Columbus, OH — With barely two weeks left in one of the most crowded and expensive primaries in the country, Ohio’s GOP Senate candidates have ramped up their attacks on each other, with “mudslinging in all directions” creating a “hodgepodge of continuing controversy.” The race remains wide open and chaotic as the candidates go after one another in an increasingly ugly fashion.
Earlier this month, even Republican operatives like Kellyanne Conway were freely admitting how this crazy primary helps Tim Ryan’s chances in November.
Cleveland.com: With mudslinging in all directions, Ohio’s Republican Senate candidates head for the big finish
Andrew Tobias and Seth Richardson
April 17, 2022
- Candidates in Ohio’s already hotly contested U.S. Senate race are turning up the heat even further, launching attacks against each other in all directions in the final days before the May 3 primary.
- A profane confrontation between Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel last month that nearly turned physical. Comments Gibbons made during a podcast last October that suggested the middle class doesn’t pay its “fair share” of taxes. JD Vance attacking Mandel for hiding behind his Marine service. Jane Timken trying to steer the conversation toward her general election viability against Democrats. And Matt Dolan continuing to bill himself as above the fray.
- In total, the candidates have created a hodgepodge of continuing controversy with just two weeks of voting left to pick the Republican nominee to replace retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman.
- Despite the vitriol, the candidates themselves are not far apart regarding the issues, including red-meat topics like guns and abortion, with so much of their attention turned toward courting the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump. Vance scored the endorsement on Friday, putting to end months of speculation and deflating local Republicans’ last-minute effort to block the endorsement.
- Vance might be the most significant outlier as the lone candidate who has said he does not care what happens to Ukraine – a position the other candidates have attacked him for plenty.
- New campaign ads and interviews the candidates have given over the past week with Hugh Hewitt and Steve Bannon, two conservative media figures with dramatically different world views, help reveal what the candidates are focusing on as they hit the final days before the May 3 election.
- The candidates also have spent time mudslinging in all directions and continuing their attention-grabbing antics, illustrating what appears to be a fluid race in which four or five candidates appear to have a realistic chance of winning.
- In various interviews over the past week, Mandel also has rolled out a new talking point that puts a slightly friendlier face on what’s generally been a far-right, flame-throwing campaign of grievance: the other candidates are not “bad” people but aren’t senator material.
- In a Wednesday interview with Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host and Ohio native with a national program, Mandel bashed other leading candidates in the race while saying he’s trying to get Trump’s endorsement.
- “All of us are doing everything we can to earn his support and earn his endorsement,” Mandel said. “I think JD Vance and Jane Timken are two of the candidates who would still lose the race even if they did get the endorsement because they’re so far behind in the polls.”
- Gibbons, who’s been of particular focus of attacks given his surprising strength in various campaign polls, tried to turn the tables on everyone launching new attacks against Timken, Vance and Mandel while defending himself against criticism over his history of making business deals in China.
- Over last weekend, Gibbons had gone on the defensive after the Associated Press published a story highlighting comments about taxes he made in October during a podcast interview with Crain’s Cleveland Business.
- Specifically, as part of a lengthy answer about economic policy, Gibbons said Democrats advance what he called a “false narrative” that the wealthy aren’t paying their fair share of taxes at the expense of the middle class.
- “The top 20% of earners in the United States pay 82% of federal income tax — and, if you do the math, and 45% to 50% don’t pay any income tax, you can see the middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share, depending on how you want to define it,” Gibbons said.
- Gibbons also has spent time cleaning up over attacks on his business connections in China, a popular theme in the race. A recent ad bashes Mandel, the former state treasurer, for loaning “tax dollars” to “Chinese business interests.”
- Timken has heavily invoked being the only woman in the race in recent weeks. During a debate last month, she scuffled with Gibbons over previous comments he’d made that women were not oppressed and saying Timken, a Harvard-educated attorney, hadn’t held a real job before entering politics.
- Some of the attacks Timken has received involve the business activities in China and Russia of the Timken Co., a Canton manufacturer founded and previously run by her husband’s family. Gibbons also has attacked Timken for “bankrolling tax-raising politicians,” which the ad says is a reference to Gov. Mike DeWine’s 2019 move to hike the state’s gas tax to pay for roads and bridges.
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