Steve Austria, today, writing in the DDN, denied that he is mediocre and listed legislative accomplishments to attempt to prove his point. Austria is the Republican candidate to represent Ohio’s 7th District in the US Congress, to replace retiring Republican, David Hobson.

Austria’s article responded to the DDN’s prior endorsement of Austria’s Democratic opponent, Sharen Neuhardt. The DDN’s October 17 editorial urged its readers to choose Neuhardt saying, “Neuhardt is the smarter, bolder choice for 7th District,” and warned that if Austria is elected this year, the 7th District is likely to be stuck with him. The DDN wrote, “If the voters of the 7th District choose Sen. Austria, they are settling for mediocrity, quite possibly on a long-term basis.“

The newspaper seems to be encouraging Republicans in the 7th District, rather than settle for mediocrity, to reject Austria and to use the next two years to find a stronger, more imaginative Republican — one who would be worthy of support for a long career.

Austria in his ads emphasizes that he is “conservative” and accuses Neuhardt of being a “liberal trial lawyer with extreme views.” But the DDN in its editorial endorsement said Neuhardt is in the “mainstream” and, in fact, in 2006 voted for incumbent congressman, Republican Dave Hobson.

Austria makes a big deal in his TV ads that he is all in favor of making Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy permanent. The biggest beneficiary of that tax cut, by far, was incomes in excess of $250,000. Austria brags that in the Ohio Assembly he helped pass Ohio’s 2005 Tax Reduction Act, but, again doesn’t say that this tax cut disproportionately benefited top incomes. The 2005 law reduced personal income taxes by $2.2 billion each year. What Austria doesn’t say in his ad is that Ohio’s 2005 law, that he helped construct, gave 26% of this big tax cut to a very small group of taxpayers — to incomes in excess of $340,000, averaging about $650,000.

The original DDN editorial that rejected Austria had two parts. The second part used a strong word in the headline — “shameless” — to describe Austria’s attacks on Neuhardt for befriending a Rwandan refugee, and suggests that Austria is engaging in “gutter politics of the most despicable sort.” Austria likes to use the word “harboring,” but the DDN defends Neuhardt’s actions in helping this refugee and shames Austria for making her generosity in doing so a matter of political attack.

The DDN says, “Sen. Austria points to the case as symbolic of the country’s immigration problem. Not even close. This isn’t about people crossing the southern border in pursuit of jobs. This country’s policy of providing asylum to people who face persecution — bureaucratic as the process is — speaks to our sense of humanity. Sen. Austria needs to display that same sense of decency.”

Here is an exchange between Austria and Neuhardt, during their debate, about the Rwandan refugee:

Martin Gottlieb in his DDN article yesterday, piqued my interest in 2nd Dist Congresswoman, Jean Schnidt. Gottlieb quoted Elvis –”it’s now or never” — and said that in three area Republican congressional districts, Democrats have a chance. Gottlib wrote, “Schmidt has been an exceptionally weak candidate. She became notorious for an absurd name-calling incident in Congress, then was found to be inflating her educational attainments and passing off generic Republican material as something she had written. As a result, she almost lost last time to Democrat Victoria Wulsin, a doctor.”

“Mean Jean”

To find out more about “Mean Jean,” as Schmidt is often referred to, to find out what this “name-calling incident” was all about, I found a helpful web-site, paid for by Dr. Wulsin’s campaign, that explains Gottlieb’s comments about Schmidt. The web-site is called Embarrassed By Schmidt.

The name calling incident refers to a one minute House speech by Schmidt that put the House of Representatives in an uproar — many Boos. In that minute, Schmidt criticized a fellow congressman, John Murtha, and used the term “coward,” saying she had a message from a Colonel Dann Bop: “He asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”

After the incident Colonel Bop issued a statement denying that he ever made such a statement and that he would never call a fellow marine a “coward.”

Later, Schmidt asked for her remarks to be stricken from the record.

The Embarassed by Schmidt site also shows that Schmidt repeatedly claimed to have two college degrees, rather than one, and that this became an issue in her primary campaign. It also shows that how she copied someone else’s written work and put her name on it.

Schmidt votes are anti-progressive, more so, according to the web-site Progressive Punch, than fellow Republicans Turner and Hobson. I wrote here, that Progressive Punch shows John Boehner’s progressive score at 2.64%, Jean Schmidt score at 4.12%, Hobson’s score at10.52%, and Mike Turner’s score at 10.93%.

Schmidt has two opponents in her race, Democrat Victoria Wulsin and Independent David Krikorian. Recently, Schmidt was in the news because she was hit by a car while jogging. In cases like this, there are important things to be aware of when it comes to personal injury claims. Krikorian’s disdain for Schmidt was shown in his initial reaction to the news of Schmidt’s accident. Krikorian initially showed doubt that the accident ever happened and indicated that he felt Schmidt was faking for the sake of publicity. When it was later shown that Schmidt was actually injured, Krikorian changed his comments.

Here is Schmidt’s one minute House speech that caused the uproar: