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Columbus, OH — Today, as another round of child tax credit payments enters bank accounts of millions of Ohioans the Ohio Capital Journal reminds all of us just how critical those checks are to hard-working Ohioans. Capital Journal’s Susan Teben highlighted a new study by Policy Matters Ohio showing how the child tax credit is helping millions of Ohio families, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Ohio Republicans continue to look out for their own interests debating laws that handcuff Ohio businesses, putting them and Ohioans at risk amidst the latest COVID surge, Democrats aided by the American Rescue Plan are putting over $1.6 billion into Ohioans pockets.

“[T]he analysis estimated 1.15 million adults with children reported struggling to pay for basic household expenses before the child tax credit, and after the tax credit, that number decreased by 26%,” writes Teben.

“Thanks to President Biden, Senator Sherrod Brown and Ohio Democrats, the American Rescue Plan is delivering major tax relief for working families with children through a historic expansion of the child tax credit. Despite opposition from Ohio Republicans, the expanded child tax is lifting 132,000 children out of poverty here in Ohio, helping to bolster financial security and spur economic growth in our state,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.

You can read more from the Ohio Capital Journal here and below:

• An analysis by an Ohio-based think tank says the expanded child tax credit has given life to families who were already struggling before the pandemic began, but sank further amid job losses and increased child care needs.
• The child tax credit was expanded temporarily in March as part of the federal American Rescue Plan, raising the per-child credit from $2,000 per child in 2020 to $3,600 for each child younger than six, and from $2,000 to $3,000 per child for children age six to 16.
• So far, $1.6 billion has been given to more than 2.1 million Ohio children since July 15, federal data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury shows, averaging $437 per month per family.
• The think tank said this expansion brought minority communities and children in rural communities funding they needed and didn’t have even before the pandemic.
• Years of policy choices have held down wages and limited opportunities for many Black and brown and rural families, draining resources from their communities,” the Policy Matters analysis stated.
• As the pandemic continued, the analysis estimated 1.15 million adults with children reported struggling to pay for basic household expenses before the child tax credit, and after the tax credit, that number decreased by 26%.
• Citing data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Policy Matters said an estimated 84% of households who make less than $35,000 per year used the refundable child tax credit to pay for “basic needs, including food, clothing, rent, mortgage, phone and internet, to support their family.”
• The CBPP said 60% of those making more than $35,000 per year would also be using the credit for the same basic needs.
• Financial recovery from the pandemic is still going on, as is the COVID-19 pandemic, so having the temporary boost has allowed more financial security and stability.
• Because of the increased financial stability and food security with the expanded child tax credit, among other reasons, Policy Matters recommended that Congress make the expansion permanent.

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Versailles, OH — Following the first GOP Senate forum tonight, Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Michael Beyer released the following statement: 

“Tonight, Ohioans heard the out-of-touch millionaires running for Senate focus on their petty feuds instead of any plans to help working families. The parade of out-of-touch millionaires confirmed this nasty primary will be a race to the bottom. Ohioans deserve a senator who is focused on them, but all they heard tonight was self-obsessed millionaires trying to advance their own political careers.”  

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Columbus, OH — Today, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters issued the following statement calling on Republican lawmakers to finally drop HB 435, a GOP-led measure that will put Ohioans’ health and safety at risk, and focus on the issues that matter to Ohio voters instead. The GOP bill would prevent Ohio businesses and organizations from taking critical steps to keep their employees safe amidst the latest surge of COVID-19, and has stalled several times in Committee, taking valuable time away from the issues that matter most to Ohioans.  

“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 discussing a bill that puts Ohioans and businesses at risk. This bill is dangerous and going nowhere, it’s time to move on,” said Chair Walters.

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Columbus, OH — A new report from Cleveland.com reveals Republican Senate candidates are once again in disarray as they waver on Trump’s effort to oust Mitch McConnell as Minority Leader. As Andrew Tobias points out, these candidates — who are always putting their own political interests first — can’t seem to decide between McConnell and Trump, putting them at risk of angering Trump. And we all know in today’s Republican Party, a nasty tweet from Trump can quickly sink a GOP campaign.

