Has Ohio's 10th Congressional District seen enough of Kucinich yet?
Could the voters produce a Republican sweep thorough enough to whisk away Dennis Kucinich?
It's hard to imagine. It's harder yet to get one's hopes up. But a very credible Republican candidate is running against Cleveland's unrepresentative representative this year, and residents of the 10th Congressional District should be falling all over themselves to elect him.
His name is Peter J. Corrigan. He's a businessman with expertise in the financial side of companies and -- of all things -- physics. In other words, he's not stupid.
He's not a Democrat, and although that would be an oddity in Ohio's 10th District, it wouldn't be a first. Republican Martin Hoke held the seat from 1992 until 1996, when Kucinich completed the most unlikely of political comebacks to take it away from him.
The candidate who is representative of the district is Corrigan. The oddity is the incumbent.
A mere 17 years after Clevelanders banished him from office for sinking their city into default, Kucinich headed off to Congress. And there he has lingered -- at least when not running for president -- ever since.
When he was first elected, the not entirely tongue-in-cheek assessment was that with 434 adults to supervise him in the House of Representatives, how much damage could Dennis do?
Besides, the 10th was a solidly Democratic district and if its voters chose to express their eccentricity by sending to Congress a fellow with a long history of wandering off into the political, fiscal and ideological weeds, well, what was the harm?
And for a long time, those analysts were right.
Since arriving at the House 13 years ago, Kucinich has sponsored 104 bills -- some of them containing some pretty wacky stuff.