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Columbus, OH — As Congressman Anthony Gonzalez announced his retirement after facing pressure over his insufficient support of Donald Trump, Jane Timken’s past defense of Gonzalez’s vote to impeach Trump is in the spotlight: Josh Mandel skewered Timken on Friday, saying she was “pro-impeachment” and “having a candlelight vigil for her bud Anthony Gonzalez.” He mocked Timken, by sarcastically impersonating her, tweeting, “Um, do I need to change my pro-impeachment stance now? Or should I poll it first?”And he lambasted J.D. Vance, claiming Vance had been “completely silent on Gonzalez’s vote to impeach Trump.”

Timken previously called Gonzalez’s decision to support impeachment “rational” and said he was an “effective legislator.” After facing attacks from Mandel and other Republicans, Timken reversed her defense of Gonzalez — in what Cleveland.com called a “jaw-dropping flip flop.”

“Every day the crowded Republican Senate primary gets more toxic, and these GOP Senate candidates are taking every opportunity they can to fight with each other. Ohioans won’t fall for these out-of-touch GOP candidates who are more concerned with bickering with each other than showing how they will deliver for Ohio families,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

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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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September 17, 2021

Happy Friday and welcome to the inaugural edition of “Buckeye Brawl,” a weekly newsletter from the Ohio Democratic Party highlighting the nasty, chaotic, and expensive Republican primary for Senate. The out-of-control primary is making conservatives “deeply worried” about the prospects of Republicans losing this seat. 

As the Republican Senate primary continues to sink lower and lower, these GOP candidates are injecting even more nasty personal attacks, more chaos, and more money into this race. We’re here to help you keep track of all of it. Here’s what you may have missed: 

VANCE UNMASKED. Josh Mandel unmasked J.D. Vance’s past by attacking his old tweets calling for “mak[ing] everyone wear masks.” Mandel tweeted, “JD Vance was for mask mandates before he was against them. The only thing that changed in between was that he decided to run for office.” He also called Vance a “phony RINO” for flip-flopping on masks to further his political career. 

COVID FOR EVERYBODY? In an interview with Spectrum News, Bernie Moreno took a swipe at Mandel, Vance, and Timken, saying, “There are people in my race, and you know who they are, and they get a lot of attention, that want it to be about carelessness let’s spread this virus it’s great, COVID for everybody. Obviously, that’s insanely stupid.”  

VANCE’S SHAM OPIOID NON-PROFIT. Reacting to a Business Insider investigation that Vance founded a sham non-profit to boost his political career, Mike Gibbons’ Senior Advisor Michael Biundo tweeted that Vance is “is about as authentic as a $3.00 bill.” Mandel also attacked Vance on his sham non-profit, saying, “Step 1: Abandon hometown Step 2: Profit off of crapping on hometown and calling people from there racists Step 3: Return from silicon valley to start nonprofit to ‘save’ hometown from opioids Step 4: Take the money from the nonprofit and instead use it for political campaign.”

CELEBRITIES AND TWITTER WARS. Jane Timken side-swiped her keyboard warrior rivals Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance at a campaign event, saying, “I’m not running on celebrity or social media or Twitter wars. This is about the fundamentals and doing what’s right for the country.”    

CHEAP TALK. Mandel retweeted Matthew Tyrmand, who accused Vance of “palling around with the Democratic establishment for years,” referring to Vance traveling around on a bus tour with President Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain to promote his book, Hillbilly Elegy. Tyrmand’s tweet goes on to attack Vance, saying, “Taking their money, bashing Trump voters as racist bigots alongside them, wine & cheese in Aspen, the works. Always watch what people do NOT what they say. Talk is cheap & he has proved that if nothing else.”

THE SILICON VALLEY/HOLLYWOOD CANDIDATE. Mandel bashed Vance’s Big Tech and Hollywood connections in an interview with Ben Shapiro, saying, “I think if the election were held today in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street or DC, I think JD Vance would run away with it. But if the election was held today in Ohio, he’d get destroyed, because Ohioans are not buying what he’s selling…They see him as a total phony and a total fraud.”   

NOBODY LOOKING OUT FOR “NORMAL PEOPLE.” When asked why he decided to run for Senate, Vance took a veiled swing at the entire Republican field, saying that he was looking out for “normal people” and “didn’t see anybody else in this race who I thought was standing up for people in the way I thought I could.” With the entire field of GOP candidates made up of out-of-touch millionaires (Vance included), it’s true that none of these politicians are looking out for working Ohioans.

WHO’S THE TRUMPIEST OF THEM ALL? Mandel tweeted that it was an “eternal truth” that “J.D. Vance is a Never Trumper.” In an interview with Ben Shapiro, Mandel attacked Timken’s past defense of Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, saying, “One of the other people running against me, Jane Timken. She defended the impeachment against Donald Trump. She called it rational. She was asked how she would go down and she said she didn’t know.” Mike Gibbons Senior Advisor Michael Biundo took a swipe at J.D. Vance, quipping in response to a J.D. Vance tweet about what got him interested in politics, “It wasn’t your hatred of Donald Trump? Hmm.”

Thanks for reading along – that’s all for the Buckeye Brawl this week. If you have questions, my email is [email protected]. Have a great weekend! 

Mike DeWine Thinks Following the Constitution is Too Much Work, Would Rather ‘Get It Over With and Move On’ Instead

Columbus, OH — This week, Republicans Mike DeWine and Frank LaRose once again showed their true colors as they both admitted the gerrymandered ‘maps’ passed by the GOP-controlled Redistricting Commission may be unconstitutional and then turned around and voted for them anyway. Because for DeWine and LaRose, political ambition always comes first, while the needs of the voters and the Constitution they both swore to support always come up short.

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.

“Political cowardice runs rampant through the Republican Party these days, but Mike DeWine and Frank LaRose seem to be taking it to a whole different level. If these politicians don’t have the courage or the strength to do their jobs and stand up for what’s right, they shouldn’t have the jobs in the first place,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

DeWine’s vote is particularly ironic given that he claims he’s powerless to implement a mask mandate for schools in the face of an ultra-radical Republican legislature. Yet, rather than take any sort of stand for fair representation that would address the extremism in the Republican Party, he backed down once again, saying he’d rather ‘get it over with and move on’ than do his actual job.

LaRose laughingly claimed that ‘unnamed members of the commission’ didn’t work in good faith to pass a bipartisan map, something he must have said while walking past a mirror. The GOP-controlled commission had a responsibility under the Constitution to pass maps that provided fair representation, yet LaRose shirked his responsibility and caved to political pressure once again. Not the kind of leadership Ohioans are looking for from the guy who’s supposed to protect the integrity of elections and voting.

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Columbus, OH — Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters released the following statement after Republicans flouted the Constitution, spat in the face of Ohio voters and once again put their own political interests over the needs of our state by passing purely partisan 4-year maps that statehouse Republicans used to choose their voters rather than the other way around.

“These Republican maps are an embarrassingly transparent partisan ploy to once again serve the needs of GOP politicians and special interests at the expense of the needs of Ohio voters. These maps will take our state even further backward in the fight for quality education, equal voting rights and an economy that rewards workers. It’s unacceptable that GOP politicians once again put their party above the will of the voters and the needs of working families in Ohio,” said Chair Walters.

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