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Columbus, OH — Today, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters issued the following statement calling on Republican lawmakers to finally put an end to GOP-led measures that put Ohioans’ health and safety at risk, and focus on the issues that matter to Ohio voters instead. The latest GOP vaccine bill that passed the House today handcuffs Ohio businesses and organizations, preventing them from taking critical steps to keep their employees safe amidst the latest surge of COVID-19.

“It’s far past time for Republicans to stop playing political games with a pandemic. Instead of focusing on critical issues that matter, like fixing gerrymandered state maps or taking action to stop Ohioans from bearing the cost of the GOP’s $60 million bribery scheme, Republicans are wasting time jamming a bill through the legislature that handcuffs businesses and puts Ohioans’ health and safety at risk,” said Chair Walters.

Chair Walters also urges the Ohio Senate to vote down this dangerous legislation and for Mike DeWine to veto this dangerous bill if it reaches his desk.

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Strongsville, OH —  Today, the ‘Foul Five,’ aka the GOP Senate candidates, participated in a forum with the Ohio Press Network in Strongsville. In response, Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Michael Beyer released the following statement:

“Democrats are focused on creating good-paying jobs in Ohio by investing in infrastructure while every leading candidate in the Republican Senate primary opposes this common-sense investment in Ohio’s roads and bridges. The out-of-touch millionaires in the Republican primary are more focused on their own nasty and petty feuds than delivering for Ohio.” 

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Columbus, OH — Today, the Ohio Democratic Party issued the following statement calling on Mike DeWine to veto the GOP gerrymandered map that ignores the will of Ohio voters and puts the political interests of Republican politicians over the needs of working families in Ohio. 

“This map is a disgrace and a betrayal of Ohio voters who overwhelmingly voted twice for fair districts and fair representation. From Toledo to Youngstown, Cincinnati to Athens and all across Ohio, this map makes Ohio even more gerrymandered and even less representative of Ohioans. It’s clear GOP politicians in Ohio want to prevent Ohioans from holding them accountable at the ballot box for the many ways they’ve betrayed Ohioans. Mike DeWine once said earlier versions of these maps aren’t ‘going to fly,’ and it’s time for him to use his veto pen to put his money where his mouth is,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.

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Lorain, OH — Today, Lorain elected officials and workers celebrated the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and discussed what it means for Lorain, as part of the Building Ohio Together Tour, organized by the Ohio Democratic Party and For Our Future Ohio.

“The infrastructure bill represents the largest infrastructure investment in American history and will have meaningful results for working families here in Lorain. This bill means critical investments in roads and bridges. It means clean drinking water for families across the state. It means expanded access to broadband for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who currently lack access. And it means good-paying jobs for Ohioans across the state,” said Matt Lundy, Lorain County Commissioner.

“There’s been lots of talk about the politics behind the historic infrastructure bill passed this month, but not enough talk about what it will mean for working families in Ohio…Billions of dollars are headed to our state to make our roads and bridges safer and help your family get where they need to go more efficiently…The pandemic underscored how important it is to be able to connect to our friends, family and loved ones. Because of this legislation, hundreds of thousands more Ohioans will be able to do so,” said John Hunter, Mayor of Sheffield Village.

The bipartisan bill will create good-paying jobs and help Ohio businesses grow by investing in our roads, bridges, public transit, water pipes and broadband.

“The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will create good-paying union jobs and rebuild Ohio’s crumbling infrastructure. It means supporting the small businesses that grow our economy and help us compete against other countries to bring more jobs back home. And right here because of this historic bill, the Great Lakes are set to receive $1 billion in new funding to support clean drinking water and support hundreds of thousands of jobs,” said John Novak, IBEW Local 129 Business Manager.

“Building on the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, Build Back Better legislation will invest in you and your family, including making healthcare, child care, elder care and housing more affordable and creating more tax cuts for working families in Ohio,” said Jim Slone, President of Lorain County CAP Council.

These critical investments in physical infrastructure will also be bolstered by Build Back Better legislation that will invest in human infrastructure, by cutting taxes and making life more affordable for working Ohioans.

Local leaders also discussed how these investments will help working families in Lorain get ahead and help communities like Lorain compete on a global stage.

More on the new infrastructure funding below:

• Ohio is expected to receive $9.2 billion for highways and $483 million for bridge replacement and repairs. [White House, 8/4/21]
• Ohio is expected to receive $1.2 billion to improve public transit. [White House, 8/4/21]
• Ohio is expected to receive $100 million in broadband funding, including providing high-speed internet access to the at least 259,000 Ohioans who lack it. [White House, 8/4/21]
• Ohio is expected to receive $1.4 billion over five years to improve water infrastructure across the state. [White House, 8/4/21]
• Ohio is expected to receive approximately $253 million for infrastructure development for airports. [White House, 8/4/21]

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Columbus, OH — National media outlets are noticing just how wild the GOP Senate primary in Ohio really is. Slate takes a look at the most recent “crazy pants debate” and assigns each of the candidates a final grade based on their performances.    

“All of the GOP Senate candidates are locked in a race to the bottom, sinking to new lows every day. With six months to go and millions to spend, this crowded primary is sure to get nastier and even more insane as the candidates get desperate to reach the finish line,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.  

