How Would A President Sherrod Brown Run The Democratic Party? Like A Corporate Clown Act

-by Tim Russo

Let me tell you about one of my favorite hangovers.

As one of the landed gentry of the Ohio blogosphere’s glory days, my weakness (and finest work) was always internal Ohio Democratic Party coverage, especially the selection of state chair. I made something of a career covering the Ohio Democratic Party’s two most recent elections of a state chair; in 2005, and 2014, plus all the mind blowing corrupt buffoonery in between. Ohio Democratic Party is a gift that never stops giving.

My experience with Sherrod Brown during the 2005 chair “election” that made Chris Redfern ODP chairman is still legendary, preserved here in a 2008 James Renner front page feature for Cleveland’s local alt weekly. Let’s leave it there, shall we? Let’s talk the next one.

The 2014 ODP Chair "election" was precipitated by a comically catastrophic statewide ODP meltdown, led by Ed FitzGerald, for whom ODP cleared the primary for governor (as usual). That summer, it emerged FBI lawman Ed FitzGerald had been driving his car without a license for 10 years. The ensuing wave against Ohio Democrats (which I covered for the now defunct Cleveland Leader) even took out then ODP chair Chris Redfern, who lost his own house seat. Redfern resigned as ODP chair election night, November 4.

By the next day, Sherrod Brown had decided who would be the next ODP chair. So on Nov. 5, I wrote my first Leader piece on Brown’s choice, Dave Wojtanowski. I am 100% certain my Leader piece on Wojtanowski was the only coverage that day that went beyond "Sherrod endorses Woj". Not one single media outlet in Ohio bothered to report that, SURPRISE turns out Wojtanowski was a “both sides” statehouse lobbyist in Columbus for 20 years who donated money to as many Republicans as Democrats. Cherry on top, Wojtanowski owned some two bit rinky dink "online organizing" consulting firm, no doubt created as a vessel for that sweet bipartisan "consulting" cash. After I disgustedly hit "pubish," I could almost hear every Democrat in Ohio start googling "David Wojtanowski."

Then, I got a good drunk on. I’d begun diving into the CSU masters program I’d fought like hell to get into, and was feeling pretty self actualized. But like any good drunk, alas... melancholy. I could not believe I was still writing, for no pay, about yet another scandal at the Ohio Democratic Party, after yet another electoral meltdown, and no one would give a flying fuck. Passed out on my friend’s couch after a bar crawl, during which I'm sure I let fly like Mussolini from the balcony at various Wednesday night revelers, waving my arms like an embryonic hipster Lenin. Bring me a shot!

The next morning, hungover like a dog, roaming the streets of Collinwood on Cleveland’s east side with my friend hunting for coffee, a text hit my pocket.

"woj is out"-- my Leader piece had scared Wojtanowski into oblivion. Woj ran like a terrified rabbit out of the race. Sherrod was on the hunt for a new chair!

"…THEY PULL ME BACK IN…" I kept muttering over the coffee. Over the next month or so, I went straight back to full overdrive ODP coverage. By the end of 2014, Sherrod Brown had gone through another endorsement/pullout cycle, with yet another corporate tool. This time, it was Cleveland law firm Thompson Hine’s featured "outsourcing attorney" Sharen Neuhardt, who clung to Sherrod’s endorsement for a couple weeks (but I ran for Congress! As a Dem!) as she went down like the Hindenburg.

All of which is how heir to a Proctor & Gamble fortune David Pepper became the current ODP chair. I suppose I could have hounded Pepper into oblivion too for the Leader, and some other corporate stooge could be ODP chair today! But quite frankly, it became too much work, too much blowback, for too little money, which has always been zero, just to uncover what should be reported anyway by the people who are paid to report it.

Bottom line-- Sherrod Brown as a political party leader is a buffoon of such comic proportion, it almost doesn't matter that Brown reversed his position on Glass Steagall the week before the 2018 midterms. Sherrod's presidential campaign will look precisely like his dalliances the last 25 years in ODP's cess pit of rigged game oligarchy, which means it will go nowhere, slowly.