The Trump-McConnell feud is just the latest loyalty test for these GOP Senate candidates, whose political positions are always based on placating out-of-state Republicans rather than the needs of Ohio voters. In a sign of how messy this race will get for the Republican Party, these millionaire candidates have been willing to go to new lows each week in attacking each other and debasing themselves to chase Trump’s endorsement – yet most of the Republican Senate candidates are too afraid to cross Mitch McConnell and his army of wealthy special interest donors.

Stay tuned to see how this plays out with Trump world. We’re guessing not well.

“In true millionaire fashion, the Ohio GOP Senate candidates have made clear the endorsement they value most is out-of-state special interest donors,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Cleveland.com: Most of Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate candidates decline to follow Trump’s lead in seeking to oust McConnell

By Andrew Tobias

October 13, 2021

Ohio’s Republican leading U.S. Senate candidates largely have been in lockstep with former President Donald Trump. But they’ve been less eager to join Trump when it comes to one major fight affecting the GOP.

In recent weeks, both former state treasurer Josh Mandel and former Ohio Republican Party chairman Jane Timken have sidestepped questions on whether they think Mitch McConnell should remain leader of U.S. Senate Republicans, a job he’s held since 2007. In doing so, they avoided siding with Trump, who has called for McConnell’s ouster repeatedly months after the powerful Senate Republican leader declined to back the former president’s false claims about the 2020 election.

“I don’t understand your question — is there someone running against him? I’m not going to entertain hypothetical situations that don’t even exist in reality,” Mandel told the Wall Street Journal last month, taking a similar tack as he did when he ran for Senate in 2018. Mandel’s campaign declined to comment further this week.

Timken evaded the question in an Oct. 1 podcast interview with Steve Bannon, a far-right former Trump campaign manager who has called for McConnell’s ouster for years.

[…]

Meanwhile, another leading Republican Senate candidate, JD Vance, has said he supports replacing McConnell, siding with Trump.

In a Sept. 17 podcast interview, Vance said that while he has “no idea” who would run to replace McConnell or how the process works, he said Republicans need widespread leadership change in Washington, D.C.

“I think McConnell has shown at times that he’s a little out of touch with the base … I think that it’s time that we moved beyond the very old leadership class that’s dominated the Republican Party for a long time. We’ve got to do it. We’ve got to bring some new blood in. We’ve got to get people the base is really excited about,” Vance said.

A fourth candidate, Mike Gibbons, called for McConnell to be replaced in 2018, criticizing Mandel for not joining him, when Gibbons unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate that year.

This year, he is taking a more neutral approach, according to a statement from his campaign.

“I was the first candidate for Senate to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but I believe Sen. McConnell understands that the Senate is the last line of defense against far-left Democrats and their radical agenda,” said Gibbons, a Cleveland investment banker. “I have not made a decision on who I will support for Majority Leader as we don’t know what the landscape will look like in January 2022, but we cannot discount Sen. McConnell’s important role right now in defending our Constitution and our country.”

State Sen. Matt Dolan, the only GOP candidate who’s not running an explicitly pro-Trump campaign, similarly sidestepped the issue in a statement: “Political squabbles make for good headlines in Washington, but it doesn’t bring one job to Ohio or defend our state’s interest that remain under threat from the Biden Administration and the Democratic agenda in Congress.”

One more Republican candidate, Bernie Moreno, hasn’t publicly commented. Messages have been left with his campaign.

The candidates are all running to replace Republican Sen. Rob Portman, a close McConnell ally who is retiring in 2022. The Republican field hasn’t been shy about supporting Trump in another proxy fight with McConnell – in August, all but Dolan opposed an infrastructure bill negotiated by Portman that McConnell supported but which Trump loudly opposed.

Tom Sutton, a political scientist at Baldwin Wallace University, said he was surprised particularly that Mandel would be circumspect when given an opportunity to align himself with Trump. But he said the candidates might be reluctant to cross McConnell when it may not help their campaign while exposing them to future retribution if they were to win the race.

