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A group as diverse as a mortgage auditor, tattoo artist, and rock vocalist will appear on the ballot March 4, running for 160 spots on the Lucas County Republican Central Committee. It's a committee many people never have heard of - including, until recently, some of those on the ballot. But it's a group - on the Democratic side as well - that supplies the backbone of political organizing and campaigning. The new faces eyeing the Republican Party are seen as a threat to the old guard. But Jon Stainbrook, the Republican activist who recruited them over a short period in December, said the party fractured by the Tom Noe scandal of the last three years needs new blood.

The voice-over cuts in for a commercial break. Above the soundboard of dials, needles, and knobs, a computer screen counts the seconds until northwest Ohio returns to Brian Wilson and the Afternoon Drive. Mr. Wilson not the legendary Beach Boys figure, but the WSPD-AM talk radio host backs away from a suspended microphone and faces his studio guest.

AS OHIO'S March 4 presidential primary looms with the crucial Democratic race hanging fire, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama must shed their timidity and sign on immediately for Rep. Marcy Kaptur's statewide tour so they can see firsthand how this region has been ravaged economically over the past eight years. We believe the tour, with Democratic members of Ohio's congressional delegation, would be an antidote to the superficiality of typical presidential campaigns, in which candidates, in effect, parachute into a state and pretend to know its problems, while largely hiding behind facades erected by spin doctors and professional opinion manipulators.

TO EXECUTIVES at Perrysburg's Owens-Illinois Inc. and other manufacturers of glass bottles, there is gold in them there hills. America's obsession with single-serving water is creating ugly mountains of cheap plastic bottles in landfills nationwide and a public relations headache for a segment of the packaging industry struggling with the three-headed hydra of escalating oil prices, rising environmental concerns, and health fears.

Really? Really?! We spent the entire week on The Mayornator v. The Marines? This is ridiculous on so many levels that I hardly know where to start. If I didn't know better, I'd say Mayor Carty Finkbeiner behaves lately like a guy deaf to his advisers, like a guy clueless about protecting his (and our city's) image, like a guy with no public-relations backup whatsoever, like a Oh. Ohhh. Right. Hizzoner is that guy.

LIMA, Ohio - Like Kenneth Richey, Robert Collins spent the last 21 years of his life waiting. But now that Richey is a free man, the father of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins, killed in a 1986 fire Richey was convicted of setting, said he is still waiting - for Richey to die. "That'll be the only closure I'll ever get," an angry Mr. Collins told The Blade in his first interview with American media.

SANDUSKY A 22-year-old man is dead, a 19-year-old woman is in critical condition, and four other young people are in trauma centers today after the car they were riding in struck a utility pole and then a brick wall early this morning just off U.S. 6, authorities said. The crash, which occurred between Sandusky and Huron, Ohio, appears to be alcohol related, according to authorities. Nicholas A. Codispoti of Sandusky was pronounced dead at Firelands Regional Medical Center, Sandusky, after the crash that occurred about 4:40 a.m., the Ohio Highway Patrol said.