I’m having a Women For Zimmann event at my house at the end of the month. We think she’s a strong candidate and I like her personally. I would have a beer with this woman, if I drank beer, which I don’t. If Obama and Brown do well at the top of the ticket we think maybe Angela can beat Mr. Latta:
The challenger to U.S. Rep. Bob Latta’s re-election in Ohio’s 5th Congressional District said she introduced herself to a United Auto Workers picnic Sunday as “a mom and foster mom, an engineer, a professor at Bowling Green, and a pastor,” then proceeded to chide the incumbent Republican from Bowling Green for his 2009 vote against the auto-industry bailout.
Angela Zimmann, the Democratic party candidate, said she emphasized the automotive industry’s importance to Ohio and support of middle-class families and protection of workers’ rights during her speech to about 50 people at the annual UAW Civil Rights Picnic in Powertrain Park, next to General Motors Co.’s transmission plant in northwest Toledo.
“It’s truly amazing that Bob Latta talks about bringing jobs to northwest Ohio when he voted against your auto industry jobs. My opponent continues to vote against your hard work,” Ms. Zimmann said.
“When you vote against the auto industry in Ohio, you have no right to be a representative here. Any representative from Ohio should stand with the auto industry. That’s the bottom line,” she said.
Mr. Latta rejected the idea that he does not stand with the auto industry.
“The auto industry plays a big role in the economy here, and we need to make sure it remains vibrant,” he said by phone when reached after the picnic.
Ms. Zimmann also argued that Mr. Latta’s policies have caused northwest Ohio to lose manufacturing jobs to outsourcing. “My opponent is very interested in preserving tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs. It’s completely un-American,” she said.
“Companies are sending jobs overseas, while our people here are standing in the unemployment line.”
Mr. Latta said in response: “I’m not sure what she’s talking about, honestly. I’ve been voting to make sure we have a tax code that will work, and right now we don’t.”
He has held the 5th District seat since December, 2007, when he won a special election to succeed Paul Gillmor (R., Old Fort).Mr. Gillmor died in office.Mr. Latta has twice won re-election.
But because of this year’s redrawing of the district’s boundaries to include 165,000 voters formerly from neighboring districts, Ms. Zimmann says she is confident she can unseat him.Most of the “new” voters were formerly in the 9th District, the stronghold of U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo).
“It’s a very different district than it was in the past. He’s really half of an incumbent,” she said “Now the district has a half percent Democratic lean.”
Mr. Latta dismissed this statement.”My district is solidly Republican,” he said.
The morning of the Women for Zimmann event, I’m backing this rabbit in the 4-H pet rabbit competition:
You can’t tell from the picture, but he’s 6’2” with piercing blue eyes. On the downside, he’s a Dutch, so a foreigner.
BGinCHI
I wish her well, Kay. I do think good candidates will drive Tea Party nuts back out of Congress. Think Kathy Hochul.
They need to stand firm on the traditionally strong Dem issues, like the auto industry as you mention. Working class values are going to make a comeback, mark my words.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Yay for Angela Zimmann. And I hope that lovely Dutch dude wins his class.
Betty Cracker
Awwwww, bunny! Good luck to Ms. Zimmann. Sounds like she’d be a fine replacement for Latta.
JGabriel
Toledo Blade:
__
Oh, for criminy’s sake, how hard is it to check that? The Blade just does a she says/he says for an EASILY checked fact?
Reporting in this country is really getting lazy and useless.
.
schrodinger's cat
Kay@top
Bunny is a cutie, want!
kindness
Jon Stewart had a good skit going with Ryan last night then let it all fall apart as he was hypnotized by Ryan’s piercing blue eyes. Yea….OK, I get it. He was mocking the MSM which needs it. But the skit was really funny up until that point. I was happier mocking Ryan.
Comrade Mary
As a Canadian, am I legally allowed to support the bunny? (I never had a bunny of my own, but my guinea pig Angie was Dutch.)
BGinCHI
You should hate David Stockman. He cut this country’s economy off at the knees in the 1980s. But at least he admitted that it was a sham, that Reagan trickle down business.
So please go read this awesome takedown of Ryan and the GOP “plan” to run this country into the shitter.
You can disagree with this guy, but he has the current GOP’s number.
Beauzeaux
“a mom and foster mom, an engineer, a professor at Bowling Green, and a pastor”
Oh how I long for the day when a female candidate doesn’t have to introduce herself first as “a mom and foster mom” and skip past those unfavorable points “an engineer, a professor” so as to wind up with the good stuff “a pastor”.
