All five campaigns for the 9th Congressional District seat are shifting into high gear in their efforts to reach the portion of the voting population that will cast a ballot in the March 6 primary.
None appears to be driving as aggressively as U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who is in the first serious primary race of her life.
Miss Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat, has a staff of 10, a schedule that has events from morning until night, and that most essential feature of a political campaign — a television commercial, on the air in Cleveland.
March Primary Election: precinct, ballot information
“I am working very, very hard to introduce myself to 320,000 new people in Cuyahoga County,” Miss Kaptur said. “I have a sense of the texture of the district. I know just thousands of people across the region. What is new is when we go across the Cuyahoga County line and to some extent Lorain city.”
Those opposing Miss Kaptur in the Democratic primary are both from Cleveland: U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and entrepreneur Graham Veysey.
A Spanish-speaking Mr. Kucinich opened a campaign office Saturday in the heart of Toledo’s Latino community, where he has grounded his local campaign since the new district boundary lines were established in December. He already had offices in Lorain and Cleveland.
Mr. Kucinich strode into the campaign offices at Broadway and Jervis Street in the city’s south end to the sound of Norteño music and applause from about a dozen Hispanic activists and clergymen.
“Good morning, my dear friends,” the congressman said in fluent, although heavily accented, Spanish. “It’s an honor to be here with you. I know it’s true that with the Lord everything is possible, and with the assistance of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” he continued, referring to Mexico’s patron saint.
Meanwhile, Miss Kaptur was in Port Clinton opening a campaign office to go along with her offices in Cuyahoga County’s Brooklyn and in Lorain and Toledo.
About 30 people attended the event, including Port Clinton Mayor Vince Leone; James M. Sass, an Ottawa County commissioner, and Gaberiel DeFreitas, a Port Clinton High School ninth grader who will manage the campaign office and Miss Kaptur’s campaign in Ottawa County.
Young DeFreitas, who last year represented northwest Ohio in the National Spelling Bee and this year is the freshman class treasurer, worked on the Obama campaign in 2008 and managed the Port Clinton campaign office for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s unsuccessful re-election bid in 2010.
“As you know, he ran the campaign for the newly elected mayor of Port Clinton,” Miss Kaptur said.
“He’s won the spelling bee. This is a very, very bright young man. He loves history and politics, and part of our goal is to bring up the next generation to public service. This is the way to learn. Gabe is a living, breathing example of the new American spirit carrying forward in the 21st century.
“It’s a lot of responsibility. He’ll have a lot of coaches. I think had we not chosen Gabe, he would have been the most disappointed young man in the world.”
The new 9th
The redrawn 9th District, established to bring the state’s congressional districts into line with the 2010 Census, stretches 100 miles from West Toledo to the west side of Cleveland, held together by the Lake Erie coastline. Ohio lost two congressional districts in the latest remap because its population didn’t grow as rapidly as other parts of the country.
Politically, the new district is not a slam-dunk for either Miss Kaptur or Mr. Kucinich. Raw population figures seem to favor the Toledo politician because there are more people in Lucas, Ottawa, and Erie counties, where Miss Kaptur has been on the ballot for at least 10 years, than in the Cuyahoga County part of the district that Mr. Kucinich has represented since 1996.
But there are more registered Democrats in the Cuyahoga County portion of the district than there are in the other four counties put together — Lorain, Ottawa, Erie, and Lucas.
Many believe that Lorain County will decide the election because neither candidate has been on the ballot there, although they can both lay claim. Lorain is in the Cleveland television media market, where Mr. Kucinich is a household name. Miss Kaptur has represented southern Lorain County since 2002 and is well known to county and Lorain city officeholders.
Still, the race won’t be decided on raw population figures — only by voters who choose to go to the polls March 6 (or during early voting) and declare themselves Democrats to vote a Democratic ballot.
To reach those people, all the Democratic candidates have been courting the county political parties and the groups — labor unions, Hispanics, and African-Americans — who are the most loyal party supporters.
Lining up support
Miss Kaptur on Friday attended a groundbreaking for Ebenezer Baptist Church in Sandusky and a fish fry in Vermilion before planning to end the day at a fund-raising event in Toledo.
Miss Kaptur has picked up the endorsements of virtually every Lorain city Democratic elected official and nearly every Lorain County Democratic elected official.
Mr. Kucinich landed the endorsement from the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party in his home county.
And now Miss Kaptur is expected to snag the Lucas County Democratic Party’s endorsement, even if the party has to twist its bylaws into a legal pretzel to make it happen.
Under a party bylaw that has been in place since 2004, the Lucas County Democratic Party does not endorse before the primary when more than one qualified Democrat is seeking the position.
The party’s screening committee will meet Sunday night to interview Mr. Kucinich and Miss Kaptur behind closed doors. Party Chairman Ron Rothenbuhler said he never heard from Mr. Veysey.
And on Thursday, the party’s executive committee is expected to make its endorsement, with Miss Kaptur the hands-down favorite.
