After being shutout for every statewide office three consecutive election cycles in a row, the once-moribund Ohio Democratic Party is not only alive, but thriving.

Congressman Sherrod Brown easily defeated incumbent Republican Mike DeWine for U.S. Senate, and Ohio elected Ted Strickland its first Democratic governor in sixteen years in an enormous landslide. Democrat Marc Dann also defeated a giant in Ohio Republican politics, Betty Montgomery, to become Ohio’s first Democratic top cop in twelve years. After a decade of Republican scandal, Dann’s oversight is sorely needed.

In a huge victory, Ohioans also chose Democrat Jennifer Brunner to be the next Secretary of State. You can listen to Jennifer Brunner’s candidate interview with DoubleSpeak here. This means the 2008 presidential election will be conducted without the disenfranchisement and dirty tricks gubernatorial loser Ken Blackwell played with the job against John Kerry in 2004. The Secretary of State is a key official in Ohio as one of 5 members of the Ohio Apportionment Board. This board does Ohio’s Congressional and state legislative redistricting every ten years, and is composed of the Governor, Auditor, Secretary of State, and one legislator of each party. Republican State Representative Mary Taylor squeaked out a victory in the State Auditor’s race, so if redistricting were done today, Democrats would have a 3-2 edge and perhaps be able to undo some of the damage of Republican gerrymandering after the 2000 Census.

Yesterday proved Ohio is very much a purple state that will be hotly contested again in the 2008 presidential election. Democrats are much better prepared to win Ohio in 2008 with Governor Ted Strickland and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner leading the charge.

Rep. Sherrod Brown has beaten Republican incumbent Senator Mike DeWine in Ohio. CNN is reporting the win and we’ll have numbers up soon.

Check out Sherrod on DoubleSpeak.

Check out this YouTube video of Ohio Senator Mike DeWine (R) greeting the voters at a campaign stop in Lorain County.

Sen. DeWine’s rubber stamp has just about dried out. It looks like Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) will defeat him on November 7th. The polls for Rep. Brown look good!

This is what a campaign with momentum looks like in the final days!

As the nation waits with baited breath on November 7 to see if Ohio, America’s quintessential swing state, turns from red to blue, it increasingly looks like frustrated voters may have to wait days before knowing who are the winners of the contests for Governor and U.S. Senate.

Since at least the 2004 presidential election, Ohio has been known for voting practices that would make a backwater banana republic blush. And it looks like despite millions spent on new technology, things just haven’t gotten any better. The primary elections were a disaster, and now that Ohio has a no-excuse law for absentee ballots on the books, county election boards simply do not have the capacity to count the votes in a quick, accurate manner.

The situation is not helped by the fact that J. Kenneth Blackwell, all but certain to suffer a landslide defeat in the governor’s election, refuses to allow counties to scan in the absentee ballots prior to Election Day. The reason for this is simple: Blackwell and his struggling Republican pal Mike DeWine will lose heavily in Ohio’s urban counties, and the longer the results are delayed, the more doubt the GOP can cast on the outcome of the elections.

Blackwell’s self-serving interpretation of the law is an outrage, but with November 7 just around the corner, county election officials have neither the time nor the inclination to make Blackwell do what’s right.

It looks like November 7 could be a banner night for Congressmen Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland. If they win, let’s hope we all know it before Santa gives Karl Rove a lump of coal.

Knowing they are on the verge of suffering massive election losses at every level of government, the Republicans have reached the point where, monkey-like, in many campaigns they are simply flinging their own waste at the wall and hoping something sticks.

It would obviously be impossible to chronicle every ad of this caliber in one brief blog post. Nor would every negative ad qualify; political realism dictates that many ads from both sides will be riddled with remarkable truth-stretching. We speak now only of ads that contain outright lies or logic so laughably flawed that it would get one expelled from a first-year philosophy course at any decent university.

One prime example is a recent ad run by the NRSC claiming Ohio Senate candidate, Rep. Sherrod Brown, hadn’t paid his unemployment taxes in 13 years. And although Mike DeWine improbably told Ohioans to “read his lips,” (always a good idea for Republican politicians), the ads were false and TV stations pulled them shortly before the NRSC did. This ad was so egregious it earned DeWine the appellation of “Mud-Loving Mike DeWine” from the Dayton Daily News.

But our favorite comes from Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional district, where the NRCC has engaged in bizarre flights of fantasy to discredit the honorable life of businessman and physician, Dr. Steve Kagen. The first claim was that Kagen was a big bully for forcing patients who stiffed him to pay up; as The Capital Times’ Joel McNally noted, this is surely a novel argument coming from Republicans, who have otherwise rarely been known to side with the Jean Valjeans of this world.

When that didn’t work, Republicans have settled for trying to impugn Steve Kagen’s character using the tried-and-true trickery of guilt by association. Since Steve Kagen’s lawyer has done criminal law work, says the NRCC, Kagen’s evil-doing mind surely holds a vast reservoir of sympathy for serial killers and rapists. This claim is of course preposterous, but is an excellent sign of how desperate the GOP is and why it must lose this November.

There’s blood in the water for Republicans. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times has a piece this morning outlining the Republicans’ new strategy for 2006: stop the bleeding! Republicans have historically had the financial advantage leading up to elections and this has allowed them to stay competitive and fight for all seats throughout the country.

While they still have the financial edge, it seems that the GOP is looking to cut its losses and and stop the Democratic onslaught. This strategy will most likely have a significant impact on Sherrod Brown in Ohio where he is beginning to pull away from Senator Mike DeWine.

From the NYTimes:

Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

The decision to effectively write off Mr. DeWine’s seat, after a series of internal Republican polls showed him falling behind his Democratic challenger, is part of a fluid series of choices by top leaders in both parties as they set the strategic framework of the campaign’s final three weeks, signaling, by where they are spending television money and other resources, the Senate and House races where they believe they have the best chances of success.

Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states — Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia — while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage, party officials said Sunday. Republicans also said they would run advertisements in New Jersey this week to test the vulnerability of Senator Robert Menendez, one of the few Democrats who appear endangered.

To read the rest of the NYTimes article click here.

This thing is FAR from over and now is the time to get to work to ensure that Democrats capitalize on this momentum.

Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) is going to be defeated by Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in under 30 days.

Rep. Brown has been hit hard by the GOP with ads that are misleading. DeWine even had his ad people doctor photos of the World Trade Center to add more drama to the 30-second spot.

Today, Brown hit back with another really good ad. Check it out.

Stay tuned for DoubleSpeak’s interview with Rep. Brown - It will be up shortly.

Below is a clever ad that’s currently running in Ohio. It’s called “Together.”