Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland Knocked by Foe as 'Chicken Shack' Bumpkin

The humble upbringing of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has become a campaign issue in the governor's race. A spokesman for his opponent claimed Strickland couldn't manage the state's urban problems because he was raised in a "chicken shack on Duck Run."

Strickland, an onetime Methodist minister and son of a steelworker, did indeed grow up in hilly southeastern Ohio near Duck Run, an area in Scioto County. And his family lived briefly in a chicken coop after a fire in their home.

That much is known. But a spokesman for Strickland's Republican opponent, former Rep. John Kasich, said that Strickland never gave residents of Ohio's cities a second thought until he needed their votes in his campaign for re-election. "Having grown up in a chicken shack on Duck Run, he has all but ignored our cities' economies and their workers," Kasich aide Rob Nichols said in a recent statement.
The Strickland campaign took umbrage and noted that Kasich, after leaving Congress, worked for the financial services firm Lehman Brothers, which collapsed during the 2008 meltdown on Wall Street. "Only the congressman from Wall Street would be so out of touch as to insult Ted's humble upbringing," said Strickland aide Liz Smith.

Nichols apologized on Wednesday, saying he had used Strickland's "own words, but shouldn't have" and didn't intend for his remark to be taken "pejoratively," the Dayton Daily News' William Hershey reported. Nichols, initially, had responded to a comment from Strickland's lieutenant governor running mate, Yvette Brown, who said "Ted didn't grow up in a city, but Ted fights for our cities every day."

At the Cleveland City Club, Democratic National Chairman Tim Kaine jumped into the fray, observing "that the other campaign yesterday ridiculed him (Strickland) for 'growing up in a chicken shack on Duck Run, Ohio.' I don't know why they thought that's a bad thing, but maybe that's how it looks from the perspective of a Lehman Brothers consultant."

Strickland, a former congressman who once worked as a prison counselor, is in a tight race against Kasich, who served as chairman of the House Budget Committee in the 1990s, and briefly considered a presidential campaign in 1999.

Duck Run, by the way, also claims another famous son, the late Roy Rogers. The King of the Cowboys, born in Cincinnati, lived there in the Appalachian foothills in his boyhood years.