The Ohio Republican Party is really sinking to new lows:

Responding to what Democrats and a political expert alike are calling a smear campaign, the state Republican Party is verbally disavowing an e-mail sent by one of its staffers that makes personal allegations against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland and his wife.

But Republican party officials did not distribute a follow-up e-mail or take any other action to repudiate the e-mail, which suggests that the Stricklands are gay.

“Every time we think we’ve reached the sewer, there’s a lower level of sewer,” said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, who has written about dirty campaign strategies in both parties.

The e-mail, obtained by The Dispatch, was sent to an undisclosed group of GOP supporters — with instructions to forward it to others — by Gary Lankford, whom the party hired in July as its “social conservative coordinator.” He was paid $16,000 as a “voter contact consultant” for the primary-election campaign of GOP gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell before taking the party job.

This is how low these right wing fundamentalists will sink in order to win a race. They go against the very fiber of their religion and Ken Blackwell is the worse offender of them all.

OH-02 Update

Looks like we might get a debate (or more) between Jean “full of ” Schmidt and her Democrat challenger Dr. Victoria Wulsin.:

One resident, however, wanted to know whether Schmidt would agree to debate at the Anderson Township Government Center and would agree to eliminate negative advertising from her campaign.

Schmidt said she could not guarantee where or when a debate would happen. However, she said she would like to debate, with both candidate’s campaigns focusing on the issues instead of personal attacks.

[SNIP]

Victoria Wulsin, Schmidt’s Democratic opponent, said she looks forward to debating Schmidt.

“Americans deserve an open and honest government that is as good as the people it represents,” Wulsin said. “Every county in the 2nd District deserves a debate between the candidates — and so I challenge my opponent to debate the issues in each county: Adams, Brown, Clermont, Hamilton, Pike, Scioto and Warren.”

I like Wulsin’s idea of having seven of them. Jean will be on a break from Congress in the next couple of weeks, so she should have the time to do all these debates. That is if she isn’t out trying to raise money ($17,509 on hand is bad for her, but good for us). True she could also be too busy heading out to smear some of our decorated veterans.