Dems dispute party faction’s validity

Now that Republicans in Columbus elective offices are a rarer sight than Bigfoot, incumbent party-backed Democrats are turning their attention to challengers from within their own party. They say their opponents from the Yes We Can group aren’t really Democrats.

But the Yes We Can camp — with five candidates who made it through the primary Tuesday to compete on the fall ballot for Columbus City Council and school board seats — say that charge is “blatantly false and openly dishonest.”

“Part of why we’re running is not only to shape the future of the city, but this is partly about shaping the future of the Democratic Party,” said Will Petrik, a Yes We Can leader who is running for city council. “We think our whole political system is fundamentally broken right now and we need to get money out of politics.”

Backers of Democratic incumbents on the ballot began circulating the notion that Yes We Can candidates are really members of a national group called the Working Families Party. In Tuesday’s primary, no Republicans advanced to the general election ballot in November for the Columbus Board of Education, and only one Republican — a 19-year-old — edged into the last open slot on the fall ballot for Columbus City Council.

That leaves November races for the school board and city council with 11 professed Democrats — six incumbents and five from Yes We Can — among the 12 ballot slots.

Some observers, including Dave Dobos, a Republican who has served as school board president, say that with the right candidates and some monetary backing, the GOP could compete. They point to the city council candidacy of former Ohio State football player Dimitrious Stanley in 2015: Stanley had a recognized name and financial backing comparable to his Democratic opponents. He finished the field race one place and two percentage points out of a city council seat.

This year in the city council race, two of the three Republican candidates were place holders, GOP paid staff members put on the ballot to meet filing deadlines while the party looked for replacement candidates. But the place holders lost, meaning there is now no place for the replacements.

The party offered no financial backing, either: The two school board candidates reported 16 cents in their campaign accounts, combined.

So instead of the Democrat vs. Republican showdowns of the past, city general elections this fall pit the liberal against the more liberal.

“I think, unfortunately for this Yes We Can group, it now appears to be separating from the Democratic Party,” said Mike Sexton, county Democratic Party chairman. “They’re now a third party that’s challenging our candidates, and they’re out campaigning against them.”

“Yes We Can is really trying to undermine the work that the (local) Democratic Party is doing, and mislead voters by claiming that they’re Democrats,” said Jen House, a member of the Franklin County Democratic Party Central Committee who chaired the party screening committee that endorsed the incumbents over the Yes We Can candidates, who sought the party endorsement.

At issue is that Yes We Can announced in March that it would affiliate with the Working Families Party, which started two decades ago in New York City and in 2014 backed Democrat Bill de Blasio’s win in the mayoral race there.

Working Families will help with fundraising and support, such as campaign mailing lists.

But as the Tea Party is to Republicans, the Working Families Party is to Democrats: Though each has the word party in its name, they aren’t recognized political parties in Ohio.

Ohio has only three recognized parties: Democratic, Republican and Green, said Matt McClellan, spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State. The main thing that determines what party a candidate belongs to is how he or she last voted in a partisan primary, he said.

“That’s the only time you receive a party identification,” McClellan said. “You don’t register with a party in Ohio. You don’t fill out a form.”

By that standard, the five Yes We Can candidates are Democrats because they last voted in Democratic primaries. Also, in March 2016, Yes We Can candidates were elected to seven seats of the more than 200 on the Franklin County Democratic Party Central Committee.

Columbus City Council and Board of Education primaries are nonpartisan, meaning anyone can run and anyone can vote in them. If it were a partisan primary, a candidate’s party affiliation could be challenged at the county board of elections, McClellan said, and, ultimately, in court. The main evidence would be the candidate’s primary voting record.

But while they’re officially nonpartisan, the city’s council and school board races are in reality highly partisan. Candidates backed by the Franklin County Democratic Party have recently held the lock on winning. Yes We Can could potentially disrupt that. “This is internal party politics in a way,” said Paul Beck, professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University.

