Ohio: Chris Redfern

I'm outta here.

I don't mind people who disagree with me.  In fact, I came here because I enjoy the give and take of a good debate.  Lord knows, I suffered the slings of arrows of several frontpagers, commenters, and other bloggers because of my support of Hillary Clinton.  And yet, despite some deeply personal and regretable attacks from both sides, I stayed.

I've been at this site for three years now.  I've gone through three rounds of site administrators during that time.  I think it's safe to say I'm the longest running member of BSB still blogging. Until today.  Because during my entire time at BSB, I've had one simple request for the administrators here: we don't have to agree with each other, but we should always have each other's back.

According to Lauren Goode, Fisher for Ohio spokewoman, the campaign has "no comment at this time."

I think Fisher missed the boat to be a real leader here.  There's nothing but upside for him to say that ODP shouldn't endorse.  One, ODP Chairman Chris Redfern has publicly and privately told the candidates that he'd prefer to keep ODP neutral in the race.  Two, the common perception is that Fisher has the most at risk by leaving this up to the primary voters.  By taking the pledge, it shows Fisher isn't willing to take some political risk and willing to be judged as a candidate on his own merits.

Last week, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern held a telephone con"fern"ce with Ohio bloggers to discuss the U.S. Senate primary.  Part of the news is that starting in the summer (why not immediately, we don't know) Redfern promises to hold monthly conference calls with us so we can get information straight to the horse's mouth.  Apparently, the "Fern" is sick of these damn speculating blogs that conjecture things like... Chris Redfern being in the tank for Lee Fisher and planning on putting his thumb on the scale as much as possible for Fisher over Brunner.

So, let us play a little fun game.

The Preamble of the Ohio Democratic Party's Constitution and Bylaws of 2007 states, that our party is organized to "sustain and advance the principles of democracy" and that one of the essential tenets of our party is that "We believe that there is no substitute for fair and equal representation and strong public participation in a government chose by election."

And yet, despite that being one of the fundamental principles of the Ohio Democratic Party, Chapter 9 of that same documents says:

"In any election year in which any statewide office . . . are to appear on the ballot, the Executive Committee shall be called for a meeting before the primary election and must carefully consider in each race the endorsement of one of more persons.