weeks, the Dispatch observes.

The poll showed that Blackwell leads in most regions of Ohio, including almost a 3-to-1 margin in Cincinnati, his home area. Petro leads by 5 points in the Columbus media market and is in a virtual tie in northwest Ohio. The Dispatch reports that one key to Blackwell’s double-digit lead is his 12-point advantage in the Cleveland area, Petro’s former turf that is home to more than a third of the registered Republicans in the state.

Republican Charles Wertz, pastor of the Church of Christ in Christian Union in Madison County’s South Solon told the Dispatch both Blackwell and Petro appear to be men of integrity who have a "Christianized world view" compared with a "secularized world view."

"It’s not a choice of which one is the lesser of two evils but which one is the better of two goods," Wertz said. "That’s somewhat unusual today."

The poll also revealed that Republican Sen. Mike DeWine and likely opponent Democratic U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown are well ahead of little-known challengers within their parties, apparently setting up a fall showdown between the two for DeWine’s seat.

[Ryan Ruck]

Gingrich Endorses Blackwell for Ohio Governor

Former U.S. House Speaker and conservative movement hero Newt Gingrich Tuesday announced his support for Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell.

"Ken Blackwell is a man, cast in the mold of President Ronald Reagan, with powerful ideas that will empower individuals and spur job creation in the Buckeye State," said Gingrich. "His new ideas, new strategies and new solutions will set Ohio back on the right path."

"I am honored to have the support of a true hero in the conservative movement," said Blackwell. "The overwhelming support of conservative leaders is a testament to my adherence to the core principles that have made the Republican Party the nation's party of ideas and progress."

Blackwell has received endorsements from Ohio Right to Life, Cincinnati Right to Life, the Republican National Coalition for Life (RNC for Life), Concerned Women for America, The Eagle Forum, Family First and Moms for Ohio.

Blackwell is also endorsed by the Fulton, Hamilton, Miami and Summit county Republican parties. In January, he reported the highest GOP fundraising totals in the last campaign finance period, out-raising his opponent by more than $700,000 in the last year. He leads all candidates for governor with over 12,000 individual campaign contributors, with an average gift of $167.87.

He enjoys double-digit leads over his opponent among Republican primary voters in five polls released within the last 30 days. The primary is slated for May 2nd.

[Ryan Ruck]

Governor Bush Endorses Blackwell

Citing the Ohioan’s bold agenda for job creation, Florida Governor Jeb Bush today announced his support for Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell.

"Ken Blackwell understands two of the most important things a governor can do is create jobs and keep jobs," said Bush. "He has a clear and achievable agenda for both."

"Governor Bush has provided governors and future governors with a road map to economic prosperity through government and education reforms," said Blackwell. "We share similar visions for reforming Medicaid and expanding school choice. His endorsement of my candidacy is a great honor."

"Florida has a strong and growing economy because we challenged the status quo and moved forward with bold, brave ideas," added Bush. "Ken Blackwell's strong leadership and courageous initiatives will move Ohio forward."

Governor Bush is the third Republican governor to endorse Blackwell's candidacy. Texas Governor Rick Perry and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford have previously extended endorsements.

Also, Blackwell has received endorsements from U.S. Senator John McCain (R- Arizona), U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Senator and Georgia Governor Zell Miller, and former HUD Secretary and vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp among others.

He also enjoys the support from Ohio Right to Life, Cincinnati Right to Life, the Republican National Coalition for Life (RNC for Life), Concerned Women for America, The Eagle Forum, Family First and Moms for Ohio.

In addition, Blackwell has been endorsed by the Fulton, Hamilton, Miami and Summit county Republican parties. In January, he reported the highest GOP fundraising totals in the last campaign finance period, out-raising his opponent by more than $700,000 in the last year. He leads all candidates for governor with over 12,000 individual campaign contributors, with an average gift of $167.87.

