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Columbus, OH – Ohioans are reading and watching J.D. Vance’s radical views on the freedom to choose, and hearing from Black leaders holding him accountable for comparing abortion to slavery.

When asked to explain his extreme comments, Statehouse News Bureau’s Jo Ingles reported: “Vance has not returned calls for comment. In fact, Vance isn’t speaking out in public forums in Ohio much these days.”

Read more below: 
WCMH: JD Vance Compares Abortion To Slavery
July 25, 2022

JENNIFER BULLOCK, NBC4 ANCHOR: It has been just over a month since Roe v. Wade was overturned and the Ohio Democratic Party is calling out Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance for comparing abortion to slavery.

BRAD JOHANSEN, NBC4 ANCHOR: The ODP says that Vance has made extreme and out-of-touch comments cheering on the largest rollback of women’s rights in a half century. Party leaders say that Vance’s comments were dangerous and out of bounds.

Statehouse News Bureau: Black Ohio Democratic lawmakers criticize Vance over comments about abortion
Jo Ingles
July 25, 2022

• Some Democratic members of Ohio’s Black Legislative Caucus are blasting Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance for comments he’s made about abortion recently.
• In a press conference organized by the Ohio Democratic Party (ODP), the Black state lawmakers took issue with Vance for calling rape “inconvenient” and comparing abortion to slavery.
• Ohio Legislative Black Caucus President Juanita Brent (D-Cleveland) said the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned the right to legal abortion nationwide, and Ohio’s new abortion ban that makes the practice illegal at the first signs of fetal heart activity, which usually happens around six weeks into a pregnancy, is taking a toll on Black women.
• “We have seen a huge threat on the access to health care when it comes to women having abortions here within the state of Ohio,” Brent said. “As we look at this decision, we look at the ignorance that candidate J.D. Vance has decided to put out there comparing abortion to slavery…This person has decided to compare one to the two.”
• Rep. Catherine Ingram (D-Cincinnati) said it’s appalling, especially when you consider Black women have higher maternal mortality rates, less access to health care and poorer health outcomes.
• “The idea that he would talk about slavery and the disproportionate impact on Black females, how dare he?,” Ingram asked.
• Vance is also coming under fire from Democrats for statements he’s made about divorce. This comes after Vice reported Vance said in a speech that Americans would be better off staying in unhappy and “even violent” marriages.
• Vance has not returned calls for comment. In fact, Vance isn’t speaking out in public forums in Ohio much these days. He has been criticized by some Republicans for not being on the campaign trail enough this summer and for not raising enough political campaign money. But Vance is endorsed by Ohio Right to Life as well as most of the Ohio organizations that oppose abortion in most or all cases.

Ohio Capital Journal: Black state lawmakers take aim at Vance over comments likening abortion to slavery
Nick Evans
July 26, 2022

• A month out from the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Ohio Democrats are doing their best to keep abortion on voters’ minds. The Ohio Legislative Black Caucus is criticizing Republican U.S. Senate nominee J.D. Vance over comments likening the impact of slavery to that of abortion.
• In an interview with the Catholic Current last year, Vance emphasized the societal impact of abortion in describing his opposition to the procedure.
• “There’s something comparable between abortion and slavery,” Vance said, “and that while the people who obviously suffer the most are those subjected to it, I think it has this morally distorting effect on the entire society.”
• He went on to invoke Abraham Lincoln’s “I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master,” and opine that many people now see children as “inconveniences to be discarded instead of blessings to cherish.”
• State Rep. Terrence Upchurch, D-Cleveland, called Vance’s comments “dangerous” and “out of bounds.”
• “J.D. Vance’s disgusting views on abortion are an outrage and Ohioans are taking note,” he said.
• Upchurch argued Vance owes Ohioans an apology. But Rep. Catherine Ingram, D-Cincinnati, doesn’t want to hear it.
• “I don’t want his apology as a Black female here in the state of Ohio,” she said. “Looking at Black maternal health issues that we have, and how desperate the health care is, how desperate our housing is, and then you have the audacity to take away a decision that women can make for themselves?”
• “How dare you insult Black women?” she added.
• Vance’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
• Rep. Juanita Brent, D-Cleveland, who heads up the OLBC didn’t mince words about Vance’s comments.

