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For Immediate Release:
Thursday, June 30, 2022

Columbus, OH —  Today, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters released the following statement after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in to the nation’s highest court, the first Black woman to serve on the bench in its 230+ years:

“Justice Jackson taking her seat today on the nation’s highest court is an important step forward for our country and a much-needed moment of celebration in an otherwise dark moment in our history. We’ve seen in the last days and weeks how important her voice, perspective and life experiences will be as conservatives on the Supreme Court continue to methodically insert themselves into our rights and rip away our freedoms. We’re confident Justice Jackson will rule with fairness, integrity and justice and act as an important check on the extremism coming out of our current Court.”

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For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, the Cleveland.com Editorial Board took Frank LaRose to task for criticizing the Ohio Supreme Court for doing the job he failed to do. In another political stunt meant to appease Republican voters who don’t trust him, LaRose went after Supreme Court Justices last week for correctly allowing qualifying candidates on the ballot ahead of the upcoming primary.

The Cleveland.com editorial points out that had LaRose chosen to follow the will of Ohio voters and create a map with bipartisan support in the first place, these candidates wouldn’t have had to go to the Court to sue to get their names on the ballot and voters wouldn’t face a multi-million dollar bill for the chaos and confusion created by the Redistricting Commission’s failure to do its job.

But LaRose is more concerned about losing a Senate race in 2024 than anything else, so he’s going to continue placating extremists in his own party and fail to do the job he was elected to do in the process.     

“In intemperately blasting Ohio’s Supreme Court in a Sunday night statement for (correctly) ruling that six Democrats LaRose had refused to allow on Ohio’s Aug. 2 primary ballot had met Ohio’s legal deadline for candidate filings, LaRose helped expose his own partisan maneuverings. The blatant politicking over elections LaRose is supposed to be overseeing is deeply troubling,” writes the Cleveland.com Editorial Board.

Read more from Cleveland.com HERE and below:

• In his partisan and impolitic zeal to wrest GOP advantage in upcoming elections, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Ohio’s chief elections officer, has shown exactly how far he’s strayed from proper stewardship of the state’s elections and its election laws.
• In intemperately blasting Ohio’s Supreme Court in a Sunday night statement for (correctly) ruling that six Democrats LaRose had refused to allow on Ohio’s Aug. 2 primary ballot had met Ohio’s legal deadline for candidate filings, LaRose helped expose his own partisan maneuverings. The blatant politicking over elections LaRose is supposed to be overseeing is deeply troubling.
• LaRose’s harsh words — that the Ohio Supreme Court justices who ruled 4-3 against him “are either ignorant of election law and administration or indifferent to the confusion they continue to create” — reveal just how low LaRose is willing to go to achieve GOP advantage in upcoming votes. That applies not just in the Aug. 2 state legislative primary, but also in all-important Ohio Supreme Court contests in November where partisan control of the court is on the line.
• The irony in LaRose’s diatribe is, of course, that had he been acting responsibly, properly and according to the law in supervising Ohio elections, and in serving on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, Ohio might have achieved fair 10-year redistricting maps long ago and there would have been no need to bifurcate the state’s primaries, at multimillion-dollar cost, into a May 3 and an Aug. 2 primary.
• Nor would there have been a need for the latest Ohio Supreme Court ruling on ballot access, because LaRose would have recognized that Ohio law retains primacy over his own partisan wish list on who belongs on the ballot.
• But thanks to the partisan intransigence of the GOP-run state Redistricting Commission – on which LaRose sits -– the Supreme Court repeatedly rejected districts the commission drew, forcing state legislative races off the May 3 ballot to a later date. Eventually, a panel of federal judges, in a 2-1 ruling, chose one of the rejected state legislative maps, and ordered a primary for General Assembly and state central committee members be held Aug. 2. Applying the 90-day deadline to the Aug. 2 date made the filing deadlines May 4 and May 23 for write-ins, the Supreme Court majority found – and it ruled that six Democrats met those deadlines for Aug. 2′s ballot.
• Yet, if LaRose had fairly overseen ballot access based on what Ohio law actually requires, there would have been no need for the Ohio Supreme Court to step in.
• The four-justice majority did just what conservatives say all judges should do – they followed the law’s plain English. That amounts to plain justice — not chaos, or politicking.

