OH-Sen: Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld likely running

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If he wants to win, He should run for Governor in 2018, when it's an open seat. He'd never beat Portman.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If, by whatever chance, Strickland runs and wins, I see him as being a one termer. Then it'll probably be the sixth year of a Hillary administration. The seat will just flip back.

Yeah, that it why I'd prefer someone younger who could conceivably hold the seat for awhile.

Except that's not one of the options.  It's basically a choice between a progressive who probably has about three or so terms in him and about a 50% chance of beating Portman (Strickland) and throwing away any chance of winning the seat by running a younger candidate who would lose to Portman by about the same margin as Lee Fisher did and damaging his own career in the process (Sittenfield).  Sittenfield may well be a rising star, but right now and in this race, he's a solid C-lister.

Strickland doesn't have 3 terms in him. The guy would be 75 upon inauguration, he’s not staying in the senate until 93. Two terms maximum.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

If, by whatever chance, Strickland runs and wins, I see him as being a one termer. Then it'll probably be the sixth year of a Hillary administration. The seat will just flip back.

Yeah, that it why I'd prefer someone younger who could conceivably hold the seat for awhile.

Except that's not one of the options.  It's basically a choice between a progressive who probably has about three or so terms in him and about a 50% chance of beating Portman (Strickland) and throwing away any chance of winning the seat by running a younger candidate who would lose to Portman by about the same margin as Lee Fisher did and damaging his own career in the process (Sittenfield).  Sittenfield may well be a rising star, but right now and in this race, he's a solid C-lister.

Strickland doesn't have 3 terms in him. The guy would be 75 upon inauguration, he’s not staying in the senate until 93. Two terms maximum.

It's hardly unheard of for a Senator to stay in office despite being in their 90s.  You really have no basis for your assertion about how many terms he has in him.  Beyond which, Strickland would spend far more time fighting for Ohio in a single term than Portman would if he spent the rest of his life in the Senate.  In fairness, a half-eaten donut would be an improvement over Portman, but that's beside the point.  The bottom line is that if Portman wins, 95-99% of Ohioans lose (even if not all of them realize it).

It's not unheard of, but it's hardly common. Right now, the oldest senator, Feinstein, is only 81.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

The OH Dems chairman says Strickland is running.

Endorsed.

And no, I'm not joking.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Ted Strickland is probably going to end up as the Tommy Thompson of 2016, an over the hill former governor who is running more as a reflection of their state party's horrible bench and will probably lose by somewhere in the mid single digits

The Ohio Democrats don't really have a horrible bench, though.

Who else do they have? Sittenfield is only known locally, and tim Ryan probably will never leave the house

From Wikipedia's page on the 2016 OH senate election:

John Boccieri, former U.S. Representative
Jennifer Brunner, Judge on the Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals, former Ohio Secretary of State and candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2010
Michael B. Coleman, Mayor of Columbus
Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former Ohio Attorney General
Connie Pillich, State Representative and nominee for Ohio State Treasurer in 2014
Betty Sutton, Administrator of the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation and former U.S. Representative
Nan Whaley, Mayor of Dayton
Bob Hagan, Member of the Ohio School Board of Education and former State Representative
Joyce Beatty, U.S. Representative
Nina Turner, State Senator and nominee for Ohio Secretary of State in 2014

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Lebron: TL, DR, dude.

Shorter LeBron: The primary winner should be the first person to announce--how dare the Dem establishment rally around a more experienced candidate. Cegelis! Darcy! Hackett! Sittenfeld!

First of all, the Democratic establishment isn't rallying around anyone yet. There's plenty of activists and party leaders in the state who said they don't want Strickland. P.G. is accumulating ODP support, and it helps when you're best friends with the state party chair.

As for Strickland having "more experience", the last time Strickland ran in a race was 5 years ago. The last time he won a race was nearly a decade ago, and if you read what I said his statewide campaigns are incredibly below average when it comes to GOTV strategy. P.G.'s experience of campaigns involves gaining support from Democrats, Indies and Republicans in his past City Council races with the help of his fundraising skills, bipartisan credentials, and ability to connect with people in many ways.

So with that said, Strickland is an experienced loser at the age of 73. P.G. is a learning to become experienced winner at the age of 30.