The Root: J.D. Vance Compares Slavery to Abortion
Kalyn Womak
July 26, 2022

• Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, everyone’s been sharing their hot takes about abortion and whether women should have the right to do what they want with their bodies. In an interview with Catholic Current, Rep. Senate nominee J.D. Vance shared his take: that he thinks there’s something “comparable” between abortion and slavery.

• “- while the people who obviously suffer the most are those subjected to it, I think it has this morally distorting effect on the entire society – I really think abortion has really done something very socially destructive to us as people in how we see the most vulnerable and the most dependent among us. I think that’s one of the under-appreciated facts about abortion. It’s really distorted our entire society,” said Vance in the interview.
• This interview was back in October of 2021 but resurfaced just in time as Vance had won the Republican Senate primary in May, reports say. Members of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus criticized his comments.

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Columbus, OH – A slew of brutal new reports show Ohio Republicans are wondering where J.D. Vance is and hammering him for his terrible fundraising.

Nearly three months into the general election, Ohio Republicans are still “waiting for Vance to show up,” and frustrated that “he’s not campaigning hard enough.” One GOP source told Daily Beast that “When the fundraising numbers came out, it’s full-on panic now.”

Ron Verb, a conservative talk radio host, offered Vance this advice that he “better get off his ass, figure out why he isn’t raising more money, why the Republican Party isn’t behind him raising money.” Yikes, the calls are coming from inside the house.

“J.D. Vance is hiding from Ohioans because he feels ‘out of place’ in the state and can’t answer for his sham nonprofit, defend his toxic position that survivors of rape and incest should be forced to give birth, or explain why he thinks that women should stay in ‘violent’ marriages. San Francisco Vance may be afraid to talk about his out-of-touch positions on the campaign trail but Ohioans won’t be fooled by the Buckeye State’s biggest fraud,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Read more below:

WOSU: Where have you gone J.D. Vance?
Snollygoster

• Democrat Tim Ryan has maintained a high-profile presence in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race since the May primary, while the Republican nominee J.D. Vance has been laying low.
• Vance, the Trump-endorsed venture capitalist and best-selling author, has basically disappeared from public view since his May primary win. There have been no big campaign events, no TV commercials and hardly a media appearance.

WOSU: J.D. Vance’s Campaign Vacation
Columbus On The Record
July 22, 2022

• Mike Thompson, HOST: J.D. Vance is laying very low. We really have not seen him. No major campaign events, no TV ads, and it turns out he’s not raising that much money…

Cincinnati Enquirer: Where in the world is J.D. Vance? Not on the Ohio Senate campaign trail, critics say
Haley BeMiller
July 25, 2022

• U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance didn’t attend Gov. Mike DeWine’s ice cream social in June.
• A conservative radio host wanted to know why.
• “I love ice cream, and I’m a supporter of Mike DeWine, so it was nothing against him,” Vance told Cincinnati’s Bill Cunningham. “Just had other things to do.”
• Vance walked in Fourth of July parades and met with Ohio law enforcement in recent months. But members of his own party have become increasingly concerned that he’s not campaigning hard enough, while his opponent – U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan – dominates the airwaves and holds events across the state.
• That, coupled with Ryan’s fundraising advantage, has some Republicans worried the race could be closer than expected in a political climate that favors the GOP.
• “As I’ve said before, with polling numbers indicating a historic GOP wave in 2022, if a statewide Republican candidate in Ohio loses the general election in this environment, it’s their own damn fault,” said Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist in Ohio.
• Youngstown radio host Ron Verb fielded calls from listeners in June who wondered why they weren’t seeing Vance ads and worried he could lose the race. Verb implored the candidate to “get off his a– and get moving.”
• Vance later appeared on the show and told Verb his campaign had to recover from a bruising GOP primary, while Ryan raised enough to continue seamlessly into the general election cycle.
• “J.D. Vance is a fraud, and his refusal to talk to Ohioans – whether it’s because he’s too scared to answer for his record of investing in companies that profited from outsourcing and globalization, or because he’s too lazy to do the hard work of campaigning – is an insult to the people of this state,” Ryan spokeswoman Jordan Fuja said.
• If candidates go quiet, that usually means they’re raising money.
• But Vance’s second-quarter fundraising numbers paled in comparison to Ryan’s haul, and Vance Victory is raising money in part to pay off the Vance campaign’s primary debt. That’s left some observers questioning the strength of his fundraising operation.
• But Vance’s campaign strategy raised eyebrows again last week when he traveled to Israel to speak at a conservative conference. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Vance advocated for the U.S. relationship with Israel and said he visited the country to learn more about key issues.
• “J.D. Vance should be campaigning and giving speeches in Jerusalem Township, Ohio (in Lucas County) rather than across the world at CPAC ISRAEL speaking to people who can’t vote or would already support him,” tweeted Alex Stroman, a former spokesman for Trump’s inaugural committee. “It’s not that hard!”

