Paul Hackett (veteran advocate)
Weemer had contacted Hackett two years earlier after he had successfully represented other Marines charged with violations of the law of war in Haditha in November 2005.
The trial lasted two weeks after which the 8 member court martial deliberated for 8 hours and announced its decision acquitting Weemer of all charges and specifications, to unpremeditated murder and dereliction of duty.
When an infant, his family moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, where his father worked for the Pratt and Whitney aircraft engine company.
Before Hackett started school, his family returned to Ohio when his father took a job with the General Electric Company's aircraft engine division in Evendale, a Cincinnati suburb.
Hackett decided to run for Congress because "with all that this country has given me, I felt it wasn't right for me to be enjoying life in Indian Hill when Marines were fighting and dying in Iraq," he told The Cincinnati Post.
John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron in northeast Ohio told USA Today "It's a real steep uphill climb for him.
Jane S. Anderson, an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati who has unsuccessfully run for the Cincinnati city council and the Ohio House as a Democrat, told the Associated Press Hackett was undaunted by the Republican composition of the district, claiming: Martin Gottlieb, editor of the Dayton Daily News editorial page, wrote a Republican landslide in the district was "a self-fulfilling prophecy": Hackett criticized Jean Schmidt as a "rubber stamp" for Ohio Governor Bob Taft's "failed policies" and said she would continue in that role for George W. Bush if elected.
At their debate at Chatfield College, he said "If you think America is on the right track and we need more of the same, I'm not your candidate" and asked "Are you better off today than you were five years ago?
"If you think America needs another career politician steeped in a culture of corruption who does as she's told and tows [sic] the line on failed policies, then I'm not your candidate," he wrote in a guest column for The Cincinnati Post.
On June 12, he went to Nicola's Ristorante on Sycamore Street in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood to call attention to Schmidt and other members of the Ohio General Assembly having accepted dinner there and Cincinnati Bengals tickets from a lobbyist for pharmaceutical company Chiron, Richard B. Colby, on October 24, 2004, and failing to report the gifts on their financial disclosure statements.
The Cincinnati Enquirer ran a front page story on July 2, reporting on the candidates financial disclosure statements that revealed both were millionaires.
Schmidt called for reducing America's dependence on foreign oil by increasing use of ethanol and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The first was held on July 7, at Chatfield College in St. Martin in Brown County, moderated by Jack Atherton of WXIX-TV, the Fox Network affiliate in Cincinnati.
Hackett told the audience his opponent was "a rubber stamp for failed policies" and "if you think America is on the right track and we need more of the same, I'm not your candidate."
Schmidt always appeared in public with a button in her lapel containing a photograph of Keith Matthew Maupin, the only prisoner of war of the Iraq campaign.
Hackett's ad began with a clip of President George W. Bush speaking to troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on June 28, 2005, "There is no higher calling than service in our armed forces."
The Republican National Committee's lawyers wrote him saying the commercial deceived the public with "the false impression the President has endorsed your candidacy."
Robert T. Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, told The Cincinnati Post the commercials were "a blatant effort to dupe voters."
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the official Republican Party body that helps candidates for the United States House of Representatives, announced on July 28, it was spending $265,000 for television ads in the Cincinnati market, covering the western part of the district, and $250,000 for ads in the Huntington, West Virginia, market, covering the eastern half.
A mailing to voters by the DCCC reiterated these statements under the headline "Who Voted for the Taft Sales Tax Increase—the Largest in Ohio History?"
The Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes, a Cincinnati-based group founded by Tom Brinkman (who lost the GOP primary to Schmidt), began running ads in the last week of July urging voters to skip the election.
COAST's president, Jim Urling, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that this might help elect Hackett, but "we think it will be easier to remove a Democrat next year than an incumbent Republican posing as a conservative."
The Daily News said Schmidt's attacks on Senators R. Michael DeWine and George V. Voinovich were "remarkably classless" and "seemed to be saying that voters who like legislators who exercise occasional independence from their party should not vote for her."
It noted Schmidt is the latest in a line of "Republican patricians" and "likely to be a dependable vote for the Bush administration" whereas Hackett is a gust of fresh air.
The Cincinnati Post editorialized Hackett's success in the eastern counties was in part from "the increasingly desperate struggle in rural areas to provide enough decent jobs for those who want them."
The Clermont County Democratic chairman, Dave Lane, told the Dayton Daily News "Here we are in the reddest of red districts and it was very, very close."
Her boss, Charlie Cook, told The Los Angeles Times Hackett's "rubber stamp" charge had resonated with Ohio voters.
Mark Steyn, a conservative columnist who writes for National Review magazine, wrote in the Irish Times "Paul Hackett was like a fast-forward version of the John Kerry campaign" who "artfully neglected to mention the candidate was a Democrat."
Hackett told The Cincinnati Post he stood by his criticisms of George W. Bush: One voter turned off was veteran Arthur Smith of Loveland, whose letter to the editor in The Cincinnati Enquirer on August 5, said Hackett Jerome Armstrong stated in TomPaine.com that the returns tapped into the growing movement within the Democratic Party willing to take the Republicans head on about the direction of this nation.
"[3] Hackett on October 24, 2005, announced he would seek the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent United States Senator Mike DeWine after rejecting a second run against Schmidt.
