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For Immediate Release:

Wednesday, March 16, 2022 

Columbus, OH — Today, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters issued the following statement after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled yet another set of GOP-gerrymandered state legislative maps unconstitutional, all but confirming that a May 3 primary will be impossible. Moving the primary date will cost Ohioans tens of millions of dollars, a cost that falls squarely on the feet of Ohio Republicans who have chosen to play politics with redistricting rather than do the jobs they were elected to do.  

“Millions of dollars just flew out of the pockets of hardworking Ohioans all because Republicans refused to do their jobs and pass fair maps. Ohio now finds itself in complete chaos, created only by GOP politicians who have broken the law time and again. Our message to Republican politicians on the commission is simple: do your job or get out of the way. Democrats have fair maps ready to go, all Republicans have to do is stop their obstruction,” said Chair Walters. 

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Business Ties To Russia Could Be A Major Vulnerability For The GOP Senate Candidates

Columbus, OH — A new Associated Press report shines a light on millionaires Jane Timken, Mike Gibbons and J.D. Vance for their Russian business deals as the country escalates its war in Ukraine.

The AP notes that Timken “reported owning roughly 2,800 shares in Timken Co., whose stock price initially rose after the Feb. 24 invasion” and faces mounting questions over her family company’s business dealings in Russia. Vance helped fund what Cleveland.com describes as “a main platform for RT, the propaganda arm of the Russian government.” Gibbons’ financial firm in 2011 announced a business deal involving a company that specializes in pipes for the Russian oil industry.

Following the AP’s investigation of Timken’s entanglement, a week after a viral list noted Timken Co. was still doing business in Russia, and three weeks after Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, the Canton Repository last night reported that Jane Timken’s family company has finally been shamed into pausing operations in Russia.

“Millionaires Jane Timken, Mike Gibbons and J.D. Vance are complete frauds – shamelessly cashing in on business deals with Russia while tens of thousands of Ukrainian Americans in Ohio mourn Putin’s relentless invasion. It’s clear that no matter the issue, Timken, Gibbons and Vance will sell out Ohioans if it means they can enrich themselves,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Associated Press: Russia business deals muddy GOP US Senate primary in Ohio

By Julie Carr Smyth

March 15, 2022

• Several Republicans competing for the party’s nomination to run for U.S. Senate in Ohio are facing scrutiny for their ties to Russia as the country intensifies its war against Ukraine.
• Much of the attention has focused on former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken, whose husband’s family founded a company that does business in Russia. But other candidates in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman, including J.D. Vance and Mike Gibbons, also have links to business deals in Russia that could become vulnerabilities in the May 3 primary.
• While domestic issues generally dominate midterm political contests, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — with its harrowing images of civilian casualties — has become an animating subject of the competitive Senate race in Ohio, which has a large Ukrainian American population. In a race with several millionaire candidates, the war is highlighting the risks that come with being wealthy and having tangled investment interests involving foreign countries.
• The easiest target has long been Timken, whose husband sits on the board of the like-named Fortune 500 ball bearing manufacturer based in North Canton, Ohio. Even before Ukraine, her adversaries sought to pin the Timken Co.’s international business dealings on Timken.
• Timken Co. last week suspended its operations in Russia, where it has a manufacturing plant and an 8-year-old relationship with United Wagon Co., a Moscow-based manufacturer and servicer of freight cars. The company signed the deal in 2014, around the time Russia seized Crimea.
• Conservative PACs, mostly backing Republican Josh Mandel in the race, pilloried Timken in attack ads as “shameless” for outwardly supporting Ukraine and calling for tough sanctions on Russia while making money off her investments in the company. She has reported owning roughly 2,800 shares in Timken Co., whose stock price initially rose after the Feb. 24 invasion.
• After Timken criticized Vance for voicing indifference to the fate of Ukraine in the days leading up to the invasion, a Vance ally tweeted, “No candidate has business ties in Russia except for Jane Timken. Her husband’s company has provided steel for their tanks, rail, and military.” The attacks continued from the left, with one labor union ally trying to label Timken “Russia Jane.”
• But Vance has business interests in Russia of his own.
• In May 2021, he joined Peter Thiel and other prominent conservative venture capitalists and invested in the video platform Rumble, a YouTube alternative favored by the political right. After tech companies including Meta and Twitter limited Russia’s state-controlled news network RT to minimize the spread of propaganda, the Russian government announced it would move to Rumble.
• Gibbons, another Senate candidate, is distancing himself from a Russian business deal announced by his company, Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, in 2011. 
• HMS specializes in pipes for the Russian oil industry and one of its main customers is Gazprom, the state-owned gas giant and majority owner of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, whose operation was suspended because of the war.
• Lost in the ad attacks against Timken is the fact that their intended beneficiary, Mandel, has taken thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Timken family members, employees and PACs over the years.
• Among other entanglements, the real estate company owned at the time by the family of Mandel’s then-wife, Ilana, sold off its stake in the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center to Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov in 2016. The billionaire has since sold the assets.

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Meltdown Comes As Gibbons Meets With Trump, Whose Allies Say Trump “Couldn’t Pick Him Out Of A Lineup”

Columbus, OH —  On the same day Mike Gibbons heads to Mar-A-Lago to grovel for Donald Trump’s support, his staff is scrambling to explain away a video of their favorite investment banker millionaire blaming Trump for losing Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats. It’s tough out here having to defend a lackluster candidate like Gibbons when he puts his foot in his mouth, but that’s not stopping them from trying! 

Here’s the Gibbons cleanup crew flailing to defend Gibbons: 

Here’s why the explanations aren’t adding up: 

1. Excuses notwithstanding, Gibbons is parroting the exact same Trump-bashing talking points as Mitch McConnell and his allies on the GOP’s twin Georgia U.S. Senate losses. See the similarities for yourself: 

• Mike Gibbons: “That’s what happened in Georgia. Somebody said, ‘Don’t vote because it’s fixed,’ and we lost two Senate seats.”
• Longtime McConnell advisor Scott Jennings: “That’s on him [Trump]. He told them their votes didn’t count, and some of them listened.” 

1. This isn’t Gibbons’ first anti-Trump fumble: he previously let loose on the MAGA movement, bashing the “cult of personality” around Trump.

“As he heads to Mar-A-Lago to beg for Trump’s support, Mike Gibbons’ team is hitting the panic button because they can’t cover up their boss doing his best Mitch McConnell impression of slamming Trump for losing Georgia’s two U.S. Senate races last year. Today’s panicked response shows just how much of a liability Mike Gibbons’ own anti-Trump words are and no amount of spin can change that,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. 

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For Immediate Release:

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported on the various ways Mike DeWine has used Ohioans’ safety as a political pawn over the years, as he flip-flops and breaks his promises to Ohio voters time and again in order to shore up his own political support. Yesterday, DeWine signed Senate Bill 215 into law, selling out law enforcement officers and Ohio families in order to keep the gun lobby happy and breaking his promise to voters to ‘do something’ to combat the threat of gun violence in the state.

DeWine, underwater with political support from his own party, is willing to do or say anything to get himself reelected, even if it means breaking his promises and putting Ohioans’ lives in danger in the process – from signing ‘stand your ground’ legislation into law to his recent signature of SB 215. While DeWine promised to ‘do something,’ the only thing he’s done is make Ohioans more vulnerable to gun violence.

“Perhaps the most consistent aspect of DeWine’s approach to firearms is its inconsistency,” writes Jessie Balmert for the Cincinnati Enquirer.

“Mike DeWine is so scared of a primary challenge from his fellow Republicans, he’s willing to put Ohioans’ lives on the line. It’s despicable to watch DeWine sell out law enforcement officers and Ohio families all to try and hold on in a Republican primary in which most voters oppose him,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.

Read more from the Enquirer here and below:

• Gov. Mike DeWine once earned an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association.
• Over the years, Second Amendment advocates have had a love-hate relationship with DeWine.
• Perhaps the most consistent aspect of DeWine’s approach to firearms is its inconsistency. That leaves him open to attacks from both the right and the left as he faces a four-way GOP primary and, if he wins the nomination, a November election after that. 
• The law DeWine signed Monday will allow Ohioans to carry concealed weapons without training or permits. A long list of groups opposed the change, including the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio and several county sheriffs. Democrats condemned DeWine’s decision to sign Senate Bill 215, which will take effect in 90 days.
• “This just shows DeWine doesn’t really stand for anything when it comes to common-sense gun legislation and that when he promised the people of Dayton that he would do something, he wasn’t meaningful about it at all,” said former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, who is running for governor as a Democrat. Whaley was the mayor of Dayton when a gunman killed nine people in the city’s Oregon District in 2019.
• While in Congress, DeWine supported background checks at gun shows and a ban on assault weapons. That led the NRA to give him an “F” rating and the Brady campaign to endorse his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate against Democrat Sherrod Brown in 2006. In 2002, a Columbus Dispatch article described DeWine as a “Republican who’s not afraid to stand up to the National Rifle Association.”
• In his 2010 bid for Ohio attorney general, DeWine started to remake his image into a more pro-Second Amendment, more pro-gun politician.
• Once elected, he worked on reciprocity agreements with other states so gun owners permitted to carry concealed weapons in Ohio could do so elsewhere. He backed efforts to arm teachers after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.
• Husted, who has a consistently high rating with the NRA, joined DeWine’s gubernatorial ticket in late 2017, shoring up support from Second Amendment advocates wary of DeWine’s history on guns. As part of that campaign, DeWine made promises to sign bills such as stand your ground and permitless carry. 
• But DeWine broke other promises with those bills, promises he made to a grieving crowd in Dayton after the 2019 mass shooting. They called on him to “do something” about gun violence, and in the weeks after, it appeared he might.
• DeWine, standing with Whaley and a slew of law enforcement officers, unveiled a list of reforms that he called “STRONG Ohio.” The list included background checks for most firearm purchases, harsher penalties for felons banned from having guns and a “red flag”-like proposal to remove guns from those with mental health or violence issues. 
• “If we do these things, it will matter,” DeWine said at the time. “If we do these things, it will make us safer.”
• Ultimately, he did few of those things. Ohio’s GOP-controlled Legislature was not interested in restricting gun rights. Lobbyists picked apart each proposal. DeWine’s ideas even sparked turmoil within Buckeye Firearms Association, which removed its top lobbyist at the time. 
• DeWine was under pressure – from 2018 campaign promises and from his GOP opponents – to sign the concealed carry changes into law. And he did, 50 days before the May 3rd primary.
• But will support of bills such as this hurt DeWine in a November general election? Democratic candidates Whaley and former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley certainly hope so.
• DeWine, Cranley said, “has shredded all credibility on common-sense gun safety issues.”

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Meeting Arrives As Trump Allies Call Gibbons A “Nonentity” And Say Trump “Couldn’t Pick Him Out Of A Line-Up”

Columbus, OH — As Investment Banker Millionaire Mike Gibbons meets with Donald Trump this afternoon, the Ohio Democratic Party has some tips about what he really shouldn’t say:

1. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE your past warning of the “cult of personality” around Trump in the GOP.

Last year, you told Jewish Insider that “I’m not into the cult of personality” around Trump and “It’s not about Donald Trump, it’s about America.”

Please DO NOT mention this.

2. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE that you blamed Trump for losing two Georgia U.S. Senate seats.

You told the Paulding County Republican Central Committee, channeling your best Mitch McConnell, “In Georgia, where there was obviously a problem, because we watched it on television. And my wife always brings this up and I said, ‘Listen, don’t.. we all have to vote even if we think there might be some shenanigans going on, we need to vote.’ That’s what happened in Georgia. Somebody said, ‘Don’t vote because it’s fixed,’ and we lost two Senate seats.”

Please DO NOT mention this.

3. DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE your past statements that you are “pro-people” instead of “pro-choice,” and saying you were not dogmatic on social issues.

You told the Associated Press in 2017 you are “‘not a woman’ so wouldn’t choose for them” and you said you weren’t “‘pro-choice,’ though, but ‘pro-people.’”

Please DO NOT mention this.

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