Saturday, July 17, 2004
Greg Harris For Congress?
This story is an example of why the Cincinnati Enquirer is a terrible paper. The AP story hit the wire early Friday morning. I saw a version of the story on cincynation.com which linked to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. So the Enquirer is late with the story. Then they don't add any local information. Rob Portman is mentioned in the story (he has more than $1 million in the bank) but his opponent, Charles W. Sanders, isn't. The AP story is focused on Congressional incumbents fundraising advantage over non-incumbents but the 1st District incumbent Steve Chabot isn't mentioned in the story nor is his opponent. I checked the Federal Election Commission's website and found that Greg Harris has done virtually no fundraising. This guy has raised less money than most City Council candidates! I talked to one of Greg's supporters yesterday (one who had actually donated money to his campaign) and he told me that Greg is a nice guy but nobody expects him to defeat Chabot unless Chabot died or got involved in a sex scandal. (And this was a Greg Harris supporter.)
Some of you may know I considered running for Congress this year and was discouraged from doing so by the Hamilton County Democratic Party. During a candidate interview, I was told by Tyrone Yates, Tim Burke and others that whoever ran against Chabot needed to raise at least $1 million to be competitive. They felt that Greg would do a much better job of fundraising since he ran with the Party's endorsement last time. I could've still ran in the primary and beat Greg but I had other priorities at the time. Greg Harris is not a serious candidate for Congress. Democrats deserve better.
