Howard Wilkinson

If you are an incumbent elected official and you are facing re-election, with dismal looking poll numbers and a potentially difficult challenger looming on the horizon, there is one thing you are likely to do.

Knock that challenger down a notch or two before he or she even gets in the race.

This is the situation where Kentucky’s senior senator, Republican Mitch McConnell, the U.S. Senate minority leader, finds himself.

Former Cincinnati mayor and congressman David Mann was snubbed by the Cincinnati Democratic Committee's nominating committee for an endorsement of his city council campaign, but he is not taking it lying down.

Mann sent a letter Friday to the full membership of the Cincinnati Democratic Committee (CDC), which will meet Saturday, May 4th at the Letter Carriers Hall in Northside to vote on the nominating committee's recommendations.

A portion of Bridgetown Road in western Hamilton County will be named Saturday in honor of a local Marine who died in Iraq nearly eight years ago.

The dedication of the Sgt. David Kreuter Memorial Highway will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Miami Township Community Center on Shady Lane at Bridgetown Road.

Kreuter, a 1997 graduate of Saint Xavier High School and the Three Rivers School District, was one of 14 members of the Marine Corps Reserve's Lima Company killed in a bomb blast in August 2005.

U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, the Westwood Republican, wrote a strongly-worded blog posting Monday blaming the Boston bombings on “Muslim Jihadists” and accusing the Obama administration of trying to cover it up.

“These weren’t a couple of disgruntled Methodists who set off pressure cooker bombs in an attempt to kill and injure as many infidels as possible,’’ Chabot wrote on his blog. “They were Chechen radicalized Islamists who hated America, the country that had generously taken them in, clothed them, fed them and educated them.”

Kevin Johnson, a West End business owner and aide to former council member Laketa Cole, didn't get the nominating committee's recommendation for a Democratic party endorsement, but he is running for Cincinnati City Council anyway.

Johnson will kick off his campaign at 6 p.m. Thursday at Sonny's All Blues Cafe, 4040 Reading Rd., North Avondale.

Johnson said, years ago, that is where he had a conversation with former Cincinnati mayor Dwight Tillery that "set my life on a different path. I trace my passion for public service back to that day."