Well if anyone doesn’t think Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro isn’t pandering to political and religious conservatives by now, his new choice of a running mate should set any doubt aside.
Petro picked State Senator Joy Padgett (R-Coshocton) to be his Lt. Governor should he be elected.
Padgett, who supported the ban on gay marriage, became infamous during her 2004 State Senate campaign when she smeared her opponent and won 54 to 46 percent in a district that leans Republican.
Her opponent?
Former journalist Terry Anderson, who had been held as a hostage in Lebanon by the Hezbollah terrorist group for more than six years from 1985 to 1991.
Padgett’s campaign used a photo of Anderson meeting one of his former kidnappers when he went back to Lebanon with CNN to look for his captors.
The attack ads against Anderson have been in mailings and on TV and radio. At a League for Women Voters debate last week, Anderson walked off the stage, refusing to participate. “The first time I met Padgett she said, ‘I run a clean campaign,’ and I said, ‘Good, let’s do that.’ I have attacked her votes . . . never attacked her personally. . . . She attacked me, twisting my campaigns. The last piece, I couldn’t accept it.
“The picture,” he continued, referring to the photo of himself shaking hands with the Hezbollah official, “is one of the guys who kidnapped me, who held me for seven years, who chained me and blindfolded me. I went back to Lebanon with a CNN news crew and looked him up and put him on camera and asked him, Why did you do this?
“She now says I am an apologist for terrorists.That’s sheer nonsense. It’s offensive. I’ve just about had enough.”
I wasn’t planning on voting for Petro, especially after his God and Bible advert he broadcast shortly after his campaign started, but now his judgement is in question by adding Padgett to the ticket.
*Side Note* Maybe it is too early after the announcement but none of the reports I read mentioned Padgett’s attack on Anderson in 2004 in their stories.