Daily Beast: Inside the GOP Freakout Over J.D. Vance’s Senate Campaign
Sam Brodey and Roger Sollenberger
July 24, 2022

• When J.D. Vance took the stage at a conservative conference last week, it should have prompted sighs of relief from Republicans hoping to see the Ohio GOP’s U.S. Senate nominee hit the campaign trail harder.
• There was just one problem: the stage Vance took was in Israel, 6,000 miles away from Ohio.
• The spectacle of Vance gushing in Tel Aviv about Israel’s high birth rates—to a friendly audience stocked with plenty of conservatives but almost certainly no Ohio voters—seemed to distill for some Republicans everything that’s wrong with his campaign right now.
• Back in the Buckeye State, many are still waiting for Vance to show up, as the most critical phase of the campaign season draws near.
• Bill Cunningham, a fixture on conservative talk radio airwaves in Cincinnati for decades, told The Daily Beast that voters, party activists, and even statewide officials are telling him that Vance has been phoning it in. Vance is allegedly missing from many of the county fairs, party meetings, and campaign stops where candidates in this state are expected to be.
• “The Republican faithful are telling me,” Cunningham said, “they can’t find J.D. Vance with a search warrant.”
• Others say it’s not just that they don’t see Vance—the anti-Trump literary celeb turned MAGA firebrand—pounding the pavement in Ohio. Privately, some aren’t even getting calls back from him, or his campaign, to discuss how they can help.
• That group includes campaign donors whom Vance literally cannot afford to lose. The candidate’s fundraising has been anemic, and because he’s carrying debt from the bruising primary, Vance is in the unenviable position of asking donors to pay off those debts.
• One GOP source in state politics said Vance’s lack of followup with some important donors in the state has been disappointing. “When the fundraising numbers came out, it’s full-on panic now,” they said.
• “It’s a code red,” said Ron Verb, a longtime talk radio host in Youngstown, who has been sounding the alarm about Vance on his show. “I think he’s running the worst campaign that you could possibly run.”
• Meanwhile, Republicans begrudgingly admit that the Democratic nominee, Rep. Tim Ryan, is perhaps running the best possible campaign from a Democrat in this increasingly conservative state.
• With Vance largely absent on the airwaves and the campaign trail, Republicans fret that Ryan is successfully defining himself before Vance is—and that time is running out for the Republican to right the ship.
• “Republicans are like, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ This isn’t some fucking book tour, dude.”
• A GOP source in state politics said it’s a “widespread trend” that Republicans officials are hearing in their networks about Ryan’s crossover appeal. “People who are Republicans are saying, ‘that Tim Ryan guy, he’s alright, I like the way he sounds,’” the GOP source said.
• That’s why Vance’s mid-campaign venture to Israel especially rankled some Republicans. “Tim Ryan is talking about kitchen-table issues, and J.D. Vance is out there going to fucking CPAC in Israel,” said a veteran strategist with deep ties to the state. “Republicans are like, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ This isn’t some fucking book tour, dude.”
• Cunningham, the Cincinnati talk radio host, said he has been speaking regularly with Vance. He shared with The Daily Beast his advice to the candidate: “I told J.D., ‘This race is yours to lose, and at this point, you’re losing it.’ Your staff won’t tell you, but I just did.”
• With less than three months to go until early voting begins in the race, the exact scenario that some Vance-skeptical Republicans were worried about may be coming to fruition.
• But the Trump boost may have papered over the fundamental weaknesses in Vance’s operation. He has never been a strong fundraiser. Instead, an outside group largely funded by Vance’s mentor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, spent millions through the primary to promote Vance and conduct voter outreach.
• However, Vance cannot touch any of that money to directly fund his campaign operation. His most pressing problem now is that he’s not attracting enough donors: Vance’s latest federal campaign finance filing shows his campaign committee went broke after he won the primary. Further, the campaign is prioritizing donations to pay down Vance’s $700,000 in personal loans.
• The campaign ended June $250,000 underwater, with more debt than cash on hand, and his joint fundraising committees are struggling to keep up. That has raised concerns and criticism that Vance’s fundraising struggles may reflect a lack of grassroots support and enthusiasm among the state’s Republican and independent voters.
• Another longtime Republican strategist in the state told The Daily Beast that the campaign’s passive attitude in the primary won’t fly in the general election.
• “It seems like a mix of not knowing what they are doing—they didn’t run much of a primary campaign and were functionally dead before Trump’s endorsement and Thiel’s money bailed them out at the last minute—and J.D. not seeming to want to do much, anyway. I think they are also just reading the environment and trying to play a ‘prevent defense’—keeping J.D.’s profile low, minimizing gaffes,” the strategist said.
• Vance, Verb continued, “better get off his ass, figure out why he isn’t raising more money, why the Republican Party isn’t behind him raising money, and try to counter the ad campaign of Tim Ryan.”

