Denise Driehaus Campaign Kickoff

The Denise Driehaus for State Representative Campaign will officially kickoff this weekend with an event in West Price Hill. You can link to her campaign website here: http://www.aryehalex.com/Denise_Driehaus/Denise_Driehaus.html.

She will face Scott Gehring who ran against Steve Driehaus last cycle but was defeated handily, garnering only 33% of the vote. Gehring is no stranger to local political controversy having been fired by Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz in the middle of his campaign in '06 when she caught him campaigning at City Hall on her dime. He then went to work on the losing campaign of Melanie Bates, and was forced to resign as President of the Blue Chip Young Republicans because of it. He hasn't had much going for him since. We would provide a link to the Gehring site but it, like the Chabot site, is still under construction.

We will keep you updated on this race as well as it unfolds............

Chabot Among "Rubber Stamp Elite"

According to The Washington Post, Steve Chabot is above average when it comes to towing the party line. The statistic shows that he has voted how President Bush and top Republicans want him to 90.6% of the time while the average for all other Republicans combined is just above 85%.

On another note, President Bush's approval ratings slipped to 28% this week. If Chabot wishes to continue billing himself as an "independent thinker", he will have to try and distance himself from these numbers.

Chabot Still Plagued by Scandal

It looks like Steve Chabot will have alot of explaining to do once this campaign heats up. Shown here with longtime friend and supporter Ken Blackwell, whose name has been synonymous with corruption since 2004, Chabot's office has been under fire over the last few weeks with charges of corruption and scandal. Many questions were raised several weeks ago when Chabot used his office in Washington to forward campaign e-mails in support of a Republican hopeful from Illinois, an abuse not allowed by Congressional rules. This incident reminded us of the 2006 election, when once again Chabot was caught abusing his Congressional privileges to send campaign materials to Republican households at taxpayers expense.

Now, it seems the company he keeps is coming under fire. Just over a week ago Chabot brought in for a fundraiser Newt Gingrich, who is known infamously not only for his infidelity but also his involvement in the "House Banking Scandal" where he personally wrote 22 bad checks.

Ken Mehlman, former chair of the Republican National Committee as well as Campaign Manager for George W. Bush, is shown at right speaking at Chabot's office last cycle during a rally. During his tenure as White House political director, he allegedly orchestrated the 2002 Phone Jamming Scandal for which co-conspirator James Tobin was later convicted for. Let's not get into his close relationship with President Bush and Dick Cheney, who said last week that he did not care what the American people thought about his policies regarding the war in Iraq.

We expect to see Steve Chabot and his team scrambling hard over the next few months to try and clear his name from the scandals that seem to follow him wherever he goes. Maybe they will find some time in there to get that website up and running!