No, leaks indicate that P.G. will drop out, basically because the state Democratic Party is rallying around Strickland, which is because -- I say this as a fellow Ohioan (as a fellow Northeast Ohioan, in fact), even if I don't wear the avatar -- with his appeal to Appalachia and experience running a campaign, Strickland is the best candidate the Democrats' have. You're right, of course, that Strickland cares more about himself than the Democratic Party, but after two consecutive beatings in 2010 and 2014 the Democratic Party basically has to accept that. I would love to see my region adopt a neutral (or, hell, pro-Portman) attitude in the Senate race, but we both know the reason Strickland takes Northeast Ohio for granted is because Northeast Ohio will vote for him anyway, especially in a Senate race conducted in a presidential year.

I think Strickland's comeback rather echoes Tommy Thompson's and that Rob Portman will ultimately win (and that one of his key advantages is the weakness of the OHDP), but this becomes an actual, real race starting now. Whether Sittenfeld could've challenged Portman or not was unclear (though I suspect, because of the presidential year, it would've happened).

Sittenfeld would have put a scare into Portman, but I honestly don't see any realistic scenario in which Portman doesn't get a 4+ point win against Sittenfeld. City Council ---> Senate is a HUGE leap, and if Sittenfeld won, the story would probably be less about him, and more about the reverse 2014 from sea to shining sea.

That being said, the people who think Sittenfeld would lose like Fisher did (yes, people have actually suggested that) need to give up that theory. Sittenfeld's not some terrible candidate, he just doesn't have the strength, donors, or name recongition of Strickland. Furthermore, Strickland's record is known, Sittenfeld is an unknown entity who may have some unknown skeletons in his closet. That being said, we can be pretty confident that Sittenfeld doesn't have a fitzgerald-esque embarrassment hiding somewhere, as he's probably smart enough that he wouldn't just 'run and hope nobody notices' like Fitzgerald did. Add in presidential turnout, and Sittenfeld probably has a realistic floor of ~44% and a realistic ceiling of ~47.5%.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Meh. Sittenfeld was an unknown before his brief Senate campaign, but he fundraised pretty well during it and that could well have allowed him to compete. Almost certainly not win, but yes to compete. People go from no elective experience --> Senate fairly frequently (David Perdue, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee), so I don't see why City Council --> Senate should be harder except for the fact that it is typically difficult for City Councilmen to fundraise and they are not typically self-funders. If Sittenfeld would've been able to fundraise and wouldn't totally drop the ball, he would almost certainly have been able to keep Portman at least to a high single-digit margin.

Perdue & Johnson - Self-Funders
All Three - The PERFECT political environment. Lee ran at the point when the tea party was at its peak in terms of strength, and all three chose HUGE republican wave years as the year they would run.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Couldn't find these numbers already posted in this thread, but PPP has Strickland and Portman tied up at 45-45 with 10% undecided.

Portman leading Sittenfeld 50-31 there. Time to give up on him, LeBron.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Mike Lee endorses Portman. Sorry, Adam. Probably not getting that primary you wanted.

Portman was never going to get a strong primary challenger. The Ohio Tea Party isn't very strong to begin with, and some of the big names like Mandel and Jordan were never going to run.

It didn't help Zawistowski's cause either to find a primary challenger to Portman when the Ohio GOP (who have already endorsed Portman) threatened all of the state legislative Tea Partiers to support/not run against Portman or else. Most of them complied and there's only a small handful of county GOP chairmen and state legislators who haven't endorsed him yet.

So at this point, if Portman does get a primary challenger, it will likely be a no name who Portman ignores.

Any chance of Matt Lynch trying? Or is he just going to challenge Joyce again?

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Please X, do not criticize Lebron's *skills*. You should remember how right he was about Fitzgerald in 2014.

Everyone makes mistakes, but I see I'm becoming the new Keystone Phil now.

Edit: Keep in mind, I said like 3 months before the election (right around the time of the implosion) that FitzGerald would lose. That, and I think we can all agree that most of our 2014 predictions sucked miserably (especially Governor races).

Depends on what your definition of sucked miserably is. The average atlas prediction, as shown on the site's front page, got every senate race except NC right, which isn't sucky at all. The average gubernatorial prediction got ME, MD, FL, IL, and KS wrong, for 5 wrong predictions out of 36 races. That's not great, but it doesn't really fit something I'd call "sucked miserably". Granted, you can point to individual users who did worse than the average (I, for instance, got KS wrong as well on the Senate side, but had an identical prediction to the average on the governor's side), and some do deserve the "miserably sucked" title. But the average user does not.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

A new editorial is out by Brent Larkin reporting that after Sittenfeld said he would stay in the race after the ODP's endorsement of Strickland, party leaders within the party are about to start a smear campaign against him.

