Kasich elaborated, suggesting his displeasure with the news stems partly from its paucity of emotional edification. “Reading newspapers does not give you an uplifting experience — because it never really makes it clear that you won the Irish Sweepstakes,” he continued, referencing the now-defunct hospital benefit lottery that some now suggest was a scam.

“I have found that my life’s a lot better if I don’t get aggravated by what I read in the newspaper,” Kasich said, noting that others occasionally send him important articles and “things I need to know about.”

Kasich’s speech addressed so-called “look-backs,” the process by which the government tracks down Social Security and welfare overpayments (what he called the “ultimate government screw-up”). But his adverse attitude toward newspapers, which often contain public-opinion polls and other useful information, could explain his seemingly near-total inability to champion legislation and other measures that people in Ohio actually like. Kasich is currently competing with Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie for the un-coveted “least popular governor” prize. As many as three of Kasich’s signature agenda items – the state’s census-mandated congressional reapportionment; an elections-reform bill now branded the “voter suppression law”; and his towering failure of a union-reform law, the infamous Senate Bill 5 –will all end up before voters for them to summarily dismiss.

This is not the first time the freshman governor has expressed a disdain for the press and even the very idea of open government, which he seems to find inconvenient at best.

In a somewhat-incoherent diatribe last December, Kasich blamed reporters and “transparency” for the government’s inability to hire “quality” workers:

“I find myself tripping over the anthills on the way to the pyramids. We have so many stupid rules and regulations that prevent us from getting the best people to come in here. You just can’t believe it. And I blame it on all of you [reporters at the press conference] — all this transparency, and NATO conflicts, and all this other stuff. … Our problems in the government are bigger [than those of the private sector], and the quality of people who want to come in is less. Today if you get sick, under the governmental rules and all the political correctness and all the open – sunshine –and all this other stuff, you get a worse doctor.”

Reading between the lines, Kasich wants to run the government like a business. But the government isn’t a business, and anyway, Kasich is not a businessman. A career politician, Kasich worked for a few years at Lehman Brothers as a managing director of its investment-banking arm before it declared bankruptcy during the height of the economic collapse. His anti-union attitude and neutering of the state’s Department of Development in favor of the operationally opaque nonprofit Jobs Ohio demonstrate further his desire to run the state like a business. In his draconian biennial budget, the governor slashed funds for struggling local governments, schools, and even nursing homes, as though he were middle management trying to skimp on office coffee creamers.

Maybe the governor would find newspapers more edifying were he occasionally to humor those voters that do read them.

Watch Kasich’s anti-newspaper rant:

“By resoundingly rejecting the Republican-backed push to rewrite labor rules for public employees, Buckeye State voters helped set the table for the 2012 presidential election,” wrote Henry Gomez, politics writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Without question the results will be viewed as a momentum-builder for Democrats nationwide and should encourage President Barack Obama.”

In the same column, he quoted John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “Unions and their allies have done a lot of things transferable to next year,” said Green.  “In some respects, the campaign was a trial run for the presidential.”

Both parties are making dangerous long guesses on Ohio’s political will, however.

After Ohio’s independent voters, reacting to high unemployment and limited recovery from the recession, helped Republican candidates sweep most Democrats from the statewide positions in 2010, freshly elected Governor John Kasich introduced some sweeping changes for the state, from so-called reforms in the biennial budget, to the establishment of an opaque non-profit — JobsOhio — to take the helm for the state’s economic development and keep behind the scenes machinations away from pesky media scrutiny. Finally, Kasich and the state GOP attempted to end public unions’ rights to bargain, eliminating third-party arbitration and public employees’ right to strike.

But the Governor was elected in 2010, when Democrats were purged nationwide, the result of a massive effort by the Republican Party to place blame on the Obama administration and cast every Democrat as guilty by association.  Even so, Kasich was only elected by a 2-percent margin, or roughly 77,000 votes, over incumbent Ted Strickland, who was elected by nearly 50 percent more votes than his Republican challenger J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2006.

Kasich, however, seemed to think he was bestowed with a popular mandate to fulfill a conservative agenda, and sought extremely aggressive reforms that proved to be far from what Ohioans actually wanted. The referendum on SB5, Issue 2, was one of three laws of which the public took umbrage. The other two are on the ballot for 2012: Republicans’ redistricting plan for Congress, passed in an emergency appropriations bill to insulate it against a referendum effort. Ohio’s Supreme Court disagreed, ruling the reapportionment part of the bill was indeed subject to citizen’s veto referendum.

