Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
0000017a-3b40-d913-abfe-bf44a4f90000Howard Wilkinson joined the WVXU news team as the politics reporter and columnist in April 2012 , after 30 years of covering local, state and national politics for The Cincinnati Enquirer. On this page, you will find his weekly column, Politically Speaking; the Monday morning political chats with News Director Maryanne Zeleznik and other news coverage by Wilkinson. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Wilkinson has covered every Ohio gubernatorial race since 1974, as well as 16 presidential nominating conventions. Along with politics, Wilkinson also covered the 2001 Cincinnati race riots, the Lucasville prison riot in 1993, the Air Canada plane crash at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in 1983, and the 1997 Ohio River flooding. And, given his passion for baseball, you might even find some stories about the Cincinnati Reds here from time to time.

Strickland's U.S. Senate bid gets big boost from national Democratic campaign committee

Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland’s bid for the U.S. Senate got a huge boost Tuesday morning when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) endorsed his candidacy.

The DSCC is capable of raising millions of dollars for Democratic U.S. Senate candidates.

Its endorsement of Strickland is a blow to the campaign of Cincinnati city council member P.G. Sittenfeld, who is the only other announced Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican Rob Portman.

In a written statement, DSCC executive director Tom Lopach said “we look forward to supporting Ted Strickland’s campaign and are confident he will be a great senator.”

“Ted Strickland has a long record of fighting for working folks in Ohio and there is no question that he is the strongest candidate to defeat Rob Portman,’’ Lopach said.

The DSCC endorsement comes a day after the state’s ranking Democratic elected official, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, endorsed Strickland, while at the same time praising Sittenfeld as a Democrat with a "bright future" in the party.

Despite the DSCC endorsement of Strickland, Sittenfeld's campaign put out a statement which gives no indication the Cincinnati councilman is considering getting out of the race.

The campaign, Sittenfeld said in the written statement, is "about and for hard-working, everyday Ohioans whose concerns have gone unrepresented in Washington for far too long because insiders like Rob Portman have put the interest of his friends ahead of our state."

"It's about people like Ron Jackson who worked with me to install crosswalks so seniors like him could safely catch the bus; it's about Nikki Steele who made her community safer by helping me repair street lights in low-income neighborhoods in Cincinnati,'' Sittenfeld said. "The endorsements that matter most are the ones from Ohioans like Ron and Nikki - and I will continue working hard to earn them."

Sittenfeld and Strickland are to face each other in a Democratic primary a year from now. The winner would face Portman in the Nov. 2016 election.

Ohio's Senate race is likely to be a key match-up in the 2016 battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

The National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC), the DSCC's opposite number, put out a statement critical of Strickland and the endorsement.

"Only a bunch of Beltway Democrats would actually believe the future of their party rests with a retread governor who saw his state lost over 350,000 jobs during his tenure,'' NRSC spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a written statement.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.