In the aftermath of President Obama’s visit yesterday to the Buckeye State, a number of sources noted increasing tensions among Democrats in Ohio.

Politico’s Dave Catanese writes that the “GOP says Brunner was snubbed” –

Just one of the two Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in Ohio showed up for President Obama’s visit in Strongsville Monday – and Republicans say even she got snubbed.

While Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner attended the president’s final pitch for a health care overhaul, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher did not. Fisher’s campaign chalked up his absence to a scheduling conflict.

“We would have been happy to join the president. But we had a long scheduled editorial board meeting with the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer. It conflicted. We were with him the last time he was in town,” said Fisher spokesman John Collins.

But Brunner was able to keep that same long-standing commitment with the newspaper and make the Obama event. Fisher’s campaign later cited a previously scheduled meeting with community leaders in Akron that could not be rescheduled.

Eager to highlight any candidates seeking distance from the president, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) initially shot out a release Monday afternoon questioning why both candidates failed to make the trip to the Cleveland suburb.

But a campaign Twitter feed quickly revealed that Brunner was, in fact, in attendance.

“Just returned to Columbus from seeing President Obama in Strongsville. Someone shouted ‘courage!’ and he agreed it’s needed now. So do I,” Brunner wrote in a tweet about an hour after the rally.

Campaign manager David Dettman said Brunner sat in the VIP section and got to speak with president briefly, but he would not speculate on why their primary opponent was not in attendance.

“I have no comment on it other than Jennifer was there. There’s plenty to talk about in this race, other than who showed up in Strongsville,” Dettman told POLITICO.

Undeterred by the development, the NRSC accused Obama of snubbing Brunner because he never singled her out in the crowd. “The President took time to acknowledge Ohio’s Democrat Governor, Senator and congressional delegation during his remarks, but he didn’t think to acknowledge Ohio’s female statewide Secretary of State and Democrat Senate candidate Jennifer Brunner?,” asked NRSC spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson Marchand. “It’s difficult to believe that the president’s omission today was an oversight,” she added.

While Fisher holds a significant fundraising advantage, the Secretary of State is counting on enthusiasm from the liberal, grassroots wing of the Democratic party to stay competitive.

In a joint interview with the Plain Dealer, Brunner said she wasn’t afraid to make tough decisions on controversial topics and suggested Fisher is not as decisive.

“I am not afraid to take a principled stand on controversial issues and to do it early,” she told the paper.

The winner of the May 4 primary will go on to face likely Republican nominee Rob Portman. 

Politico’s Morning Score also notes –

ONE THERE IN OHIO: If 90 percent of life is just showing up, it must be the other 10 percent that gets you a shout-out from the president. Only one of the two Democrats running for Senate in Ohio this year made it to President Obama’s health care speech in Strongsville, Ohio, Monday, and (as the GOP is eager to point out) Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner wasn’t among the elected officials acknowledged by the president in his remarks. Not in attendance: Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, the party favorite for the Senate race, whose campaign said he had a previously scheduled engagement with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. http://bit.ly/aopLXF  

The problem with Fisher’s excuse: Brunner made it to both Obama’s speech and an event at the newspaper, which featured the two Democratic Senate hopefuls making their respective cases side by side. http://bit.ly/bGgsya

The Cincinnati Enquirer editorializes on the Democrats’ “arrogant approach to health care” –

America’s robust discussion of health care reform during the past year has been beneficial in many ways, giving the public greater awareness and insight into this complex issue. Unfortunately, the debate has been held pretty much on one-party terms as Democrats, controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, crafted the only plan allowed on the table, and negotiated behind closed doors. Now, despite the deep reservations of a majority of Americans, congressional leaders plan to ram through their proposal this week – bypassing normal congressional procedures.

It is a distressing prospect. We hope that moderate House Democrats – among them Rep. Steve Driehaus of Cincinnati, who says he “will not bend on the principle of federal funding on abortion” but will be stuck in the middle of an elaborate charade to include that funding anyway – will put a stop to this sham.

