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Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, Ohio Capital Journal editor David DeWitt today took Mike DeWine and Frank LaRose to task for once again breaking their promises to Ohio voters as they bowed to political pressure and voted to pass unconstitutional statehouse maps. DeWitt looked back on past statements from DeWine and LaRose that prove that they know better than to pass these unconstitutional maps that fly in the face of what Ohio voters repeatedly called for, they just don’t care.

“DeWine had a vote. So did Frank LaRose. Instead of a 5-2 partisan vote for gerrymandering, it could’ve been a 4-3 bipartisan vote for fair maps. That’s exactly what voters wanted, bipartisan and fair maps. DeWine and LaRose could’ve voted for and gotten representative maps, but they gave Ohio voters more rigged maps. Their actions scream so much louder than their hollow words,” writes DeWitt.

Both LaRose and DeWine are scared of primary challengers and know they are hemorrhaging support within their own party. So instead of showing any sort of courage and doing the right thing, they backed down once again to extreme members of their party (read: the Republican legislature) at the expense of the rule of law.

Read more from Ohio Capital Journal HERE and below:

• The oddest part is Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine acting as though he’s somehow powerless and had no choice when he voted to rig Ohio elections with partisan, gerrymandered maps for the next four years. After all, he’s only the governor.
• In 2011 as a state senator, LaRose voted for the gerrymander-rigged districts Ohio has had for the last decade. Those lines, our current districts, were created in a secret GOP hotel room “bunker” at the downtown Double Tree in Columbus.
• Last week, as secretary of state and a member of the redistricting commission, LaRose again voted to gerrymander Ohio, this time for four years.
• This is now 14 years of rigged district lines LaRose has voted for but feels super bad about.
• LaRose told everybody all over the state in 2018 that we could count on him, but when the time came, in a critical moment for the integrity of Ohio government, he failed us.
• How about DeWine? Here’s what he said when he was campaigning for governor in 2018: “The rules are pretty clear — the voters said that the redistricting process should be done in a bipartisan way and when I am governor there will be an expectation that the new district maps honor the voters’ wishes.”
• DeWine had a golden opportunity to live up to his own expectations. It was even in his own interest. He could’ve broken the veto-proof supermajority that has overridden him on pandemic safety and stripped him of powers.
• Instead DeWine shrank from the moment, and claims powerlessness, bemoans a lack of compromise, when it was he who was in a position to compromise, he who was in a position to lead, and he who failed to do so.

• DeWine had a vote. So did Frank LaRose. Instead of a 5-2 partisan vote for gerrymandering, it could’ve been a 4-3 bipartisan vote for fair maps. That’s exactly what voters wanted, bipartisan and fair maps.
• Their actions scream so much louder than their hollow words.

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Columbus, OH — Following a new Daily Beast report that J.D. Vance called rape “inconvenient,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters released the following statement:

“J.D. Vance’s statement is dangerous and despicable. He is unfit to serve in the United States Senate.” 

Read the report below:

Daily Beast: J.D. Vance Defends Texas Abortion Ban, Calls Rape “Inconvenient”

In a local news interview published Wednesday, author and venture capitalist turned Senate candidate J.D. Vance suggested he would support prohibiting abortion even in cases of rape and incest—and dismissed those catalysts as “inconvenient.”

Asked by Curtis Jackson of Spectrum News 1 in Columbus, OH, whether a woman should be forced to give birth even if the pregnancy was the result of incest or rape, Vance replied that “the question betrays a certain presumption that’s wrong.”

“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term; it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” said Vance, who lags behind several Republican candidates in his Ohio primary. “The question to me is really about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.”

The exchange came amid an extended discussion about abortion laws in light of the broadly criticized new Texas ban on the procedure, which does not make exceptions for rape and incest. Vance, a multimillionaire investor whose 2016 bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, detailed the plight of Appalachia’s poor, defended the ban, saying that “in Texas they’re trying to make it easier for babies to be born.”

He also claimed, falsely, that “the Supreme Court has upheld the Texas law,” referring to the Court’s eleventh-hour split decision last month to let the ban go into effect rather than issue an emergency injunction. Vance, a Yale Law grad, also stated that “the fundamental problem with abortion law in this country” is that it is “unsustainable and unstable.” Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which defined those laws, was decided 48 years ago.

[…]

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Columbus, OH — In an interview with The Spectator, Silicon Valley millionaire J.D. Vance is facing more scrutiny about his “superficial” “charade” non-profit, Our Ohio Renewal. 

In the latest interview, Vance acknowledged his organization’s limited impact, saying, “Is it a massive nonprofit? No. Did we spend a lot of money? No. Did we raise a lot of money? No. And, most of the money, or at least a lot of the money, was my personal money that went into it.” 

