Local Dick Cheney enjoys VIP ratings at disclosed location

Maumee's Dick Cheney, 74, left, points out that he had the name before the 65-year-old vice president did.

Dick Cheney's wife would like you to know that his approval rating is doing just fine, thank you very much.

"I'm doing OK," he confirmed, though he admitted he hasn't checked the latest polls.

No, not that Dick Cheney, our nation's vice president and a sometime quail and lawyer hunter.

This Dick Cheney lives in Maumee.

Readers who saw yesterday's letters to the editor in The Blade may have done a double take after reading a letter from Maumee's Mr. Cheney criticizing President Bush.

"It's my name, and I had it before he did," said the 74-year-old. "I'm not changing it just because it's associated with that dweeb."

The retired engineer was born and raised in Toledo and spent much of his working career helping run Fulton Industries in Wauseon. He's been a registered Republican since he decided he wanted to vote for President Dwight Eisenhower and mistakenly figured he had to register as a Republican to do so.

Mr. Cheney said he's never changed his registration but votes for whoever he thinks is the best candidate: Democrat, Republican, or Independent.

Sharing a name with Vice President Cheney - whose age, 65, is much higher than his current approval rating of around 35 percent - brings some occasional laughs. In 2004, Republican campaign officials invited him and many other registered Toledo-area Republicans, to attend a local Bush/Cheney fund-raiser.

Sure, he said. Sounds fun.

He made an anti-Bush T-shirt, which he wore. While standing in line waiting to get inside, he said security officials checked his ID, paused, and said: "There's no way you're coming in here."

"I got a lot of laughs, though," he said.

Still, Mr. Cheney - the one in an undisclosed location in the Washington area - should know something before he gets upset with Maumee's Mr. Cheney.

When asked about the hunting accident in Texas earlier this year in which the vice president accidentally shot another member of his hunting party instead of a quail, the local Mr. Cheney was quite sympathetic.

"That stuff can happen," Mr. Cheney said.