Can a little luck rub off on Ohio?

BYLINE: Joe Hallett, Special To The Plain Dealer

Forty-eight years out of Northwest High School in Scioto County, Gov. Ted Strickland still wears the clunky class ring to remind himself that he's a lucky guy.

Strickland barely could scrape together the money to buy the ring, so before he left for his freshman year at Kentucky's Asbury College in 1959, he gave it to his sister for safekeeping. Her house was burglarized, the ring stolen.

Almost 25 years later, a high-school classmate called Strickland from Atlanta. A friend of hers in Lucasville had called, saying that her daughter was walking along the railroad tracks and found a ring in the mud. It was inscribed: "Northwest High School, 1959, TS."

Since then, the ring's luck has carried Strickland to Congress, and to a place where little more than two years ago he had never imagined going: the Ohio governor's office. Now, Strickland hopes he's lucky enough to be a governor of consequence, a transformational leader.

Two months into his term, his luck is holding. His State of the State speech Wednesday received rave reviews from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, editorial writers and scholars.

"It was the kind of talk about policies and values that could get a Democrat elected president," said Joseph White, chairman of the political science department at Case Western Reserve University.

"It was a very courageous, very bold, very aggressive speech," said Michael Schwartz, president of Cleveland State University. "There is nothing timid about this man."

For the last 16 years, Statehouse denizens had been lulled to sleep by successive two-term Republican governors preaching to their partisan brethren, ignoring Democrats and offering little salvation for a state going to hell in a handbasket.

"In the last 16 years, we've been playing in-your-face Republican politics," said longtime GOP lobbyist Neil S. Clark. "Now, we have a new series of thoughts and ideas that need to be taken seriously."

Strickland was the first Democrat since Gov. John J. Gilligan in 1971 to address a legislature totally controlled by Republicans, and he used his speech - and, a day later, his first budget - to remind all that two-party government still exists in Ohio.

Senate President Bill Harris, an Ashland Republican, commended Strickland for "a very good job of articulating in his speech a vision for the state."

And then he said four seemingly innocuous words that are rich with texture in a state that has been stunted by the intransigence of one-party rule: The debate can start.

Compromise, a simple concept long lacking at the Statehouse but crucial to good government, will be reintroduced into deliberations on Strickland's two-year budget, which proposes funneling $53 billion to more than 11 million Ohioans in countless personal ways.

Strickland has given lawmakers much to mull with a budget that charts a new direction, exhorting them in his speech that it's time to make "very tough choices . . . to make meaningful investments which will lead to a transformed Ohio."

The budget has plenty for Republicans to like, especially the lowest rate of spending growth in 42 years and the largest property tax cut in state history.

"There was a lot in there for people who believe in limited and effective government," acknowledged Rep. William G. Batchelder of Medina, a conservative GOP leader.

But Strickland will need all the magic in his lucky ring for his agenda to get through the Republican legislature largely intact. There will be pushback and, no doubt, compromise on his proposals to freeze funding for charter schools and on his idea that state grants for students to attend private colleges should be based on need. Lawmakers representing school districts that would be flat-funded won't be happy.

Moreover, one crucial aspect of Strickland's budget is far from certain: a plan to "sell" Ohio's expected revenue from its 1998 court settlement with tobacco companies in order to instantly get an estimated $5 billion, with more than half of the proceeds earmarked for property-tax cuts. Before he agrees, House Speaker Jon A. Husted, a Kettering Republican, will want to ensure that Ohio's school-construction needs are met, which was the intended purpose of the tobacco funds.

As the governor with the clunky high-school class ring strives to make a meaningful mark, he can thank his luck for Harris and Husted, two sensible leaders equally committed to Ohio's future.

Hallett is senior editor at the Columbus Dispatch. To reach him: jhallett@dispatch.com