Puttin’ Out the Bone

Oh, man. What a bunch: Mike Allen, Rebecca Collins and Joe Deters. Let’s have fun and take them one by one.

· Rebecca Collins. It’s hard to work up sympathy for her. She claims that, as an intern and then as assistant prosecutor, she freely bopped her boss on government property and on the clock before ratting him out to his wife. Then after claiming he sexually harassed her, she tried to get a huge pile of money from taxpayers in a settlement. For all we know, she is the victim in this Republican mess, but it’s hard to work up a wet eye for her.

· Mike Allen. Well, it’s easy to turn on him. I mean, remember how he jumped in front of television crews a few years back to suck for votes by attacking Bill Clinton for doing an intern?

Wasn’t that just about the same time he was doing one himself?

How many times did we hear him on, say, WLW radio whining about black people’s crimes and family values? Remember when he called Cincinnati City Councilman Chris Smitherman “a smart-mouthed little punk”? He was always brimming with virtue and full of himself.

Look. When self-righteous Republicans tell you they’re closer to God, that their party projects family values, that they’re not the party of blue jeans, drugs and free sex, that a vote for them is one for the stability of the family and protection of our culture, laugh at them. Just say, “Mike Allen.” If it’ll make you feel better, mention that Republican who dropped out of the Illinois Senate race because he asked his actress wife to have sex in public.

I’ve never been one to get worked up politically over someone’s personal failings. But damn! When a dude puts at the center of his vote-getting pitch his altar boy credentials, then he earned his fate when he gets caught with his cassock around his ankles.

So Allen goes down hard — off the ballot in November. No more chairmanship of the local Bush campaign. Might lose his seat on the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees. Might have to pay his own legal fees, maybe even fund a settlement with Collins. That’s the stuff of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Sure, rumors abound. One is that State Treasurer Joe Deters, who will assume his spot in the election for county prosecutor, might have pushed buttons behind the scenes to take Allen down. Another is that Vice President Dick Cheney called the shots that pressured Allen off the ballot, for fear that the scandal would spike the Democratic vote here and hurt Bush’s chances in Republican vote-rich Hamilton County.

Who cares? Allen is gone. The election will be an all-write-in affair. For once Democrats have a chance for an administrative county office with a clear theme that one-party rule breeds arrogance, abuse and scandal.

So it’s delicious that the local Republicans think they can slip an old name back into the county over a weekend — one who has ethical questions of his own upstate.

· Enter Joe Deters. Let’s not get personal here, but Deters is a total punk. While prosecutor, he regularly violated state law barring him from prejudicial public comments about perps as they were waiting for trial. The rule is designed to assure a charged person that he’ll get a jury that hasn’t been prejudiced by, well, the government’s lawyer. Makes sense. But Deters rarely adhered to that when tough talk might get him West-side votes.

But it’s his Columbus mess that will likely trip up his grand plan of using Hamilton County voters to get him into the attorney general office in 2006.

Because of a pile of questions about his fund-raising ethics, which brought criminal convictions to two of his staffers, Deters’ political stock plummeted within the Republican Party, even though he was never indicted. So as a strategy to regain his balance, he’s coming back home and off the pages of The Columbus Dispatch and Cleveland Plain Dealer to rehab, so to speak. The theory is that he might be better marketed as a candidate for state attorney general in 2006 after several more years under his belt as a county prosecutor and away from the scene of bad statewide press.

So what Hamilton County voters might be facing is a candidate who would come here briefly before starting a campaign in 2006, a date that will be on us before we know it. Evidence of this scam came on the eve of Deters’ return, when Hamilton County Republican Chairman Michael Barrett told the local media that, while Deters will be a write-in candidate for prosecutor, he doesn’t rule out a run in 2006 for attorney general.

So isn’t it hilarious that the Republican Party sees Deters, even with his own ethical problems upstate and lack of commitment to the prosecutor’s office, as their white knight to get them from under Mike Allen’s dark cloud? Maybe they thought few in the local media would tell the Columbus stories, which have gotten far less play down here. Or maybe they’re counting on it being forgotten by this November.

Fanon Rucker, the Lincoln Heights prosecutor who is the Democratic Party’s candidate for prosecutor, must pound those ethical questions to swing voters who just might be tired of Republican candidates who act like election is their birthright.

A write-in campaign is usually tricky, but not when both candidates must mount one. Count on the Republicans gathering huge resources. There will be pencils carrying Deters’ name in every school, bingo and bowling alley. Paid media for him will abound. Rucker will run with shoe leather, free media and a limited budget.

But something tells me the public is finally tired of hypocrisy and audacity. Thanks to those who got us there: Mike Allen, Rebecca Collins and Joe Deters.

This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2004.