Married with no kids?

[tugmoose]

The party of Karl Rove is shocked, shocked!

 

GOP staffer fired over e-mails attacking Strickland

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Associated Press

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Ohio Republican Party fired a staffer Thursday for sending inflammatory e-mails about Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland that Democrats labeled "gutter politics."

 

The messages, sent to GOP supporters, questioned Strickland's ministerial credentials, his toughness on child predators and his and his wife's sexual orientation.

 

Gary Lankford, a Christian school headmaster and former director of the Ohio Restoration Project, was let go over the postings, said Jason Mauk, the state party's political director.

 

The party had hired Lankford to coordinate the GOP's outreach to social conservative groups. Ohioans for Ken Blackwell, the campaign of Strickland's GOP opponent in the Nov. 7 election, paid him $15,000 during the primary for "voter contact," state records show.

 

Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett said Thursday he did not see Lankford's e-mails before they went out and that they crossed the line.

 

"I will not tolerate anything like that. That's not how I run the party," Bennett said. "Unfortunately, I was a little slow to react to this."

 

Democrats, who said they first learned of the messages through news reports, blasted Lankford's postings, which he encouraged recipients to forward to others.

 

"This is the worst kind of innuendo and gutter politics, like you used to see in the 19th century. It's sleazy," said Brian Rothenberg, a spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party.

 

Strickland called the firing appropriate.

 

"I would like to be able to take Mr. Bennett at his word when he says we ought to focus on the issues that are important to Ohio," he said. "That's what I've been doing my entire campaign."

 

He said the party should have been wary of Lankford, who had worked for the Blackwell campaign and the Restoration Project, a politically active, conservative Christian group.

 

"He was not an unknown quantity," Strickland said. "They got caught trying to carry out this campaign. It's unfortunate."

 

From The Nation:

 

Strickland, an ordained Methodist minister who has thrown Republicans for a loop by speaking about his faith during the campaign, is running far ahead of scandal-plagued Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the Republican nominee who gained national fame in 2004 when he was broadly accused of manipulating election processes and vote counting to favor Bush in the presidential race.

 

What's the GOP strategy for getting Blackwell back into the running? Imply that Strickland is gay.

 

What are Republican staffers pointing to as evidence? Reports that the Democratic congressman and his wife of 20 years reside in different locations when he is in Washington.

 

In his email, Lankford, the GOP "social conservative coordinator," links to an Internet posting by a conservative operative that is headlined: "Article Adds Fire to Strickland Gay Rumors." The posting suggests that a mid-June Toledo Blade newspaper article implies "the Stricklands are both gay."

 

The article turns out to be a wide-ranging Father's Day feature on Strickland and Blackwell, in which mention was made of the fact that Strickland and his wife have no children. Blackwell was quoted as saying that it would be absurd to try and make an issue of whether the Democrat was a father or not. "Some of my most adored, most respected leaders are not parents," said the Republican. "Pope John Paul II was not a parent."

[Silent Assassin]

I fear for our state if Blackwell gets elected.

[anodyne]

blackwell is so far behind in the polls, i fear a landslide victory for kenny-boy as he's still the vote count guy and refuses to recuse himself from that count.

[Albert Tatlock]

Yes. No.