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Columbus, OH — Today, Ohio Democratic Party (ODP) Chair Elizabeth Walters called on Dave Yost to resign as Attorney General. Yost rushed to implement a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest and then questioned the story of a ten-year-old rape victim who suffered even more by having to travel out of state to receive critical reproductive healthcare because of Yost’s ban. 

Yost has refused to apologize to the victim and continues to spread misinformation about the law he helped implement, demonstrating that he’s not qualified to serve as Ohio’s Attorney General any longer.

“Dave Yost is clearly incapable of shame. He’s incapable of doing the right thing. As attorney general, Yost should be looking for justice, not getting in the way of it. An apology is not enough, Dave Yost must resign. And if he does not, we’re ready to defeat him at the ballot box in November,” said Walters.

Chair Walters was joined on the call by family medicine doctor and abortion provider Dr. Catherine Romanos, who has firsthand experience with reproductive health and the risks the dangerous new Ohio laws may pose to patients.

“I don’t think that our leaders should be setting examples like this. People should feel comfortable going to law enforcement, people should feel supported when they go to law enforcement. When stories like this circulate, we should do everything to make people believe that we believe them. That we trust them, care about them and are going to support them,” said Dr. Romanos.

Yost also asserted without a doubt that the ten-year-old victim could have gotten an abortion in Ohio. Now legal experts, doctors and even Ohio’s own Legislative Service Commission (which helps state lawmakers draft laws) have weighed in on that assertion and made clear the six-week abortion ban makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

Yost either doesn’t understand the law or is pretending not to, once again demonstrating why he is unfit to serve as Attorney General.

A full video of today’s press conference can be provided upon request.

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Columbus, OH — Though independent candidate Neil Petersen submitted his signatures to run as an independent gubernatorial candidate months ago, Frank LaRose still hasn’t certified his candidacy, just months before the November election. LaRose’s delay raises questions about his intentions, especially as Petersen is running as a conservative challenger to DeWine.

“More Republicans voted against Mike DeWine than voted for him, and now DeWine’s buddy Frank LaRose is dragging his feet in certifying the candidacy of a candidate who poses a real threat to DeWine’s re-election. Ohio voters deserve answers from Frank LaRose about the delay, why it has taken so long and when voters can expect an answer,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

According to a tweet from Petersen, LaRose’s office promised results by Friday but now are walking that back and providing no timeline to the candidate on when they may get results.

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July 18, 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 the Republican governor’s race and Mike DeWine’s statehouse, courtesy of the Ohio Democratic Party.

Here are some stories you may have missed:

SICK AND DISTURBED… is how some are describing Mike DeWine and his Republican buddies (we’re looking at you Dave Yost) after they cast doubt on the validity of the rape case involving a 10-year-old forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion because the six-week abortion ban they helped implement includes no exceptions for rape or incest. Facing questions about the consequences of the six-week abortion ban DeWine himself implemented, DeWine refused comment. Now, the Dayton Daily News has noted his campaign website has scrubbed language about DeWine’s abortion record. DeWine is the most anti-choice governor in the country, and now he’s trying to hide it. Sick and disturbed indeed.

FOLLOW THE MONEY. Thanks to Ohio Democrats, Appalachia just received an influx of investments to help communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. But if it were up to DeWine, they would never have seen a dollar of that funding. Why? Because DeWine (and every other Ohio Republican on the ballot this fall) opposed the American Rescue Plan championed by Ohio Democrats. But Mike DeWine is so desperate to stay relevant, he’s touting funding he opposed and that Democrats passed – a sure sign that DeWine knows he’s in trouble.

FACT CHECK: FALSE. Mike DeWine claimed on Twitter this weekend that he will always support Ohio law enforcement, but his actions tell a different story. Ohio’s largest police union has said ‘our voices are not heard’ when discussing recent actions by DeWine to sign dangerous gun bills into law. Time and again, DeWine has said one thing and done another. In this case, it’s making our law enforcement officers and Ohio families less safe.

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

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Columbus, OH – J.D. Vance is facing brutal coverage for a brutal fundraising quarter that left his campaign in debt. With a high unfavorability rating, polls showing a dead heat and low fundraising numbers, the problems for Vance’s campaign continue to pile up.