These comments follow a Business Insider investigation that found Vance’s non-profit was a “charade” and “superficial,” bolstering himself and his personal ambitions. Business Insider found that in its first year, the group spent more money paying for “management services” provided by Vance’s top political advisor than on programs to fight opioid abuse. In a Logan Daily News interview, Vance pointed to his non-profit’s limited impact, citing only “small grants and funds…here and there,” and said that he was “doing less and less with the non-profit” as the Senate campaign ramped up and was instead “focusing more” on his own political career.   

“For weeks, Silicon Valley millionaire J.D. Vance has failed to answer what his sham non-profit has done to help Ohioans struggling with the plague of addiction. The truth is that Vance is only ever interested in helping one person: himself,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.  

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Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, the Cleveland.com Editorial Board yesterday took Mike DeWine and Frank LaRose to task for failing to stand up and do the jobs they were elected to do as they caved to their own party and passed gerrymandered maps that are a slap in the face to Ohioans who voted for reform. The Cleveland.com editorial points out that both DeWine and LaRose had the power to rise above politics and help produce a map with bipartisan support, but both chose to look out for their own interests instead.

“It is hard to reconcile with their oaths of office the governor and secretary of state’s almost blasé attitudes — voting for flawed maps despite expressed qualms. In taking office, they both solemnly swore to ‘support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Ohio’ and to ‘faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all of the duties incumbent upon me.’ Their actions last week were not a faithful and impartial discharge of their duties,” writes the Cleveland.com Editorial Board.

Both LaRose and DeWine are scared of primary challengers and know they are hemorrhaging support within their own party. So instead of showing any sort of courage and doing the right thing, they backed down once again to extreme members of their party (read: the Republican legislature) at the expense of the rule of law.

Read more from Cleveland.com HERE and below:

• What were Gov. Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose thinking in voting for what they both acknowledged were deeply flawed — and in DeWine’s case, possibly unconstitutional — gerrymanders of state legislative districts?
• By its 5-2 party-line vote late Wednesday — just within the constitutional deadline — the Republican majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, including DeWine and LaRose, created four-year Ohio Senate and Ohio House maps that flout voters’ intent to prevent overtly partisan gerrymandering.
• Given their reservations, DeWine and LaRose could have instead sided with the commission’s two Democrats, state Sen. Vernon Sykes and House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, a father-daughter duo from Akron, to insist on fairer maps.
• They didn’t.
• Among other problems, the maps grotesquely slice and dice the majority Black city of Cleveland, raising concerns that the maps violate federal law by diluting Black voting power. Further, in carving up Cleveland and other communities, the maps also fail to adhere to the voter-approved Ohio constitutional reforms requiring keeping communities intact and not using the process to advance partisan aims instead of reflecting voting patterns of the past decade.
• When they had the power to influence the redistricting process to a fairer, more constitutional outcome, DeWine and LaRose both whiffed.
• Kicking this down the road to uncertain judicial review was irresponsible and wrong.
• Last week, our editorial board urged DeWine to exercise his authority to guide the Redistricting Commission to a fairer outcome. Instead, to his discredit, the governor has been strangely disengaged from this critical process.
• If both DeWine and LaRose had sided with the Democrats, the commission’s 5-2 partisan vote of Wednesday night might have flipped to a 4-3 bipartisan vote on improved maps — and made it more likely the maps would pass muster constitutionally while meeting voters’ expressed desire for fairer districts.
• If both DeWine and LaRose had sided with the Democrats, the commission’s 5-2 partisan vote of Wednesday night might have flipped to a 4-3 bipartisan vote on improved maps — and made it more likely the maps would pass muster constitutionally while meeting voters’ expressed desire for fairer districts.
• In taking office, they both solemnly swore to “support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Ohio” and to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all of the duties incumbent upon me.”
• Their actions last week were not a faithful and impartial discharge of their duties.
• The Ohio Constitution provides the governor with supreme executive power. It does not say he should subsume himself to his party, or to its chief legislative leaders, Huffman and Cupp.
• It says he should lead. What DeWine, and LaRose, did in signing off last week on maps they knew were wrong was the opposite of leadership.

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Columbus, OH — Following Matt Dolan’s announcement that he is running for Senate, Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Michael Beyer released the following statement:

“Add Matt Dolan to the long list of out-of-touch millionaires vying for the GOP Senate nomination. With this latest addition to the GOP clown show, this primary is sure to get nastier, more divisive, and more expensive all while Ohio voters and their interests get left behind.”

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