He enjoys double-digit leads over his opponent among Republican primary voters in five polls released within the last 30 days.

[Ryan Ruck]

Just wanted to update everyone... Ken Blackwell won the May 2nd Ohio primary for Ohio Governor.

One step closer to Governorship!

[Brian Baldwin]

Great news. His first act as Governor should be to outlaw the Browns and Bengals. Two horrid scars upon their state.

[Ryan Ruck]

Har... Har...

How about he just outlaw the city of Cleveland? I'm leaning toward outlawing Cincinnati too with as fast as it is going downhill. And since Columbus is such a liberal stronghold in Ohio, that is in the running too.

[Ryan Ruck]

I can't stand Giuliani's big time RINO-ness but, it is great for Ken to have such a big name endorsement.

Giuliani Calls Blackwell Best For Job In Endorsement

Republican gubernatorial hopeful J. Kenneth Blackwell picked up one more endorsement yesterday from a prominent national GOP figure when former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani backed his candidacy.

"America needs governors like Ken Blackwell," Giuliani said in a statement released by the Blackwell campaign. "His steadfast leadership will make Ohio an economic powerhouse."

Blackwell called Giuliani, a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, the "the right leader at the right time for New York City and our nation" after the Sept. 11 attack.

He also has been endorsed by possible GOP presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain, of Arizona; Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother; former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich; former U.S. Sen. and Georgia Gov. Zell Miller; former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp; Texas Gov. Rick Perry; and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Blackwell faces Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, of Lisbon, in the Nov. 7 race for governor.

[Ryan Ruck]

The Great Black Hope For The GOP

I don't know about you, but I see a dearth of leadership in America.

Where are the Ronald Reagans?

Are there any on the horizon?

Well, I think I have spotted one.

His name is Kenneth Blackwell and he is running for governor of Ohio on the Republican ticket.

It's going to be a tough year for Blackwell, given the extent to which his party has alienated the American people. Even worse, in his own state, the GOP organization has been mired in breathtaking scandal.

But emerging from the ashes is a courageous, principled leader with a capital L.

He may represent the one bright spot in Republican politics this year. And he is a rising star the whole nation will come to know and love if he is successful in his bid for the top executive position in the big industrial state.

This week, he lays out the specifics of his plans – not only for Ohio, but for the nation – in "Rebuilding America," published by WND Books.

Here's a politician with whom I'm proud to be associated.

Judging from the rhetoric in Ohio, he's also the Democratic Party's worst nightmare – a conservative black man who threatens to break up the opposition party's plantation-like control of black American votes.

They're practically in hysterics already in Ohio. This week, his white Democratic opponent for the governorship accused Blackwell of engineering a plot to deprive his fellow blacks of the right to vote in the 2004 election.

A spokesman for Blackwell, Carlo LoParo, pointing out how "irresponsible" Rep. Ted Strickland's comments were, added that the would-be governor – now promising black voters he will stack his cabinet with blacks – has never employed an African-American staff member.

You know how that works – watch what I say, not what I do.

Blackwell, 58, is a former mayor of Cincinnati and a former Ohio treasurer. He was the first African American to be elected statewide, in 1994.

He believes his recipe of rebuilding America's urban areas through private enterprise, and America's families through moral renewal, will resonate with both black and white Ohioans.

After reading his great book, co-authored by our own Jerome Corsi, I'm happy to say I believe it, too. And I believe Blackwell is just the guy to lead us to the Promised Land.

Blackwell championed the successful 2004 ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio. This year, he is promoting a state constitutional amendment that would impose tight spending limitations on state and local governments.

He's what I call a 100 percenter – pro-life, pro-family, in favor of limited government, the Constitution, free enterprise, personal responsibility, self-reliance and a practicing Christian.

Even Strickland admits Blackwell has the potential to cut into the black vote in November. That's why he is campaigning hard in black communities – normally taken for granted by Democratic politicians.

