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Columbus, OH – A new column from Cleveland.com’s Brent Larkin scorches J.D. Vance for the “stench oozing” from his candidacy and the positions and statements that disqualify him from being a U.S. senator. Larkin takes Vance to task for having “awful political instincts, not an ounce of class and a tendency to embrace views parroted by political maggots he considers friends.” 

“J.D. Vance continues to deal with the fallout from his extreme comments that women should stay in ‘violent’ marriages, comparing abortion to slavery and arguing that women who are survivors of rape and incest should be forced to give birth,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.  

Read more below: 

Cleveland.com: J.D. Vance’s Senate candidacy is a stain on the GOP: Brent Larkin

August 28, 2022 

• The $28 million effort to fumigate J.D. Vance’s reputation might not be large enough.

• There’s a whole lot of stench oozing from the candidacy of the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate who, through little doing of his own, eked out a narrow win in his party’s May primary election for the seat held by retiring Sen. Rob Portman. As a candidate, Vance has awful political instincts, not an ounce of class and a tendency to embrace views parroted by political maggots he considers friends.

• History is replete with names of honorable Republicans who served their state and country with distinction, men and women named Grant, Garfield, McKinley, Davidson, Taft, Voinovich and others. If voters in red-state Ohio reward Vance’s breathtaking unfitness with a win over Democratic nominee Tim Ryan on Nov. 8, they’ll be making a monumental mistake.

• Vance is one of a handful of trashy Senate candidates who won their Republican Party primary elections only because they were endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already signaled it will be difficult to win back control of the Senate in November, largely because he’s saddled with a bunch of pitiful candidates handed him by a former president he rightfully despises.

• “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome (of Senate races),” McConnell acknowledged recently.
  
• To salvage Vance’s campaign, a McConnell-linked super Pac will pour a $28 million into Ohio, flooding airwaves with attack ads against Ryan, who — despite running a mistake-free campaign — is vulnerable because of Ohio’s lurch to the right. That massive infusion will more than offset the impact of all the deep-pocketed GOP donors in Ohio who are saying “no” to the candidate’s fundraising requests.

• Win or lose, there’s a lot that disqualifies Vance from holding high office in this or any other state. Let’s review:

• Because women find him so unlikeable, the Vance campaign is trying to soften his image with ads featuring his wife, Usha, depicting him as a loving family man. But in remarks from last September that Vice.com surfaced in late July — and that Vance now repudiates — he suggested that women with children should stay in marriages with violent abusers for the sake of the kids.

• Vance made the remarks during an appearance in California, where he seems to spend a lot of time.
  
• “This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” Vance then said to a Christian high school group, “which is the idea that like, ‘well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term.’”

• “And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads,” he added, “though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”

• Vance has said his remarks were taken out of context. Good luck selling that story to informed females.

• Vance’s choice of friends argue persuasively that he lacks both judgment and character.

• Right-wing conspiracy theorist and Sandy Hook school-massacre denier Alex Jones is the nation’s most vile public figure. A Texas jury earlier this month ordered Jones to pay more than $49.3 million in defamation damages to families of one of the 20 children killed in the 2012 slaughter. The jury should have added another zero.

• Nevertheless, last September Vance tweeted that Jones was being “censored by the regime” and argued, “Alex Jones is a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.”

• Vance and his wife should travel to Connecticut and explain to the Sandy Hook parents why he’s such a great family man.

• I attempted to ask Vance about his admiration for Jones, but an interview request went unanswered. Vance seems to view the news media as part of the same “regime” that’s out to get Alex Jones. This column is unlikely to change that.

• Other Vance pals include Tucker Carlson and U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. When Greene spoke to a white nationalist group in January, Vance said of his bigoted pal, “She’s my friend and she did nothing wrong.”

• Vance has argued against the need for rape and incest exceptions to abortion, claiming, “two wrongs don’t make a right.” He’s also said, “there’s something comparable between abortion and slavery.”

• Days before Russia began slaughtering tens of thousands of men, women and children in Ukraine, Vance said on a podcast, “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

• Then there’s the prerequisite for all Trump endorsements – a fact-free claim the 2020 election was stolen. It’s a lie Vance has been all too willing to peddle, to a base where the truth doesn’t matter.

• The centerpiece of Vance’s twisted election fraud tale, offered without a shred of evidence, is that Mark Zuckerberg engineered a conspiracy to swing the vote to Joe Biden.

• “I think we’ve got to investigate [the 2020 results] as much as possible,” Vance told Steve Bannon in May 2021. “But, you know, I think at a basic level we already mostly know what happened.”

