100 People Who Are REALLY Screwing Up AmericaIn late July and early August, Jean Schmidt and the entire Ohio Republican Party sent a message to our troops in Iraq: "If you come back home and run for public office as a Democrat, we'll knock you down and grind you into the dust forever." Talk about supporting the troops.
Schmidt, a thin, sour-faced lady who somehow manages to make Katherine Harris and Ann Coulter look gorgeous by comparison, ran in a special election for a vacant House seated in Ohio's 2nd district. She was undoubtedly very confident going in, as no Democrat has won that district in decades. In 2004, more than two-thirds of voters went for Bush. But then she ran into trouble: she drew a true American hero for an opponent. Major Paul Hackett, United States Marine Corps, who had just returned from Iraq, was a direct, tough-talking honcho with a spotless service record.
So Schmidt and her gang did the only thing they could think of: character assassination. Under Schmidt's watchful eye, local media personalities accused Hackett of serving in Iraq for the sole purpose of making himself look good politically, and some even flat-out said he was making his whole service record up! Tens of thousands of people were called by automatic dialers which attacked Hackett's values and motives for service. Schmidt herself said, "There is a clear difference between my opponent and myself on moral issues."
She was right about that, anyway. Schmidt accepted a $10,000 contribution from ARMPAC, Tom DeLay's criminal fundraising group. She lobbied intensely on behalf of a businessman who wanted to play the state lottery through his internet business. While speaking loudly of "family values," she hired a campaign manager who advertised his services on a S&M website. She co-sponsored a bill being lobbied by a biotech group, who had earlier treated her and her daughter to a gourmet dinner and luxury box seats at a Bengals game. The list goes on.
Oh yes, and she violated federal election law by campaigning in front of a polling place on election day.
Her smear-boat efforts paid off, in that she won the election. But she did so by only 4 points -- in a district where, less than a year ago, the Republican incumbent won by 44 points. The GOP, of course, is pretending that a 40 point swing is not a big deal. But not only is it a big deal, it's an indicator of how Americans are waking up to this shameful behavior. If they keep it up -- and I'm almost certain they will, because they simply don't have any other entries in their playbook -- the entire nation will turn blue in 2006.
In the meantime, however, Schmidt did a great disservice to this country by continuing to worsen the tone in American discourse. She thinks it's all about making the other guy look bad -- forget ideals, forget making people's lives better. It is, quite literally, by random chance that she earned herself the number-one spot on this list of the worst living Americans -- but you won't find many people more deserving of it.
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