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Columbus, OH — Once again, Mike DeWine – the most anti-choice governor in the country – is trying to hide from his long-standing record of ripping away reproductive rights from women in Ohio. After scrubbing his website of all anti-abortion language, DeWine today told a group of reporters he wants to “let the [abortion] debate play out” when asked about his views on legislation that would make abortion illegal in Ohio.

This is the same Mike DeWine who told an anti-abortion group he wants to “go as far as we can” to rip away abortion rights in Ohio and signed an executive order mere hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade that implemented one of the most extreme six-week abortion bans in the country, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

“Mike DeWine is trying to hide from his record of ripping away reproductive rights and punishing women, but Ohioans know all too well that DeWine is the most anti-choice governor in the country. He can scrub his website and dodge questions from the press, but he can’t run away from a lifetime of attacking the right to choose. Make no mistake: abortion, birth control and reproductive rights are on the ballot this November, and Mike DeWine will only take Ohio backward,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.

Read more about DeWine’s extreme anti-abortion record HERE.

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Columbus, OH – According to a new bombshell report from Vice, J.D. Vance said that people in violent marriages should not get divorced for the sake of the children. Vance also claimed that divorce makes it easier for people to “shift spouses like they change their underwear.”

“J.D. Vance does not trust women to make decisions about their own bodies and believes women should put themselves in danger and stay in violent marriages. Vance’s comments are beyond the pale, and he is too dangerous to be in the U.S. Senate,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Vice: JD Vance Suggests People in ‘Violent’ Marriages Shouldn’t Get Divorced
Cameron Joseph
July 25, 2022