• We do, indeed.

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Columbus, OH — As debate season starts to ramp up in the closing weeks and days of the election cycle, Mike DeWine has continued to duck committing to debates across Ohio with Mayor Nan Whaley, even as the Mayor has already publicly agreed and challenged DeWine to a number of debates. DeWine also dodged a debate with his primary opponents earlier this year, signaling that he is scared to defend his record to Ohioans, especially since he’s debated political opponents in the past. The Ohio Democratic Party is launching ‘DeWine Debate Watch’ today, to remind Ohioans that DeWine won’t even try to make his case to them as he seeks re-election to the highest statewide executive office. 

“Mike DeWine clearly knows his record over the last four years of selling out working families in favor of the wealthy and well-connected is not going to be popular with Ohio voters. If DeWine can’t even muster the political courage to tell Ohioans why they should re-elect him, he doesn’t deserve the job and should be held publicly accountable for his cowardice,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes. 

Ohioans deserve answers from DeWine on a number of key issues, including his promise to ‘go as far as we can’ to rip away reproductive rights, his broken promise to ‘do something’ to combat gun violence in Ohio, his connections to the largest public corruption scandal in state history and his role in the failed redistricting process that produced GOP-gerrymandered maps and cost Ohioans millions of dollars. 

Read more here and below from the Ohio Capital Journal:

Ohio Capital Journal: DeWine ducks Whaley’s call for debate

Jake Zuckerman

August 29, 2022

• But will Mike DeWine go toe to toe with his Democratic challenger? He repeatedly avoided a clear answer on the subject Friday.

• Whaley, a former mayor of Dayton and Ohio’s first woman to run for governor on a major party ticket, said she’s all in.

• “Hey, I’m ready,” Whaley said. “Look, I’m pretty disappointed. Frankly, I thought that Mike DeWine at least believed in democracy.”

• She said DeWine is afraid of the public learning about his anti-abortion stances or his 2019 signing of legislation that’s now at the center of a criminal bribery investigation into both FirstEnergy Corp. and the former Speaker of the Ohio House.

• “He knows those answers aren’t good for him,” she said. “We’re ready to go. You name the time and place and we’ll be there.”

• Invitations to the governor from both Nexstar Media Group, which operates several news stations in Ohio, and the Ohio Debate Commission await final answers.

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Columbus, OH – Two new reports highlight how J.D. Vance’s “personal culture war” is with women – an ongoing struggle throughout his campaign, thanks to his extreme views on divorce, same-sex marriage, abortion, as well as his comments railing against “childless cat ladies” and women in the workplace as a whole.

A new Mother Jones report highlights how Vance went on a podcast hosted by a man who said “feminists need rape.” It shows the kind of company Vance keeps – just like a recent tweet from one of his super PAC cronies telling a Tim Ryan staffer she should strongly consider “finding someone who can make you a stay at home mom.” 

Vance’s first ad of the general election also underscored the challenges he faces with women – enlisting his wife Usha to talk about his biography while only having Vance himself speaking during the legally-required disclosure at the end of the ad, which political analyst Kyle Kondik noted “appears to be an effort to improve Vance’s image with women, which supposedly is in need of boosting.” 

Read more below: 

Cincinnati Enquirer: In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, J.D. Vance declares war on behalf of nuclear family

Haley BeMiller 

August 25, 2022

• “This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that like, well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy,” Vance said. “And so, getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happy over the long term. And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical, but it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages.”

• Critics say Vance’s comments, first reported by Vice News, show that he believes people should stay in violent marriages for the sake of their children. Vance contends news outlets and the campaign of his Democratic Senate opponent U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan twisted his words and called it a “disgusting” attack on someone who’s witnessed domestic abuse.

• Still, Vance is undeniably against divorce. And his personal culture war doesn’t stop there: He opposes abortion except when it’s necessary to save the pregnant person’s life. He told a Catholic magazine he wants to ban pornography. He’s against same-sex marriage and said he would not support federal legislation to codify marriage equality. He cast Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” who don’t have a true stake in the country’s future.