The other law, H.B. 194, is an election-reform law that liberal opponents freely refer to as the “Voter Suppression Bill,” a law the would make permanent Secretary of State Jon Husted’s decision this year to prohibit county boards of elections from mailing out unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters. Ohio residents will decide its fate next November, as well.

Even the union-sympathetic message sent by voters last Tuesday hasn’t stalled Ohio conservatives from announcing a petition to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit unions from forcing employees to join against their will. If passed, Ohio would join 22 other “Right to Work” states, cutting in on labor’s ability to raise funds. SB5 was voted down by 792,676 votes -– more than ten times the number of votes by which Kasich beat Strickland.

Does this mean Ohioans will now embrace Democratic initiatives? Not necessarily. While SB5 was widely perceived as unfair and over-broad, many elements within the bill were consistently embraced by voters.

And on Tuesday, Ohio voters easily approved Issue 3, a tea party-led effort to “block” the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act.

In fact, it passed at almost the exact same margin as Issue 2 failed, according to unofficial election results. While Issue 3 was campaigned much less aggressively, both for and against, the tea party’s referendum on “Obamacare” and, in effect, President Obama himself, shows that Ohioans don’t completely align with him or his party.

In fact, they don’t seem to have any allegiances to anyone.

The law, known as Senate Bill 5, would have stripped public-employee unions’ ability to negotiate, giving the ultimate decision-making power to state and local employers, ostensibly in an attempt by Ohio Republicans to stem government spending.

Fitch’s report suggested that, while local municipalities may have stood to save on employee expenses such as pensions and health care, the state would have seen little effect had the law remained on the books, “since state employees already contribute 15% toward their health insurance, the state had not incorporated any savings in its current biennial budget from the changes to collective bargaining rights, and historically, the state has not included pension pick-ups as part of its labor negotiations.”

The report says the state could have picked up some savings from the requirement for employees to pay 15 percent of health-care costs, but it called the $45-million savings “modest,” with respect to the state’s $27-billion budget.

Another hotly contested element of the bill, a requirement for the establishment of a merit-based promotion system for teachers, was not affected by the law’s repeal, as the budget, which passed earlier this year, already provided for such a system.

Fitch, while not expecting the repeal to have an immediate impact on local budgets, did acknowledge that local governments would have a difficult time off-setting the massive cuts the state made to the Local Government Fund, Ohio’s disbursal of sales tax revenues to local municipalities. The cuts, about half of what the state had been paying out before, seem to pose the greatest challenge for Ohioans after SB5, although it is difficult to determine whether the law would have had the effect on employers the administration desired.

Fitch, on the other hand, said its credit ratings did not rely on collective-bargaining laws or even employee costs, but rather governments’ “willingness and ability”  to address fiscal challenges, however they choose to do so.

“Whether solutions are developed through management powers or collective bargaining negotiations is not material to Fitch’s credit analysis; the key is that timely and effective results are consistently achieved,” read the report.

The ratings agency also assigned a “AA+” rating to Ohio’s $146 million in new general-obligation bonds, and reaffirmed its standing ratings of previous bonds, calling Ohio’s rating outlook “stable.”

A group of tea party activists have formed a group called Ohioans for Workplace Freedom, and plan to put a measure on the 2012 ballot that would amend the state constitution by making Ohio a right-to-work state, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

“Currently, Ohio is not among one of 22 right-to-work states in the U.S. In those states, unions may not reach agreements with employers that require union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment,” The Dispatch reports.

A similar measure was on the ballot in 1958. Ohio voters rejected the proposed constitutional amendment by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent, and, in the process, propelled Democrats to victories in both the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate race that year. At the time, it was the largest defeat of a statewide ballot issue in Ohio’s history.

On Tuesday, Ohio voters rejected Issue 2, a statewide referendum on union-busting legislation known as Senate Bill 5, by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent.

SB5 would have ended the practice of “fair share payments,” which public employees that choose to be non-union members are currently required to pay for the costs of negotiating and administering a contract from which they derive benefits.

Gov. John Kasich, who after watching his signature piece of legislation go down in flames on election night, declared “the people have spoken,” did not entirely rule out getting behind this latest effort.

