Strickland: Come cleanAccording to Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, Ohio moral conservatives are beginning to answer a question that Rep. Ted Strickland, Democratic candidate for governor, has yet to answer:
If Ted Strickland knew that his 1998 campaign manager had a police report documenting criminal sexual offenses with minors, why didn't Strickland do something about it?
I have now thoroughly documented that at the end of the 1998 campaign, Strickland was sent police reports that documented 1994 criminal offenses in which his '98 campaign manager had committed sexual violations in the presence minors. Specifically, the Athens Police Department report now in this writer's possession charges the former campaign manager with driving to Ohio elementary schools, enticing young girls to his vehicle, then opening his door in order to expose himself and "pleasure himself" in their open view.
According to an anonymous e-mail, "Ohio Concerned Citizen" writes:
The prior criminal history of (the named 1998 campaign manager) was brought to the congressman's attention in 1998. It appears that the congressman was given a copy of the police report from Belpre, Ohio. The congressman claims to have asked the man about it and the man denied the charges were true. What the congressman has not explained is why he did not check further to see if in fact the charges were true. A simple public records request in Ohio would have turned up the case and the conviction.
Mark Mezibov, the former campaign manager's current attorney, has confirmed that police records in Belpre, Ohio, did exist in the Washington County Sheriff's Office. Mezibov also confirmed that the Athens Police Department records identifying the former campaign manager are also valid. The charges in Belpre were ultimately dismissed. The former campaign manager pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge in Athens, Ohio, and the court recommended psychological counseling.
Both sets of criminal records were available in 1998, had Ted Strickland bothered to search for them. According to Mezibov, the records in Washington County were sealed only in 2002, as a result of the former campaign manager's request, and the records in Athens, Ohio, were expunged, also as a result of a 2002 request by the former campaign manager.
According to Mezibov, his client never disclosed to Strickland when he took the job in 1997 to be Strickland's campaign manager that he had a conviction for sexual misconduct in the presence of minors When Strickland confronted him in 1998 about the criminal records his office had received anonymously, the former campaign manager lied. Said Mezibov: "My client was embarrassed and scared. He didn't know what to do. So, he lied. He told Strickland the charges weren't true."
"We will probably never know what the truth is about what the campaign manager and Strickland said to one another," John Willke, M.D., president of the Life Issues Institute, Inc., in Ohio, told me. According to Willke:
No experienced manager is going to take an employee's word at face value when the employee is under this kind of stress. If Strickland didn't call up the police departments to see if there was something to these charges, then he probably didn't want to know. Or, even worse, Strickland might have known the truth all along, but he chose not to care. My point is that we don't have straight answers from Strickland – and he had better start giving them to us right now.
When Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Flannery brought up these charges against Strickland in the primary, the congressman could dodge the bullet largely because Flannery was working from redacted police reports on which the name and identifying information of the sex offender had been blacked out. Strickland never came forth and admitted then that the person in question was his 1998 campaign manager. Nor did he openly indicate he had been aware of the police reports since he was provided them anonymously at the end of the 1998 campaign and that he now knew the police reports were true.
Even when GOP candidate Ken Blackwell brought up the charges in the last gubernatorial debate, Strickland chose to act offended, as if Blackwell was "going in the gutter" by bringing these charges into the open. Now, Strickland can no longer weave and duck, seeking to deflect the blame. The name of the offender in question has been published, and the offender's lawyer has admitted that the material facts are true, including the campaign celebration trip Strickland took with his then-campaign manager to Italy, without bringing Strickland's wife along.
The Ohio newspapers and Democratic Party have been equally disappointing, choosing to participate in the Strickland cover up rather than pushing the Strickland camp to explain why the congressman did not find out in 1998 that the criminal charges against his campaign manager were true. When the issue of sexual misconduct with minors involved Republicans, the Ohio newspapers and the Ohio Democratic Party were all over the "party of corruption" theme. Why is Ted Strickland not under similar scrutiny?
According to Phil Burress, the answer is simple:
It's a matter of fairness. For that reason the newspapers in Ohio and the Democratic Party are not going to apply the same standards that they used when they demanded that Rep. Dennis Hassert step down. Speaker Hassert claims that he did not know. Mr. Strickland claims he did not know, and after looking at the facts it is hard to believe. So, I ask, why are we treating these two situations differently? The election is not the issue with me – children and fairness are the issues.
The next test will come with the Ohio Elections Commission. Attorney Scott Pullins of Mount Vernon, Ohio, has announced that he plans to file charges with the Ohio Elections Commission against Ted Strickland, arguing that Strickland has lied in an attempt to cover up the scandal with his 1998 campaign manager.
The end chapter of this drama will be written on Election Day. But as the drama plays out, Strickland can expect to have an increasingly difficult time from Ohio's Christian moral conservatives if he continues not to face the issue directly and honestly.
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