Plunderbund 2011 in review: November

Issue 2 was defeated with over 60% of the vote.  More Ohioans voted to repeal SB 5 than people who voted for Kasich a year earlier.   Turnout was a historic high for an off-year election, and only 2% less than in 2010.

Seriously, I could just stop writing here.  That was the story of November and the political story of the year in Ohio.

In fact, our top stories in November dealt with almost exclusively the post-Issue 2 political world in Ohio:

• Jason had the top post for the month discussing how Kasich kind of won despite the defeat of Issue 2 because Kasich still was able to starve local governments of revenues while actively campaigning against the “Kasich levies” those governments sought to balance their budgets.  As a result, local government employees continued to lose jobs.
• I reviewed the political geography of Issue 2’s defeat, discussed the growing irrelevancy of newspaper endorsements, how the defeat would lead to the tabling of the “heartbeat abortion” bill (which happened this month), what last night’s election results across the nation said about the prospects of the “personhood” amendments in Ohio, and the 2012 referendum on HB 194—the GOP bill that rolled back early voting in Ohio.
• The Columbus Dispatch, like the Cleveland Plain Dealer, continued to live in acute denial about Issue 2’s defeat by labeling it “unions get revenge” on Kasich (that comes in 2014).
• We wondered if the papers that endorsed Issue 2 would offer Kasich a free full page ad to apologize for Issue 2?
• One of our top posts for the entire month was simply about this “crowd” shot of Governor Kasich at a pro-Issue 2 rally shortly before the election:

• And yes, this really happened.  We made our premiere on national cable news on Election Night in Ohio thanks to the Ed Show on MSNBC:

Trivia fact: State Senator Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) and I once worked together as aides in the same office in the Statehouse in the 1990s.  That was the first time we’ve seen each other since then.

• As Issue 2 headed to defeat, we predicted the GOP infighting that would result would ironically turn to Governor Kasich trying to leverage the defeat of Issue 2 to again try to replace Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine with a statewide chairman of Kasich’s own choosing.
• Greg continued to hammer away at HB 136—that would radically explode the availability of vouchers in Ohio and deplete public schools of even more funding.
• Within days of Issue 2’s defeat, conservative activists announce a campaign to put a right-to-work amendment on the ballot for 2012.  As you can imagine, it goes over as well as a lead balloon among the still smarting Republican legislative leadership.
• John Kasich breaks Joe Hallett’s heart by declaring that he “doesn’t read” Ohio’s newspapers.  This is the same Governor who also admitted in November that he doesn’t plan ahead, making Kasich the male version of Sarah Palin… without the charm.

Issue 2, In Memoriam (2011-2011)- John Kasich didn’t even respect you enough to read your obituary in the papers.