Make Room in the Trophy Case: Ohio Brings Home 4th Governor's Cup In a Row Under Ted Strickland

Every year, Site Selection magazine awards its Governor's Cup to the state with the most new or expanded business capital projects in the country. And in every year of Ted Strickland's governorship, Ohio has won the award.

Site Selection credited Ohio's business friendly tax climate (yes, that's right, the conservative fantasyland naysayers are wrong.

What a shock.) reformed Worker's Compensation system, and its Third Frontier program for Ohio's back-to-back-to-back-to-back win. Read the full story from Site Selection here.

What's remarkable about this is that we're about to go into an election season in which Fox News commentator/Lehman Brothers Managing Director/GOP Gubenatorial candidate John Kasich will insist that Governor Strickland's Turnaround Ohio plan has been a failure, even though the trophy case suggests otherwise. Kasich can offer Ohioans no ideas, no plans, nothing at all except conservative platitudes for his way forward. 

Strickland, on the other hand, can and should insist that Ohio has been taken off the road to oblivion and put back on the path to prosperity. He has four shiny trophies that he can and should be pointing to as proof positive of record of accomplishment that deserves a second term, not to mention the slowest growth in college tuition in 40 years, not to mention making tough choices to deal with the consequences of the 2005 GOP tax cut. Does anyone think that Entrepreneur magazine would have named Youngstown, Ohio one of the 10 best areas in the country to start a business if Ken Blackwell was in the governor's mansion? After all, it was the government-backed Youngstown Business Incubator that started that particular ball rolling.

In short, for Ohio to have had more business capital projects than any other state under Gov. Strickland's tenure is a pretty strong statement about the business communities' confidence in his leadership. Congrats, Gov. I'd be drinking some Moet out of that bad boy if I were you.