Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. Big Day on the “…back roads of Ohio” campaign trail! The Columbus Dispatch said Bush and Kerry are in a dead heat in Ohio, 46% to 46%. During a whistle-stop in Fostoria (pop. 13,000) , I said to a Times Review reporter: “Wouldn’t it be something if a small town, independent presidential candidate (read: me) from Ohio had just enough of an impact to sway the vote here? And, ultimately, the National Election.” I then traveled on to Tiffin, Ohio (pop. 18,135) where I was interviewed by political reporter Matt Suman. I told him about Grand Junction, Colorado’s Marillac Clinic, which we researched several years ago. Volunteer doctors, nurses, town people who do intakes, janitorial work… staff a two-story hospital where everyone in the county who doesn’t have health insurance are seen on an extremely minimal sliding fee scale. With 46 million uninsured in America, I told Mr. Suman that maybe we should be looking to setting up more Marillac Clinics. Tomorrow I do a 6:40 a.m. phone in spot on the “Tom & Beth” radio show in Fostoria, and after a stop in Fremont, head north for a series of whistle-stops in towns along Lake Erie in Ohio.
8/28/04
Average Joe Buckey Blitz Tour cont. (Still on my hometown pit-stop…) President Bush’s motorcade comes up I-75 here this afternoon, passing by Bluffton, Ohio (pop. 3,800), my hometown. To get a jump on Mr. Bush, I went campaigning at Bluffton’s Farmer’s Market this morning. There I talked with a man from Louisiana and a woman visiting from Idaho. They both walked away wearing “average Joe” buttons. One of the market vendors, Cindy Basinger, said she’d been called by a Gallup Poll representative earlier in the week and was asked if she was voting for Kerry or Bush. “Neither. I’m voting for Joe Schriner,” she said. What’s more, the Bluffton College Library Director walked up to me at the Market and said a display case, with a current presidential candidate theme, just went on display at the library. “And you’re right there in it,” she said. So there, George! Note: A recent Chillicothe (Ohio) Gazette article noted I said that I could be the “Nader factor” in Ohio this year. With campaign success like this morning, you have to wonder that. Don’t you?
8/26/04
“Average Joe” Buckeye Blitz cont. We’re back in our hometown of Bluffton, Ohio for a brief pit stop, before launching back out onto the “…back roads of Ohio.” And we believe we should be able to cover the whole state, again (we campaigned in all 88 counties in Ohio in 2002), before this November.
8/25/04
“Average Joe” Buckeye Blitz Tour cont. Met with Ed and Dorothy Bailey in Blanchester, Ohio today. In their retirement, they did a stint with the Peace Corps in the Phillipines. They helped provide loans to small farmers. Ed said where they were at in the village of San Fernando (pop. 4,000) was so poor, the only one who had a motor vehicle was the mayor. And he had an old, WWII jeep. What’s more, the mayor and his family had the only TV, a black & white one, which they watched for an hour each evening by hooking up the TV to the jeep’s battery. During Campaign 2000, I told a reporter for the Jackson Hole, Wyoming newspaper that we would like to see a tremendously expanded Peace Corps (made up, for instance, of many more retired couples like the Baileys) to promote much more social justice worldwide.
8/25/04
“Average Joe” Buckey Blitz Tour cont. Met with Fred Treaster in Blanchester, Ohio today. Treaster, who is from nearby Midland, said he is a proponent of doing things naturally on the farm, as opposed to all the chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and so on. He said in the “old days” people seemed a lot healthier because of this. “I don’t remember people living on pills then, like they do now,” he said. A couple years ago, during an 88 county tour of Ohio, I told a reporter in Bellfountaine that “chemical weapons” on American farms (i.e. these pesticides, herbacides…) are creating, in effect, ‘chemical cocktails’ in the body that are leading to high cancer rates. Average Joe common-sense truism: “If we want to end cancer, why don’t we stop using things that cause cancer?”
8/24/04
Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. I met with J.W. Simpson today, curator of the Blanchester (Ohio) Historical Society Museum. He said sparks from a passing locomotive are said to have ignited a livery stable on a windy October day in 1895 here — burning the whole 5-block downtown to the ground. Some 70 years later, a train coming down the same stretch of Blanchester tracks, made a “whistle-stop” with Barry Goldwater (who was running for president at the time). Old time resident, and retired City Department worker Ed Bailey said he lifted the town newspaper photographer “high up” in a heavy equipment bucket so he could take a picture of Goldwater. I told Ed he might not have to lift a photographer up, oh, “as high” at one of our whistle-stop events.
8/23/04
Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. I told the Brown County Press today that I’m your typical “average” father of three young children: “I cut my own grass, sit in the ‘cheap seats’ a the ball game and change my kids diapers (not as much as my wife Liz, she’ll tell you, but some).”
8/23/04
Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. We did a whistle-stop event on the square in Georgetown, Ohio today at noon. Just as the event started up, a stream of people showed up: for a Sheriff’s Auction. Never one to pass up a campaign opportunity, we passed out literature to the group while they were waiting to bid. I told a reporter for the local News Democrat newspaper that we had a “consistent pro-life” ethic, which meant we were against abortion, but we were also against anything else that can end life prematurely. I said this included things like: poverty, pollution, tobacco… Incidentally, Brown County here is one of the biggest tobacco producing counties in the state and this weekend is the Tobacco Festival in nearby Ripley, Ohio. While I might have lost a few votes here, maybe it got a few parents, tobacco farmers, and so on… to think twice. After the interview, News Democrat publisher Steve Triplett told me he’s heard rumors John Edwards might be coming to Georgetown as part of a southern Ohio swing because Ohio continues to look that important to the outcome of the presidential race. (I couldn’t help but wonder: Is anyone starting to factor our campaign into all of that.) Note: Steve Triplett’s editorial the week before noted singer Linda Rondstadt had endorsed John Kerry during one of her performances and Ricky Scaggs had endorsed George Bush. After hearing this, I thought maybe we could get the accordion player we met in…
8/23/04
Average Joe Buckeye Blitz cont. This morning I met with Bob Olsen who coordinates programs for Presentation Ministries in Peebles, Ohio. He was the “Voice of College Hockey” in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before feeling spiritually led to come to Presentation Ministries. One of Presentations main goals is to help establish “home based small communites” of Christians meeting weekly for prayer, meals and to share the stuff of life. Each community, and there are many throughout the country, also pick a social justice cause of some sort (pro-life efforts, helping the poor…) to rally around. On site in Peebles, Presentations also does weekend retreats on a variety of topics and has a radio program that is broadcast on some 40 stations around the country. (For more on the ministry, see: www.presentationsministries.com)
8/22/04
Average Joe Buckey Blitz cont. I met with William Smalley in Mineral Springs, Ohio today. He is the president of the Adams County Board of Health. He said schools are often “incubators for disease.” For instance, during flu season the school system here experiences a consistent 12% (or sometimes higher) absentee rate. What’s more, he said studies show one square inch of your average desk top contains 20,000 germs. To combat all this, Smalley said the Adams County School System is going to a vigorous Hand and Desk Washing Program this year, with the hopes of cutting down on medical costs for families (Adams County is one of the poorest counties in the state) and less missed class days for students. I told Smalley our platform leans heavily toward prevention when it comes to Health Care and we would talk about the program around the country, with the hopes other school systems pick up on it.