Silver Lining Department: Ohio Democrat Party Chairman Chris Redfern Slinks Off Into The Night

Last Tuesday was pretty ugly for Democrats almost everywhere. But it was worse in Ohio. Republican Gov. John Kasich, who was once considered a one-term sitting duck, won a landslide victory, 1,922,436 (63.8%) to 989,201 (32.9%). Ohio has 88 counties; Kasich won 86, all but Athens and Monroe. Obama had won Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) with 69% and Sherrod Brown won it with the same margin. Obama and Brown both won Lucas County (Toledo) with 64%. Both won Franklin County (Columbus), with 60%. Similar results for Summit County (Akron), 57% each. Both even won Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Obama with 52% and Brown with 53%. Kasich won them all. Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine was reelected with 61.66% of the vote. Secretary of State John Husted beat progressive fave Nina Turner 60.04 to 35.32%. Republicans also took the state Auditor and state Treasurer jobs-- a Republican sweep of all the statewide offices. Taking a cue from the DCCC, the Ohio Democratic Party didn't seriously a single House seat. It was a wipeout for the state party.

We've written about Chris Redfern here before. He's been to the Ohio Democratic Party what Steve Israel's been to the DCCC or Debbie Wasserman Schultz to the DNC-- a cancer on the organization he was entrusted to lead. But instead of screwing working people for only a few years like Israel and Schultz, this piece of shit hick from the sticks has spent nine years running the Ohio Democratic Party into the ground, destroying it's infrastructure, picking uninspiring loser New Democrats and Blue Dogs over real progressives who could win, running Ohio's most talented elected officials out of office and enriching himself and his Republican corporate lobbyist wife.

Let's take a look at how this corrupt, imbecile of a "clown who helped ruin the state Democratic Party," this "pipsqueak from a county [Ed Note: Catawba Island, pop. 3,157 in in Ottawa County] with 12 people and a highway" as former Ohio State Senate President and Democratic Party Chair Harry Mishel referred to Redfern, rose to power:

Fast-forward to December 2005, when Democrats gathered in Columbus to select a new party chairman. With the backing of [then Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ted] Strickland, Malone and other labor leaders, the job went to State Rep. Chris Redfern-- but not before their thugs in the room hurled some vile insults in the direction of U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin, two powerful black women who opposed Redfern’s election.

Tubbs Jones always believed there was a significant amount of racism in the room that night.

Once in power, Redfern's one criteria for recruiting Democrats to run for statewide office was their loyalty to him. Not their beliefs or ability to win. During his tenure, save one race he had nothing to do with, the Ohio Democratic Party lost every single race for the State Supreme Court, which is elected in that state. He undercut progressive Paul Hackett's primary run for the U.S. Senate in 2006, one of the reasons the principled and charismatic Hackett walked away from politics. Interviewed over the past few days, the netroots and grassroots supported Hackett called Redfern "unethical" and said he was made aware Redfern suppressed his campaign by refusing to hand out his campaign literature. He did the same to progressive Attorney General candidate Subodh Chandra. Chandra that same year, and he spoke on the record about it in a just released documentary: 

In John Wellington Ennis' documentary "Pay 2 Play," Chandra alleges Redfern went so far as to destroy about $10,000 worth of the candidate's campaign literature, intended for distribution to constituents at political events.

The 90-minute documentary uses the board game "Monopoly" to illustrate politics in the Buckeye State. It briefly touches on Chandra's 2006 campaign and notes how he faced opposition within the Democratic Party, namely because of his unconventional name.

Chandra, now a practicing attorney in Cleveland, said he's unsure why he quickly became one of Redfern's political enemies, but it was quite clear to him Redfern had an ax to grind.

"Chris Redfern is one of the most mean-spirited and small-minded people that I have ever met in over 30 years of political involvement," Chandra said in an interview with the Register. "He would actively and gratuitously hurt people he perceived to be his enemies for no apparent rational reason. And that drove many Democrats who are interested in public service for the right reasons from being involved in the party."

Redfern's alleged strategy in dealing with Chandra's political aspirations: Stop handing out his literature.

People such as former Northwest Ohio coordinator Steve Chaffin were ordered to stop spreading Chandra's messages, according to both Chaffin and Chandra.

"(Democrats) were excited about (Chandra's) campaign," Chaffin said. "He seemed to appeal to a lot of young people. Shortly after, Redfern decided he was going to decide who the candidates were going to be. He told me and others we were not to pass out any literature from (Chandra)."

Chandra ultimately lost in a primary to Marc Dann, who won the general election but eventually resigned in 2008 over a sex scandal.

