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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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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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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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