• Sen. Mike DeWine, possibly looking for a place where reporters won't ask him about his firing of a sex-crazed blogger in his office, spent part of last week in Haiti. He visited an orphanage and some Ohio troops and checked out flood damage.

• Westwood Rep. Steve Chabot jetted off to Taiwan, where he won't have to chair any hearings on gay marriage. He joined Taiwan's president in pushing for a free trade pact between Taiwan and the United States.

• Meanwhile, northern Warren County's Rep. Mike Turner is set to visit scenic Bosnia next weekend. The Turner connection? Turner represents Dayton, where the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ended wars in Bosnia.

• Sen. George Voinovich didn't go anywhere - but he did join the Senate India Caucus, he announced Thursday.

New man in town: The Kerry campaign named J.B. Poersch Jr. director of its Ohio campaign. He said his job is to "make the trains run on time."

"My job is to make sure, operationally, between phone calls and door knocking, that we get our supporters all the help they need," said Poersch, 42. He has run Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed's Washington office for the past 14 years with several breaks.

The Kerry campaign press release mentioned he ran the Democratic National Committee's Ohio campaign in 2000 and that he had served in three other presidential campaigns previously.

It didn't mention another Tristate experience: He ran Scotty Baesler's unsuccessful 1998 Senate campaign in Kentucky. Poersch's guy lost to Sen. Jim Bunning.

Nor does the press release explain what J.B. stands for: John Benzie. But he's been J.B. his whole life.

"Only the nuns called me John," he said. He starts June 14.

Kerry's coming back: Speaking of Kerry, he'll wrap up an 11-day national-security-focused trip with an appearance Sunday, the 60th anniversary of D-Day, in Toledo. He will deliver the commencement address at Bedford Senior High School. The tour hits battleground states Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida. This will be Kerry's ninth day in Ohio since February.

Underdog: Chabot's Democratic opponent, Greg Harris, almost thinks he's in this race.

"Have you seen this?" he wrote in a Tuesday e-mail to supporters, pointing to the Political Oddsmaker feature in Campaigns & Elections magazine. The magazine had Chabot favored only slightly to hold on to the heavily Republican 1st District seat, giving him an 8-5 edge.

Never mind, Harris said in a Wednesday dispatch. Those odds were for the 2000 election against John Cranley. This year, Harris is a 9-to-1 underdog.

---

Contributing: Greg Korte from Cincinnati. E-mail cweiser@gannett.com or call (202) 906-8134.