That's right, Redfern's candidate who he illegally submarined Chandra to support was none other than Marc Dann, who after taking over as Attorney General didn't make it for very long before he resigned in disgrace after he and his top lieutenants sexually harassed just about every woman in his office. When then-Treasurer Rich Cordray (current head of the Consumer Protection Bureau in Washington) moved from the Treasurer's office to the Attorney General's office, Redfern had unheralded Columbus City Councilman Kevin Boyce appointed. Boyce engaged in classic pay to play politics and was in so far over his head that he handed the running of the state's finances over to his deputy treasurer, who is currently sitting in prison in Lahore, Pakistan, after jumping bail in Ohio for a kickback-scheme conviction (he also was a deputy under Rahm in Chicago, of course!). Boyce also refused to raise money and campaign in 2010, and was trounced by another pipsqueak, Josh Mandel.

Redern, always the corporate whore, also anointed terrible New Democrat Leigh Fisher as the party's U.S. Senate candidate that same year by blocking progressive Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner from running a successful primary campaign by threatening he funders. Fisher lost by 20 points to current Senator Rob Portman. He then supported Ohio's Sarah Palin, the odious, homophobic, anti-choice, gun loving, pro-coal, Jennifer Garrison, for this seat, even though key Democratic groups warned him they would never support her. (We've often talked about her at DWT, because the just as stupid and corrupt Steve Israel recruited her so she could once again get destroyed (38.6%), this time running for a House seat in Ohio this year).

This election cycle, for the final coup de gras, Redfern supported Ed Fitzgerald for governor, blocking the potential campaigns for governor of Rich Cordray and Jennifer Brunner, two progressives who could have won. Fitzgerald, like Boyce, refused to raise money and then it came out that he had had no driver's license for 10 years, while he of course kept driving. He was trounced by 30 points, dragging the entire ticket down with him, and costing the party more state house seats.

So it was only right that Redfern, comically, ended his chairmanship by resigning in the dead of night, after losing his state house seat in an Obama district to a novice Tea Partier who is being investigated for burglary. His lobbyist wife lost her race for the Ohio Board of Education. Redfern then resigned after saying he wouldn't, shut down his social media accounts and made a run for it.

The list above if only a partial look into how this power hungry, petty, vindictive, corrupt little man, of well-below average intelligence and with the professional demeanor of Louie Gohmert, finally met his Waterloo, after destroying the Ohio Democratic Party. If they are to rebuild in this important swing state, it must be an open process. And one where progressives are given the chance to rise to the top. One such example is David Pepper, who recently was one of those dragged down by Fitzgerald in his run for Attorney General. There are also others. All should be vetted and voted upon by the party. No more Chris Redferns, the people of Ohio can't afford it!

 


UPDATE: Tim Russo On Redfern

Tim doesn't believe the silver spike has been driven thru Redfern's heart yet. "Redfern's core competence," he wrote, "is stitching up primaries. The reasons so many Democrats are angry with Redfern, and want him gone, are found in the rivers of blood Redfern leaves behind after shoving candidates down Democrats' throats, all over the state, in any primary Redfern can get his filthy paws on."

Word is that ODP Chairman Chris Redfern has taken leave to Florida to continue spending the paycheck he's hanging onto for dear life while he holds Ohio Democrats hostage until he actually vamooses. Redfern is making noises to various lapdog reporters that (a) he wants a role in Hillary Clinton's campaign (LOL) and (b) he wants to stay on at ODP as a consultant when a new chair is picked (LOLOL), and (c) he doesn't regret stitching up the umpteenth primary of his career for Ed FitzGerald, who he calls the best candidate he's seen since Dick Celeste (ROFLMAOLOLOL), despite knowing full well Fitz was Public Offical 14 as early as 2010. Delusional, as usual.

Blue Dogism Slipping Under The Waves?

Yesterday I got a message from a friend in Ohio that that state's Democratic Party, headed by a sleazy and corrupt lobbyist and hack Chris Redfern-- whose heavy handed interference and mindboggling incompetence is virtually just handing the state back to the Republicans-- has removed the Coussoule campaign's access to the state's voter data base, the only way the Ohio Democratic Party has even remotely helped Coussoule's campaign. Redfern and his whole corrupt, conservative establishment is circling the toilet but he apparently thinks his lobbying business will benefit by his having helped John Boehner win another term and, perhaps, the Speakership.

