I spent hours, today, scouring the Internet for items like "How to share ridiculously large files" and downloading gizmos alleged to help with that task. But I admit defeat. Writer's Week must go out to our readers without a link to the video of our excellent Election Post Mortem last Tuesday. I will keep trying, and supply a link when I succeed. Meanwhile, we have a good photo, above, thanks to Cheryl D'Mello, our first vice president and program chair.   

It was a great panel and we extend our heartfelt thanks to Joe Frolik and Henry Gomez of the Plain Dealer and Richard Perloff of Cleveland State University, who discussed the recent election issues with yours truly moderating and a small but engaged audience who posed excellent questions.   

We spent half the evening on the "sleeper" Issue 3, which approved a constitutional amendment on health care while the media were not exactly napping, but distracted with Issue 2. Frolik revealed that, as the person responsible for setting up the Plain Dealer's Editorial Board interviews with election candidates and referendum campaigns, he discovered there was no organized opposition to Issue 3. He recalled calling several people, asking them to represent the No side at the ed board meetings, and feeling thrust into the role of campaign organizer. That's an odd and highly uncomfortable feeling for a journalist! As for the Yes side on Issue 3, Frolik called theirs a "stealth" campaign. Nearly invisible, it coasted along without spending much on advertising or organizing, secure in the notion that the wording (which is crucial in referenda) would present Issue 3 as a statement that most people would agree with. Who knows what the impact of this amendment to Ohio's Constitution will be? Will it invalidate Obama's health-care reforms in this state? This remains to be seen.   

As for why the media focused almost entirely on Issue 2, on collective bargaining rights, while missing Issue 3, Gomez and Perloff argued that Issue 2 was impossible to ignore and its massive public appeal sucked up most of the journalistic resources available. Governor John Kasich's fatal mistake, Gomez said, was to include police and firefighters in Senate Bill 5, the law he pushed through early in his mandate to largely disenfranchise public service unions. Perloff pointed to the symbolic value of public heroes like these in the No campaign's advertisements and public rallies, while the always-less-popular teachers, Frolik noted, were rarely seen as the face of the No campaign. Gomez pointed out that police and firefighters are more natural allies for Republicans in most political battles, but on Issue 2, Kasich virtually delivered them to the Democratic side.  

What does all this portend for the 2012 elections in Ohio? Certainly, the Democrats are up and running already, after a massive effort to defeat Issue 2. It was one of those rare referendum campaigns that required very little in the way of paid staff, Frolik said, because so many volunteers were galvanized to help defeat it. That wasn't the case for the Republicans on Issue 3, however, because their stealth campaign required little or no organization, once the question was on the ballot. So the GOP will have a lot more work to do, to organize their troops in Ohio for the looming 2012 battle.      

As a Canadian, I learned a great deal about Ohio politics from this one evening, which seemed equally engaging for the native Ohioans in the audience. I hope to share the video with those who could not attend. But next time, I'll ask my tekkie friends for help.