It's not completely the same as in this situation of course, but five years ago, both Brunner and Fisher weren't racking in as much money as they could have had Democrats backed behind one candidate and to make matters worse there were internal and public bombshells being thrown in the primary to weaken each other when Democrats should have used that time uniting against Portman. Those who don't learn history just might be doomed to repeat it, I guess.

As a young college Democrat from Cleveland I don't have any authority to say what happens high up in the ODP down in Columbus, but a toddler could figure out that trying to ruin the career of one of the party's top rising stars is not a good idea, either.

Sittenfield isn't a rising star at this point. 

His rising star status has taken a dive in the past month, though I wouldn't call it completely gone yet. Of course if Ohio Democratic party leaders go through with this smear campaign and open these big wounds on Sittenfeld, then his future may as well be gone.

Sittenfeld needs to do the right thing and drop out today. Apologize to Strickland and the OH Dems for staying in as long as he did, respect the party's endorsement, endorse Strickland himself, and leave the race. Regardless of the success level with the upcoming smear campaign, a respectful, even if slightly late, withdrawal, will be much better for his future than a 20-30 point primary loss to Strickland. He has absolutely no chance of winning the primary, and 'embarrassing' Strickland will likely be a net negative for the GE and give Sittenfeld a Teachout-Like image, which is probably not what he's going for.

Even I agree that Strickland would be a better senator than Portman. But Portman is no pushover, and Strickland will need to run a great campaign to defeat him despite what will be Portman's massive use of repackaged ads from the 2010 gubernatorial race. Having a primary challenger will do nothing but hurt Strickland, and it's time for Sittenfeld to drop out.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

This P.G. guy must be the dumbest politician in all of Ohio. In what universe is running from a councilman to a senator a good idea? He should have run for state senate/congress/State Auditor etc first. Now he's going to go down in flames as cannon fodder in the primary.

Not too surprising, considering the democrats literally ran a school board member in Wisconsin last year (burke).

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

How does getting crushed 3-1 in a primary help his career again?

Name recognition!1!!

But it doesn't help that this is likely to be a very low turnout primary. Didn't Strickland also represent an Appalachian district? I don't really see then how Sittenfeld gets protest votes from them (because of soshulist obummer) if Strickland represented them.

Ohio Democratic primaries always have low turnout, but yeah he did used to represent a district that extended from Youngstown on down to the Kentucky border. Strickland will carry Appalachia in the primary in a blowout no matter what.

It wouldn't be worthwhile for Sittenfeld to campaign in Appalachia in the primary anyways. Just to provide some reasons behind this, 1) Democrats there aren't the Democrats who Sittenfeld wants to identify with, 2) He's naturally a bad fit for SE Ohio, 3) He's running against Ted Strickland and 4) The region doesn't supply all that many votes due to weak registration/turnout numbers (for example, in Strickland's 2006 Democratic primary he got roughly only 16-18% of his total overall votes from Southeast Ohio). It might be best for him to avoid Central Ohio as well (that's very solid, unbreakable Strickland territory).

Sittenfeld's best strategy as long as he stays in is to continue campaigning on college campuses with the youth voting block, and to focus on the two regions where he has the strongest potential of doing well (Southwest and Northeast Ohio). Most of his donors and support are coming from SW Ohio (to be expected) and Strickland under-performs all the time up here in NE Ohio with Democratic base votes, so if I were Sittenfeld I would take full advantage of that.

That aside, he has a floor of about 30% and a ceiling of 40% when all's said and done.

He has a floor of 12% and a ceiling of 28%.

If TEACHOUT can get 34%, so can Sittenfeld.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

How does getting crushed 3-1 in a primary help his career again?

Name recognition!1!!

But it doesn't help that this is likely to be a very low turnout primary. Didn't Strickland also represent an Appalachian district? I don't really see then how Sittenfeld gets protest votes from them (because of soshulist obummer) if Strickland represented them.

Ohio Democratic primaries always have low turnout, but yeah he did used to represent a district that extended from Youngstown on down to the Kentucky border. Strickland will carry Appalachia in the primary in a blowout no matter what.

It wouldn't be worthwhile for Sittenfeld to campaign in Appalachia in the primary anyways. Just to provide some reasons behind this, 1) Democrats there aren't the Democrats who Sittenfeld wants to identify with, 2) He's naturally a bad fit for SE Ohio, 3) He's running against Ted Strickland and 4) The region doesn't supply all that many votes due to weak registration/turnout numbers (for example, in Strickland's 2006 Democratic primary he got roughly only 16-18% of his total overall votes from Southeast Ohio). It might be best for him to avoid Central Ohio as well (that's very solid, unbreakable Strickland territory).

