Ohio's Favorite Scum Bag
Submitted by Admin on Thu, 05/31/2007 - 9:02am.
Bill Todd is pathetic. He promised not to get personal in the campaign for Mayor of Columbus. Yet that’s all he's done for the entirety of his campaign... lob personal attacks at Mayor Mike Coleman and his wife, Frankie.
It’s Bill Todd’s MO. From giving Ken Blackwell the money to start the TEL campaign to gay-baiting anti-Strickland ads, Bill Todd is the go-to lawyer for corrupt Republican campaigns in Ohio.
Yesterday Todd sent out another attack press release alleging that Mayor Coleman committed a felon while volunteering on the Strickland transition team. The reason: Frankie Coleman worked on the transition team along with hundreds of other Ohioans.
The truth, of course, is far from what Bill Todd claims. The Mayor did what every transition chair does – help pick the cabinet-level leadership, then move on. He never hired – or had the authority to hire – a single person. Ipso facto, no possibility of a felonious act. Claiming Coleman's involvement and responsibility in low level staff hires is like asserting the pope's responsible for the window cleaners a church hires in Bexley. It's ridiculous.
Then again, Bill Todd’s never cared about the truth. He’s just after another hit piece in the Dispatch (and he hopes no one notices the follow-up stories that call him on his bullshit).
Also not mentioned
Poor Todd. The Dispatch apparently didn't even cover his latest attack.
This allegation is completely baseless. At the time, the Strickland-Fisher transistion team made it perfectly clear that Mayor Coleman was responsible for strategic decisionmaking while the Governor's chief-of-staff John Haseley was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the transition office.
Under long-held opinions of the Ohio Ethics Commission (as posted on Right Angle Blog), there is nothing unethical or illegal in the hiring of Frankie Coleman by the transisition team. To assert otherwise as fact, is to assert that Mayor Coleman breached his responsibilities and infringed on the responsibiliities of John Haseley as Director of the Strickland Transistion Office with no evidence, not even the hint that such evidence can even be found, is ethically reprehensible for a licensed attorney to do.
Mayor Coleman was not responsible for the hiring decisions of the transition team, so long as he didn't use his influence to get Frankie Coleman that temporary job, there is absolutely no basis to allege a criminal violation.
Bill Todd, if he had any sense of moral decency, should be ashamed of himself.