Really, Jenny Garrison?
In case you need context on the format...
Really, Jennifer Garrison? You think this is the best move for Ohio?
Really?
You'll strive to represent both rural and urban voters even though you won your house seat on the strength of a homophobic campaign and ran to the right of Nancy Hollister on DOMA? Really? The same year that the gay marriage ban was being advocated for by Bob Taft, George W. Bush, and Karl Rove? Really?
Even though you have an NRA "A" rating? You think you can handle the pressure of running statewide elections in Ohio when you can't stand up to worse-than-the-NRA-Buckeye Firearms or Ohio Right To Life? Really?
You helped raise money for the caucus, allowed your donors to write checks to you under the impression that it was going to the caucus, and now want to walk out of said caucus and take all of the money with you? Really?
We have a four-seat majority, that you're trashing for your own ambition? Really? That would have cost us 15K to defend, but will cost 1/4 again (250) as much as you raised (200K) to take as an open seat-- if we can recruit somebody from the five Democrats that live there. Really?
You're endangering the house-controlled apportionment board seat, so you can lose to Jon Husted, because when voters get a choice between a fake Republican and a real one, they choose the real one. Really?
Your father was in a union, so you're pro-union, but otherwise you may as well be a Republican. Really?
If there was still room in the GOP for women, or minorities, or non-Southerners, or supporters of labor, you'd be able to win their primary.
Really?
You invoked God repeatedly in your announcement so you could remind everybody you're running against a dangerous liberal Jew from not just ONE "C", but two-- and that Marilyn Brown will never get away with it!
Really.
Welcome to the Democratic Primary, everybody. The agents of intolerance are in our party now. We may not win. We have to fight. Really.
So if you disagree with her views on guns and gay marriage (which I think has been overblown), what better place for her than Secretary of State? Think about it. Where would she have more effect on issues like that: the House leadership or running elections?
While I'd stop short of endorsing anyone this early, Garrison has always stood out to me over her transparency. She sends out email newsletters about what's going on in the House and how she votes. She also championed the effort to have House members' votes posted online. These are more along the attributes I'll be looking for in a Secretary of State.
In no particular order, David: 1) You can't "Overblow" gay rights. They're either fundamental, or not, and Jennifer Garrison either found the lifestyle of millions of American fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters so offensive that she thought they deserved less than the rest of us, or she saw an opportunity to use them for personal gain and didn't care. In either case, that's a disqualifying maneuver for an official entrusted with overseeing fair elections.
2) A link to Buckeye Firearms' politics page. Jenny Garrison has their endorsement. Looks overblown to me.
Granted 2004 was my first election as an eligible voter and I was more focused on John Kerry, but I never heard anything about Garrison and DOMA until well after the election. As I've said, she was always presented to me as the education candidate.
I also can't see labeling someone as a homophobe for something they did 5 years ago as productive. If you want to make this an issue now, you need to get her on the record again and hold her to it. You won't recruit anyone new to your cause with a permanent blacklisting.
David:
Stop being willfully ignorant on this issue, just because Jenny Garrison is obviously your girl. "I can't recall" doesn't look any better for you than it did for Alberto Gonzalez, Don Rumsfeld, Rudy Giuliani, John Ashcroft, or John McCain.
You may be wondering how I got my hands on that list. We have these things called records. Let me Google some for you (computers make research easy!):
Jenny Garrison is a vicious homophobe, who not only is anti-gay marriage, anti-gay civil unions (putting her to the right of many Republicans) but also thought that gays in lesbians in schools didn't deserve protections from getting their asses kicked. Yup, you read that right. She wouldn't sign onto a bill to protect gays and lesbians from bullying. This was in 2006. Is that still too long ago to label her, David? Oh, and the anti-discrimination bill on the floor of the House right now...you wanna take a guess who has been holding that up? Is one month ago too long to judge too, David?
I'm not a fan of litmus-test politics. We're a big-tent party, and on a lot of issues, we can get over it. But don't you dare condone her telling 10% of the population that they're anything less than they are.
Or would it have been counterproductive to blacklist white supremacists, too?
about that Gay People's Chronicle story you cited. I couldn't get a single person, even the ones who had invested the most in that bill, to confirm it.In fact, some of them even outright denied that Garrison wasn't supporting the bill. The consensus was that the budget had moved everything else to the back burner.
And before you start, the reason I asked around was because I was fully prepared to launch an all out attack on Garrison if it was true. In fact, the main reason I'm even standing up for her is because I'm sick and tired of the "Well she opposed gay marriage in 2004, so this must be true" rational.
So I stand by what I said. If you can get her on the record through words or actions (not hearsay and rumors) as opposing gay marriage now, I'll gladly oppose her campaign.
I'll leave the absurdity of "I talked to people and it's not true" as a defense out of this, because, well, it should be self-evident. Inheriting biases of sources? Ambiguous? Easy to fake? Maybe your constantly-crashing blog passes as a platform that bestows journalistic credibility with some people, but it doesn't with me.
To that end though, if you have an issue with the Gay People's Chronicle, let me fire up the Google machine's bigger, pay-only brother and lay some truth on you:
And to reiterate the Gay People's Chronicle, you seem to dismiss the whole body because "people" told you the budget was in the way. In 2006, when the bully bill passed without LGBT provisions, largely at Jenny Garrison's request? You're being intellectually dishonest to throw out that very correct assertion just because you don't believe the accusations about the present session are true.
Don't mess with a student, David. We're educated, we have resources, and we have time to burn. Did you go to college?