Meanwhile, Blackwell is hoping his book, "Rebuilding America: A Prescription for Creating Strong Families, Building the Wealth of Working People, And Redeveloping Our Cities," will not only help him get his message out in Ohio, but, also, position his candidacy as a nationwide cause.

Are you ready to get on board?

Are you, too, looking for some new political blood in America?

Are you eager to see some real leadership exhibited once more in our nation?

Do you think a little principle could go a long way to restoring our country?

Then take my advice. Read Ken Maxwell's "Rebuilding America."

[Ryan Ruck]

Ohio's Blackwell Points to Future of GOP

As he runs for governor, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has been telling audiences about the values he learned from his parents that guide him to this day.

“I was raised in a Bible-believing, church-going, hardworking [family],” Blackwell told me as we drove through downtown Columbus to a campaign event at the Nationwide Arena. “My dad ... worked a couple of jobs. He worked as a meatpacker, and he served parties on the weekends for some of the affluent families in the greater Cincinnati area.”

“My mom was, for the most part, a stay-at-home mom,” he said. “She had been a drop-out. She had gone back and got a GED and became a practical nurse. But she was a stay-at-home mom. She had a big belief in the accelerating power of education.

“My dad was a devotee of Booker T. Washington’s philosophy. So his thing was work, work, work, save, work.”

“They believed in self-sufficiency,” said Blackwell. “They believed in economic independence. And even though my dad never ever—he died when he was 56 years old—owned his own home, he preached nothing if he didn’t preach: Own your own home.”

The Blackwells always kept their eye on the American Dream. “They both believed that they could make sacrifices, they could work, they could save, they could invest in their boys and their boys could do better.”

Now their son, Ken, who made a fortune investing in a chain of radio stations, and who has served as Cincinnati mayor, U.S. undersecretary of Housing, U.S ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, Ohio treasurer and Ohio secretary of state, is seeking to become governor of the swing state that determined the last presidential election—and could determine the next.

Influential Conservative

If Blackwell wins, he will become the first black Republican ever elected as a governor. He also may become the most influential and inspirational conservative officeholder in the country.

But Blackwell is no new-comer to the conservative movement. For almost three decades, he has been working to advance conservative causes and principles in local, state and federal government. He is an outspoken champion of both the free market and cultural traditionalism. He has been in the front lines of the movements to cut taxes and unnecessary regulation and to protect marriage and the lives of unborn babies.

Blackwell served from 1995-96 on the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform, which was empanelled by the Republican congressional leadership and chaired by Jack Kemp. With Blackwell’s enthusiastic support, the commission endorsed a flat tax. “The future health and strength of our economy will depend on lawmakers’ willingness not just to tinker with the system and make a change here or there, but on their willingness to uproot the entire tax code and implement a pro-growth system,” he said at a 1997 conference hosted by Empower America.

“On the Internal Revenue Service Building in Washington, there is a quote that says: ‘Taxation is the cost of a civilized society,’” Blackwell said that year. “We’re paying too much for too little civilization.”

In 2000, when he chaired Steve Forbes’ presidential campaign, he again argued for a flat tax.

Now, in his gubernatorial campaign, Blackwell is calling for converting Ohio’s progressive income tax into a 3.25% flat tax. He is also calling for abolishing the state death tax.

In recent years, Blackwell opposed Gov. Bob Taft, a fellow Republican, and the Republican controlled state legislature as they increased spending and hiked the state sales taxes. Earlier this year, he led the effort to place an initiative on Ohio’s November ballot—the Tax Expenditure Limitation (TEL) amendment—that would have limited both state and local spending increases to 3.5% per year or the sum of the rate of inflation plus the rate of population increase.

After Blackwell trounced his opponent, Atty. Gen. Jim Petro, 56% to 44% in the GOP gubernatorial primary, the Republican establishment capitulated and enacted a bill codifying the state-government spending restrictions in Blackwell’s TEL. The initiative was removed from the ballot.