“Kasich, the primary pitchman for Senate Bill 5 and Issue 2, has previously stated that he did not believe Ohio needed to become a right-to-work state. This morning, Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said ‘job creation is Gov. Kasich’s top priority and we need to continue to work hard to create a jobs-friendly climate in Ohio,’” The Dispatch reports.

Before going on the ballot, likely in time for the 2012 presidential election, the group would have to get the language approved and collect 386,000 valid signatures in support.

“We have to listen carefully to what local governments say they want,” the governor told reporters last night after the election, “because the ability to … bail them out, to somehow come to the rescue with money -– we don’t have the money to do that.”

But it seems obvious that Kasich wouldn’t be “bailing out” local governments, especially after halving the state’s payments to them. The governor’s budget, passed earlier this year, included $1.4 million worth of cuts to the state’s municipalities, monies earned through sales tax revenue.

The budget also included dramatic cuts to health services, including around $360 million in cuts to nursing homes, according to the Associated Press.

“Certainly, no one was expecting a bailout of any kind from the state of Ohio,” said Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s spokesperson, Dan Williamson, in an interview with The American Independent. “It’s not that we aren’t concerned with it, but it is was it is, and we are dealing with it,” he said of Columbus losing state money.  “No one thought, ‘well, if Senate Bill 5 loses, the state is going to give us some cash’; that didn’t seem very likely.

“The mayor spoke out and said that cutting the local government fund in half wasn’t ‘shared sacrifice,’ it was disproportionate sacrifice, and he spoke out against the elimination of the estate tax, which doesn’t help the state budget at all, it only hurts cities.”

The new budget does, however, give breaks for business, totaling around $400 million annually, according to an estimate by Progress Ohio.

“The mayor spoke out on those things, and the Legislature passed it (the budget) anyway,” said Williamson. “You’ll see when we introduce our budget on Tuesday that we’re looking ahead to where those cuts are going to hit us.

“It’s passed,” he said of the state budget. “We know what’s coming. We can’t change what’s coming.”

Overcoming challenges

Williamson said that the City of Columbus has worked out many of its greatest challenges through the collective-bargaining process with the city’s workers, including phasing out the practice of pension pick-up and asking employees to pay more for their health care.

“What we’ve done with the city of Columbus is, frankly, a lot of the stuff I think [Kasich] was trying to achieve through SB5, which is getting employee benefits in-line with the market,” he said.  “Before the voters voted for the income tax increase last year, we put out a reform plan and that was to reduce the amount we spent on employee benefits, and already, in just two years, we are projected to save at least $200 million in that ten-year period of time,” he said.  (The city’s original commitment was to save $100 million over the next decade.)

Williamson said that, while the Legislature and the government had passed SB5 on the premise unions were insatiable and third-party dispute arbitrators were favorable to unions, Columbus had not found that to be the case.

“We found the arbitration period works very well,” he said, adding that phasing in cuts gradually mitigated the effect workers felt on their wallets.

“I think if Governor Kasich were to look at what we’re doing in the city of Columbus, he would find that some of what he would like to accomplish can be done by working with the unions,” he said.  “Hopefully, as he looks at what steps to take now, that could be helpful for both the Legislature and the governor.”

According to unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, just over 61 percent (around 2.1 million people) of Ohioans voted ‘no’ on Issue 2, repealing Senate Bill 5, a law that dramatically curtailed public employee unions’ right to collectively bargain with city and state management. Almost 39 percent (1.3 million) voted to keep the law.

During a concession speech, one reporter asked Gov. Kasich whether he now believed the law was an “overreach.”

“That’s like asking an athlete, ‘should you have not taken a shot?’” he said, later acknowledging that voters might be saying it was too much, too soon.

Two other pieces of legislation are already on next year’s ballot in referendum: one a bill some say would amount to voter suppression, the other a reflection on the state Legislature’s congressional re-districting plan.

The beautiful weather in Ohio Tuesday may seal the fate of Senate Bill 5, the state’s new anti-collective-bargaining law that was placed on the ballot via the state referendum Issue 2. Poll workers in Central Ohio are reporting much higher turnout than is usual for an off-year election, especially for a ballot with three state issues and only local candidates.

Poll workers are also expressing confidence in their training and readiness to handle last-minute surprises, said Jarvis Carr, a election worker in Columbus.

“In fact, the training emphasizes problems and challenges, but 95-percent of voters are ready to vote,” noted Carr.  “They have their IDs, they’re at the right polling location and they are ready to go.”

