Schmidt did post-election poll

This is kind of weird, but Jean Schmidt paid $5,700 for a poll with TelOpinion Research on March 16, ten days after her crushing defeat at the polls.

(The funny thing is, one of our COASTer's got the poll, and the poll mistakenly identified Lt. Col. Dr. Brad Wentrup as "Ben Wenstrup," so we are not sure how reliable their data is going to be.)

Why would she do this?  Preparing for another run?  To do a proper post-mortem?  Or was this payment for a pre-election poll, just after the election?

You can read it here.

Update!
As if this could get any more ridiculous, the homepage for TelOpinion Research hasn't been updated since November, 2009!  In which they brag about their "intensive involvement with Presidential candidate John McCain last year."

Check out their homepage here.

Gee, do you think maybe somebody on Jean's staff should have noticed that before paying for a poll that misidentified her opponent? But based on how up to date their website is, we're surprised the poll didn't ask voters if they were going to vote for Jean or Debbi Alsfelder!

Think Progress Blog: GOP Lawmakers furious with Cantor. Good!

ThinkProgress has a short piece on it here.  It all stems from his $25,000 donation to the Campaign for Primary Accountability, which may well have gone to unseat Jean Schmidt.

COAST thanks Rep. Cantor for his vision and principle in that donation, and encourages more of that!

Read it here.

Houston Chronicle has a nice piece on Campaign for Primary Accountability and SuperPACs in general

Story is here.

....so many stories bringing a smile to our faces these days.

Also, COAST's own Brian Shrive, a campaign expert of monumental proportions, is quoted therein.

Schmidt campaign finance report is, like her campaign, unbelieveable

Late last night, Jean Schmidt filed her post-primary campaign finance report.  We got a few good chuckles out of it.  

You can read it here.

Highlights include:

• Schmidt spent a whopping $633,976 in the 18-month cycle from the 2010 election to today to lose her seat by six points.
• She ended the cycle with only $3,867 in the bank, but she paid herself back old loans in the amount of $40,000.  (That's on top of the $50,000 she paid herself since the first of the year.)
• In the closing days of the campaign, she received $49,359 in campaign contributions, including $28,146 from PACs and $21,213 from individuals.  It looks like most of the PAC contributions dealt with committees on which she served, such as the Agricultural Committee (Poultry PAC, Pork PAC,  Soybean PAC, United Egg PAC, and on and on and on! -- can you say "currying favor"?).  This woman has no shame!
• She finally started paying her own legal bills, paying a little over $1,000 to Chester, Wilcox & Saxbe.
• She dropped $66,000 on T.V. ads and more than $33,000 for campaign mailings in the closing days of the campaign (seems like she finally knew she was in trouble).
• She spent $15,500 for a poll in February.  We think she should ask for her money back on that one!

In all, Jean Schmidt spent $17.14 per vote she received in the primary election.  That compares to only $7.64 per vote that Lt. Col. Dr. Brad Wenstrup expended ($322,000). 

Some other tidbits:

1. Schmidt took in $49,359.85 between February 16 and the March 6 election; and $0 after the election (sounds like fundraising for that legal expense fund might be slim pickin's). 
2. For the second straight quarter, Wenstrup out-raised Schmidt among individual contributors – even in just the period before the primary.

We just can't get enough of this story -- and there's more to come!

Eric Cantor goes rogue and funds PAC that helped defeat Jean Schmidt

John Boehner and the National Republican Congressional Committee have cut off the Campaign for Primary Accountability, threatening their donors and vendors not to support the upstart PAC that had the temerity to fund primary opponents to weak-sister Republicans who have been there too long.

Now, Roll Call has the story the House Majority leader Eric Cantor gave the PAC $25,000, along with $25,000 from Rep. Aaron Schock. 

That means $50,000 more that was available to defeat Mean Jean Schmidt.

Sweet!

The story just keeps getting better.

The next Jean Schmidt? The top 10 House incumbents who could lose their primaries

The "Fix" at the Washington Post has it here.

Somehow, it's music to our ears!

Jean Schmidt drops the lawsuit that spawned a corruption scandal that toppled the Congressman

Today marks the next step in the unraveling of the Congressman that used to be Jean Schmidt.

Jean Schmidt has dropped the $6.8 defamation million lawsuit that she initiated against one-time opponent David Krikorian in Clermont County Common Pleas Court, offering as an explanation only "its time to move on."