Real debate has been sidestepped, while Democrats played a childish game of Catch-22 with health care legislation: Congressional leaders wouldn’t allow Republican proposals to be formally considered, then turned around and accused them of not having alternatives. Among themselves, Democrats cut a series of backroom deals that in any other context would be considered criminal payoffs and bribery.

Here’s how blatant it’s become: Last week, President Obama nominated for a federal appeals court the brother of a wavering Democratic House member from Utah.

This disgusting process, which Democrats brazenly wish to bring to conclusion this week, is being done with little regard for the opinions of a clear majority of Americans who, while they may believe health care reform is necessary, think this particular approach will take our nation down the wrong economic path.

Obama, despite all his fine talk of bipartisanship, has proven he has little regard for the ideas – or the constituencies – of those who are not his political allies. The paltry few GOP proposals that he has indicated he is willing to consider – even here, there are no real commitments – are so token as to be laughable.

Meanwhile, an Associated Press poll last week showed that 68 percent of Americans don’t want health care reform passed without Republican support.

Supporters of the Democratic plan can spin it any way they wish, but polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans oppose their heavy-handed approach to reform. Americans may favor general principles such as universal coverage, but they are distrustful of the way this bill has been crafted and how it will change their relationship with their health care providers.

According to the Quinnipiac Poll, Ohioans oppose the Democrats’ reform plan 56 percent to 33 percent, although they agree 53 percent to 44 percent that Congress should keep trying to reform health care.

The legislation has major problems that have not even begun to be discussed in a serious way, and if Democrats have their way will not be debated at all. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, for example, calls the Senate bill “racially discriminatory” because of provisions that “in addition to being unconstitutional, will not improve health care outcomes for minority patients.”

And despite denials, the bill has worrisome implications for Medicare. According to an Associated Press news account, much of the reform bill is “financed with Medicare cuts the government’s own experts say could be unsustainable.”

Democrats are devising an elaborate set of sleight-of-hand tricks to get this bill on Obama’s desk this week, including Senate “reconciliation” to avoid a GOP filibuster.

Yes, both parties have employed reconciliation in the past – it has been used by Republicans in 14 of 22 instances since being adopted in 1974 – but its purpose is supposed to be resolving budget issues, not making far-reaching policy decisions that will alter one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

Its blatant abuse is yet further damning evidence of congressional leaders’ arrogant, condescending attitude toward the people they ostensibly were elected to serve.

And the DailyKos notes the divisions surrounding the Ohio Senate Dem Senate primary in a post entitled “DSCC to Ohio voters: Screw your primary” –

On May 4th, Ohio’s Democratic primary voters will have a choice between Jennifer Brunner, a progressive who has restored dignity to Ohio’s elections, and Lee Fisher, a corporate Democrat whose achievements are somewhat lacking.  Fisher served as Ohio’s Director of Development, in charge of attracting new industry and jobs to Ohio.  Instead, Ohio lost hundreds of thousands of jobs under his watch, and, in true Sarah Palin fashion, resigned a year early from his post.  Since then, he hasn’t done anything to help Ohioans.  He’s done an awful lot to help himself, though, raising money from all sorts of questionable places…

So you would think that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee would remain neutral and allow Ohio’s voters the choice between the candidate of the people, Jennifer Brunner, and the candidate of Corporate America, Lee Fisher.  Not quite.  In September, the DSCC told Jennifer that they were going to support Lee Fisher, because of his fundraising prowess [5].  They then proceeded to make $6333 worth of contributions to Fisher’s campaign [1].  In a flurry of communications this week, the DSCC has continued to voice their support for Lee Fisher while neglecting Jennifer’s campaign altogether.  First, they released the results of a poll they conducted that shows Fisher leading Republican candidate Rob Portman by one point [6].  They don’t give a margin of error, but this is likely a statistical toss-up.  They either did not include Brunner in their poll or found that she was polling better than Fisher and left that information out.  Then, in their “Plan for Victory in 2010″ which they emailed to their members, they examine the Senate race in Ohio.  To be fair, they include a picture of both Fisher and Jennifer, but in the text there is no mention of Jennifer, they instead spend a paragraph touting the supposed accomplishments of Lee Fisher [7].