Nov 17, 2014 4 min read

What was originally forecast as a competitive contest turned out to be a rout in this year’s governor’s race in Ohio, when Republican incumbent John Kasich chewed up and spit out Democratic opponent Ed FitzGerald by a 31-point margin Nov. 4.

Despite some early polls, it likely would have been very tough for FitzGerald to triumph in any circumstances, given the Republican wave in this year’s midterms, combined with Kasich’s ability to cast himself as a sensible, purple-state moderate who doesn’t rile the horses or frighten small children.

But FitzGerald, the 46-year-old executive of Cuyahoga County, which contains Cleveland, turned what could have been a respectable loss into a humiliating, probably career-ending rejection on the back of amateur-hour blunders and two embarrassing revelations that generated more headlines and clicks than anything FitzGerald said while on the hustings.

First was the news that, in 2012, FitzGerald was discovered in a car in a suburban Cleveland parking lot in the small hours of a Friday morning with a woman who was not his wife.

A police officer found nothing untoward, and FitzGerald said he and the woman were just chatting.

But then came another – and infinitely more damaging – disclosure FitzGerald tooled around for years in his own car, and in vehicles owned by Cuyahoga County, without a valid driver’s license.

That FitzGerald evinced so little interest in complying with one of the everyday laws of the state he wanted to lead turned off legions of voters and made him a laughingstock.

For FitzGerald, faux pas that were, in the grand scheme, rather small, started to add up.

She’s nowhere close to being in as dire a state politically as FitzGerald, but his follies should serve as a cautionary tale for Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

Her office sent a news release Thursday offering an update on her medical condition following an Oct. 21 auto accident in the Scranton-area community of Dunmore, where Kane apparently sustained a concussion.

The third paragraph of the release begins thusly: “Unfortunately, the attorney general was not wearing a seat belt; she hit her head on the window and was jolted.”

Give her office points for candor. But after years when we’ve been told again and again about how buckling up saves lives and prevents injury, why wasn’t Kane, one of the commonwealth’s leading political figures, and by many estimations a rising star, using a seat belt?

Take off points for setting a crummy example.

It must be said that, unlike FitzGerald, she was not violating any statutes by not wearing a seat belt. She was a back-seat passenger, and surprisingly, in Pennsylvania, seat belts are required only for front-seat passengers, and in the back seat for children and teenagers.

Pennsylvania is one of 23 states, along with the Virgin Islands, that does not require that adult, back-seat passengers use a seat belt.

Nevertheless, numerous studies have found that passengers who do use them, no matter where they are positioned in a vehicle, have had lower injury and fatality rates when they have been involved in accidents.

A 2010 story in USA Today noted that, despite the fact that seat-belt use among front-seat passengers is now at around 83 percent, just 74 percent of back-seat passengers nationwide use seat belts, even though being in the back seat is no safer than the front seat in a collision.

Take, for instance, Princess Diana’s death in a Paris car crash in 1997. She was an unbuckled back-seat passenger.

We hope Kane has a speedy and complete recovery.

And perhaps when she is back at her desk, she can turn this embarrassment toward a good end by urging that the commonwealth require all passengers in motor vehicles to wear seat belts.