Alan Calcaterra asserted Ohioans are currently favoring the most liberal Democrat in Congressional electoral politics today for the governor’s mansion in his column Thursday.

Calcaterra said: “According to the non-partisan National Journal, Strickland was ranked as more liberal than all of his colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives even though he claims to be moderate.

That’s right boys and girls, he’s more liberal than Dennis Kucinich.

Knowing who both these men are probably would have helped Calcaterra realize he was asking his editors to publish a falsehood.

Maybe he did know, but that would make his mistake not a mistake, but rather intentional deceit.

Strickland, who scored a 72, is less liberal than Kucinich (94) according to the 2005 National Journal Composite Liberal Score found on votesmart.org (National Journal is a pay site).

In fact, Strickland is less liberal than U.S. Congress members Marcy Kaptur (75) or Sherrod Brown (84), according to the National Journal’s methodology – combining votes on defense, economy and foreign policy.

The Democrat Strickland scored closer to Senators George Voinovich and Mike DeWine (45) than either of those Republicans did to the second-highest ranked House GOP member John Boehner (16).

On social policy, the National Journal gives Strickland a score of 64. Kucinich (93) scores much higher – as do Kaptur and Brown.

DeWine scores a 50. That is 14 points less than Strickland, while House members Mike Oxley (27) and Paul Gillmor (34) are both farther away from DeWine’s position than Strickland.

Seems to me Calcaterra’s next column should focus on how DeWine has more in common with Strickland – an unapologetic liberal, according to Calcaterra – than he does with some of his more prominent fellow Ohio Republicans.

But he won’t.

That’s the problem with the partisanship that dominates the opinion pages in this newspaper.

No objectivity from either side. Both are trying to manipulate you, the reader.

I have no idea and don’t care to speculate on the author’s intentions on the above quoted misstatement, but I also have no idea where Calcaterra got the assertion that Strickland is more liberal than Kucinich – whose name you could have put into the “more liberal than all of his colleagues” claim above.

It also provokes the following line of questioning: Why should readers continue to trust information in Calcaterra’s columns?

If they can’t trust that info, should they bother reading?

I’ll let the intelligent surveyors of The BG News’ pages decide.

Russ Zimmer is a BGSU alumnus and can be reached at [email protected].