Columbus Dispatch...
Ohio GOP’s No. 2 official tells Kasich to back off
Kay Ayres is vice chairwoman of the Ohio GOP.
By  Joe Hallett

Tuesday December 6, 2011 

Ronald Reagan’s famous 11th Commandment — Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican — is officially dead in Ohio. 

Intraparty warfare over an attempt by Gov. John Kasich and House Speaker William G. Batchelder to depose Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine intensified yesterday when the party’s vice chairwoman asked Kasich to “stand down.” 

In a strongly worded letter to Kasich and copied to the 65 other members of the state party’s central committee, Kay Ayres said she is heartbroken that the governor and his allies are trying to depose DeWine a little more than a year after he led the party to a massive victory in statewide elections. 

The attempted coup is splitting the party when it needs to be unified going into the 2012 elections, wrote Ayres, chairwoman of the Highland County Republican Party for 30 years. 

“It’s almost become: We have met the enemy, and it is us,” Ayres told The Dispatch. 

The brouhaha that erupted publicly over the weekend has put central-committee members in an untenable position, Ayres said. They want to support their governor while also keeping DeWine in the post to which they unanimously elected him in January, she said. 

DeWine has done a “terrific job,” she said, and has support from a strong majority of central-committee members. 

Sources told The Dispatch that Kasich had wanted to replace DeWine with Rex Elsass, the governor’s campaign media consultant. Elsass said via text message from New York City last night that he has “no active interest in the job.” 

Elsass was in New York for an event with GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, whom Elsass’ firm represents as a campaign media consultant. Referring to the Ohio GOP chairmanship, Elsass said: “The national scope of my business makes that impossible.” 

Elsass was executive director of the state party in the early 1990s. He left to run a U.S. Senate campaign and became embroiled in a scandal involving a list of campaign contributors that was stolen from the party. 

In her letter, Ayres told Kasich that the “tumult in the Republican ranks” could hurt its long-term stability, causing a “divide which could well result in the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012 and your defeat in 2014. We simply cannot allow this to happen. 

“Governor, you are the one person who can quickly put a stop to this nonsense.” 

The governor’s office declined to comment for this story. 

Shortly after his 2010 election, Kasich asked DeWine to step down so he could choose a chairman. That effort gained strength late Friday when Batchelder joined it, sending a memo to his House Republican members accusing DeWine of “undermining the accomplishments we have made.” 

Allies of DeWine, who said he does not plan to resign, have said that the coup attempt is being led by four of Kasich’s confidants: lobbyists Donald G. Thibaut, Robert F. Klaffky and Douglas J. Preisse (who is also chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party), and the governor’s special assistant, Jai Chabria. 

They and others close to Kasich and Batchelder are recruiting candidates to run in the March GOP primary election against central-committee members supporting DeWine, a move that Ayres indicated she resents. 

“We are all too aware that several members of your political team, both inside your office and outside in lobbying firms, are recruiting candidates to run against sitting members of the Republican State Central and Executive Committees,” Ayres wrote. “In fact, some of these people were spearheading opposition against me in my district today.” 

Sources indicated that enough candidates to challenge members who are DeWine allies have been lined up to run in the primary. Ayres reminded Kasich that in September 2009, the central committee “unanimously placed our faith and trust in you” by issuing an endorsement. She said the state party worked diligently for his election in 2010, raising money and organizing volunteers who made more than 3.6 million phone calls and knocked on more than 400,000 doors for Kasich and the rest of the GOP ticket. 

“It is, therefore, heartbreaking to find out that less than one year after we united to defeat our incumbent governor for only the third time in Ohio history, the pettiness of political consultants and lobbyists have led us to this point.” 

Ayres told Kasich that the central-committee members “deserve gratitude, not a costly campaign for a volunteer job. That is why I am urging you to tell your political team to stand down. With 3 days to go before the filing deadline (for the March primary), it’s not too late. The targeted campaign to take over the state committee should end here and now, once and for all.” 

Dispatch reporter Joe Vardon contributed to this story. 

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