Mother Jones: J.D. Vance Appeared With Podcaster Who Once Said “Feminists Need Rape”

David Corn

August 25, 2022

• J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, is typically described as the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a venture capitalist, and a Never Trumper who came to embrace Donald Trump. But that snapshot doesn’t do justice to Vance, a reactionary extremist who yearns to destroy what he calls the “American leadership class” and to implement an extensive and possibly illegal program to cleanse US society of liberal influence. He compares this project to the de-Nazification of Germany following World War II. Last September, Vance outlined this message of revolutionary conservatism on a podcast hosted by a rightwing activist and self-styled masculinity champion who once declared, “Feminists need rape.” During the interview, Vance called for returning Trump to the White House in 2024 so Trump could fire every top and mid-level federal government employee to “deconstruct the administrative state,” and he noted that Trump should even defy the law, if necessary, to mount such a purge.

• The show’s host was Jack Murphy, who runs a secretive men’s organization that claims all major American institutions—universities, the media, the government, unions, professional organizations, nonprofits, and corporations—have been “infiltrated, corrupted, demoralized” and aim to “control you forever.” For years, Murphy has railed against feminism, wokeness, and other conservative bête noires. In a blog post written in 2015 and subsequently deleted, he asserted, “Feminists need rape… It is our duty as men to save feminists from themselves. Therefore, I am offering rape to feminists as an olive branch.”

• The Vance campaign declined to comment on his interview with Murphy or to answer questions about his call for instituting a de-Nazification-like program in the United States. Murphy declined to comment on his blog post referring to feminists and rape.

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Columbus, OH – A new report from The Vindicator/Tribune Chronicle highlights the Ohio Democratic Party’s takeover of the now-defunct website for J.D. Vance’s sham non-profit, Our Ohio Renewal. The newly relaunched OurOhioRenewal.com redirects to OurOhioRipoff.com, which spotlights how Vance’s sham non-profit helped Vance and his political allies, while bringing in a puppet of Purdue Pharma, who pushed biased science that Purdue used to deflect responsibility for its role in the deadly opioid epidemic that has ravaged Ohio. 

Here’s what they’re reading in the Mahoning Valley today: 

The Vindicator: Dems buy former Vance website, now criticizes Senate candidate
David Skolnick
August 24, 2022

• The Ohio Democratic Party bought the web domain address of the defunct nonprofit founded by J.D. Vance to fight the opioid epidemic and turned it into a parody account critical of the Republican Senate nominee.

• OurOhioRenewal.com now directs people to OurOhioRipoff.com, which highlights shortcomings of Vance and the former nonprofit.

• “With a few quick keystrokes, Ohioans can now learn the truth about J.D. Vance and his sham organization,” Michael Beyer, an ODP spokesman, said. “Instead of taking meaningful steps to address the opioid epidemic, Vance recruited a Purdue Pharma puppet who echoed their lies and deflected blame from the damage they caused.”

• Beyer added: “If it wasn’t already clear, this is just one more way that Vance continues to prove himself a fraud who won’t hesitate to sell out Ohioans in order to further his own ambition.”

• In a July 27 interview with the Scioto Valley Guardian, Vance said of the organization: “I do think we did some good. We provided some treatment to people that otherwise didn’t have it, But also, you know, running a nonprofit is a lot of work. And the guy that we actually tapped to run it, unfortunately, got stage four cancer. He’s doing fine now.”

• He added: “It was something that we tried. I’m proud that we tried it, but it wasn’t ultimately very successful.”

• Vance is facing U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, the Democratic nominee, in the Nov. 8 general election for an open seat. Most polls show the race as a statistical dead heat.

• The Associated Press recently reported Vance’s shuttered nonprofit’s “most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.”

• The report added: “The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success raise questions about Vance’s management of the organization. His decision to bring on Dr. Sally Satel is drawing particular scrutiny.”

• The report states Satel questioned the role of prescription painkillers in the opioid epidemic and that she sometimes cited Purdue-funded studies and doctors in articles she wrote.

• Satel is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, which received about $800,000 from Purdue, according to a 2019 ProPublica article. Satel told the AP that she never consulted with or took money from Purdue and wasn’t aware of the contributions to AEI.

• Vance has said in the past that his organization fell short of his goals. Vance rose to fame writing “Hillbilly Elegy,” a book that included his mother’s addiction to OxyContin and heroin and the impact those drugs have on people in Appalachia.

• Vance’s old website touted Our Ohio Renewal as “dedicated to promoting the ideas and addressing the problems identified in” the book.

• The ODP’s Vance website also cites a Business Insider article that states the nonprofit, created in 2017, spent no money on programs to fight the opioid epidemic and that 96.4 percent of its funding went to staff salaries and overhead in its first year.

• The report also states Jai Chabria, who was the organization’s top officer and is now Vance’s senior campaign adviser, made more in management fees than Our Ohio Renewal spent in programming.

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