Jennifer Brunner - Ohio Secretary of State

Turn Around Ohio Tour - Eastern Ohio

Posted by Rick Brunner - July 15, 2006 11:55 PM - Permalink

It was a little better in dragging the candidate away from Delaware, but we belatedly made our way towards the event at the Union Hall in Heath, Ohio. For those of you who are not familiar with Heath, Ohio, it is in the far corner of Licking County, very near Perry and Muskingum counties. This means that we had to drive from Delaware across Franklin County and head east on Interstate 70. It was truly a beautiful drive past Buckeye Lake and heading east across Ohio which I have described many times in previous blogs. Unfortunately, we had misread our travel time and found ourselves racing once again in order to make our candidate's speech. When we arrived at the Union Hall, we found Rich Cordray trying to stall for time awaiting Jennifer's arrival. Since we entered the hall to his back, your correspondent made his way through the crowd which Rich was facing and began to taking pictures of him so he would be aware that the Brunner campaign had arrived. Our candidate then took the stage and delivered her best speech of the day, topping anything she had done previously. She had the crowd cheering at several junctures. She ended up with a new tagline that became her tagline throughout this tour, and that was indicating that in 2008, if we have an Ohio Secretary of State who is doing her job, then Ohio won't be such an embarrassment to the rest of the country and no one outside of the State of Ohio, will know the name of the Ohio Secretary of State like all of the country came to learn the names of Kathryn Harris and Ken Blackwell. This event then ended with thunderous applause. At that point, Ted Strickland took the stage. We stayed around about a half an hour after Ted's speech to meet with all the people who wanted to meet our candidate.

As usual, we ended up being one of the last people to leave the Union Hall. We made our way across the parking lot to our vehicle which was parked in a nearby complex, and it was stifling hot. We realize that at this late hour in the day, we had not yet had our lunch and it was fast approaching the supper hour. Luckily, a few exits east near Aetna Township in western Licking County, there was a Dairy Queen where our candidate indulged herself in her favorite cherry Dairy Queen milkshake. We stopped by the campaign office to pick up additional materials for the next day and made our way to our home to pack for an overnight stay at our farm in Columbiana County. Our farm was located central to all the next day's tours, and we thought we would conduct operations from there. Unfortunately, each of us sat down in our respective chairs before beginning to pack, and promptly fell asleep. When we awoke, we determined it might be just as easy to spend the night at home with the campaign dogs and leave in the morning for the next leg of Ted's tour. This led to our candidate actually cooking a meal (which she still does quite well) and actually spending a little time sitting on our deck late that evening enjoying the warm summer evening. The night concluded with a soak in our hot tub.

Posted by Rick Brunner - July 15, 2006 11:55 PM - Permalink