Ken Blackwell won’t run for US Senate

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s feisty ex-elections chief announced Fri­day that he won’t run in 2012 for the U.S. Sen­ate seat held by Demo­c­rat Sher­rod Brown.

Repub­li­can Ken Black­well made his inten­tions known in an inter­view with The Daily Caller, for which he’s a colum­nist, and later in a brief state­ment on Twit­ter: “I am not run­ning for the United States Senate.”

Polit­i­cal observers who view Black­well as a strong poten­tial match for Brown in a closely divided polit­i­cal state rapidly spread the news across the Web.

Black­well is a for­mer state trea­surer and was Ohio’s sec­re­tary of state dur­ing the con­tentious 2004 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He held a lead in early polling among poten­tial GOP con­tenders to unseat Brown. Polls still favor Brown to retain the seat.

In a tele­phone inter­view with The Asso­ci­ated Press, Black­well said he weighed the Sen­ate bid for 90 days and decided he is in a bet­ter posi­tion to advance his agenda where he is.

“I decided I am blessed by a gra­cious God, a lov­ing fam­ily, and a group of col­leagues that are car­ing and com­pe­tent, and I’m finan­cially com­fort­able,” he said. “I look at what my ambi­tions are in terms of fur­ther­ing an agenda now sharply defined as a constitutional-conservative agenda, and I would pre­fer to do it from an exec­u­tive office as opposed to a leg­isla­tive process where it’s con­stant trad­ing off.”

Since his unsuc­cess­ful run for gov­er­nor in 2006, Black­well has been vis­i­ble nation­ally as a con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor, author and con­tender for chair­man of the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee. His announce­ment leaves for­mer state Sen. Kevin Cough­lin and Trea­surer Josh Man­del in the field of likely Repub­li­can pri­mary contenders.

Ohio Democ­rats cel­e­brated Blackwell’s deci­sion not to run. They had already begun blast­ing him as extreme and built a web­site called Ken Blackwell’s Book Club, fea­tur­ing quotes from his con­ser­v­a­tive writings.

The state Demo­c­ra­tic Party also wasted no time in bash­ing the remain­ing candidates.

“Ohio Repub­li­cans now find them­selves left with two can­di­dates who have done noth­ing to stand up to their party’s efforts to end Medicare as we know it, keep tax breaks for Big Oil, or dis­man­tle Ohio’s middle-class,” said Justin Barasky, the party’s press secretary.

“We leave it to the GOP to decide if they would rather nom­i­nate an eth­i­cally chal­lenged and newly elected trea­surer who promised to serve the full four years of his term, or a do-nothing for­mer state sen­a­tor,” Barasky said.

Man­del, a U.S. Marine vet­eran of Iraq and Afghanistan and a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, has filed paper­work to run for the office but has not pub­licly acknowl­edged he’s pur­su­ing the post. Democ­rats have made an issue of his short tenure.

They have also filed a com­plaint with the Fed­eral Elec­tions Com­mis­sion, alleg­ing infor­ma­tion was improp­erly shared between his state office and his cam­paign. Man­del was quoted in The Blade of Toledo this week call­ing the com­plaint baseless.

Cough­lin issued a state­ment Fri­day call­ing Black­well “a con­ser­v­a­tive hero” who would have been a for­mi­da­ble opponent.

“Ken’s deci­sion strength­ens my resolve to run. I am the proven con­ser­v­a­tive in this race,” Cough­lin said. “I have a record of get­ting things done and the courage to change Wash­ing­ton. To reclaim Amer­ica, our party must cap­ture 12 seats in the United States Sen­ate. But it is not enough for us to just elect 12 Repub­li­cans. We must elect the right Republicans.”

Cough­lin recently ran up against Sum­mit County GOP Chair­man Alex Arshinkoff and lost, join­ing an unsuc­cess­ful bid to retake the party that the pow­er­ful Arshinkoff has built into one of the strongest county par­ties in the country.

Cough­lin hinted at the feud Fri­day, say­ing it won’t stop him.

“Money and the estab­lish­ment can­not com­pete with prin­ci­ple, mes­sage, con­vic­tion and a proven record,” his state­ment said.

For his part, Black­well said he will con­tinue to fight for con­ser­v­a­tive causes through national lead­er­ship orga­ni­za­tions and keep his ambi­tions in check for now. He declined to say whether another run for the Ohio’s governor’s office, cur­rently held by Repub­li­can John Kasich, was in his future.

“My pref­er­ences over four decades of pub­lic life have run toward exec­u­tive lead­er­ship,” he said. “Over the next four to eight years, Kasich has the big enchi­lada wrapped up.”

A native of Cincin­nati, Black­well joked that a vic­tory over Brown would also make him Ohio’s least senior sen­a­tor — after fel­low south­west Ohioan Rob Portman.

“On a more humor­ous note, hav­ing Rob Port­man call me ‘junior’ would be more than I could bear,” Black­well said.

Posted by AP News on Jun 24 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.