A casual look at the lists of voters that had already cast ballots, required to be posted in a public place at all precincts, showed that even before noon, the columns were filling up with ‘X’s, indicating that many in the precinct had found time to make it to the polls.

Alesia Richardson, polling precinct manager of a polling station in the relatively affluent Victorian Village neighborhood of Columbus (The American Independent is headed out to more polling locations as the day goes on), said she found herself working harder than usual this year.

“We’ve been very busy, unusually so,” she said. “It must be the issues that’s bringing them in.”

Ohio voters are deciding on SB5 through Issue 2, which has placed a spotlight on the Midwestern state as labor’s last stand. Laws that severely curb public employee unions’ rights to negotiate have passed in Wisconsin and New Jersey, states that don’t have Ohio’s constitutional ability for citizens to reject unpopular laws in referendum.

Other issues on the ballot include an increase in the age limit for new judges and Issue 3, a tea party-led initiative to prevent the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through an amendment to the state’s constitution. Recent polls show Issue 3 is headed for defeat, although there’s some indication of voter confusion about the language, as Republicans polled more negatively towards the issue than they had polled positively for “Obamacare,” the tea party’s derisive nickname for the law, while Democrats polled more favorably towards passing the issue than they had ever polled negatively toward the act.http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/senate-bill-5-headed-for-resounding-defeat-tuesday.html#more

Unlike Wisconsin, where tens of thousands appeared to protest the law, Ohio’s SB5 provided no exemption for public-safety workers, which helped to galvanize public opinion against the law. Recent polling suggests Ohioans are opposed to SB5 59 percent to 36 percent, a margin of 23 points. The favorable weather has a positive effect on liberal candidates and issues, as urban areas are both more likely to vote left and have more obstacles to overcome when they try, such as lower vehicle ownership and long lines at the polls.

“We’ve had a steady stream, with a line first thing this morning,” said Richardson in Columbus.

In spite of the line, she estimated no voter had waited more than three to five minutes to vote.

“We’re moving them through pretty quickly,” she said.

Early and absentee voters, on the other hand, were less enticed this year than any election in the last five, as new directives from the Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, restricted county boards of elections from mailing out unsolicited applications for absentee ballots, and shut down early voting over the weekend.  Both were part of the elections reforms former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner put in place as a result of the 2000 and 2004 elections debacles.

This year, poll workers indicated that while some voters had been confused by the new rules, they had been able to vote provisionally anyway.

“A couple people said they just got their absentee ballots yesterday, so they weren’t able to mail them in on time,” said Carr, a poll worker in the Victorian Village precinct, adding that they were, however, eventually able to cast absentee ballots successfully.

Update, 7:10 p.m. EST: In Columbus’s Milo-Grogan neighborhood, voters are still turning out in unexpectedly high numbers, even in spite of some confusion as to the location of the polling station.

Milo-Grogan, a largely blighted area on the city’s east side, saw an estimated 200 voters by 5 p.m., which the precinct’s presiding judge called “almost twice as many as last year’s election,” when John Kasich was elected governor.

“I think it’s from Issue 2,” said Alison Thornton in a confiding whisper. “It’s from the push. Firefighters and police and teachers — there was just a huge push for Issue 2.”

Thornton added that churches and other organizations had been busing voters to the polls all day.

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. in Ohio.

If the law is not repealed through Issue 2, it could take the state back to a time when labor relations in the public sector were particularly sour, and the delivery of government services was often disrupted due to work stoppages.

Ohio public-sector workers did not win the right to collective bargain until 1983. Prior to that, it was illegal for public employees to engage in strikes or work stoppages.

However, that certainly didn’t stop them from fighting for what they felt was right. Prior to collective bargaining, it was not uncommon for police officers in a municipality to call off sick en masse or teachers to walk an illegal picket line.

Under federal law, employers had the right to fire their striking public-sector employees if they did not return to work within 24 hours. However, that was an entirely unrealistic option.

“You think that would conclude strikes in Ohio. But, depending on the year, we ranked second or third in the nation in the number of strikes which were illegal,” said former state Sen. Eugene Branstool, a sponsor of the 1983 collective-bargaining law that SB5 could replace.

“The mayor can’t just fire all the firefighters. The superintendent can’t just fire all the teachers. It’s just impossible.”

