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In Case You Missed It, Salon today did a deep dive on Big Tech’s favorite Republicans, Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance. As Mandel and Vance attempt to appear tough against Big Tech, in reality they’re deep in the pockets of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.  

“Mandel has made attacks on Silicon Valley a central theme of his campaign, despite being funded by some of the tech sector’s most prominent financiers,” writes Igor Derysh for Salon.

“Vance worked for Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm founded by PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel that came under FBI scrutiny in 2019, before joining Revolution LLC, a tech investment firm founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case. Vance has criticized Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for donations to the Democratic Party, even after his fund raised money from the billionaire. In 2019, Vance founded Narya Capital, raising $93 million from tech titans like Thiel, Schmidt and Silicon Valley legend Marc Andreesen,” Derysh continues. 

Playing to an audience of one, Mandel tries desperately to fit in with the anti-tech ‘cool kids’ and beats his chest as he claims he ‘won’t be silenced by Big Tech.’ Then he turns around and funds his campaign with donations from one of “Silicon Valley’s top investors,” the former CEO of Cisco and an executive at a tech firm founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  

J.D. Vance is also working hard to try to keep up his populist scam and distract from his Big Tech roots while leaning on his controversial Silicon Valley pals Peter Theil — who had his venture capital firm investigated by the FBI — and Robert Mercer — who co-founded Cambridge Analytica — to bankroll his political ambitions. And the Big Tech tycoons are keeping a close eye on their investment as Theil ‘chaperoned Vance’s trip to Mar-a-Lago.’

Journalist Judd Legum sums it up well in the Salon article: “In fact, there is no political candidate more beholden to corporate money and the economic elite than JD Vance.”

Read more from Salon HERE and below:

• Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel received financial backing from technology executives and investors despite railing against “Big Tech” censorship and “ultra-liberal thugs in Silicon Valley” on the campaign trail.
• David Blumberg, managing director of the San Francisco-based venture capital firm Blumberg Capital and one of “Silicon Valley’s top investors,” and his partner Michael Armand donated $21,600 to the Team Josh committee last quarter, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Despite his ties to the tech world, Blumberg has backed Trump and his claims of tech censorship against conservatives while promoting right-wing online media figures like Jordan Peterson and PragerU founder Dennis Prager.
• John Chambers, the former chief executive officer of Cisco who now runs the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm JC2 Ventures, and his wife Elaine Chambers also contributed $10,800 to Team Josh, according to an FEC filing.
• Jordan Blashek, an executive at Schmidt Futures, a Silicon Valley nonprofit founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, also kicked in $5,800 to Team Josh.
• Mandel has made attacks on Silicon Valley a central theme of his campaign, despite being funded by some of the tech sector’s most prominent financiers.
• Like Mandel, Vance has made attacks on “Big Tech” a core component of his fledgling campaign.
• Vance worked for Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm founded by PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel that came under FBI scrutiny in 2019, before joining Revolution LLC, a tech investment firm founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case.
• Thiel, a major Trump donor who has also backed right-wingers like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and multiply-defeated Kansas candidate Kris Kobach, was the first major contributor to a PAC backing Vance’s Senate bid, with a $10 million donation.
• The billionaire Mercer family, which also backed Trump as well as controversial tech ventures like Cambridge Analytica, Breitbart and Parler, joined Thiel in financially supporting Vance’s run.
• “In fact, there is no political candidate more beholden to corporate money and the economic elite than JD Vance,” argued Judd Legum, a journalist at Popular Information who tracks corporate influence in politics. “It’s all a scam, laundering right-wing politics through a phony everyman frame.”

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Late last night, the already out-of-control Republican Senate primary took a dangerous turn when Josh Mandel tweeted pictures of him at a gun store with the caption ‘hunting RINOs with my buds in Delaware County.’ Mandel’s latest tweet — which he later tried to walk back after criticism — is just the latest in a series of dangerous tweets in which his rhetoric against his fellow Republicans becomes much more incendiary, a trend that other candidates in the race have adopted.

“Josh Mandel is willing to do anything to score political points, including make jokes about hunting fellow Republicans. As Josh and the rest of the Republican field sinks lower and lower, all of them are demonstrating to Ohio voters how unqualified they are to serve as U.S. Senator. Void of any substantial ideas for how to make life better for Ohioans, they’re sinking to new lows just to try and seem relevant,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Josh has repeatedly called Gov. Mike DeWine a ‘RINO,’ a Republican In Name Only, and has also used terms like ‘traitor,’ when talking about Rep. Anthony Gonzalez. Mandel’s tweet also comes just months after Republican rhetoric incited a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol that led to five deaths and hundreds of injuries.

Other candidates in the race have followed Mandel down the rabbit hole of attacking their fellow Republicans. As a reminder, there’s still more than a year before the 2022 primary election, so Ohio voters will have to endure several more months of Republicans ignoring them to go after one another.

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Today, Ohio Democratic Party Vice Chair Andre Washington released the following statement after a Minnesota jury found Derek Chauvin guilty on three counts in the death of George Floyd.

“Today’s verdict isn’t the end of our efforts, it’s a starting point. For too many Ohioans, justice, equality and fairness feel out of reach. We must put the pain we all felt watching this trial into action, and recommit to a fairer, more just Ohio for all.”

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Today, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters released the following statement after a Minnesota jury found Derek Chauvin guilty on three counts in the death of George Floyd.

“While the jury reached the right decision, no verdict will change the fact that George Floyd should still be alive today. We all have much more work to do in the fight for racial justice and for a fairer legal and criminal justice system. Our hearts are with Mr. Floyd’s family and loved ones, as well as with Ohioans who have been hurting as we watched this trial unfold.”

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Caught in the act, Republicans in Columbus are trying to walk back draft legislation that would implement some of the most extreme attacks on voting rights in the country. Regardless of public posturing, we know some form of new anti-voter legislation is coming, and it’s important to remember: for Columbus Republicans, the radical Georgia election bill is just their starting point.

“Ohio Republicans created the anti-voter playbook for states like Georgia to copy. For years, Republicans in Columbus have attacked Ohioans’ voting rights by implementing some of the most extreme measures in the country. And now that other states are taking notes, GOP lawmakers refuse to be outdone. Once again, we know Ohio will be on the forefront of the fight to protect voting rights and our work to protect Ohioans’ right to vote is more important than ever,” said Malik Hubbard, Executive Director of the Ohio Democratic Party.

While the Georgia election law was widely panned as a radical effort to attack voting rights, many of those provisions are already the law of the land in Ohio. For example:

• Georgia’s voting law reduces the absentee voting period from 49 days to 29 days prior to the election. Ohio’s absentee voting period is already limited to less than one month prior to Election Day.
• Georgia lawmakers placed severe limits on dropboxes, but still allows for more than one dropbox per county. Frank LaRose has prohibited counties from installing more than one dropbox per county.
• The Georgia voting law gets rid of signature match requirements, Ohio still rejects ballots due to the questionable and subjective practice of signature matching.
• Georgia is now requiring voters to submit a driver’s license number or other ID number to cast an absentee ballot, joining Ohio as only one of four states that require voters to do so.

In addition, Columbus Republicans eliminated Golden Week in 2014, a week in which voters could register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time. And LaRose continues to purge a huge number of voters from the voting rolls, even after major errors in the system were discovered.

As a reminder, all of these provisions are solutions in search of a problem as even Republican Jon Husted admitted, as he reported that only 153 “irregularities” were found during Ohio’s 2016 election out of 5.6 million ballots cast. That represents .00002% of ballots cast.