But as Blackwell works the room afterward, on a warm fall afternoon in Columbus, one well-dressed woman stops him to outline her concerns. “I like your ideas on taxes,” she tells the former college football star, who at 6 foot 5 towers over her imposingly, “but I don’t like your other ideas so much”—meaning Blackwell’s strong pro-life positions and support of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. “I am not just an economic being,” Blackwell unapologetically replies. “I have a wider set of beliefs that I follow.” And then, before the woman moves away, Blackwell adds: “With me, you’ll always know what you are getting. You’ll always know where I stand.”

With that kind of track record, Blackwell has become a growing target of left-wing blacks like Jesse Jackson, aghast that the first black governor of a major midwestern state might actually turn out to be a conservative who doesn’t trade on race.

....Mindful that many people found it hard to swallow the notion that a black was disenfranchising other blacks, Blackwell shot back, “I am Jesse Jackson’s worst nightmare.”