Knowing their employers had little recourse in the face of a work stoppage, public employees in Ohio would frequently shut down public service in order to bring attention to working conditions.

“It was unharmonious,” Branstool said. “But they had no way to resolve differences, no way to have their concerns heard. When people are pushed into a corner, they do what they have to do.”

From 1978 through 1980, Ohio averaged 61 public strikes each year.

In the early 1980s, the city of Newark, Ohio, virtually shut down because almost every one of its employees was engaged in some form of work stoppage.

“Really every public employee in the city was down, whether it was teachers, firefighters, police. The city was hard hit,” said former state Rep. Mark Guthrie, another co-sponsor of the original collective-bargaining law. “Newark wasn’t alone. There were strikes all over the state.”

Under Ohio’s current collective-bargaining law, strikes among certain public employees are still illegal. But there are tools to resolve differences between employers and employees, namely binding arbitration. SB5 would end the practice of third-party binding arbitration, instead allowing management to implement their last offer if negotiations reach an impasse.

After the collective bargain law was passed in 1983, public-sector strikes have become almost non-existent. In the past three years, Ohio has had a total of just five public-sector strikes.

To Branstool, the lack of public-sector strikes in the years since the law was passed is proof that it has worked well.

“We practically eliminated strikes. Thousands of agreements these last 27 years have been worked on,” he said. “Not one word has been changed in 27 years. All these previous administrations, Democrat, Republican, nobody laid a hand on it because it was working.”

Self-described ideological “moderates,” plan to reject the law 76 percent to 19 percent, while independents are more closely divided over it, 54 percent to 39 percent.

The poll’s conductors note public sentiment has changed little since they conducted their first survey (PDF) on the issue back in March.

While an overwhelming 86 percent of Democrats are united against the law, the numbers show only 66 percent of self-identified Republicans support the law, Ohio Governor John Kasich’s signature work since his election in 2010.

The poll also shows voters are likely to pass Issue 3, which has been overshadowed by Issue 2 in the media, with very few television spots devoted to the constitutional amendment that would attempt to block in Ohio the individual mandate to have health insurance, as required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The tea party-led effort to block the contentious element of the law began with last year’s election, but the all-volunteer petition drive did not gather enough signatures until this year. Issue 3 would also roll back many statutory Ohio laws, some of which would affect school immunizations and child-support battles. According to the poll, however, 49 percent of Ohioans support the amendment.

The poll also suggests Kasich is among the least popular governors in the country right now, his job considered favorable to only 33 percent of voters. Apparently, Ohio is also feeling considerable buyer’s remorse, as ousted former governor Ted Strickland beats Kasich in a hypothetical reelection 55 percent to 37 percent. Kasich, just a few days past the anniversary of his election, has another three years to recoup voters’ lost confidence; he isn’t up for reelection until 2014.

The poll, conducted by automated “robocall” surveyors, addressed 1,022 “likely voters” from Nov. 4 to Nov. 6; its margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent.

A television ad from Columbus-based progressive think tank, Progress Ohio, highlighted footage from an actual meeting of the Xenia (Ohio) City Council, in which council members question the city fire chief’s request for $13,755 worth of “turn-out gear” (the protective outer-garments worn by all firefighters that include helmet, boots, heat- and fire-resistant trousers and an oxygen supply) for seven firefighters.

The council members’ responses range from incredulity to accusatory.

“I have a hard time believing that the gear needs to replaced every five years; that’s just my opinion,” says one in the video.

Another points out that firefighting is “one of the only occupations I know of that you aren’t responsible for absolutely anything.” He added, “Maybe a fireman should have to buy his own turn-out gear.”

Another member of the council highlighted a dangerous conflict between safety needs and political expedience, arguing, “it’s my opinion that we wait on this expenditure until after the election.”

When the chief argued the suits were as critical to a firefighter’s survival a police officer’s bulletproof vest, a member of the council pointed out that police officers in the city supplied their own bulletproof vests. (They don’t.) Another council member corrected him, and he responded, “Maybe that’s something else that we need to fix.”

Liberal commentator Ed Schultz aired the spot on his MSNBC television show, Ed TV, on Oct. 24. His guest was Mark Sanders, the president of Ohio’s Association of Professional Firefighters. Firefighters trust the collective bargaining process as it stands now, Sanders said, but if Issue 2 passes Tuesday, “you see what might happen all across Ohio, as those who might not be equipped to make those decisions will be making those decisions in the end.”