Democrats hold a razor-thin one-seat majority in the Senate; Republicans are considered likely to retake the chamber next year, which would restore McConnell to his former position of power, Sutton said.

“Part of it, quite frankly, is McConnell has been a leader for a long time, and he knows how to manipulate the levers of power at the party and the Senate,” Sutton said. “And if you’re aiming to be the next senator from Ohio, he’s going to hang on to that power, and you’re going to have to work him.”

Meanwhile, Sutton said Vance might be trying to distance himself from his past prolific criticism of Trump from before he became a political candidate. And, he said candidates might view McConnell as having completed his work, given that he helped Trump confirm three judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, cementing a solid conservative majority.

“Some might say… that’s a mission accomplished, and so do we still need him?” Sutton said.

Michael Beyer, a spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said: “As Republican Senate candidates make their next self-interested political calculation in this nasty primary, they face a tough choice: do they go all-out to pursue Trump’s endorsement, or do they court Mitch McConnell and his wealthy special interest donors?”

After working closely with Trump during his presidency, McConnell repudiated Trump earlier this year after the former president falsely claimed he lost the November election due to widespread fraud. The claim has been rejected by his own justice and homeland security departments, some top Republicans and dozens of state and federal courts. McConnell and his aides blamed Trump for losing two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, and with it, control of the Senate, saying his election fraud claims dampened turnout in Republican areas of the state, according to Politico.

McConnell even denounced Trump in a February speech on the U.S. Senate floor, saying there was “no question” was “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers worked to certify the results of the election.

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president,” McConnell said. “Having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

Trump, meanwhile, has said Republicans need to find a replacement for McConnell. He most recently bashed McConnell at an election-style rally in Iowa last Saturday, criticizing him and other Republican senators for voting with Democrats to temporarily raise the national debt ceiling.

“Mitch McConnell didn’t have the courage to challenge the election. He’s only a leader because he raises a lot of money and gives it to senators,” Trump said.

In response to a request for comment for this story, a McConnell spokesman said: “If we have anything to share we’ll be sure to let you know.”

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Columbus, OH — In his latest column, Cleveland.com’s Brent Larkin lambasted the leading Republican Senate candidates – branding Josh Mandel, J.D. Vance, Jane Timken, Bernie Moreno, and Mike Gibbons as the ‘Foul Five’ – because they have “already shredded any sense of respectability in pursuit of a job for which they are uniquely unqualified.”

Larkin takes turns listing off just how low each member of the ‘Foul Five’ has gone to stand out in this crowded primary. His column comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal article where the ‘Foul Five’ have all admitted they need to spend $10 million each in order to stand out in this crowded primary, which would be “unprecedented” in Ohio. 

“The Republican Party is running a pack of elitist millionaires who have been dubbed the ‘foul five’ while Ohio Democrats stand with working families, and we like our chances,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.  

Key points below: 

Cleveland.com: ‘Foul Five’ seeking to replace Sen. Portman will heap shame on Ohio: Brent Larkin  

Brent Larkin

October 10, 2021 

Ohioans should prepare for the possibility of another enormous blow to what’s left of the state’s reputation. Of the seven candidates with a plausible chance of succeeding outgoing Sen. Rob Portman, at least five would be a giant-sized downgrade.

This is not to excuse Portman’s silent sanctions of former President Donald Trump’s toxic behavior and lies. But as a person and legislator, Portman possesses qualities far superior to the “Foul Five” who have already shredded any sense of respectability in pursuit of a job for which they are uniquely unqualified.

The Foul Five are Josh Mandel, J.D. Vance, Jane Timken, Bernie Moreno and Mike Gibbons. Should any one of them win next year’s Senate election, those of us who regularly criticized Portman will be yearning for his return the day after he leaves office.

