Plunderbund's first podcast

Eric Vessels of Plunderbun has posted his first podcast today. Future episodes will include interviews with other Ohio bloggers, as well as the opportunity for listeners to call in.

It starts with the Charlie Wilson hoedown ad--he's the one who didn't get enough valid signatures and has to run as a write-in candidate. Followed by a parody of the recent Sherrod Brown ad, set to hoedown music.

Eric: All right, I've got with me on the inaugural Plunderbund podcast our very first candidate politician interview with Subodh Chandra. Subodh, welcome.

Subodh: Thank you so much for having me.

Eric: Subodh is the Democratic candidate for Attorney General which will be in a primary coming up here in just a few weeks with Marc Dann. Subodh was kind enough to take a bit of time to speak with us today. First of all, does anybody ever actually call Abode Tundra--have you ever had that happen?

Subodh: You know, that actually hasn't happened yet. Maybe we can start a trend right now.

Eric: (laughs) Well, actually we don't want that to happen--we want them to know your name. I'll share kind of a funny story from yesterday. Our mail lady comes up to our house, and she looks at my van and says "You know, I know that Strickland guy, but what's that *other* sticker? Who is that?" And it was your sticker on there. So I had to go through the whole "abode tundra", and that's how you say it and stuff and explain who you were. So, are you finding that you're getting your name recognition out there--because I know that was one of your initial struggles. How's that coming?

Subodh: Well, absolutely, it's going well. You had that conversation and other people are having that conversation, and the newspapers are covering, you've seen our internet ad is getting out there and people are talking about it. I mean, here's what I figure about my name--I've got third grade teachers that are still haunted by it. (laughter) So, you're stuck with it. And, in all seriousness, if people associate the name with a record of public service accomplishment and with a particular plan to try to help save the state, then they're with you, for the haul. All the way at least, I hope, through May 2, the primary, and beyond.

Eric: Absolutely. Hey, I want to ask you, I've got sitting on my desk here this great big red folder that you guys sent out to me, and I call it "the dossier". Do you want to talk a little bit about why you did that, and what that is?

Subodh: Sure. It comes back to the notion that I've been talking about since the beginning of this campaign, which is that all I'm doing is applying for a job. A very sensitive job, a job that's of *incredible* importance to Ohioans. And so when you're applying for a job--and I gotta tell you, I'm going through the longest damn job interview in my life! (laughter) When you're applying for a job, what do people do? They look at your qualifications and they do a background check. Particularly for sensitive jobs. If you were going to hire a babysitter for your girls, you'd want to know, hey, have you ever taken care of kids before, and you'd want to know, do you have a clean background.

Eric: Sure.

Subodh: So, the documents that we released to the media, I think it's over a month ago now--

Eric: Right.

Subodh: It's basically a background check. Everybody knows that campaigns do research on the candidate to prepare for any attack that might come. It's opposition research on yourself. So everybody knows that campaigns do that, and they guard that information like a state secret. Well, when we were done with ours, I said, let's just give this to the media. Let's just put it all out there.

Why? Well, because I'm applying for a job and people deserve to have a background check, first of all. Second, what it does is that it gives people confidence at a time when people are more cynical than they've ever been, whether they're Democrats or Republicans or Independents. They're more cynical than they've *ever been* about government, and about their elected officials. And with good reason.

Eric: So, basically, you saw the culture of corruption and tried to get one step ahead of that, and that's one of the reasons you released this. And I would like to point out that you also sent it very freely to bloggers. I mean, I'm just a guy with a blog, and I got it in the mail just like probably all of the press media did, and I really appreciate that. Which actually--go ahead...

Subodh: This is a confidence building measure--

Eric: Right.

Subodh: --and the third reason, was pretty practical, and I hope designed to bring a little bit of shock therapy to American politics. I don't know that this has ever been done in Ohio political history. I don't know that it's been done in American political history. But my feeling was, if we put this out there, hopefully what we do is help drain the negativity out of campaigns.

Because, how does it usually work? Your opponent digs, the media dig about your background, and then they find a little revelation, and then they go negative on you, and then soon you're explaining yourself. And that detracts from a campaign's ability and from your opponent's ability to have a meaningful dialog about the future of Ohio.

Eric: Sure.

Subodh: Everything is on the line in Ohio in 2006. If we don't put Ohio back on the right course in 2006, everything's on the line. We may run out of time. Four more years, eight more years, twelve more years of this nonsense, and the last person out of Ohio is going to have to turn off the lights. So I did this, so that we could focus on what we need to focus on, which is how an Attorney General can help protect Ohioans and this state from further decline.

Eric: Absolutely, I think it was a great, preemptive move. I have to admit that when I first got it I thought that, well, this is great, and I didn't dig into it until some of the flap came out about the Indian American Leadership Investment Fund, but then I was able to dig back in there and go, "Oh! Okay!" And then we posted some posts on that.

For listeners who aren't too familiar with that, it's an issue that came up that Subodh was involved in this Indian American Leadership Investment Fund, someone else involved in it was doing some hanky-panky with money, and you were actually one of the ones who exposed that, and helped to get that person investigated, and ultimately serve time, is that right?

Subodh: Right, right. So, what basically what happened was a mentor of mine wound up illegally laundering money through the political action committee I helped. The bottom line is, as soon as I found out about it, I reported it, I cooperated with the law enforcement authorities--now, at the end of it, I was a victim of and a witness to the crime.

Eric: Right. And that's what was great about sending out this big red folder background check thing is that it was all in there, and it was all pretty well laid out on that.

Subodh: Let me just add one other thing on that. Because I found it amusing when a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch suggested that we had somehow "buried" that information into the information that we had released.

Eric: It's on page 2 of the "Dear Member of the Press" thing!

Subodh: Right. It's in the cover letter, I talked about it in the press conference, where that reporter was present. (Eric laughs.) And, I don't know what more I can do. You know, you can lead the horse to water but somehow--

Eric: You can't make 'em read!

To be continued...

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