BREAKING : Jennifer Garrison Withdraws From Secretary of State Race
Submitted by Anthony Fossaceca on Sat, 01/30/2010 - 5:24pm.
It's official.
With the announcement expected Monday, Jennifer Garrison's campaign beat everyone to the punch and issued a press release moments ago declaring the end to her six-month campaign to be Secretary of State. The larger news is that Garrison will not be seeking re-election to the Ohio House.
From the release:
State Representative Jennifer Garrison, announced today she will not seek the Democratic nomination for Ohio Secretary of State.
“I have truly enjoyed meeting Ohioans from all walks of life during the 6 month campaign. Ohio is blessed to have a diverse landscape and people. I feel thankful and humbled by the support I have received from my colleagues, labor and Ohioans.” Garrison said.
“While I have determined this is not the right time for me and my family to seek this office, my utmost hope is that the voters will challenge all Secretary of State Candidates to explain how they will increase voter participation and facilitate business growth in Ohio.”
Garrison continued by saying, “I ask the next Secretary of State to be committed to the principles of transparent and fair elections and to concentrate on increasing voter participation. House Bill 260, otherwise known as the Elections Enhancement Bill is a good start. This legislation requires automatic voter registration every time an Ohioan touches state government, whether through renewing a driver’s license or applying for state benefits. This bill goes a long way toward increasing voter participation and reducing allegations of fraud within the voter registration process. I ask both Republican and Democratic candidates to commit their support for this bill.”
Garrison does not plan to seek re-election to the Ohio House of Representatives.
Not one to dance on a grave...
...but this is good news for the party. Like her or hate her, Jennifer Garrison is a hard worker, and losing her from the House delegation is a big blow. She rightly states that HB 260 is an important step in reforming Ohio's election laws, and I too hope it gets the hearing and attention it deserves.
Given her position on issues, I wouldn't be shocked to see Garrison re-emerge as a Republican at some point in the future...just hopefully not this cycle.
This withdrawal gives ODP a chance at the re-boot they desperately need in this race. It's an uphill push against Husted from the get-go, and we need a candidate who can inspire passion in the base to have anything resembling a chance. If that's Neuhardt, great; if it's O'Shaughnessey, also great...but it was never Garrison.
Best of luck.
just another example...
Just another example of Democrats acting like Republicans...kicking out candidates with whom the party
bosses don't like.
Just like ProgressOhio.org now censors Ohio Green Party political posts....
And people think Democrats are Progressives....NOT!
Actually, the party didn't kick her out;
the grassroots did. The party bosses loved her until the bitter end, defying the stream of feedback they were getting until the very end. Finally, when they heard that key Democratic groups absolutely would not support her and they saw some of those key groups amassing behind Sharen Neuhardt, they responded to a message being sent to them by their base.
I didn't know Progress Ohio was finalliy "censoring" the distortion-filled posts from Dennis Spisak. Good for them!
What key groups?
I'm sorry, Anastasia, but not even Anthony has been claiming that "key groups" were amassing behind Neuhardt.
You guys formed a Facebook page with a couple of hundred fans. That's about it. No endorsements, nothing to support your comment. Again, I think the ODP got behind the Franklin County Clerk of Courts to get Garrison out, to show here there was an opponent as Neuhardt dithered over her decision.
Modern, with all due
Modern, with all due respect, either get your facts correct or don't comment. WE didn't start Sharen's Facebook group. This is the second time I've had to point this out. I didn't start it. I didn't ask to be made an admin.
On the O'Shaughnessy piece...our sources told us as late as Thursday that she wasn't sure if she was going to run. It's pretty obvious now that she is. Sharen has been making calls for two weeks - not because she's indecisive or "dithering" but rather because she wants to shore up her support and make a decision that makes sense for her rather than jump in and have no one backing or contributing to her effort.
I don't care who wins the primary, as long as the party doesn't feel the need to knee cap a qualified and potentially more electable candidate (and I said potentially). And that's not me saying one is better than the other. None of us will know until they run.
Sorry, Anthony
But when I saw you pushing the Facebook page and the fact that you're an administrator of it... well, you can't blame me.
"Our sources told us as late as Thursday that she wasn't sure if she was going to run," then you claim she hasn't been indecisive or dithering about whether to run. LOL.
How is Neuhardt either more qualified or more electable? You guys are on a tear trying to drum up sympathy for someone who REFUSES to even say whether she's running, I've heard literally nothing from except from YOU, and who has NEVER won an election.
It not a kneecap when it's done to fulfill a threat that Redfern had to make in order to get Garrison out and your candidate refuses to answer the basic questions like : are you running and why?
your lack of attention to facts & details is well established
but just to further drive it home:
When Anthony said "Our sources told us as late as Thursday that she wasn't sure if she was going to run," he was clearly referring to O'Shaughnessy.
When he said "not because she's indecisive or 'dithering,'" he was clearly referring to Neuhardt.
There was no ambiguity whatsoever in his wording.
