#oh-gov

[npi]

Dr. Amy Acton hopes to flip Ohio's governorship Democratic after decades of mostly uninterrupted Republican rule

A very fat pet cat circled around Amy Acton as the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate delivered her pitch at a Friday night Seattle fundraiser. It was emblematic of the $10 million paid media campaign that her rich opponent recently launched. Action, the former director of Ohio’s Department of Health, is all about restoring the political health of the Buckeye State’s Democrats, who have…

Dr. Amy Acton hopes to flip Ohio's governorship Democratic after decades of mostly uninterrupted Republican rule

[aaroncamp]

Ohio Tea Partiers are so livid at John Kasich for expanding Medicaid in Ohio, they're threatening to form their own party to run a third-party candidate against Kasich. That could give Democrats the keys to the Ohio Governor's Mansion on a silver platter.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) has joined the growing list of Republican governors pushing income tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens of his state, and like those other governors, his plan would raise taxes on the poor to pay for it.

Kasich’s plan would cut income tax rates by 20 percent and some business tax rates in half, and it would pay for the plan by levying sales taxes on goods and services that were previously exempt. Since sales taxes are inherently regressive, Kasich’s plan would raise taxes on the poorest 60 percent of the state’s residents by as much as $77. The top 1 percent, though, would see an average tax cut of $10,369, according to an analysis by Policy Matters Ohio.

The poor in Ohio already pay more of their income in taxes than do the rich. The bottom fifth of Ohio taxpayers pay 11.6 percent of their income in taxes, while the top 1 percent pays an effective rate of 8.1 percent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That disparity exists because of sales taxes: the bottom 20 percent pay 6.7 percent of their income in sales taxes compared to just 1 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers.

h/t: Travis Waldron at Think Progress Economy

[justinspoliticalcorner]

It turns out that wholesale attacks on workers' rights aren't nearly as popular in a rough economy as conservative governors thought.

The latest one to realize he's overstepped his bounds and offer “compromise”? Ohio governor John Kasich.

Kasich, elected in 2010 with just 49 percent of the vote, pushed through an attack on public workers similar to the one Wisconsin's Scott Walker championed. Senate Bill 5 (SB5) was passed and signed into law in March, and eliminated most collective bargaining for state workers, as well as increased the amount of money they had to pay for their pensions and made it harder for unions to collect dues.

It spawned mass protests that might have been overshadowed in the public imagination by the sheer size of the Madison resistance. But progressives sat up and took notice when Ohio activists, led by the coalition group We Are Ohio, collected 1.3 million signatures on a petition to allow Ohioans to vote on the bill themselves, putting it on the ballot in November's election. Ohio's "Citizen Veto" is an unusual law; it gave activists 90 days to collect a minimum of 231,149 signatures to stop the bill going into effect until the voters have a chance to decide. The results were so outstanding—more than five times the required number of signatures--that the group and 6,000 supporters held a parade through the city of Columbus to deliver the signatures to the secretary of state's office.

h/t: AlterNet

[justinspoliticalcorner]

What could possibly have changed between November 2010 when it was get on the bus or get run over by the bus, compromise not an option, and August 2011 when Kasich suddenly became a major advocate of compromise?

Well, first, Republicans had a tough time getting enough of their own members to vote for SB 5, a bill eliminating collective bargaining rights for public employees, to get it passed. But finally, after shenanigans like pulling a Republican opponent of the bill off the committee voting on it, they got SB 5 passed.

Then, the people of Ohio developed an astonishing case of buyer's remorse about Kasich.

And finally, repeal of SB 5 vaulted onto the November ballot with several times the number of required signatures, and polling showed repeal leading by around 20 points.

One, two, three, and suddenly John Kasich is all wounded and aggrieved that the people he came into office attacking won't compromise with him. For the good of the state, don't you know. Because he's a "believer in talking," not because he's a bully who's afraid he's going to lose.

H/t: Laura Clawson at Daily Kos Labor