J. Kenneth Hackwell’s Hypocrisy

The latest revelation regarding the single most unprincipled man in the history of Ohio politics, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Hackwell, is that the man who stole the 2004 election will no longer talk to Columbus Dispatch reporters. Hackwell, the frontrunner in the May 2 gubernatorial primary, won’t talk to a newspaper that hasn’t endorsed a Democrat for president since 1916.

There’s reasons why he won’t talk. Hackwell’s crafted an image of himself as a pious Christian man of the highest moral values. While soliciting the state’s theocrats and right-to-lifers’ vote, he privately holds stock in Barr Pharmaceuticals that manufactures a morning-after pill – or as Hackwell and his followers call it, a baby-killing abortion pill. While he’s opposed to gambling, he’s “shocked,” shocked, I say, that he found himself holding stock in the nation’s largest maker of slot machines. As Ohio’s chief election officer, he decides whether the signatures will be valid for the two casino initiatives attempting to be placed on the November ballot.

He was equally shocked to find that, while negotiating unbid contracts on Dieblod machines, he happened to hold stock in that company as well.

The self-proclaimed man of integrity is really the ultimate Machiavellian. His holdings, as a multimillionaire, need to be scrutinized by the Ohio Ethics Commission. Exactly who loaned him the money to buy a stake in a radio conglomerate that made him so filthy rich that he has no idea what companies he’s invested in, and how those investments go against anything he professes. Perhaps that is why it is easier for the camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to get into heaven.

Hackwell’s hypocrisy comes from the fact that he ignores the scripture that you cannot worship both God and mammon.