Steve Israel's Anti-Choice/Anti-Gay Conservative Candidate In Ohio, Jennifer Garrison, Will Now Face A Populist Primary Challenger

Inauthentic in every way

Steve Israel made a lot of really bad choices this cycle. His Jump Start program is a compendium of most of the worst, most reactionary corporate shills running as Democrats this year. Not all of them, but almost all of them are not worth voting for even against Republicans. Remember, the lesser of two evils is still evil. And several of his candidates are Republicans and have just switched their registration for sheer opportunism and careerism. One of his favorite candidates is Jennifer Garrison in eastern Ohio, all the way from the southern suburbs of Youngstown down along the West Virginia border into Scioto County across the Ohio River from Kentucky. It's a very Republican part of the state-- Obama only won 43% against Romney in OH-06, third worst of Ohio's 16 districts-- and Israel's strategy was to find a Democrat even more conservative than the Republican. That's been the story of Jennifer Garrison's miserable political career-- out-rightwinging the Republicans. She won her first office by attacking a Republican for being too pro-gay. She's an anti-Choice fanatic and opposed to just about every core value Democrats stand for. Israel has lied to his House colleagues about her and persuaded many of them to donate to her campaign. Some are now fuming. He got both Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi to do fundraisers for her. Now she's going to have to spend that money trying to win a primary against a real Democrat, Greg Howard.

In the 4th quarter, Garrison-- with massive help from Israel, Hoyer and Pelosi only managed to take in $102,031. She has an inadequate $134,298 in the bank. In the same time period, incumbent Bill Johnson took in$183,466 and now has $650,942 in the bank. His party is united behind him and he has no primary challenger. Israel shouldn't be playing in this primary and wasting scarce Democratic resources on a PVI R+8 district Democrats can't win anyway. Yesterday, the Athens News reported that Greg Howard has officially filed his petitions and is now a candidates "declaring his intention to press for an overhaul in the American economy because, he said, the country currently fails to provide many citizens full employment at a living wage." He laid out a classic, straight-forward progressive campaign for the Marietta Times: "I've not held political office before, but our current elected representatives are working for special interests like large corporations, not for the people they represent. And this area's economy needs to be a lot better."

Howard alleged that Johnson is blocking economic reforms that help average Americans.

"I will push for a substantial increase in the minimum wage and the retraining of unemployed workers," Howard said, adding that it is "critical to extend unemployment compensation for the long-term unemployed."

Ohio's 6th District includes all or parts of Athens, Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Gallia, Guernsey, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson, Lawrence, Mahoning, Meigs, Monroe, Muskingham, Noble, Scioto, Tuscarawas and Washington counties, and runs along the eastern border of the state. The district includes the two southeastern-most townships in Athens County.

Howard's release added that he supports a U.S. Constitutional amendment to abolish the controversial Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. the FCC, calling it an "abomination." Howard said that while corporations have economic value, they should not be allowed to dominate American political life.

The release from Howard's campaign stated that he is a member of the Meigs County Democratic Central Committee, and comes from a family of union pipefitters. Howard said he graduated with a B.S. in civil engineering from Ohio State University, and has had extensive experience as a construction engineer on large projects including power, petrochemicals and hazardous materials remediation in several states.

…"It is time to have money created as a public asset rather than as public debt. Monetary reform can pave the way to job-creating investment in the nation's infrastructure, and could ultimately result in the balancing of the federal budget and the paying off of the national debt," Howard said in his release. "It would also rein in the 'too big to fail, too big to jail' Wall Street banks, whose business practices put us into the economic slump that we are in currently."

Israel tells his batch of conservative mystery meat candidates to use the word "results" and to say "Congress is broken" instead of talking about a legislative agenda or about issues. All his zombie candidates parrot those moronic phrases. Here's a short contentless, policy-free, process interview Garrison did with Roll Call in November. The most anti-gay politician in Ohio, she answered the question about her homophobia by trying to misled people about her putrid record. And she told Obama to keep out of OH-06 during the campaign.



If conservative voters want someone who stands for right-wing values, they can comfortably vote for Bill Johnson and have no need turning to Jennifer Garrison. At least Greg Howard will be offering a genuine alternative vision for the district and the country. This is what Alan Grayson had to say about these kinds of races: