Uncategorized

Columbus, OH – After spending the primary bragging that he was “the only person in the Ohio Senate race who’s actually been willing to criticize leadership,” J.D. Vance has changed his tune on Mitch McConnell now that he needs McConnell’s special interest millions to keep his struggling campaign afloat. 

Last year, J.D. Vance went after McConnell, saying he’s “a little out of touch with the base.” Marjorie Taylor Greene even said she endorsed Vance in part because he “won’t hand his voting card over to Mitch McConnell.” 

But now that Vance is relying on a $28 million cash infusion into the race, courtesy of a Mitch McConnell-linked super PAC, he’s stopped criticizing McConnell altogether.

• Since the primary, Vance has been spotted in D.C. at an NRSC retreat and at the same table as McConnell at a Senate GOP lunch. 
• When McConnell stood in the way of creating 3,000 jobs in Licking County, Vance issued a tepid both-sides statement refusing to call out McConnell by name. 
• And now that Trump is going after McConnell for his complaints about the “quality” of Trump-backed candidates (like Vance himself), Vance told Larry Kudlow (at the :35 second mark) that he’s “made peace with anybody who’s going to help us win… it’s time for the Republicans to actually unite.” 

Supporting McConnell is not new for J.D. Vance, after McConnell begged Vance to run in 2018. It’s like J.D. Vance said of himself, “I’m not just a flip-flopper, I’m a flip-flop-flipper…”

“J.D. Vance used to brag about being willing to criticize Mitch McConnell, but now that it no longer suits his political needs, Vance no longer dares speak out against the GOP leader — even to defend himself against McConnell’s criticisms. If J.D. Vance is too much of a coward to stand up for himself when McConnell insults him, how can he be trusted to stand up for Ohioans at all?” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.  

###

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. It’s ‘DeWine Debate Watch’ Day 2, reminding 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 Chronicle Telegram Editorial Board:

Chronicle Telegram Editorial: DeWine Should Debate Whaley 
Editorial Board
August 30, 2022

• Nifty as it was for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to drop by the Lorain County Fair on Saturday, he’s still dodging what should be the bare minimum for a gubernatorial candidate: debating his opponent.
• DeWine, a Republican seeking a second term, has thus far refused to agree to debate his Democratic opponent, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley.
• That’s all well and good, but talking to fairgoers and reporters isn’t the same thing as sharing a debate stage with Whaley.
• A debate would allow the public to see how both candidates respond to questions and push back against each other. It would give voters a chance to hear and evaluate the positions, priorities and promises that each candidate would bring to leading a state of more than 11.7 million people.
• Whaley suggested that DeWine was trying to avoid hard questions about his pro-life stance on abortion and the alleged bribery scandal surrounding the House Bill 6 nuclear power plant bailout.
• Regardless of whatever perceived advantage there might be in not debating, voters deserve a chance to compare the candidates and their positions side-by-side.
• The best format to permit that is a debate.

###

  August 29, 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 Mike DeWine’s campaign and statehouse, courtesy of the Ohio Democratic Party. 

Here are some stories you may have missed:

DEWINE DEBATE WATCH. 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. 

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. 

WEAK AFTER WEEK. Mike DeWine continues to show how weak he really is, refusing to take a stand on issues critical to Ohio voters until it becomes politically convenient for him and his special interest pals. Last week was no different when DeWine refused to take a stand on student loan forgiveness. Instead of saying if forgiveness was right or wrong, all DeWine could utter was a weak no comment, saying it was “difficult to be for or against it.” A profile in courage, as always. 

YOU STILL DIDN’T WANT THE MONEY. It’s a day that ends in Y so we know Mike DeWine is trying to plot his next event touting critical funding for law enforcement he initially opposed. Last Thursday, he took his pathetic and shameless “photo op of a Democratic victory” tour to Gallia County, where the American Rescue Plan will provide a much-needed boost to police in southeastern Ohio. Ohioans need to remember, DeWine has repeatedly taken credit for this critical federal money that was passed by Ohio Democrats (without a single Republican on the ballot this fall’s support) and that he’s on the record opposing the cash. Bottom line, DeWine is in trouble, he knows it and he continues to stoop to any level to come off as likable.

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

###

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.

###

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.

###