In yesterday's Charlotte Observer, North Carolina's #1 newspaper, there was a glowing endorsement of Elaine Marshall's Senate scrappy insurgent campaign. The endorsement was a slap in the face not just to reactionary corporate shill and incumbent Richard Burr, but also to his pal, sleazy New Jersey ward-heeler and failed DSCC chair Robert Menendez. Marshall, they enthused, "dove into this year's Senate race without Democratic Party backing, yet beat the party's hand-picked choice in the primary. 'I don't have to vote with the Senate leadership,' she told us. 'I wasn't their pick'."

Not only was she not their pick, when North Carolina Democrats let Menendez know what he could do with his pick-- and handed the progressive, activist Marshall a decisive win against the corporate-oriented slug-- Menendez took his toys and ran back to Washington. He had forced Marshall to spend almost a million dollars to win a primary fight he insisted on-- even after she won the first round-- and since then has studiously, many would say vindictively, ignored North Carolina, easily the Democrats' best chance of picking up a GOP-held seat in the entire country.

From the time he handed Scott Brown Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts, right through all his wrong-headed primary meddling, Menendez's place in history has been assured: the worst DSCC Chair ever. He has been the driving force in making John Cornyn look astute and in turning a filibuster-proof Democratic majority into a hodge podge that may or may not be able to cling to a bare majority. Out of touch, self-serving political hacks like Menendez and Redfern are managing to emphasize that the Democratic Party, despite the disciples of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt at the grassroots level is anything but a peoples' party.

Yesterday a friend of mine, Ari Berman, author of the brilliant new book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, published an incisive OdEd in the NY Times about the damage Blue Dogs and ConservaDems have done to the Democratic Party and, thereby, to the one hope that working families have for a fair shake in this country. And it isn't only Blue Dogs and ConservaDems, but the political bosses like Redfern, Menendez and, of course, Rahm Emanuel, whose milieu they swim in.

Berman asks how Obama's breathtaking victory just two years ago could have turned to such bitter ashes today. "One important explanation," he begins, "is that divisions inside the Democratic coalition, which held together during the 2008 campaign, have come spilling out into the open. Conservative Democrats have opposed key elements of the president’s agenda, while liberal Democrats have howled that their majority is being hijacked by a rogue group of predominantly white men from small rural states. President Obama himself appears caught in the middle, unable to satisfy the many factions inside his party’s big tent." Even inside the DCCC, which should be theoretically controlled by Pelosi and her sluggish assistant, Chris Van Hollen, a rogue bunch of Emanuel leftovers, basically Jon Vogel and John Lapp-- each of whom has ownership stakes in outside consulting firms (which we'll be discussing at greater length on November 3)-- has taken it upon themselves, for curious reasons (more on... November 3), to bolster the campaigns of violently anti-Obama, anti-family reactionaries like Bobby Bright (see the Blue America response in the video above, which is running as an ad in the Democratic-leaning counties of his Alabama district), Travis Childers, Baron Hill, Ann Kirkpatrick, Harry Mitchell, Joe Donnelly, and Frank Kratovil, while ignoring not just progressive challengers, but even tried and true progressive incumbents like Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Mary Jo Kilroy and Carol Shea Porter.

Conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives-- whose election in 2006 and 2008 enabled Nancy Pelosi to preside over a supermajority (there are 255 Democrats and 178 Republicans)-- increasingly question whether she should relinquish her position as speaker. Representative Heath Shuler of western North Carolina, a leader of the restive Blue Dog Coalition of Democrats, has even hinted that he may run for her job. Representative Shuler is an unlikely candidate for leader of the party-- a devout Southern Baptist who voted against the stimulus, the bank and auto bailouts and health care reform. Yet he’s exactly the kind of Democrat that the party worked very hard to recruit for public office.

In 2005, Howard Dean, who was then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, carried out a campaign to elect as many Democrats as possible. In long-ignored red states, both Mr. Dean and Rahm Emanuel, then the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, backed conservative Democrats who broke with the party’s leadership on core issues like gun control and abortion rights. Mr. Shuler was one of Mr. Emanuel’s top recruits. The party leaders did not give much thought to how a Democratic majority that included such conservative members could ever effectively govern.

With President Obama in office, some notable beneficiaries of the Democrats’ 50-state strategy have been antagonizing the party from within-- causing legislative stalemate in Congress, especially in the Senate, and casting doubt on the long-term viability of a Democratic majority. As a result, the activists who were so inspired by Mr. Dean in 2006 and Mr. Obama in 2008 are now feeling buyer’s remorse.