[…]

But to win the primary, Dolan needs at least 30% of the vote, a tall order given that a CNN poll in September showed that 78% of the nation’s Republicans don’t believe Joe Biden won the presidency. More frightening, 54% believe there is evidence it was stolen – although no such evidence exists.

Attractive as Dolan may be to those who believe honesty is a virtue, it’s wise to remember that voter enthusiasm and turnout in Republican primaries tend to be highest among those whose views are far right of center. The same is true of Democratic primaries and far-left voters.

Members of the Foul Five have apparently concluded that embracing an anti-science, anti-fact agenda is the only path to victory in next spring’s Senate primary. The rallying cry of this sick and twisted appeal is “freedom” – freedom for Ohioans to live their lives as they see fit, even if it jeopardizes the lives of others, including children.

The worst of the Foul Five, for now, is Mandel, the former state treasurer whose long service in elected life is best remembered for a 2017 scheme using $1.84 million in tax dollars to promote himself. So egregious was Mandel’s waste of taxpayer funds that the Republican-run legislature amended state law to prevent some future officeholder from repeating it.

Mandel has no soul, no bottom. He uses social media to vaguely hint at the need for violence and often argues the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. On Sept. 23, Mandel took to Twitter with the preposterous claim there was widespread voter fraud in Ohio last year, offering no evidence, because none exists.

But the GOP’s race to the bottom is a competitive event. J.D. Vance, a Fox News favorite and author of the runaway best-selling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” is working hard at proving more repugnant than Mandel. During the 2016 campaign, Vance positioned himself as a truth-teller with, “I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”

Now, it’s Vance who wants to lead America to a very dark place, regularly serving the base helpings of bigotry and hatred. He revels in describing immigrants as “dirty” and regularly rails against “elitists,” then jets off to the Hamptons to fill his campaign coffers with their money.

On Sept. 5, Vance reached a point of no return, raging in a tweet that right-wing conspiracy crackpot Alex Jones “is a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.” Three weeks later, a federal judge in Texas ruled against Jones in a lawsuit brought by families of the children massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Jones had cruelly claimed the Sandy Hook shooting never happened. He said the whole thing was a hoax.

If this is Vance’s idea of “reputable,” Ohio would be far better off without him. Not long ago a fresh face with a compelling life story, now it’s Vance who has been unmasked as a hoax. His journey from best-selling author to candidate for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat was best described in a July profile in The Atlantic headlined, “The Moral Collapse of J.D. Vance.”

Timken, who resigned as Ohio Republican Party chair to run for the Senate, and successful Cleveland businessmen Mike Gibbons and Bernie Moreno, are a wee bit less contemptible than Mandel and Vance. But that requires clearing the lowest political bar imaginable.

Of these three, only Timken has a plausible path to victory. But her betrayal of U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for the Cleveland-area congressman’s vote to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection evidenced a mind-numbing lack of character.

At the end of January, Timken told The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com that Gonzalez had a “rational reason” for his impeachment vote, describing him as “a very good person.”

He is. She isn’t. Barely a month later, the conscience-free Timken called on Gonzalez to resign.

[…]

Trump’s “election fraud” claims are a nonissue to anyone who believes facts matter. But facts clearly matter not all to the Foul Five, because they all lack the constitution to demand Trump stop spreading these lies. Not one of them seems to care Trump’s obvious goal is to undermine voter confidence in democracy.

A far better option for the Foul Five would be for them to take their talents elsewhere.

I’ve found just the spot.

The village of Rendville is the tiniest town in Ohio. Tucked in the foothills of southeast Ohio, about 25 miles north of Athens, Rendville is home to 28 residents, down from 36 in 2010.

Funds are scarce in Rendville. If a road needs repair, residents do it themselves. For police and fire protection, they rely on the generosity of neighboring communities.

Bryan Bailey has been mayor of Rendville since 2000. “I’ve been at this a long time,” Bailey told me. “I’m pretty sure I won’t run again.”

And therein lies an opportunity for the Foul Five. They should all move to Rendville and run for mayor in 2023.

Rendville’s loss would be Ohio’s gain.

Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.

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