The lawsuit and several other legal actions against Krikorian were funded, illegally, by the Turkish Coalition of America to the tune of $500,000.  Schmidt dodged the media inquiries and prosecution by the House Ethics Committee by claiming ignorance of what those around her were doing.

The media in Cincinnati, especially the editorial pages, showed what lapdogs they are by refusing to cover and condemn her illegal behavior, or at least her claimed ignorance.

City Beat has the best coverage of today's developments, here.  We just wonder why they refused to tell this story while it was happening.  The Enquirer's is here.

The Empire Strikes Back! NRCC tells vendors to cut off CPA

Well, we now know that the Campaign for Primary Accountability is having an impact. 

After two wins (Schmidt in OH-2 and Manzullo in IL-15) against incumbent, establishment Republicans, the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee is telling vendors they must choose sides.

The WSJ has the story here.

We know this is a tactic the Speaker has been using to enforce order in the House, as at least one vendor sought to assist the Brad Wenstrup campaign was waived off by John Boehner's operation.

This is good news, though, as if the Empire did not feel threatened, they would not be reacting.

We assure them they have good reason to worry.

Campaign for Primary Accountability bags its second win of 2012

The dethroning of Jean Schmidt on March 6th was a shot heard 'round America, as Lt. Col. Dr. Brad Wenstrup rolled into the GOP nomination for Ohio's 2nd Congressional District seat.  And that win was greatly aided by the "anarchist PAC from Texas" (as one target called them), the Campaign for Primary Accountability.

Well, CPA has targeted seats all across the country.  We were disappointed last week that they could not nail two races of corrupt (or aiding in corruption) House members, Spence Bachus and Jo Bonner in Alabama.  Both deserved to go.

Tonight, however, COAST is pleased to announce that CPA has bagged another win -- the defeat of Donald A. Manzullo from Rockford IL with freshman lawmaker, and reformer, Adam Kinzinger.  After 99% of the vote is counted, Kinzinger is leading with 55.9% of the vote.

It wasn't even close.  And that's the way it always should be.

Throwing off the chains of the failed Bob Taft era

Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, two of the last holdovers of the failed Bob Taft era of state governance (1999-2007) will soon be gone, the result of conservative voters taking control of their government in the March 6 primary election.

First, as COASTers know and have celebrated, Jean Schmidt was unceremoniously hoisted on her petard in her crushing six point defeat at the hands of Lt. Col. Dr. Brad Wenstrup in the Second Congressional District of Ohio. Ultimately, Schmidt was dispatched for a series of sins, starting with her multiple votes in slavish obedience to the Taft/Householder agenda while she served in the Ohio legislature. Her pedigree as a Taftie was firmly embedded in her during these years. Those instincts manifested themselves in vote after vote in Congress, all in lockstep conformity with the spend-and-borrow ways of the Republican House under Speaker John Boehner.

Second, Governor John Kasich courageously challenged Kevin DeWine's leadership of the Ohio GOP through elections for the members of the Republican State Central Committee.  DeWine sits as a proxy for Ohio Secretary of State, John Husted. Both Husted and DeWine were also loyal votes for the Taft agenda of higher taxes and spending in the legislature, Husted as Speaker of the House and DeWine as his lieutenant.

Well, it has taken a few weeks for the results of that election to sink in.  We knew conclusively that DeWine was in trouble when he announced this week that he would not stand for election in 2013 as Party Chairman.  But that was not enough for the principled insurgents, and today, the GOP Chairman of Ohio's seven largest counties wrote to DeWine asking for his immediate resignation.

Yes, the walls are closing in quickly on the remaining Tafties.  As of January, Schmidt and DeWine will be gone, and hopefully Husted will soon be following them.

After the damage they have done to Ohio, it won't be soon enough for COAST.

National political analyst Charlie Cook sizes up the Schmidt defeat

Here is a good, humorous, if not detailed, explanation of why Jean Schmidt lost from respected political analyst Charlie Cook: "Run Scared: More House Republicans could lose in the primaries than in the general election."

COAST wants incumbents to be fearful, always, of holding their jobs.  Fearful incumbents listen to voters, not entrenched special interests.

Here is the funniest line of the article:

For one thing, Schmidt has chronically underperformed in GOP primaries. And, in a related factor, she was apparently behind the door when God handed out the charm and gregariousness that most elected officials possess. Schmidt is an acquired taste that many in her district and on Capitol Hill never managed to acquire.

Read it and enjoy!