The difficulty Blackwell is experiencing winning support for his socially conservative message reflects the anxiety evident this year among voters in Ohio and elsewhere, some pollsters say...

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and a professor at the University of Akron, said that in this campaign Blackwell's biggest problem has not been his policy ideas but his arch-conservative profile. "Ohio leans to the right. But he is way to the right, and some Republicans are quite unhappy with his relationship with religious conservatives," Green said.

You know the old saying...it really holds true for Black Republicans. They have to go so far to the right that white folks don't think they can turn Black again real fast when nobody's looking. So far to the right it even creeps out some Republicans. Hence, Blackwell, Steele, Patterson, Sowell, McWhorter and their ilk.

'Values' Decline As Issue In Ohio
Economic Woes Boost Democrats
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; A01

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Two years ago, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell was a driving force in the triumphant campaign for a state constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage. That helped cause a surge in turnout of "values voters," who helped deliver this pivotal state to President Bush's successful reelection effort.

As the Republican candidate for governor, Blackwell has been counting on values voters to do for him this year what they did for the party in 2004. But the culture wars are being eclipsed as a voting issue by economic worries and Republican scandals that have altered the political dynamic here in striking ways. Several polls find Blackwell trailing his Democratic opponent, five-term Rep. Ted Strickland, by double digits with less than four weeks to go until the Nov. 7 midterm elections.