Margaret Johnson, a former party chairwoman in Polk County, N.C., helped elect Representative Shuler but now believes the party would be better off without him. “I’d rather have a real Republican than a fake Democrat,” she said. “A real Republican motivates us to work. A fake Democrat de-motivates us.”

Ms. Johnson is right: Democrats would be in better shape, and would accomplish more, with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus. It’s a sentiment that even Mr. Dean now echoes. “Having a big, open-tent Democratic Party is great, but not at the cost of getting nothing done,” he said. Since the passage of health care reform, few major bills have passed the Senate. Although the Democrats have a 59-vote majority, party leaders can barely find the votes for something as benign as extending unemployment benefits.
A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)

Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.

Republicans have become obsessed with ideological purity, and as a consequence they will likely squander a few winnable races in places like Delaware. But Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way. Polls show that, despite their best efforts to distance themselves from Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, a number of Blue Dog Democrats are likely to be defeated this November. Their conservative voting records have deflated Democratic activists but have done nothing to win Republican support.

Far from hastening the dawn of a post-partisan utopia, President Obama’s election has led to near-absolute polarization. If Democrats alter their political strategy accordingly, they’ll be more united and more productive.

Although he was asked, for the sake of some semblance of party unity, to back off, what Berman is saying is very much what the dean of California's congressional delegation said this summer: the Democrats would be better off without the Blue Dogs.

“I think a lot of the House seats we’re going to lose are those who have been the toughest for the Democrats to pull into line-- the Democrats that have been the most difficult,” Waxman said.

Waxman, one of the Democratic Party’s stalwarts, is simply voicing publicly what many in his party have said privately as the reality of the looming November elections sets in. If Democrats retain a majority, it will be smaller but more cohesive.

 As Waxman sees it, the fractious coalition of Democrats that House leaders have cobbled together to pass sweeping healthcare and energy bills is not markedly different from the bipartisanship of the past, when Democrats partnered with centrist and liberal Republicans, whom Waxman says are “practically nonexistent at the moment.”

 “We’ve been trying to get the Democratic conservatives together with the rest of the Democratic Party, so in effect we’ve gotten bipartisan support among Democrats in the House,” the chairman said with a laugh. “Now we’ll have to work on genuine bipartisanship in the future.”

The Bobby Bright Blue America ads were paid for with a single contribution from a dedicated progressive who feels much the same way about this that Henry Waxman and Ari Berman feel. But if you'd like to chip in a little to hammer home the message... here's The Bobby Bright Page on ActBlue.


UPDATE: And Don't Forget The New Dem Coalition

They're a couple steps further away from the white sheets and hoods than the Blue Dogs, with this group of conservative Democrats has been nearly as lethal, especially when it comes to protecting their corporate benefactors. Sebastian Jones and Marcus Stern blew the whistle on these bad dogs at ProPublica today. Usually the ugly public faces of the New Dems have been Illinois corporate whores Rahm Emanuel and Melissa Bean but right now the chairman of the corporate Wall Street bagmen is Joseph Crowley, whose under investigation for collecting bribery checks. A congressional friend of mine told me the Democratic Caucus has decided to elevate him in the leadership-- and probably not in spite of all the bribes he takes but because of them! After all, they reason, how can the Democrats fight Boehner, Cantor, Ryan and that lot without people just an unsavory and criminally-minded?

In a review of data collected by the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation, ProPublica found that at least 16 other New Democrats also held fundraisers in the days leading up to the December vote on Wall Street reform. Several explicitly mentioned their membership in the New Democrat Coalition or their seat on the Financial Services Committee on invitations distributed to lobbyists.

Throughout their rise to power, the New Democrats have maintained that their pro-business positions are based not on the campaign contributions they receive but on their personal convictions, their experiences in the private sector, and on the politics of the affluent suburban districts many of them represent.

Staffers for the New Democrat Coalition refused to answer questions on the record, but the group's spokesperson, Natalie Thorpe, read a one-sentence statement over the phone: "The fundraising activities of the NewDemPAC are completely separate from the New Democrat Coalition and have no effect on the official work of the coalition or the positions taken by our members."

...The Blue Dogs took the lead in protecting business interests during healthcare reform. Although the Blue Dogs and the New Democrats have much in common, including 21 members and many of the same K Street backers, there are differences as well. Because of their generally Southern and rural constituencies, the Blue Dogs’ top concerns involve the national debt, energy legislation and social issues. The New Democrats represent suburban districts, some of them solidly Democratic, and are more interested in hi-tech industries, trade policy and finance.