Disgraceful: Rep. Bob Ney’s abrupt announcement yesterday that he would not seek re-election in Ohio’s 18th District was followed immediately by word that state Sen. Joy Padgett would replace him on the ballot.
Padgett will face Democrat Zack Space, a charismatic young lawyer and city official from Dover, in November.
Ney’s decision comes after months of speculation about his connections with disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But Padgett has an unseemly skeleton in her own closet that may follow her onto the national stage, if she wins Ney’s seat in their Republican-leaning district.
In 2004, Padgett won her senate seat in a hotly contested race against former Hezbollah hostage Terry Anderson, a Democrat and ex-Marine. Instead of fighting fair and dealing with facts, of course, Padgett took the GOP’s patented easy way out and attacked Anderson by falsely impugning his character:
During her race against Terry Anderson, Padgett accused Anderson of being a member of the “Blame America crowd”, and campaign fliers showed a photograph of Anderson in a meeting with a leader of Hezbollah.
The photos were taken when Anderson went back to Beirut many years after he’d been freed and confronted his former captors. The fact that he was there to challenge his terrorist abductors did not matter to Padgett, of course. Her campaign used the photos to cast Anderson in the most damaging possible light:
The attack ads against Anderson have been in mailings and on TV and radio. At a League for Women Voters debate last week, Anderson walked off the stage, refusing to participate. “The first time I met Padgett she said, ‘I run a clean campaign,’ and I said, ‘Good, let’s do that.’ I have attacked her votes . . . never attacked her personally. . . . She attacked me, twisting my campaigns. The last piece, I couldn’t accept it.
“The picture,” he continued, referring to the photo of himself shaking hands with the Hezbollah official, “is one of the guys who kidnapped me, who held me for seven years, who chained me and blindfolded me. I went back to Lebanon with a CNN news crew and looked him up and put him on camera and asked him, Why did you do this?
“She now says I am an apologist for terrorists.That’s sheer nonsense. It’s offensive. I’ve just about had enough.”
Anderson was working as an Associated Press reporter in Beirut when he was taken hostage in 1985 by Hezbollah Shiites. He was held for six years and nine months — one of the longest capitivities of the Reagan era.
It is alarming that Republicans like Joy Padgett would deploy such dirty tricks, but it is even more unnerving to think that Ohio voters are stupid enough to fall for them.
- The Stakeholder has more on Padgett’s sleazy associations.
Wow,
Another scumbag Repuglicken wins by slinging the manure, Fatso Joyless Pageant should take a look in the mirror some time, herself. Of course how could fatso possibly comprehend being locked up for a 6 1/2 years living on bread and water and constantly being threatened with your life. This while our “shining light on the hill,” Ronald Raygun does nothing to get this hostage released.
Buckeyes just love fatso cowardly manure slingers, don’t they?
FIGHT BACK!!!!!!!!
Label these Right wing Republicans for what they are.
— ignoring Bin Laden
— sending someone’s son or daughter to die for corporate profits not American national security.
— helping increase terrorism
— Constitution haters.
(and on and on and on.)
Once you’ve established YOUR FRAME OF THEM, then use the facts and details to back it up.
What is it with Ohio-18?
First they send Ney, one of the most corrupt of REPUBLICANS to Congress, and now they are running another “swift-boater” to replace HIM with an even MORE REACTIONARY BIGOT to set in the Ohio Congressional Delegation right next to that OTHER great example of Self-righteously-Bigoted-Fundamentalism, “Screaming-Mean- Jean Whatsername?
Boy is Ohio in deep doo-doo, if THIS is the best they can do!
If voters In Oh-18 District really want change in Ohio and the country, they will vote against the status quo and Joy Padgett who is even more extreme than Bob Ney. She will push all the Hot Button Issues while her District wallows in the malaise of the rust belt. She is Bob Ney with another face. With this Republican dominated house having a 25 per cent approval rating, people are saying “Throw the bums out”. Now it is time for citizens of the 18th to throw their bum out!
Not all Buckeyes support steaming piles of crap like Ney and Padgett. I’ve lived in Ohio my whole life and I remember the good old days when we had real representation with Glenn and Metzenbaum, not these venal, cut-throat, for-sale-to-the-highest-bidder, immoral, sleazebuckets we’re stuck with now (thanks to Diebold). From freedom fries (yes, Bob Ney signed right on to that ridiculous waste of taxpayers’ money) to swiftboating a remarkably courageous man, I can honestly say I’m enduring government without representation, because these miserable excuses for human beings do not represent me, or my fond recollection of what Ohio was, and what I fiercely hope will be again. There have to be people willing to represent the citizens of this country with the understanding that they are serving us, rather than helping themselves to whatever they can grab.
There are NO depths to which Republicans will not sink because for them, the end justifies the means.
Note to Marthe48:
John Glenn was a hero until he got caught up in the 1989 Lincoln Savings Bank Scandal (along with John McCain et al). Glenn had a minor role so he was re-elected.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig.
A Padgett pig.