A veteran republican operative has confirmed to Ohio Public Radio that Montgomery is indeed leaving the race for Governor and will announce instead that she's running for the job she held four years ago, state Attorney General.
Montgomery's first stop today is a news conference at the Wood County courthouse in northwest Ohio where she launched her career in government by serving eight years in the nineteen-eighties as county prosecutor. After that, it was a stint in the Ohio Senate, then state Attorney General, and now state Auditor.
Recent polls have shown Montgomery, the most moderate of the three big name G-O-P challengers in the Governor's race, running third. Her departure from that contest makes it basically a two man race between front-runner, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and current A-G, Jim Petro