The roots of the Democratic dispute could be seen in the 2016 presidential election, when independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — who Petrik calls the inspiration for Yes We Can — gave Hillary Clinton a serious grass-roots challenge in the Democratic primaries. While Clinton eventually surpassed the 2,382 party delegates she needed to land the Democratic nomination for president, she had to rely on superdelegates, party officials who backed her 93 percent to Sanders’ 7 percent, to get there. Then she lost to Donald Trump.

Making this local Democratic schism relevant has been the nearly complete collapse of the Republican Party in city races.

Democrats duking it out in Tuesday’s primary should have been a dream come true for the GOP, Beck said, splitting the party’s voters. In addition, turnout of registered voters in the city was “pitiful,” Beck said, just above 7 percent.

“Given that, you would think that any political party worth its salt would be able to mobilize its stalwarts to the polls,” or get them to send in absentee ballots, Beck said.

“Pardon me for laughing when somebody suggests that there’s a perfect situation for Republicans in the city of Columbus,” said Brad Sinnott, chairman of the county GOP central committee.

Democrats enjoy a threeto-one voter registration advantage and run in atlarge, citywide races “larger than a congressional district,” Sinnott said. They are “maintained in office by enormous contributions that come from development interests,” he said. The typical Columbus primary is decided by 6 percent of the people opting for the status quo, 3 percent opting for change and 91 percent not bothering to show up, Sinnott said.

“By saying that,” Beck said of Sinnott, “I think he’s confirmed what I kind of speculated on, which was: ‘They did nothing.’” 1. Interstate 270/Route 315/Route 23 interchange: lane and ramp restrictions for interchange improvement project. Completion: fall 2. Interstate 270/Route 33 interchange: lane restrictions and night detours for interchange improvement. Completion: fall 3. Hamilton Road between Havens Corners and East Johnstown roads: lane restrictions for widening and improvement project. Completion: fall 4. Interstate 71 between Stringtown Road and Rt. 665: lane restrictions for widening. Completion: summer 5. West Broad Street between Marconi Boulevard and McDowell Street: lane restrictions for road improvements. Completion: June 6. Refugee and Gender roads: lane restrictions for intersection improvement. Completion: summer 7. South Hague Avenue between Sullivant Avenue and West Broad Street: reduced to southbound-only traffic for road reconstruction and improvements. Completion: summer 8. South State Street and Schrock Road: lane restrictions for road improvements. Completion: spring 9. Parsons Avenue between Franklin Avenue and East Broad Street: reduced to southbound-only traffic for roadway improvements. Completion: spring 2018 10. Joyce Avenue between East Hudson Street and East 17th Avenue: reduced to northbound only through traffic for roadway improvements and path construction. Completion: fall 11. Indianola Avenue between East Weber Road and East Arcadia Avenue: closed to through traffic for bridge rehabilitation. Completion: October 12. Route 104/High Street interchange: various ramp and lane restrictions for bridge rehabilitation. Completion: mid-June 13. West State Street between McDowell and Belle Streets and Starling Street between West Broad and West State streets: closed for utility improvements. Completion: mid-May 14. Interstate 70 between Interstate 270 and Hilliard-Rome Road: evening and overnight lane and ramp restrictions for widening and improvement project. Completion: fall 15. West 3rd Avenue between Edgehill Road and Columbus Fire Station No. 25: various restrictions for widening, railroad bridge replacement and patching. Completion: late 2017 16. Sunbury Road between Maxtown and County Line roads: reduced to northbound-only traffic for widening and improvement. Completion: fall 17. Dublin Road between North Street and Indian Run Drive: southbound-only traffic for roadway widening. Completion: November 18. South Old State Road between Polaris Parkway and Orange Road: lane restrictions in place for widening and improvements. Completion: fall 2018 19. North Hague Avenue and El Paso Drive intersection: closed for a sewer project. Completion: late May 20. Interstate 270 between Route 33 and Trabue Road: reconstruction and widening with lane restrictions, variable speed limit restrictions and weekend and evening ramp closures. Completion: fall 2018