Endorsement by Obama and Biden helps Strickland of Ohio as he and Senator Rob Portman are neck and neck for Portman's U.S. senate seat....A Democrat, Strickland spoke to Cleveland Urban News.Com at an event in Cleveland on what he will do for Blacks if elected and on his political platform.....By editor-in-chief Kathy Wray Coleman of www.clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader
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| President Barack Obama (right) and Vice President Joe Biden |
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Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican. Strickland has won the endorsement of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in his effort to unseat Portman in November, a race for the Senate that is now neck and neck, polls say
www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com  By Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman, a-23-year journalist who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years, and who interviewed now President Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS
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CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-Cleveland, Ohio- The celebrated endorsement in March by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden of former Democratic Ohio governor Ted Strickland's bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman this November is coming in handy as recent polls have them neck and neck.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows a virtual tie, Strickland with 43 percent, as well as Portman, a poll with a margin of error of +/- three percent.
And the endorsement of Strickland by the nation's Democratic president and vice president gives the state of Ohio even more clout as a pivotal state for presidential elections.
"As Ohio goes, so goes the nation," former Cuyahoga County commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, a Shaker Heights Democrat and longtime Obama supporter, told Cleveland Urban News.Com in reiterating the popular cliche that has helped to make Ohio a swing state that must be reckoned with.
No Republican in thinkable years and no Democrat since president John F. Kennedy in 1960 has lost Ohio in the general election and subsequently walked away with a presidency.
U.S. Senate elections are a little different, but can also go either way for Republicans and Democrats. Strickland endorsed Obama for president in 2012. But in 2008, he supported Hillary Clinton for Ohio's Democratic primary, which she won, though she lost the nomination to the now two -term Obama, America's first Black president, and the country's highest ranking Democrat.
The front-runner, Clinton seeks the Democratic nomination for president this year against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is holding his own but lags in delegates. And the colorful real estate mogul Donald Trump is now the presumptive nominee for the Republicans, which will hold their convention in the largely Black city of Cleveland this July, a city led by three-term Black Mayor Frank Jackson, a Democrat.
A center-right Republican, Portman is a lawyer and, like Strickland. a former U.S. representative. He succeeded George Voinovich, a former mayor of Cleveland, in the U.S. Senate, a seat he has held since 2011. The other U.S. Senate seat is held by Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat up for reelection for another six-year term in 2018. Strickland lost reelection in 2010 to now two-term Republican John Kasich, also a former Congressman, and a former 2016 presidential candidate.
Strickland spoke at length with Cleveland Urban New. Com in a largely Black forum in Cleveland last year, a gig staged by longtime Democratic Party operative Charles E. Bibb Sr., who is Black.
That gathering, at Angie's Soul Food Restaurant on Cleveland's largely Black east side, drew a large crowd of Democrats, including union -types, activists, Black clergy, and a few elected officials,
A former East Cleveland councilman, Bibb is the president of the greater Cleveland Carnegie Roundtable, which sponsored the luncheon with Strickland. During that forum Strickland, who lost a second term as governor to Kasich in 2010, promised that Black issues of public concern will be part of his congressional platform if he were to win the primary, as he did, and thereafter Portman's heavily guarded U.S. Senate seat, a political quest that will be readily determined at the ballot box in November.
The former governor also said that education, jobs, social security, medicaid and healthcare are his priority, among a litany of other public policy topics that he tossed to the audience before taking questions.
Strickland did admit, via questioning at the forum by Cleveland Urban News.Com., that the Ohio state legislature did not comply with the DeRolph decision, a ruling handed down by the Ohio Supreme Court in 2002 and reissued several times.
That ruling, which the high court of Ohio allowed the Republican controlled state legislature to outright ignore, mandated a revision of Ohio's public school funding formula by the state legislature, and deemed it unconstitutional, due partly to the over-reliance on property taxes that create "property rich and property poor school districts." And Black children and poor children are disproportionately impacted, data show.
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