Does anyone think that any of those things make one a better candidate? Is being a “mom” make her more qualified than that dread creature, the “non-mom”?
And to wind up with “pastor” is just shilling for the god-botherers.
Now I don’t know Angela Zimmann and she might well be a splendid person and a decent candidate. But that self-description is a little nauseating and a lot pandering.
MikeJ
Mr. Snuggles has never had to meet a payroll! He doesn’t know what his policies will do to small animals!
BGinCHI
@Beauzeaux: Good point, but if moms ran this country it would be a better place, with less wars and more compassion. Especially if my mom was in charge.
Hi mom!
Violet
@BGinCHI:
I think the period where we worship banksters, plutocrats and Gordon Gekkos is drawing to a close. Won’t go away completely, but I think the pendulum is swinging the other way.
Hypatia's Momma
@Beauzeaux:
Yeah, no kidding. What’s odd is that you’ll encounter other women who will expect you to vote based on that description alone.
Elizabelle
@BGinCHI:
I think you’re right about working class values making a comeback.
And good on Kay for hosting a Zimmann event, and to Zimmann for running.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Blatant lying seems to be required these days in order to add (R., Old Fart) after your name. Ryan is now denying his worshipping at the Ayn Rand altar, even when his. admiration. is. on. tape.
AHH onna Droid
@Hypatia’s Momma: I don’t moms per se, especially working moms who know what it means to struggle to pay bills and care deeply about quality public education.
Now these mommy bloggers and tea party traitors can go fuck themselves.
hep kitty
bunneh bunneh bun-bun!
Steve
@Beauzeaux: Maybe being a mom isn’t a very important part of her life or self-identity, in which case I agree with you that it’s pandering to mention it. But maybe it is, in which case I don’t see what the problem is.
Hypatia's Momma
@AHH onna Droid:
My mom was a working mom who didn’t receive child support from my father (because he was an asshole), leading to a mighty struggle to obtain food and clothing for the four of us, and I don’t think that qualifies her to be an elected politician. Which is the point: being a mom shouldn’t be the FIRST THING on your list of qualifications, nor should it be the sole reason for someone’s vote.
PurpleGirl
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937: He’s had at least one (public) letter from the Conference of Bishops and a visit from the Nuns’ Bus Tour to take him to task for that admiration of Ayn Rand as incompatible with the Roman Catholic concepts of economic justice. They didn’t like the budget plan and what it would do to people.
hep kitty
@Beauzeaux:
THANK YOU! I was really offended by yet another teen mom show wherein unwise decisions are celebrated as long as they involve having a baby.
No one has ever made me feel special for not having kids, one of the most unselfish decisions a woman can make because of the enormous pressure to get preggers just like all your friends – everyday you are bombarded with messages that because, you didn’t have children, you are not a real woman. Not even normal, really.
Women get absolutely frantic when they can’t conceive and resort to fertility clinics, if they can afford it.
You don’t get any kudos for deciding not to have kids bc you don’t believe you can provide for them, either financially or emotionally. Somehow that makes you unnatural instead of smart. You’re supposed to throw caution, have a kid or 3 and assume everything is going to work itself out just fine.
We have regressed so far from the 70’s when we, as women learned to define ourselves as more than mothers/wives/homemakers. What happened to all that?
Kay
@JGabriel:
She carries a folded up map in her pocket with the new numbers, which she will happily show to doubters. I’m sure the Blade reporter saw it, because everyone does :)
There are people who are put up as (essentially) placeholders in hard to win districts, which is part of the now near-mythical Fifty State Strategy, so necessary (run in every race) and I’m fine with that as long as everyone knows the deal.
Angela has to fight that perception, that she’s the designated loser, and I think she’s right.
I think it’s ACTUALLY somewhat competitive. I have seen The Map!
They probably thought Latta was safe because he’s second generation, his father was in the House, so they cut him a slightly more competitive district to help some other more struggling Republican. I don’t know that she’ll win, but I think she has a shot.
hep kitty
Ok, sorry I got a little off point to unload personal grievances!
Roger Moore
@PurpleGirl:
And I’ll take their views seriously if they treat his views on throwing granny under the bus as seriously as they treat Obama’s views on abortion.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Beauzeaux:
Yes, because when women are forced to conform to societal expectations by putting “mom” first on their resume, we need to berate those women for conforming and demand that they stop being so weak. Good strategy.