Here’s what they are saying about Vance’s abysmal fundraising numbers:

• “J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, raised considerably less money in the second quarter than Tim Ryan, his Democratic opponent. Also, Vance’s Senate campaign would have a deficit if not for $700,000 the candidate gave it while a joint fundraising committee he uses to raise most of his money would have only a $91,626 surplus as of June 30 if it paid the outstanding debt it owes.” –David Skolnick, The Vindicator
• “I think legitimately he’s got to crank up his fundraising, and a lot of that’s got to be national. But clearly, they’re still digging out and recovering from the primary, because it was so nasty, twisted and dirty.” –Terry Casey, a Columbus-based Republican strategist to Cleveland.com 
• “It’s certainly got to be a wake-up call to the J.D. Vance campaign, because Tim Ryan is running circles around him right now.” –Ohio Republican strategist to Cleveland.com
• “But in the money game, Vance’s opponent has the upper hand.” –Haley BeMiller, Columbus Dispatch
• “The J.D. Vance campaign is broke.” –Roger Sollenberger, The Daily Beast
• “Vance showing some low fundraising numbers.” –Jonathan Lemire on MSNBC
• “But his campaign, totally broke.” –Gabby Orr, CNN
• “Tim Ryan…crushed GOP nominee J.D. Vance in the campaign cash dash…” –Paul Steinhauser, Fox News

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MEMORANDUM
To: Interested Parties
From: Michael Beyer, Ohio Democratic Party Communications Advisor
Re: J.D. Vance Is Flailing

Another round of dismal fundraising numbers and a new poll showing Tim Ryan ahead are just the latest signs that Big Tech Financier (FINN-ANCE-EER as he would pronounce it) J.D. Vance’s campaign is flailing. Despite a rolodex full of Silicon Valley and Yale Law contacts, he  can’t raise the money to get on the air and he still hasn’t consolidated Republican voters after a bruising primary. Ohioans aren’t buying his transparent political reinventions that have dogged his campaign from the get-go.

POLLING NUMBERS

Still reeling from a tough GOP primary (that ended more than two months ago), Vance is polling at 49 percent unfavorable with voters disliking him by an 11 point margin. And he is well-known, with 88 percent of Ohioans knowing who Vance is. More than twice as many Ohio voters view him very unfavorably than very favorably, 39 percent to 16 percent.

Vance was exposed as a fraud in the GOP primary with millions of dollars worth of attack ads that revealed him as a “fraud,” “flip flop flipper,” “Never Trump,” “RINO,” who “called for higher taxes,” and “cheering for the wrong team.” A Republican voter recently said he may vote for DeWine but couldn’t vote for Vance because “it bothered him that Vance went from Trump critic to courting Trump when it was expedient.”

Vance has an uphill battle to convince voters from his own party to back him while not turning off Independent voters who currently favor Tim Ryan by 11 points, a maneuver that will require Vance to once again reinvent himself — a major liability coming off a primary where his GOP opponents spent millions of dollars on TV ads defining him as a fraudulent shapeshifter. Vance started the race as an untrustworthy fraud then and everything he’s done since has only reinforced that perception.

ABYSMAL FUNDRAISING

It is likely that after today, Vance will have one of the lowest cash-on-hand totals of any Republican U.S. Senate candidate in a competitive race. Vance’s campaign has $628,611 on hand and is $882,883 in debt. Vance’s campaign is broke from an expensive and bruising primary – and he’s shown himself to be an abysmal fundraiser who can’t dig himself out of the hole he got himself into.

Vance’s campaign knew they were in a rut, which is why they hired a new finance director in June (although this reset doesn’t seem to have fixed their fundraising struggles).

Two Republican consultants went after Vance today for his lackluster fundraising, saying, “It’s certainly got to be a wake-up call to the J.D. Vance campaign, because Tim Ryan is running circles around him right now,” and, “I think legitimately he’s got to crank up his fundraising.”

REPUBLICANS UPSET WITH VANCE’S “HORRIBLE CAMPAIGN”

One conservative radio host slammed Vance for his “horrible campaign” and encouraged him to “start running some ads and get moving” – which is hard to do when your campaign has no money to spend on ads. Vance has admitted he’s still struggling to unite the Ohio Republican Party because there are “a lot of Republican voters with hurt feelings” from the primary (again, 2+ months ago).

Conservative radio Bill Cunningham asked Vance why he wasn’t at Mike DeWine’s ice cream social. Vance told him that he has “nothing against” DeWine; he just had “other things to do” – but apparently those other things did not include fundraising. Bill Cunningham today said that they would have Jack Windsor on to discuss “what many consider to be the non-campaign of J.D. Vance.”

