First, RABer Daniel Jack Williamson dissects Lorain County Commissioner Ted Kalo’s good old boy politics along with Ted’s corrupt behavior and his support of the Lorain County sales tax increase. This is a must read for all Lorain County voters. Whoever runs against Kalo next year will have a field day with this stuff.

And second, even though I no longer live in Lorain County or am on the county Republican central committee there, I see that the county GOP is just is nutty as when I was involved. They are fighting over who will lose the race for Mayor in the heavily Democratic city of Lorain:

LORAIN — At a Republican Executive Committee meeting this evening, additional precinct committee chairs could be appointed — changing the dynamics of the group that will select Lorain’s interim mayor.

The move is prompting some political insiders to accuse Lorain County Republican Party Chair Robert Rousseau and Lorain area Republican Party Chair David Arredondo of maneuvering to get Arredondo appointed as mayor instead of John Romoser, the party’s mayoral candidate on the November ballot.

The interim mayor will fill the remainder of the term Craig Foltin was elected to until the end of the year. In 2008, the job will be filled by the winner of the November election. Foltin left office Aug. 2 to work at Cuyahoga Community College.

Arredondo had publicly expressed interest in the mayor’s job as recently as late June.

In late July, Foltin mailed a letter to the precinct officials backing Romoser for the interim job, though he had originally supported someone from his office taking over.

Under state law, the city’s Republican precinct committee chairs must choose Foltin’s replacement.

The party has 52 precinct committee chair positions, but only about 30 are filled. At least two precinct committee chairs have resigned recently.

Rousseau said tonight’s meeting is to discuss last year’s election results as well as the 2008 presidential election. He said the meeting is for the approximately 60 county executive committee members.[…]

Arredondo said he’s trying to fill as many vacancies as possible, though he denied any political motivations. He said he’s not even sure that any newly appointed precinct committee chairs would be able to vote on the mayoral issue.

Party officials have yet to call the meeting to select the new mayor, which has also prompted accusations of foot-dragging for political purposes.

State law requires the meeting to take place within 45 days of the mayor leaving office, which would be mid-September.

Arredondo said the party is still trying to determine who — either he or Helen Hurst, the party’s central committee chair — has the authority to call the meeting.

Many people outside of Lorain County probably know Lorain for its fledgling steel industry or from the descriptions of poverty from Toni Morrison’s books (That is, if you were forced to read the same type of liberal crap in school that I was.).

It has always been fascinating to me how Lorain has a Republican Mayor. Craig Foltin is somewhat of a liberal and a staunch opponent of free markets, as I suppose any union-dominated steel town probably wouldn’t elect anything else.

But I know that Arredondo is lying, as this move is absoutely political, and he wants to be appointed as Mayor. In fact, I know that David asked Mayor Foltin to step down much earlier so David could quit his job at Lorain County Community College (He would have to, under the Hatch Act) to be appointed and run as the incumbent. And this sort of arrogance has encouraged some of Arredondo/Rousseau’s supporters to donate to John Romoser. Rosomer, as you might remember, had to be a write-in candidate during the primary because Mayor Foltin waited too long to announce his resignation.

The Lorain County GOP needs to get it’s act together and stop this infighting. The party has been run for years by people who, unfortunately, are more concerned about having a job at the Lorain County Board of Elections than improving the party. And to give you an example of how protective they are of their power over a barely noticeable county GOP, they refused to give me the list of central committee members to me to post on our website back when I was their webmaster. It turns out, the BoE would refuse to give that list to anyone, in violation of Ohio’s sunshine laws, since the Republicans in the BoE also help run the party, and they want to keep as many of the central committee seats as empty. Even the Ken Blackwell for Governor campaign had a tough time getting the central committee list, and Ken was the Secretary of State!

Lorain County has some of the most competitive seats in the Ohio House, and both the 58th District and 57th District, which are now Democrat-held seats, have been recently occupied by conservative Republicans (Jeff Manning, Earl Martin, and Kathleen “broad squad” Walcher). And the 13th Senate Seat, now occupied by Sue Morano, was recently held by Republican Jeff Armbruster of North Ridgeville.

Those three seats are winnable, as they were drawn to be that way. But with the Republicans in the Ohio legislature barely holding onto their majority, the Lorain County GOP must put aside this nonsense and build an organization that can help win back those three critically important seats in the Ohio legislature.