Gasoline prices have fallen a bit over the past week. Here in Columbus, they have gone down from $4.50 a gallon to about $4.30 a gallon, so a 20-cent drop.
Come next week, they will drop at least another 38.5 cents because Ohio lawmakers this week passed a suspension of the state's gasoline tax.
It passed overwhelmingly, with only a few Democrats opposing it. Gov. Mike DeWine, who once said it was a bad idea, will sign it, and it will take effect almost immediately.
The move will cost the state more than $700 million in lost revenue, money that pays for road repairs and construction. However, the state ended its last fiscal year with a surplus, so lawmakers will use part of that money to pay for the holiday. Presumably, we will save a few bucks at the pump, the potholes will get filled, and the bridges will not fall down.
This happened so fast because both candidates for governor called for it. Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy announced their support for suspending the gas tax. No doubt the Republican Legislature did it for Ramaswamy more than Acton. They did not invite her to the post-vote news conference.
Will this last-minute, largely symbolic move help either candidate win the governor's race?
To look at the politics of the gas tax issue and other campaign news, we turn to our "Columbus on the Record" panel: reporter Andrew Tobias of Signal Statewide, Ohio State University political scientist Herb Asher, and Republican strategist Mike Gonidakis.
Latest Poll Results
A couple of new polls out this week both show Amy Acton with leads over Vivek Ramaswamy in the race for governor, with leads outside the margin of error.
A Marist poll shows Acton leading Ramaswamy by 6 percentage points, 50% to 44%. A Suffolk University poll shows Acton up by 9 percentage points, 50% to 41%.
(The Marist poll has Sherrod Brown up by 8 percentage points over Jon Husted in the Senate race.)
So, good news for Democrats, right? Not so fast. That Suffolk poll seems dubious. Even its author cautioned the USA Today Network, which sponsored the poll, that it could be an outlier. Suffolk had Democrat Richard Cordray up by 6 percentage points a month before he lost to Mike DeWine. That Suffolk poll has Brown leading Husted by just 3 percentage points, basically a tie.
That one I believe. All indications are that both of these races are tied and could go either way. But the polls are consistent in some important areas. President Trump is pretty unpopular and becoming more unpopular, and people are worried about the economy. Both are bad news for the party in charge, which is the GOP.
So take the Democrats' current leads with a grain of salt, because they likely will dissolve by the time actual votes are counted. The question is how much those leads will dissolve.
Snollygoster of the week
Sherrod Brown is out with a new ad that uses Jon Husted's words against him. In a video session, Husted inartfully tried to explain how low-income people struggle to navigate a complicated system. The quote that stands out was "people living in poverty are not very experienced in navigating the real world."
Brown's campaign has taken that video and produced an ad. It shows Husted sitting at a desk in a suit and tie speaking for himself. The ad mixes in images of working-class people watching the video on their phones and making serious expressions.
But there is another version, posted only on social media, that takes those expressions a step further with some colorful language that was intended to get attention and go viral online.