AUTHENTICITY PROBLEM HAS DOGGED VANCE’S CAMPAIGN

Since the start of his campaign, Vance has faced an authenticity problem – flip-flopping on key issues for his own political benefit. And Vance will continue to suffer for his lack of convictions that leave many Ohioans wondering, “Which J.D. Vance will we get today?”

Here are some of the many ways that Vance has changed in order to bolster his political career: 

TRADE

Before running for U.S. Senate:

• In his memoir, Vance wrote, “We talk about the value of hard work, but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: (Barack) Obama shut down the coal mines or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• At a Trump rally in Pennsylvania in May, Vance said, “We have to stop being weak on China. We have to stop sending American jobs to people who hate us.”

ELITES

Before running for U.S. Senate:

• When he was promoting Hillbilly Elegy, Vance told NPR: “I think that the elites of both parties do care about the people I grew up around.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Now Vance decries elites, saying they are “robbing us blind” and that they “don’t care about the American people.”

TRUMP

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance called himself a “Never Trump guy” and Trump “noxious.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance sought Trump’s endorsement and said “this guy is doing great things.”

Bonus: Vance admitted he wasn’t sincerely a Trump supporter, bemoaning the fact that he would have to “suck it up and support Trump” in the GOP primary.

SOCIAL SECURITY

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• American Independent headline: “GOP Ohio Senate nominee J.D. Vance has supported cuts to Social Security and Medicare”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

•  HuffPost headline: “J.D. Vance Ditches Past Support For Social Security Cuts”

ANTISEMITISM

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance liked a tweet implying Trump supporters were antisemitic.

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance has promoted Soros conspiracy theories, saying, the “result of his ‘philanthropy’ is death and crime across America.”

RACISM

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance said, “A lot of people think Trump is just the first to appeal to the racism and xenophobia that were already there, but I think he’s making the problem worse.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance called immigrants “dirty” at a candidate forum in 2021.

WHITE PRIVILEGE

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• In a 2017 interview published two weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Vance told Ezra Klein that there are “obviously still advantages to being white” and that “there are still disadvantages to being black.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance claimed people should be able to sue businesses that tell people they need to “deconstruct their privilege, or they need to sacrifice or repent of their whiteness.”

RED FLAG LAWS

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance supported red flag laws and said, “We should make it easier to take those guns out of the hands of people who are about to use them to murder large numbers of people.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Now Vance opposes the Portman-led bipartisan gun law that includes red flag laws.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance said John Kerry had “more of a spine” than Mitt Romney because Romney flip-flopped on climate change.

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Now Vance questions the science of climate change, saying, “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man. That’s basically the argument they’re making. It’s been changing, as others pointed out, it’s been changing for millennia.” 

SUPER PAC SUPPORT

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance said (at the 41 minute mark), “My intuition is that I am not the biggest fan of multi-billion contributions or multimillion dollar contributions.”

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance bragged about having “most of the money” supporting his campaign coming from Big Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel, who has given $15 million to a super PAC supporting Vance’s campaign.

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance opposed the repeal and replace efforts of Congressional Republicans in 2017. 

After running for U.S. Senate: 

• Vance said “We’ve got to” repeal the Affordable Care Act.

POLICE

Before running for U.S. Senate: 

• As a CNN contributor, Vance said, “There are legitimate concerns that a lot of Black Americans have – that they’re not treated fairly by some members of the police.”

When he was considering launching a U.S. Senate campaign:

• On Tucker Carlson, Vance said that concern over police brutality is “ridiculous” because it’s not a “real problem.”

LGBTQ RIGHTS

Before entering the U.S. Senate race:

• Rod Dreher said: “But unless he has changed his mind, his attitude towards gay marriage is more in line with his generation’s.”
• Vance praised Hillary Clinton for her “It Gets Better” video in the wake of a rash of suicides from LGBTQ youth, saying, “Preach it, hil-dog. Not bad for a stinkin’ leftist (I kid I kid).”

After entering the U.S. Senate race: 

• J.D. Vance on Bill Cunningham this week said, “I am a Christian, will you know that I’m a practicing actually Catholic convert. I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

And knowing J.D. Vance, this is only the tip of the fraudulent iceberg.

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