2010 is looking like it will be a tough election cycle for incumbents, and for some Democrats especially the Conservadems like Harry Reid and Blanche Lincoln.  However, there are some opportunities to “flip” Senate seats that are currently being held by Republicans.  Ohio is one of those, and it will be crucial to keeping the Majority for the Blue Team in the Senate.   The Democrats trying to pick up this Senate seat in Ohio are Lt. Governor Lee Fisher who was briefly also the Director of Development for Ohio, and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who was elected in 2006 to clean up after Ken Blackwell and the stunts he pulled in 2004 in order to help George W. Bush get re-elected.  Their Republican opponent is Rob Portman, a former Congressman and Bushie point man for outsourcing jobs.  It will soon be clear why I nominated Brunner into our candidate pool, and why she is the only candidate who can beat Portman and give the excellent Sherrod Brown a formidable partner in the Senate.

Brunner is one of the candidates that shows why we need an organization like Peanut Butter PAC.   She has a long history of public service, and in her stump speeches, emphasizes that one of the reasons why she is running for this seat is for public service. With her history of dealing with polling location security problems and upholding the integrity of all the votes in the 2008 election cycle from the schemes of partisan operatives as Secretary of State in which she earned a JFK Profiles In Courage award, and her leadership skills where she created a drug court in 2002 as a judge in the Franklin County Court of Appeals, thereby helping people with substance abuse problems avoid the downfalls of the traditional “get tough” criminal justice system and effectively reducing crime.  She is also a well-respected Kossack who has made the rec list with bold statements that the Senate lacks courage, and who has approached this race with a solutions-based approach as shown on her Issues page.

On her issues page, Brunner details how she would tackle various issues as the next Senator from Ohio.  As an example of her commitment to jobs, she says on her Jobs page under Issues “Others and I have suggested Congress take unspent bailout money and use it for infrastructure jobs in our states. Infrastructure building is one of the most direct ways to get people working again quickly, especially skilled workers in the building trades, which is often called the “tip of the spear” to jobs recovery in any area.”   This shows that Brunner “gets it” and it is one of Peanut Butter PAC’s aims to fight for jobs and for improving our nation’s infrastructure.  Her Health Care page is also top-notch where she clearly says that health care access is very important to a strong middle class.  And this quote warms my Union-loving heart “I support the “Employee Free Choice Act” as a means to make a secret ballot vote on collective bargaining the choice of the workers and not the as a stall tactic of some employers who would use it to deny employees collective bargaining rights.”  There is even more quote-worthy material that shows that Brunner is a Senator for the People and not for Corporations, which makes her the kind of Democrat we need in Congress.

Looking at Brunner’s primary opponent Lt. Gov. Fisher, his main strength is his vast better fundraising when compared to Brunner.  Fisher also has the support of Harry Reid, who spoke at a fundraiser for him.   He also has the unofficial approval of the DSCC.  Basically, he’’s the Democratic Establishment Candidate.   Fisher doesn’t seem to me, by hearing him speak on YouTube and reading his Issues pages and looking at a synopsis of a speech he made recently, to be a Conservadem.   Rather, he seems somewhat like a Maria Cantwell(D-WA) or a Mark Warner(D-VA) in that he could vote liberal on a few issues but mostly sticks in the middle and won’t challenge the Bayhs, Lincolns or the Baucuses on their view that the Democratic Party needs to be Republican Lite.

Fisher does have  three possibly fatal weaknesses if he were the nominee for the Democrats.  First, he lacks any sort of charisma or in my opinion, passion in his speech.   Politics these days often makes personality a factor, and as we saw in Massachusetts, a very ennui-inducing candidate with a terrible campaign message but a deep war chest cannot win against a populist message and a candidate that is very appealing to voters.   Brunner has a clear message and she is well-liked by many on both the left and the right, in contrast.  Secondly, Fisher’s message is very vague other than saying he’s the Jobs candidate and his Issues page on Jobs and the like has nothing but general philosophy statements and what Fisher has done in the past.  An uniformed voter might take away from him that he has no idea how to fix the economy, and directly asking the voters for their ideas on how to create jobs was a major faux pas.   Since Fisher also quit as Director in Development as Ohio was bleeding jobs left and right, he has no credibility to attack Portman on his actions that made Ohioans lose their jobs to China and to Vietnam.  Brunner has no such baggage.   And thirdly, most of Fisher’s rich friends have maxed out their donations to his campaign, and the DSCC won’t be able to excite voters about Fisher.  Fisher has actually needed out of state personnel to collect signatures to put himself on the ballot, while Brunner has a energized core of volunteers that will push hard for her.   If Fisher spends most of his funds on knocking out Brunner, he’ll have to rely on out of state sources for his fundraising and since Portman already has the money advantage over him, Fisher is toast since he also doesn’t have the message to beat Portman.

As the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party to use a phrase by our favorite ex-governor and former DNC Chair Howard Dean, we have a decision to make.  Will we stand by as another establishment candidate with a long history of losing races becomes our standardbearer in Ohio or will we fight for the best candidate we have, one that has a history of victory and building institutions that serve the people?   If we want to really have “change we can believe in” then the decision is clear.  We need Jennifer Brunner in the Senate, and we can help her get there.