CINCINNATI (TDB) -- CityBeat's Kevin Osborne is reporting Hamilton County GOP Chairman George Vincent will depart no later than mid-April. He is supposed to be replaced by a sitting Common Pleas Court Judge who plans to resign his $120,000-a-year job for the partisan post overseeing the state's richest urban countywide political organization -- an organization whose grip has begun to ebb.
Judge Alex Triantafilou is currently seeking election to the judgeship, which was an appointment from former Gov. Bob Taft. According to CityBeat's Osborne, when Triantafilou drops out of the race to step in as GOP chair -- he does not have a Democratic opponent for the judgeship --the Republican party will name a replacement candidate for the November ballot. Osborne says the dealmakers already have made their choice: Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Russell J. Mock.
What's interesting about all this? If the changes indeed take place, judgeships get shuffled and voters have little sway over who fills these important elected offices. Instead, all the decisions get made by political insiders. Is that the kind of democracy John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had in mind when they created the Republic?
It may have been what John Adams had in mind, but not Thomas Jefferson. Adams, along with Alexander Hamilton, was a key player in what eventually became the Republican Party of today. They believed in a powerful Chief Executive, that religion should be closely intertwined with government and that the citizen voter was not to be trusted with the reins of power.
ReplyDeleteJeffereson on the other hand argued for the ideas that underlie today's Democratic Party. It's he that argued for sepration of church and state and a president who answered to Congress, not the other way around. Funny how those arguements still remain powerful today.
As a "Courthouse insider", you sure are late with the news!
ReplyDeleteCourthouse insider --
ReplyDeleteHa! Do you think it's possible I kept quiet because I couldn't spell Triantafilou?