• JD Vance said people need to be more willing to stay in unhappy marriages for the sake of their kids—and seemed to suggest that in some cases, “even violent” marriages should continue.
• The Ohio Republican Senate nominee, talking to Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California last September, gave an extended answer that claimed that people now “shift spouses like they change their underwear,” and that it had done long-term damage to a generation of children.
• “This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, 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,’” Vance said.
• “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,” Vance continued. “And that’s what I think all of us should be honest about, is we’ve run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that’s making our kids unhappy.”
• “Culturally, something has clearly shifted. I think it’s easy but also probably true to blame the sexual revolution of the 1960s. My grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways, but they never got divorced, right? They were together to the end, ’til death do us part. That was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the 70s or 80s,” he said.
• “And I think that probably, I was personally and a lot of kids in my community, who grew up in my generation, personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract, right? Like any other business deal, once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go onto a new business relationship. But that recognition that marriage was sacred I think was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together. And when it disappeared, unfortunately I think a lot of kids suffered,” Vance said.
• VICE News asked Vance’s campaign why he thought “it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced,” as well as whether he wanted local or federal law changed to make it harder for couples to divorce.
• Vance sent the following statement in response, via a campaign staffer:
• “I reject the premise of your bogus question. As anyone who studies these issues knows: domestic violence has skyrocketed in recent years, and is much higher among non-married couples. That’s the ‘trick’ I reference: that domestic violence would somehow go down if progressives got what they want, when in fact modern society’s war on families has made our domestic violence situation much worse. Any fair person would recognize I was criticizing the progressive frame on this issue, not embracing it.
• But I can see that you are not a fair person, so rather than answer your loaded and baseless question, let me offer the following: I’m an actual victim of domestic violence. In my life, I have seen siblings, wives, daughters, and myself abused by men. It’s disgusting for you to argue that I was defending those men.”
• Vance’s campaign declined to make him available for an interview to clarify his comments. When asked follow-up question of whether “he thinks people in violent marriages should generally stay together or get divorced,” a Vance spokesperson said they felt Vance’s statement already answered this question.
• This isn’t the only time Vance has tied divorce rates to societal instability.
• When he was asked about gay marriage at a March candidate forum hosted by Toledo Right to Life, Vance said that he doesn’t like the “cafeteria Christianity” of people selecting their own beliefs and said he believed that “marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman,” before pivoting into a criticism of how divorce has become more societally acceptable.
• “The entire idea that you can discard your husband or your wife like a piece of clothing is one of the most dangerous assaults that we’ve ever seen on the family in this country,” he said. “If we want children to grow up with healthy, happy lives, we should be reminding them that the most important thing that we can do for our kids is make sure they grow up with a mom and dad at home. The assault on the institution of marriage has been a profound evil. It hasn’t just affected our adults, it’s affected our children in big ways.”

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Good Monday afternoon, and welcome back to Mike Check, your weekly source of all the infighting, conspiracy spewing and corruption that’s making headlines in and around the Republican governor’s race and Mike DeWine’s statehouse, courtesy of the Ohio Democratic Party.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

THE TERRIBLE TWOS. Last Thursday was the second anniversary of Larry Householder’s arrest and Saturday marked the third anniversary of DeWine signing the tainted HB 6 into law, two milestones in what would become the largest public corruption scandal in state history. Instead of coming clean and sharing what they knew and when, Mike DeWine and those in his inner circle continue to refuse to tell Ohioans what they knew about the scandal and when they knew it. And it’s still costing Ohioans $287,000 each day. From his meeting with Mike Dowling and Chuck Jones to the resignation of top staffer Dan McCarthy to FirstEnergy donations to his daughter, DeWine seems to have something to hide. While Republicans like DeWine continue to try and “no comment” their way out of the scandal, Democrats are fighting each and every day to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s why we’ve sued Mike DeWine over his refusal to turn over records connected to the scandal. So far, crickets on our updated records requests.

WILL DEWINE DUCK DEBATES?  Mike DeWine has already dodged one debate this year, too scared to take on the likes of political heavyweights like Jim Renacci and Joe Blystone. But Ohioans deserve answers on issues ranging from the FirstEnergy bribery scandal to his anti-abortion stances to his refusing to heed concerns from Ohio law enforcement about dangerous gun bills he signed into law. Last week, Nan Whaley called on DeWine to debate across the state. DeWine can’t run away scared this time. He must face the voters straight on and face consequences if he doesn’t. Ohio voters deserve nothing less.

PAYS TO HAVE FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES. As part of his taxpayer-funded official duties as governor, Mike DeWine regularly releases appointments to various state boards. However, it seems as if DeWine is once again playing politics with a state-funded process by appointing Eleanore Awadalla to the University of Toledo Board of Trustees. Records show Awadalla also donated at least $5,000 to the DeWine-Husted campaign in the last two elections, raising questions about whether the appointment was politically motivated. First time this happened? Hardly. Last month, DeWine appointed Lynn Isaac to the same board. He donated at least $10,000 to the DeWine-Husted campaign. Ohioans deserve answers about these appointments, but if history shows us anything we know DeWine will keep hiding the truth.

Thanks for catching up with us, that’s all the Mike Check we’ve got for this week. Have a great week!

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