http://www.cleveland.com/open/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/isope/1158413598136710.xml&coll=2Republican's shift brings down wrath of the party chief
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Ted Wendling
Plain Dealer Bureau Chief
Columbus - ...On Wednesday, the day after the prominent Republican businessman attended a Statehouse news conference with Rep. Ted Strickland to announce that he was joining "Republicans for Strickland," Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett denounced Slane as a pig who has "bellied up to the state government trough."
He then canceled an Oct. 5 fund-raiser he had asked Slane to host, moving the event to the Columbus condo of Akron charter schools magnate David Brennan...
The basis for Bennett's pig-at-the-trough charge is that the Slane Cos. has been a subcontractor on the state's $270 million Multi- Agency Radio Communications System.
But if that qualifies Slane as a guy who has his snout in the public trough, doesn't it also make Brennan a prodigious porker in his own right? After all, Brennan's White Hat Management has collected at least $350 million in state tax dollars...
Posted on Tue, Sep. 12, 2006
GOP loyalists switch parties for Strickland
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/politics/15502958.htmJULIE CARR SMYTH
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A group of high-powered Republicans led by the son of a former Ohio attorney general threw their support to Democrat governor candidate Ted Strickland on Tuesday, choosing him over his GOP rival, Ken Blackwell.
"I'm an Ohioan first, and Ohio has some serious challenges going forward. We need strong, new leadership to overcome the problems the state faces," Columbus attorney Charles "Rocky" Saxbe said. "The next governor must unite, inspire and motivate all the people of the state in order to accomplish the task before us."
Saxbe, whose father William Saxbe served nine years as attorney general, was joined at the launch of Republicans for Strickland by former Ohio State University board chairman Dan Slane, a Columbus businessman, and former Mason Mayor Betty Davis, once a member of the state Republican central committee.
The three said a Strickland administration would be better equipped to solve Ohio's economic problems, more bipartisan, and more tolerant than one led by Blackwell, the secretary of state who beat Attorney General Jim Petro, the favorite of establishment Republicans, in the primary...