AP Howler of the Day: Kasich 'Keeping Pace' With Strickland in OH Guv Race

In a short item about a Democratic Governors Association election complaint about Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, the Associated Press's Julie Carr Smyth showed that she is willfully ignoring Buckeye State reality, or has been living a hermit's existence for the past few months.

In describing Kasich's standing against Democratic incumbent governor Ted Strickland, Smyth claimed that Kasich "is keeping pace with Strickland in polls and fundraising" (a picture of the relevant paragraph is here).

As you can see, that's sort of like a baseball writer claiming that "The Cincinnati Reds are keeping pace with the Chicago Cubs this year":

For those who aren't following baseball closely, the Reds have a 21-1/2 game lead on the Cubs with less than 30 games remaining.

Who do you think you're foolin', babe?

(Answer: Relatively disengaged voters who need to given the impression that the sinking Strickland campaign is really on track to victory, instead of heading towards the first defeat of an incumbent governor in the Buckeye State in 36 years.)

Democrats are upset that Kasich appeared on Fox News and was able to give out the name of his web site and encourage viewers to donate to his campaign during Bill O'Reilly's show on August 18. Awwww.

The election complaint is carried at a Huffington Post item courtesy of Sam Stein, a former NewsWeak (spelled that way on purpose) reporter. Two years ago, Stein claimed that Republican presidential nominee John McCain couldn't possibly have vetted VP pick Sarah Palin because no one had visited her town's local newspaper and looked through its archives. Well Sam, that just might be because the paper's archives going back a decade were available online, and contained hundreds of entries. This Internet thing is pretty cool when you have a clue about how to use it.

Ben Smith at Politico, who is not being linked because of his outfit's outrageous attempt to shut down the College Politico, seems to think that this complaint has as much validity as Stein's unproven claim against Team McCain two years ago:

It seems to hinge on a chyron and, to my eye, is more in the great tradition of thin, high-profile election-year litigation than about winning in court.

Speaking of "in-kind contributions," maybe Julie Carr Smyth can estimate how much value favoring Strickland we should place on her demonstrably false claim in a national news story that Kasich is only "keeping" pace with him, when the fact is that Kasich has an averaged-out double-digit lead.

Cross-posted at Bizzyblog.com.