Sittenfeld's best strategy as long as he stays in is to continue campaigning on college campuses with the youth voting block, and to focus on the two regions where he has the strongest potential of doing well (Southwest and Northeast Ohio). Most of his donors and support are coming from SW Ohio (to be expected) and Strickland under-performs all the time up here in NE Ohio with Democratic base votes, so if I were Sittenfeld I would take full advantage of that.

That aside, he has a floor of about 30% and a ceiling of 40% when all's said and done.

He has a floor of 12% and a ceiling of 28%.

If TEACHOUT can get 34%, so can Sittenfeld.

Arbitrarily choosing a race for a different office from a different state with very different political dynamics isn't really comparable.

Wulfric's example isn't the best. For a better example, if you look back at Strickland's 2006 Democratic primary race, his opponent Bryan Flannery got 21% of the vote against Strickland. He won that 21% despite jumping in only a few months before the actual primary race, raising just $100K-$200K, and as a result he had no chance to get his name out there with Ohio Democratic voters.

Sittenfeld is a stronger candidate/fundraiser than Flannery was and as opposed to 2006, there's obviously more reluctantly now by some Democratic voters about backing Strickland.

Anything at or below a Flannery performance would require Sittenfeld to not even try to campaign. At the bare minimum, he'll likely get around 30% of the vote.

You're basically the only one feeling more reluctant about supporting Strickland

Because Atlas is totally representative of the OH Dems as a whole. Right

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

I wonder how much the Sittenfeld campaign is paying LeBron.

Not as much as Ed Fitzgerald, but close.

Ugh, really? You guys are honestly just as bad as the anti-Hillary hacks who attack IceSpear for his Hillary fanboyism.

As an anti-Hillary hack, at least I can say that a "Hillary fanboy" makes a modicum of sense to be. The same cannot be said for a Fitzgerald/Sittenfeld hack, though.

You also have to keep in mind though I supported Sittenfeld from the beginning when Sittenfeld had a very good chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

The reason why I'm still a Sittenfeld fanboy (and will write his name in, in the general) is because his views are the best (ex. he addresses the student loan debt and equal rights issues more often and better than the other two do), because I've already donated to him and am campaigning for him, and Sittenfeld would have been a much-needed breath of fresh air to the Senate.

That makes your vote worthless in terms of electing a democrat to the U.S. senate - the more sittenfeld supporters write in his name in the general, the less votes Portman needs to win. You're sounding like you'd actually prefer Portman over Strickland. Wow.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Sittenfield needs to do what is best not just for beating Portman but also for his own political future, which is and continues to be his immediate withdrawal from the race.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

New Poll:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/06/ohio-senate-race-a-toss-up.html


Highlights:

Portman leads Strickland 43/41

Portman leads Sittenfeld 46/28

Strickland leads Sittenfeld 65/13 in the Democratic Primary. Suprisingly, Sittenfeld's best performance is among 'Somewhat Conservative' Primary Voters, where Strickland only leads 37/21. Strickland gets at least 63% of the vote among all other ideologies though, with his biggest margin being among 'Very Liberal' Primary Voters, at 75/13.

Portman leads Fmr. Sec. of State Ken Blackwell 57/24 in a hypothetical primary. Blackwell leads 74/26 among 'Very Liberal' Primary Voters, but Portman is ahead 50/35 with 'Very Conservative' Primary voters, and gets at least 58% with all other ideologies, with his biggest margin being his 62/15 among 'Moderate' Primary Voters.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Sittenfeld misses his financial disclosure deadline.

Disgusting. Fortunately we have a real candidate (Ted Strickand) who is not an incompetent baboon and submitted his financial disclosures in on time.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Strickland applied for a 90-day extension, FWIW.

At least he had the decency to be honest and admit he wouldn't be able to meet the deadline. Sittenfeld missed it without notice and made up ridiculous excuses.

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Yeah, there's no way Strickland is going to win this. He's the Tommy Thompson of this cycle and should have just stayed dignified in retirement. And yes, I'd take Sittenfeld over him.

Thompson overperformed Romney by 2 points despite having faced a nasty primary with some tea party challengers. I forgot you could be optimistic sometimes .

Thompson received the exact same % of the vote as Romney. The only reason the senate race was closer is because third parties did better at the senate level.