Congrats To Joel Coon: Dem Childers Took Mississippi House Seat From GOP With Joel As Manager

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Could he help knock off Republican U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt? Joel Coon saw her as extremely vulnerable when he was in Ohio last year. His work in Mississippi produced the third straight victory for the Democrats in a special election in Republican territory. Coon was the campaign manager for Travis Childers, the newest Dem in Congress. The Hill, the newspaper that serves Capitol Hill, said the win sends "the listless GOP into further disarray."

For a few months last year, Coon was in Ohio managing the campaign of Steve Black, a Cincinnati lawyer who switched parties to seek the Democratic nomination in OH-02. Coon moved on for reasons that have never been publicly disclosed. Black lost the March primary to Dr. Victoria Wulsin. In Ohio, Coon believed that the shift of manufacturing jobs overseas was a critical issue for Democrats to emphasize during contests in GOP-controlled House districts such as OH-02. Coon also believed a Democrat running in a Republican district has to be a moderate to win. Before leaving the Black campaign, he told the Daily Bellwether last fall:

"One thing is, you have to find a certain kind of Democrat that doesn't scare independent voters. You have got to have a moderate, but a moderate who is progressive on the right issues like the war, like S-Chip"

And:

"I think trade has to be a huge issue in general . . . a lot of the eastern part of the district (OH-02) has been decimated. NAFTA is a disaster. We're not looking to run a duplicate Sherrod Brown campaign. But he won 30 rural counties statewide that John Kerry didn't win, so our rhetoric is going to be very, very similar. Clearly people were listening to what Sherrod Brown had to say. Sherrod Brown was on to something."

In Mississippi, Coon largely ran that kind of campaign with Childers. He didn't scare independent voters. He talked down trade agreements. And it worked.

OH-02 Dem Steve Black: Another Campaign Manager Departs

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Just two months ago, Democrat Steve Black was touting the arrival of a new campaign manager who had a wealth of experience. But Joel Coon is now gone, The Daily Bellwether has learned. Black is a Cincinnati lawyer who switched from Republican to Democrat and is challenging physician Victoria Wulsin in the OH-02 primary next March.

Coon was brought in to replace Mary Huttinger, who for a time was signed on with Black. If that sound like musical chairs hang on to your seat: Huttinger was Wulsin's campaign manager in 2006 when she won the Dem nomination. The Black-Wulsin winner gets to run for the southern Ohio U.S. House seat that currently is held by Jean Schmidt, who beat Wulsin but now has a challenger in the GOP primary.

Black's campaign has not publicly announced Coon's leave taking after about three months on the job. Coon was reached by phone today and confirmed he has moved on.

"I would rather not get into the reasons why I left. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about Steve Black. He's a good candidate. He has the highest integrity. Leaving -- it was something I had to do. Steve can beat Jean Schmidt. He's a very good candidate."

Coon was a former John Edwards campaign aid involved in rural issues.

While Coon is out, The Bellwether hears that former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director John Lapp is in as the ad man for Black campaign. Lapp joined the political consulting firm McMahon Squier Lapp and Associates after 2006 elections and is considered an architect of the Dems' victory that ended GOP control of the House. At the DCCC, Lapp was in charge of a $60 million budget. He knows Ohio River politics -- he worked for former U.S. Rep. Ken Lucas who held a Kentucky House seat on the opposite side of the river from OH-02. He was Lucas' campaign manager, then his chief of staff. Lucas retired to keep a promise about term limits.

OH-02 Dem Steve Black: New Campaign Chief Is A Southern Man

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- A substantial chunk of Ohio's 2nd Congressional District is in Appalachia and has a distinctly southern feel that includes tobacco farms. Democratic hopeful Steve Black has a new campaign manager who seems to be in sync with that culture. Joel Coon grew up in Mississippi, worked for presidential candidate John Edwards as deputy national rural liaison at the North Carolina headquarters this year, and was signed up when Virginia's Tim Kaine held on to the governor's mansion in that state. In 2006, Coon was in Texas' 14th District, where he ran 30-year-old cattleman Shane Sklar's failed bid to knock off Ron Paul.

Sklar was a conservative Democrat who opposed abortion and received the NRA's endorsement (Coon has since commented that the NRA did not endorse in TX-14.) That still wasn't enough to upend Republican maverick Paul, who now is a libertarian-leaning GOP presidential candidate.

OH-02 is now held by U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, a conservative Republican who has a primary challenger in Phil Heimlich, a former Hamilton County commissioner who is running to the right to Schmidt. The district touches seven counties along the Ohio River. It starts east of downtown Cincinnati and is a melange of suburban and rural Ohio. It has always been considered an extremely conservative region. Coon told The Daily Bellwether he knows how to operate in that kind of environment.

"One thing is, you have to have a certain kind of Democrat, you have to find a Democrat that doesn't scare independent voters. You have got to have a moderate, but a moderate who is progressive on the right issues, like the war, like S-CHIP."

Coon said that he and Black both plan to emphasize trade as an issue in the months leading up to the March Democratic primary against Victoria Wulsin, a physician who was the OH-02 Demo nominee in 2006. He said he and Black have been closely studying Sherrod Brown's U.S. Senate campaign, which was largely a crusade against the loss of Ohio jobs to flawed foreign trade deals and offshoring.

"I think trade has to be a huge issue in general. Steve's going to push it. A lot of the eastern part of the district has been decimated. NAFTA is a disaster. We're looking at it. We're not trying to run a duplicate Sherrod Brown campaign. But he won 30 rural counties statewide that John Kerry didn't win, so our rhetoric is going to be very, very similar. Clearly people were listening to what Sen. Brown had to say last year. Sherrod Brown definitely was on to something, and Steve feels the same way that he does about good jobs going away with nothing to replace them."

Coon also said he isn't concerned that Black, a wealthy Cincinnati lawyer, was a Republican until just before he decided to run for Congress this year as a Democrat.

"I don't work for Republicans. Period. I vetted him pretty hard. He hadn't been comfortable in the Republican Party since the Reagan years. When the Republican Party started to be taken over by social conservatives, it made him extremely uncomfortable. Steve's conversion is real. He's a Democrat, and I think we can make our case that he's the correct person for the 2nd District."