“That’s a gimme. I expect the executive committee will endorse Marcy Kaptur,” Mr. Rothenbuhler said.
Lucas County wouldn’t be endorsing at all, he said, if the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party had not endorsed Mr. Kucinich on Jan. 21.
“Cuyahoga County endorsed him. I told the chairman if you do that we’re going to do it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do this,” Mr. Rothenbuhler said.
To get around its bylaw, the recommendation to endorse will come from the executive committee rather than from the screening committee.
Even though the screening committee’s recommendation may not be entertained by the executive committee, the time of the candidates and the screening committee won’t have been wasted, Mr. Rothenbuhler said.
“I’ve only met the guy once. We’d like to get to know him. What if he does win? We certainly don’t want to make an enemy out of him,” Mr. Rothenbuhler said.
Democrats in Erie and Ottawa counties so far have avoided jumping into the endorsement game.
Dan Laity, chairman of the Ottawa County Democratic Party, won’t even reveal his personal favorite and said there’s been no discussion, to his knowledge, of endorsing before the primary.
“If I had my druthers, I know which way I’d want it to go. I’m not going to say,” Mr. Laity said.
He said he has heard people tell him they like both Mr. Kucinich and Mr. Veysey. But he said he’s seen numerous Kaptur signs in Port Clinton and none for the other guys.
“I do know a lot of people who are going to vote for Marcy Kaptur. I’d say there is still strong support for her,” he said.
Miss Kaptur’s campaign started off the race with the most money. As of Dec. 31, she had $706,592 in her campaign war chest, compared with $121,373 in Mr. Kucinich’s account.
Fund comparison
However, in the last quarter of 2011, Mr. Kucinich outraised Miss Kaptur $167,388 to $143,816, according to reports on file with the Federal Elections Commission.
Mr. Kucinich has sent email alerts signed by his wife, Elizabeth Kucinich, to his supporters complaining of being outspent 7-1.
He doesn’t always give the media or the public notice of where he’ll be, such as when he showed up unexpectedly at an event at the Sophia Quintero Center on Broadway in South Toledo on Feb. 3.
But he said no one should count him out on the basis of the appearance of his campaign.
“I think between now and the election I’ll be in Toledo more than any other place in the district,” Mr. Kucinich said. “I’m making every effort to let people in Toledo know that I’m interested in having their support and I will continue to do that.”
He cautioned against drawing conclusions about the race from the greater visibility of the Kaptur campaign.
“It’s a mistake to equate campaigning with paid television ads; there’s all kinds of options,” Mr. Kucinich said. “Toledo is important. I’m not conceding any area,” Mr. Kucinich said.
He said he’s open to almost any events.
The newcomer
Attacking both of his 65-year-old opponents as due for retirement is fellow Democrat Graham Veysey, a 29-year-old video entrepreneur, who has positioned himself as a fresh alternative.
Mr. Veysey has campaigned at least twice at dawn outside the gates of Toledo’s Jeep Assembly complex and came to Toledo recently for a Twitter party. A neighborhood activist in Cleveland who runs a video production business, Mr. Veysey has made five video shorts which can be found on YouTube. (YouTube is also full of video clips of Miss Kaptur and Mr. Kucinich in action on the floor of Congress, on television news programs, and speaking at political and community events.)
“I think that Kucinich thinks that just because he was vocal about the war in Iraq and was a real vocal opponent of NAFTA that makes him somehow qualified to be sent back for another two years. Kaptur and Kucinich are both talking about the past,” Mr. Veysey said.
“It’s amazing that Kaptur needed to hire a [Washington] D.C. firm to introduce herself to Ohio voters,” he said, referring to the firm that produced the commercial that began airing in Cleveland last week.
The GOP race
On the Republican side, Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, a Springfield Township resident who became a Tea Party hero for his confrontation with Barack Obama in 2008, is hoping to overcome a persistent opponent in Huron auctioneer Steven Kraus.
Often wearing the boots, flannel shirt, and jeans that bespeak his self-styled working man’s campaign, Mr. Wurzelbacher, 38, is the darling of many conservatives in the Republican Party.
On Friday, he was a guest of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) convention in Washington, where he collected a contribution of $5,000 from the Tea Party-inspired Western Representation PAC.
And on the same day, he gained an endorsement from Herman Cain, the Georgia businessman who briefly led the Republican presidential field before quitting the race in December amid sexual harassment allegations.
Mr. Cain, who is to headline the Lucas County Lincoln Day Dinner on Feb. 24, will campaign for Mr. Wurzelbacher, his campaign director, Roman Schroeder, said.
“Our campaign to bring working-class conservative values to Washington D.C. is really taking off. It is clear that we are going to be able to raise the funds to put on a serious race in the 9th District,” Mr. Wurzelbacher said.
Struggling to get comparable attention, and learning on the job, is Mr. Kraus, an Air Force veteran making his first run for elective office.
Staff writers Claudia Boyd-Barrett and David Patch contributed to this report.
Contact Tom Troy at tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058.
First Published February 12, 2012, 5:00 a.m.
