Main Street

Recall Kasich?

Nineteen states allow the recall of elected officials, and Ohio isn’t one of them. But the disastrous reign of Governor John Kasich has prompted some lawmakers to try and change that.

Reps. Mike Foley and Bob Hagan, both Democrats, plan to introduce legislation this week to allow the recall of elected officials in Ohio, and they aren’t coy about why:

“He’s dividing the state,” Hagan said. “He’s hurting the people in this state and we think that this legislation that will be offered will go to the heart of those constituents and voters who have grown disenchanted with this governor.”
…
“We’re not going to dance around this,” Hagan told reporters at a news conference. “This is in fact about what the governor has done, what the Republicans are doing with one-party rule.”

A spokesman for Governor Kasich called the proposal “gutter politics” and “borderline absurd.” That made me want to make a quick list of other things that are “gutter politics” and “borderline absurd”:

• Governor Kasich tried to sabotage the repeal of Senate Bill 5 by messing with the ballot questions, an attempt that was rebuffed by his own Secretary of State. (Gutter politics.)
• Kasich has used “jobs” and “job creation” as his justification for everything from absurd tax cuts for corporations to Senate Bill 5 itself. Yet, in the last three months under his watch, Ohio has lost 18,000 jobs. (Borderline absurd.)
• In numerous public statements, Kasich has expressed his contempt for public workers. Most notably, he called a police officer who gave him a ticket an “idiot” several times. He followed up with Senate Bill 5, which strips the right to bargain collectively from 350,000 workers, including that police officer he didn’t like so much (Gutter politics and borderline absurd).

In any event, the recall proposal doesn’t have much of a prayer in the GOP-controlled state legislature. There is another option: Ohioans could write the power of recall into the state Constitution by collecting 400,000 signatures from registered voters. With over 714,000 signatures gathered to repeal Kasich’s signature union-busting measure, that might not be much of a stretch.