Slate: A Guide to the Crazy Pants Ohio Republican Senate Primary and Its Most Recent Crazy Pants Debate

Ben Mathis-Lilley

November 16, 2021 

• The Ohio Republican Senate primary is not being held until May, but has already made a number of national headlines as its competitors have raced to the bottom of the MAGA barrel and then tried to dig through it to find an even lower level of barrel. Well-connected venture capitalist J.D. Vance is pretending he hates “the elite” and thinks QAnon makes a lot of sense, while perennial candidate Josh Mandel is calling for violent resistance against the vaccine “Gestapo” and adopting a southern accent on Fox News despite being from suburban Cleveland. It’s been fun times from the get-go.
• Last Thursday night in Columbus, five of the candidates gathered for a forum, which was basically a debate but with less overt hostility and formal back-and-forth. In viral tweets, Politico’s Natalie Allison flagged some of the event’s worst/best moments, chief among them IT entrepreneur and candidate hopeful Mark Pukita’s monologue about why people should know that Mandel is Jewish. What better use of 90 minutes could there be than reviewing the entire tape?
• Before we dig in, here’s a primer on the candidates:
  • Vance, who skipped the event, is the author and investor who denounced white rural America for its purported culture of poverty in Hillbilly Elegy, ran a Middle America-focused tech startup fund backed by Jeff Bezos, and has called Donald Trump, among other things, an idiot. He is running as a fanatical Trump supporter who will protect white American culture against the influence of wealthy tech figures like Jeff Bezos. (This is really true!)
  • Longtime state party figure Jane Timken, who was also absent, wants to be a regular conservative senator and is saying Trump stuff because it seems like the best way to go at the moment.
• Among those who were present:
  • Mandel is a former state treasurer who was the party’s nominee in a losing 2012 race against Sherrod Brown. He supported Marco Rubio in 2016 but has always come from the racial cheap shot school of conservative politics and transitioned easily into pitching himself as a MAGA enforcer for alt-right and anti-vax types.
  • Cleveland investment banker Mike Gibbons and Pukita are respectively on the more genial and more unhinged edges of the politically incorrect Baby Boomer businessman lane.
  • Cleveland-area car dealer turned cryptocurrency enthusiast Bernie Moreno is a Colombian immigrant running on the idea that the U.S. is descending into failed-state Latin American socialism. (He is also younger and more handsome than the name “Bernie” and the phrase “Cleveland-area car dealer” would suggest.)
  • State senator Matt Dolan is running as someone who supports Trump on some things, but not others, and will therefore lose.
• Here we go! Time stamps are by the minute. 
• 16:30: Pukita, who wears the clear rectangular glasses frames of a mild-mannered architect but seems to vibrate with the throwback rage of a man who gets mimeographed newsletters from other Barry Goldwater donors, opens his remarks by denouncing (among other things) “facades” and “caricatures,” which, it will soon become clear, is a shot at Mandel (and Vance). “I make people uncomfortable,” he says matter-of-factly, then calls conservative Republican Mike DeWine “an awful governor” who “should never hold office again” to huge applause. (DeWine is disliked by some right-wingers for having instituted relatively modest anti-COVID restrictions.)
• 33:00: Gibbons is cut off by the moderator during what seems to be a complaint about how work shortages have affected McDonald’s.
• 44:15: Moreno says that he was, at one point, canceled for criticizing DeWine.
• 45:30: Pukita brags that he is not vaccinated and confronts Mandel, who had previously refused to say whether or not he’d gotten his shots, about dodging the issue. Mandel takes the microphone only for Pukita to cut him off when it becomes clear he is not going provide an answer this time either.
• 1:08:00: Moreno says the FBI should have its funding reduced until it stops advancing liberal causes and that Jan. 6 was an “unfortunate riot” rather than an insurrection.
• 1:15:20: An increasingly defeated-looking Dolan tries to convince the crowd that you shouldn’t pass abortion bills that will immediately be ruled unconstitutional. Moreno dunks on him shortly thereafter, basically calling him a coward, to huge applause.
• 1:23:25: OK, here’s the Pukita rant bit. He says: “So, in terms of anti-Semitism, all I did, in an ad, was pointed out, that Josh is going around saying he’s got the Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other. Right? But he’s Jewish! That’s fine—everybody should know that, though, right, because to me, it’s a facade, it’s a character. If I went into a mosque, right, with the Constitution and a Koran and said that’s how I was gonna make decisions in Washington? I’d get laughed out of the place. If I did the same in a temple with the Torah and the Constitution, I’d get laughed out of the place. If I went into a Hindu temple with the Gita and the Constitution, they probably wouldn’t laugh, because they’re very, very polite people. But I probably wouldn’t get invited back.”
• Closing comments and grades:
  • Gibbons is not going to win this race but is having a good time and had a nice suit. 8/10
  • Dolan already looks like a hollow-eyed salesman who is going to have to tell his kids that there’s no Christmas this year. He needs to drop out before he reaches medically dangerous levels of beleaguerment. 1/10, gets credit for at least showing up
  • For all the attention given to Vance and Mandel’s outrageous positions by national outlets like Slate, Pukita is much more of the genuine article if what you’re looking for is someone who would strangle a Communist in public. 10/10 (but to be clear it would be extremely bad news if he really got elected)
  • Mandel has natural authoritarian impulses, which allows him to understand what a certain portion of his audience is looking for, but is hamstrung by being—and I’m sorry, this isn’t nice, but it’s true and relevant to the question of who will win the race—kind of a lurching goon. You can just see the effort coming off of him. Total goon. 0/1,000

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