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For Immediate Release:
June 28, 2022

Vance Made Nearly $350,000 In 2020 Off Blaming Ohioans For Bad Trade Deals That Cost Over 135,000 Ohioans Their Jobs

Columbus, OH – On the sixth anniversary of Hillbilly Elegy’s release, the Ohio Democratic Party is releasing a new digital video, “Blame,” highlighting how Vance in his own words blamed Ohioans — bad trade deals with countries like China — for the loss of their jobs.

WATCH:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyfvS7nghT0

In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance wrote, “We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves…” And from this book blaming Ohioans and deflecting responsibility from the bad trade deals that cost over 135,000 Ohio workers their jobs, Vance made nearly $350,000 in 2020 alone.

Vance got famous off his memoir and jetted off to Hollywood where he made even more money off faulting Ohioans for the bad trade deals that cost them their jobs. But now that he’s a candidate for U.S. Senate, he’s made the political calculation to change his tune. 

“In his memoir, Vance blamed Ohioans, not bad trade deals, for jobs being shipped overseas to countries like China – and made a fortune off it. J.D. Vance is a fraud who can’t be trusted to fight for Ohio workers,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Watch the video here and view the script below:

J.D. Vance reads his own words…

VANCE: “We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves…”

And again…

VANCE: “I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

What did J.D. Vance do to make things better?

Blamed Ohioans for bad trade deals.

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June 27, 2022

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:

“As Far As We Can.” After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Mike DeWine almost immediately signed an Executive Order permitting the Ohio Department of Health to implement a six-week abortion bill. It’s only the latest attack in a long record of anti-choice extremism from DeWine, one of the most radical politicians in the country when it comes to attacking reproductive rights. And it’s only the beginning. DeWine has indicated that he would sign a trigger ban law that doesn’t make exceptions for rape or incest and has promised to “go as far as we can” to restrict reproductive rights in Ohio.

“Loaded with Potential Conflicts of Interest.” The six-figure salary Jon Husted makes as lieutenant governor is apparently not enough for Husted as he looks for new ways to line his own pockets as working Ohioans struggle to make ends meet. The Cleveland.com Editorial Board recently slammed Husted for taking a paid side gig on a corporate bank board and called on him to resign that position. Husted has refused to say how much he’s raking in with his new paid gig, and has refused to answer several questions about the bank job.

Thanks for catching up with us, that’s all the Mike Check we’ve got for this week. If you have questions my email is [email protected]. Have a great week!

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For Immediate Release:
June 27, 2022

Columbus, OH — Today, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters hosted a press call slamming Ohio Republicans for working to strip women of their freedom to choose. Chair Walters also highlighted the anti-choice records of Ohio Republicans – from J.D. Vance to Mike DeWine and Dave Yost – who think they know better than survivors of rape and incest about the potentially lifesaving care they need.

Below are highlights from the press call (video recording here):

• “Last week, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and raised the stakes for every race on the ballot this November. Who is in the U.S. Senate, governor’s mansion, and the Statehouse will determine whether Ohio women, including survivors of rape and incest, can continue to make decisions about their own body or if Republican politicians will make those decisions for them.”
• “This disastrous decision lays squarely at the feet of Ohio Republicans who have for years worked to strip women of the right to make these deeply personal decisions about their own healthcare that should be between a woman and her doctor. From now until Election Day, Ohio Republicans must answer why they think they know better than women, their families, their doctors, survivors of rape and incest about the potentially lifesaving care they need.”
• “Mike DeWine admitted that once the Supreme Court makes abortion illegal he wants to “go as far as we can” to prohibit abortion in Ohio. DeWine has said he would put new restrictions on abortion care – banning the procedure before most women know they are even pregnant. J.D. Vance has called making abortion illegal an “amazing victory,” and opposes exceptions for victims of rape and incest. He’s so far out-of-touch he even called rape “inconvenient” and “blessings to be cherished.” Attorney General Yost said if the legislature allowed him to, he would like to press charges against women who have abortions and the doctors who perform them. Yost has already moved to implement new draconian restrictions that would ban abortion before most women know they are pregnant.”
• “Our most effective weapon to combat these attacks on women’s freedom and ensure women can make their own reproductive healthcare decisions is our vote. It is critical that Ohioans elect Tim Ryan, Nan Whaley and pro-choice Democratic candidates up and down the ballot in November who will protect the right to abortion. This November, Ohioans will take their outrage to the polls and defeat the extremist Republicans who gutted our freedoms.”

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