Elizabelle
Zimmann’s running in the world Republicans have made for us.
I agree that this country should be fine with electing an atheist. However, see above.
Re having a family: I remember 1985 in Virginia, when never married Mary Sue Terry was running for Attorney General (and won; first woman to gain statewide office in the Old Dominion).
Her opponent talked about her “five ringless fingers.”
Here’s an interesting article, from 1993, about George Allen (“Macaca”)’s campaign treasurer trying to resurrect the “Allen’s better than Mary Sue Terry because he’s married” bromide that year, when Allen and Terry squared off for governor.
Allen first agreed, then backpedaled. But dog whistle sent.
Violet
@Elizabelle: Sarah Palin vilified one of her opponents in one of her pre-Governor elections for keeping her own name instead of taking her husband’s name after marriage. Palin suggested that her opponent wasn’t really married.
Linda Featheringill
@Kay:
Did Latta vote for the Ryan budget? Yes? Then go after him!
Jerzy Russian
Watch out for those Dutch! They put mayonnaise on their French Fries (I don’t think they call them Freedom Fries), use the letter ‘j’ as a vowel, smoke pot, provide healthcare for everyone, and kill their grandmothers.
Kay
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
She’s actually not, I think, relying excessively on momishness campaigning. She’ll happily also talk about being an engineer, if that matters.
I hesitate to even say it, but she might also be a farmer. I’m not clear on that part.
Kay
@Linda Featheringill:
She just hammers him on the auto rescue. I really don’t get that. I think it should be disqualifying, given his district.
How do Republicans get away with this shit?
Violet
@Kay:
Same way they have for decades. Media lets them and people don’t seem to care. I do think the tide is turning.
Elizabelle
@Violet:
Ah, that’s right. “Show me the marriage certificate.”
gvg
Am I the only one who noticed she said mom and FOSTER mom? As a foster mom I can tell you, it’s likely to have an impact on her votes. I’ve only been one for a couple of years, but it will impact my votes the rest of my life. a lot of ordinary people have no idea what the system is like. Of course I’ve also learned it’s not universal. Every stat is somewhat different and with the stupid privatization fad, even different parts of the state have a different quality of result. A lot of government reforms and proposals have dire impact on the lives of the helpless. Religion and personal predjudices interfere with good programs…
Mom/foster mom isn’t relevant to every issue but some that she will have to vote on, but some of them it is.
Yutsano
ITZ A WABBIT!!
I find that line of Latta’s so supremely arrogant. As if he just expects to show up and the district will automatically vote for him unanimously just by virtue of his political affiliation. I believe the term I’m looking for is, “WANKER”.
WereBear
Seconded.
We will really get somewhere as a civilization when only the people who really want to be parents; are.
My own life has been informed by that of my mother, who was raised in a conservative religious tradition that gave her no choice. Four kids later, she loves us and I know she did her best; but this was not a life she would have freely chosen.
Would that have made me “vanish”? Hardly. In my own, freely chosen, religious belief, my soul would have been born in another body.
And perhaps all involved would have been happier.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Likewise, I don’t have a problem with her putting that in the list; all the moms in the audience, like it or not, will be wondering.
Kay
@Yutsano:
It seemed arrogant to me, too, and a stupid thing to say, because he’s a Right wing lunatic who ran deceptively as a “moderate” in a bad year for Republicans, but is now a Tea Partier.
I don’t think incumbents are supposed to say their districts are “Republican” or “Democratic”. The line is “I represent ALL the people in the district.”
PurpleGirl
@Roger Moore: I agree with you. He walked back a bit from Ayn Rand but he still believes in hurting other people.
efroh
Love your posts, Kay. I grew up in Maumee, so it’s nice to get a first-hand report of what the political conditions are like for progressives on the ground in NW Ohio. My parents who still live in Maumee are unfortunately Republicans (although I suspect my mother might be voting Democratic and just not telling my dad), so we have agreed to not discuss politics so we can still get together at the holidays with a minimum of fights and sarcasm.
So, thanks for all your posts – I am finding them very interesting (and uplifting).
asiangrrlMN
Wow. That guy (Latta) is an ass. I hope Zimmann kicks him all the way to the curb and back. The bunneh is cute as hell – waaaay cuter than Paul Ryan! Good luck, Bunneh!
The mom thing – I don’t mind that she said that. It probably is a big part of her life. I *do* mind the fact that if I were to run, I couldn’t say I was happily not a mom and that it was the best decision I ever made in my life.