A Series of Unfortunate Coincidences

Was congressional candidate Jean Schmidt’s media strategist disciplined by The Toledo Blade for an ethics violation while working as a political writer? He won’t say, and neither will the newspaper.

In 2002, Fritz Wenzel reported that U.S. Rep. Paul Gilmore (R-Old Fort) had fired his press secretary. Two days later a story by another Blade writer reported that Gilmore had not, in fact, fired the press secretary.

The incident nearly caused The Blade to fire Wenzel, according to the Web site operated by the Lucas County Democratic Party, which has a special section dedicated to criticizing the former writer (lucasdems.org/weaselwatch). Asked if he were suspended or otherwise disciplined, Wenzel declines to answer.

“I’m not going to comment on any personnel matters,” he says. “That’s between me and my employers.”

Executive Editor Ron Royhab also declined to answer.

“I don’t discuss personnel matters with anybody,” he says.

Royhab limited his remarks to confirming Wenzel’s previous employment with The Blade.

“He worked here for 10 years,” Royhab says. “He left to form a company that he wanted to form.”

That raises perhaps more questions about Wenzel and his relationship with the Schmidt campaign. Wenzel left The Blade on Friday, May 13. Records with the Federal Elections Commission show his new political consulting company, Wenzel Strategies, received $30,000 three days later for media purchases for the Schmidt campaign, plus an additional $30,000 a week later.

That’s quite an assignment for a brand new company. After all, Wenzel Strategies, whose mailing address is in Toledo, still doesn’t even have a telephone listing there. The company does have a Web page of sorts (heartlandpolitics.com); the page describes itself as the “future home” of Wenzel Strategies.

A company with no track record, no phone and no Web site: What could have recommended it to Schmidt’s campaign? Was Wenzel advising the Schmidt campaign while still covering politics for the newspaper? He says no.

“I became aware of the Schmidt campaign because I’m a longtime friend of (campaign manager) Joe Braun,” Wenzel says. “He knew that I was starting this company up and we talked about it after leaving The Blade. I remember that weekend after I left The Blade we talked extensively and decided then to do this. It was a very busy weekend for me. I paid attention to that race, so I was well aware of what was going on.”

Wenzel did more than pay attention. In “Heartland Politics,” a personal blog he maintained while working for The Blade, he wrote a scathing summary of Schmidt’s opponents in the GOP primary election, citing former U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen’s history of bounced checks and Hamilton County Commissioner Pat DeWine’s personal peccadilloes.

“The other front-runner is Jean Schmidt, president of Cincinnati Right To Life,” Wenzel wrote on May 3. “While this might be an unpopular post in heavily Democratic Lucas County, the opposite is true down here. A former state representative, she has a good chance to pull things out.”

Wenzel was proven right when Schmidt won the GOP primary election June 14. But was Wenzel promoting his future client’s candidacy while still working as a reporter for The Blade? That would be a serious conflict of interest. The editor says he has no reason to believe it happened.

“I never heard that,” Royhab says.

Braun insists that Wenzel had no role with the campaign prior to May 16.

“Fritz was not able to come on board with the campaign until he left The Blade, and the first time I spoke with him he made that very clear,” Braun says. “Toledo is three hours away. It’s physically impossible to be up there and down here at the same time.”

That remark is curious mostly because of the dateline on Wenzel’s blog entry about the primary; he apparently wrote it in Cincinnati (see heartlandpolitics.com/ Daily_Notebook_Archives_(5-2-05).htm).

Besides maintaining that Wenzel had no role in the campaign until after he left The Blade, Schmidt also emphasizes that the money paid to his company was for media purchases only.

“We didn’t pay him,” she says. “He was buying our media for us.”

Braun says neither he nor Wenzel is being paid by the campaign.

“Neither Fritz nor I have received a single dime,” Braun says. “There’s been no money paid to him for any of the work that he’s done.”

Why is the duo working for free?

“I haven’t been paid, quite frankly, because I support Jean and what she stands for,” Braun says. “I’ve run many of her campaigns and didn’t get paid.”

As for Wenzel, he’s been so effective that the campaign wishes it could, in fact, have used him earlier.

“If he could have come on board earlier, we would have loved that opportunity,” Braun says.

This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2005.