While I'm at it... the fact that you weren't contacted by Neuhardt or her campaign about running doesn't mean squat. Are you a big donor, or an uber-volunteer? Organization leader, or an influential opinionmaker? Guess not. Plenty of folks on the inside were in fact contacted by Neuhardt - an appropriate activity for a candidate at that stage in a run or potential run.
Also, I'm not sure I have seen a whole lot of "Neuhardt is better than O'Shaughnessy" going on at ODB. There was some Neuhardt praise before O'Shaughnessy was on the radar. Then most of the rest of the discussion here has been about process - with some of us questioning ODP's motivation when it suddenly got its recruiting groove back after apparently doing nothing for so many months. Many of these posts in fact noted that they had nothing against O'Shaughnessy, to remove any doubt about exactly what it was they were questioning or criticizing. I have yet to see a real criticism of O'Shaughnessy herself here, aside from some pointing out that right now she is relatively unknown outside central Ohio. And even on that issue, I think the point was not so much that O'Shaughnessy was therefore bad, but merely that it's not as if ODP bypassed Neuhardt because they had some candidate up their sleeve with strong statewide recognition. Again - ODP was the target of the criticism, not the candidates themselves.
And regarding your obsession with some big official announcement you thought Neuhardt had promised: like Anthony, I too must have missed that. Could you provide documentation for that promise? In any case, Neuhardt pulled petitions. I'd say that counts as throwing her hat in the ring.
But alas, now I'm blogging about bloggers and blogging. We have a Secretary of State race to win. I hope we can all keep moving forward.
Here is O'Shaughnessy's Facebook page (and for the record I have absolutely nothing to do with her campaign):
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Maryellen-OShaughnessy/13435631263
I don't care...
I don't care about who got called by who or any of this whiny nonsense about a candidate who never ran, would have faced the same obstacles against Garrison had she stayed in the race, and is not running.
All I'm pointing out is that this crazy narrative that the events were somehow centered around Neuhardt and not Garrison is just that. Crazy.
Neuhardt did not, as this blog claimed, have a groundswell of progressive support. She was building it, but building something and already having it are different things. Anthony was the one who wrote that Neuhardt may have been more qualified and electable, all I did was ask him how he reached that conclusion. Now, you want to pretend it never happened. Yawn, fine... I could care less.
I love how ODP is criticized in taking this long to recruit a candidate to take on Garrison when it took Neuhardt this long to seriously consider the race, too.
As for Anthony's announcement about Neuhard see every [Breaking] post for the past week. It was clear that we were told they'd be an announcement on Friday. There wasn't. Then we were told something on Sunday. Nothing.
I don't care about how this makes Brian Rothernberg and ProgressOhio look foolish, even if it was on my blog. I don't care about why Sharen Neuhardt was the third non-candidate in this primary. All I care is Jennifer Garrison is out, and I don't even care what it took to make that happen. I don't even care if Sharen Neuhardt could have been a better candidate because she's not running.
If you want to continue to spin conspiratory yarns and talk about candidates who were never candidates, feel free. You can do so alone. The rest of us are moving on to winning in November and celebrating ODP getting Garrison out of the race.
Big Tent disentegrates
So, pro-life, pro-family democrats have no place in the party. Have they ever? Oh, they are okay to have as voters come election day but God forbid they run for office or statewide office because then they are "bad democrats." Agenda. Agenda. Agenda. And you wonder why so many fly away.
Pro-life Democrats
are welcome, as long as they aren't as radical as Garrison, who denial of women's rights was almost absolute. "Pro-family" is almost a meaningless term, subject to interpretation, but to Democrats, it means making sure people have access to jobs at a living wage so they can support their families, making sure their kids have access to quality ewducation and making sure everyone has affordable health care. To call "look! scary gay people!!!" a "pro-family" position is not based on reality, and no, we Democrats don't support that.
Actually if indeed "so many" are "flying away," it's not because Democrats don't accept right-wing frames based on inaccuracy — every study, poll and survey out there is showing it's because Democrats haven't been progressive enough and pro-active enough in pushing programs that benefit regulat people. The idea that it's because we aren't buying right-wing rubbish has been debunked. We could bring them "flying" back in an instant by enacting meaningful health care with a strong public option, what you would probably brand a "government takeover."
Also, I understand why you're defensive
the GOP "big tent" collapsed years ago. The range of people in the Democratic party is probably 100 times greater than yours.
Yours is Ours
You have mistaken me for a Republican. Moderate democrats aren't feeling real welcome these days. Big spending and continuing dangerous deficits are not what the "real" people want on America's agenda. Meaningful health care reform that doesn't overextend itself would be a step in the right direction.
You know, you can SAY you're not a Republican
but your posts give you away. ANY "moderate Democrat" is well aware that "big spending' and "dangerous deficits" are the purview of Republican administrations. It's just a simple matter of fact. Republicans spend wildly; Republicans run up reckless deficits. "Meaningful health care that doesn't 'overextend' itself" has been kneecapped by so-called "moderate Democrats" (of which I doubt you are one) too timid to admit that what you might consider 'overextended" is not only going to be beneficial to people but to the entire economy. Pass single payer and watch the economy jolt to life again.
Pro-family
Means anti-abortion and pro-marriage...is not an extreme social issue.