I have to be honest, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is not exactly one of my favorite people. His actions during the 2004 election cycle were nothing short of deplorable. As an Ohio resident, I witnessed firsthand how heavily minority (and Democratic) districts were combined and how not enough voting booths were placed in these districts (I saw people wait over 2 1/2 hours to cast a ballot in my polling place). This was just the culmination of the game-playing he had been doing for over a year.

So, I can’t say that I feel for him when I read that, with less than 7 weeks to go until the election, the polls show him behind by the largest margin of any Republican candidate in the last 20 years.

According to a University of Cincinnati poll, he trails Democratic opponent Ted Strickland by 12 percentage points. According to a Rasmussen poll, he trails by an even greater margin of 21 points.

Here are some key points of the article that really caught my attention:

Blackwell dismissed the poll numbers, saying they are “all over the place.”

Perhaps, but they all show him losing.

Looking inside the Ohio Poll’s demographic breakdowns will give little solace to the Blackwell campaign:

While 81 percent of Democrats support Strickland, only 68 percent of Republicans said they will vote for Blackwell.

In southwest Ohio, Blackwell’s home and the strongest GOP area of the state, he is leading Strickland by only 5 points.

While Rademacher cautioned that the relatively small sampling of African-Americans makes for a much higher margin of error, the Ohio Poll shows Blackwell - who would be the state’s first African-American governor - with only 20 percent of the African-American vote. That is 18 percentage points less than fellow Republican Sen. Mike DeWine’s showing among black voters in the same poll.

What this says to me is that, he has alienated black voters in favor of perceived support of white conservatives but, in the end, they aren’t looking to back him, either.

So, while the race is far from over, it does appear that Blackwell is about to get a real taste of what some of us have long suspected about the GOP (and, in all fairness, political parties, in general) — black folks are welcomed to work for them but, they are not welcomed to share the power.

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