But Blackwell is still pledging to repeal a 10% increase in the state sales tax enacted by his fellow Republicans.

When I asked him what the he sees as the core principles his party must defend now, he put individual liberty at the top of the list.

“First,” he said, “that the individual is at the center of our political system, not the state, not government. I believe in limited government. I actually believe that free men and free women and free markets can overcome any kind of economic challenge.”

“I trust in people to make good decisions,” he said. “I understand there are things, but only a limited number of things, that government can do that individuals and communities of individuals cannot do by themselves.”

One thing he insists government must do is defend the God-given rights of its citizens.

A member of the Bethlehem Temple Apostolic Church in Cincinnati, Blackwell finalized his formal education—and honed his debating skills—among the Jesuit priests at Xavier University, where, as an undergraduate, he majored in education and philosophy and then took a master’s degree in education.

He later became a teacher at Xavie, and one of its vice presidents. His wife, Rosa, whom he has known since 4th grade, and who is superintendent of the Cincinnati public schools, also attended Xavier and is on university’s board of trustees.

“I probably am among the rarified few who have read the Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II, twice,” says Blackwell, referring to a series of lectures in which the late pope explained his understanding of the purpose and sanctity of marriage.

In 2004, Blackwell was the leading proponent of a ballot initiative for an Ohio constitutional amendment that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman and prohibited legal recognition of same-sex unions. The initiative won 62% of the vote on the November ballot that year and helped drive a record turnout in which a million new Ohio voters came to the polls. Given that President Bush would not have won an Electoral College victory in 2004 if he had not won Ohio, and that he won Ohio by only 118,775 votes, it is a reasonable to assume John Kerry would be President today had it not been for the Blackwell-led marriage amendment.

Blackwell has been endorsed by the Club for Growth as well as the Republican National Coalition for Life. “Ken Blackwell believes all innocent life is sacred and should be protected,” says his campaign website. “His opposition to abortion has been steadfast and consistent, he has always been pro-life. The first obligation of government is to protect innocent life. As governor, Ken would advance a culture of life, just as he has for 30 years, as mayor of Cincinnati, ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission and in statewide office.”

Beyond his credibility as a conservative activist, his long experience in public office, and his deep knowledge of the issues, Blackwell is a great campaigner. He has an unaffected, easygoing style—and wit.

At a fundraising event at the Nationwide Arena he was greeted by a group of former Ohio State and professional athletes who support his candidacy. They include Clark Kellogg, who played for the NBA’s Indiana Pacers and is now a network television basketball analyst; Granville Waiters, who played for the NBA’s Chicago Bulls; Lawrence Funderburke, who played for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings; and William White, who played safety for the Atlanta Falcons in the 1999 Super Bowl.

As we entered the room, Blackwell joked about his own brief career in the NFL. After graduating from Xavier, he says, he was invited to training camp by the Dallas Cowboys. When the Cowboys tried to convert him from linebacker to offensive lineman, he decided he didn’t want to play pro football after all and went home to Cincinnati. Some years later, however, he was invited to an NFL Alumni event, where he found himself teasing a long-time star of both pro football and politics.

“So I said to Jack Kemp,” Blackwell recalls with a laugh, “you played 13 years in the NFL and I played 13 minutes—and we still have the same alumni status.”

Had the Ohio gubernatorial election been held two years ago, Blackwell would be governor today, and conservatives around the nation would be clamoring for him to run for even higher office. But this year is a tougher year to be a Republican—especially in Ohio, where the party’s image has been damaged by Gov. Bob Taft, who pleaded no contest to ethics charges, and Rep. Bob Ney, who is under investigation for his dealings with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and who is not running again.

So far, Blackwell is down in the polls. But his campaign has just started to effectively define his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ted Strickland, as the liberal-masquerading-as-a-moderate he truly he is.

And something tells me conservatives are going to be cheering for Ken Blackwell long after this November.