Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias this weekend reminded Ohio voters that the GOP Senate candidates don’t stand for anything but themselves and can’t be trusted. Tobias outlines the massive shifts each candidate has taken on Trump in recent months, as they view their support of Trump as the only thing that can help them advance their own interests and get elected, while the needs of Ohio voters fall to the wayside.
As these candidates stumble all over themselves to change their entire value system to match Trump’s and attack one another over past slights against the failed Florida blogger, the messiest Senate primary in the country gets even messier. And Ohio voters are becoming increasingly turned off by all of them, best illustrated at a recent Trump rally when the field of Senate candidates was met with boos and indifference when their names were announced.
“But the flip side of that purity test is that candidates are as quick to point fingers at each other as they are to emphasize their own Trump bona fides. And the candidates themselves have provided each other with plenty of material, which is true of no one more than Vance. That leaves voters to try to figure out what the candidates really think as Trump continues to be the defining force in the Republican Party even after losing the November election,” writes Tobias.
“By rushing to reverse themselves on any negative public statement they’ve ever made about the failed blogger from Florida, each of these Senate candidates is showing Ohio voters just how uniquely unqualified they all are for the job. A U.S. Senator should stand up for the interests of Ohio voters regardless of political or outside pressure. These candidates have shown they will cave at the drop of the hat when their own ambitions are at stake,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.
Read more from Cleveland.com here and below:
- The dynamic in the early days of the GOP Senate race has been well-documented – the candidates are angling for Trump’s support, as well as the support of Trump’s voters as they try to claim the nomination to succeed outgoing Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
- But the flip side of that purity test is that candidates are as quick to point fingers at each other as they are to emphasize their own Trump bona fides. And the candidates themselves have provided each other with plenty of material, which is true of no one more than Vance.
- That leaves voters to try to figure out what the candidates really think as Trump continues to be the defining force in the Republican Party even after losing the November election.
- Vance, the latest entry into the race, has the richest background to mine for anti-Trump statements.
- His 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” emerged as a popular text among the literary set to explain Trump’s appeal among white working-class voters. While promoting his book, Vance made clear that he found Trump to be personally repugnant and racially divisive.
- But after he got in the Senate race this year, NBC News reported on an email Moreno sent to a Republican fundraiser about Trump in March 2016, referring to Trump as a “lunatic.” The fundraiser now works for Timken.
- In a late January interview with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer about the future direction of the Republican Party, Timken said there was more to the GOP than Trump: “It’s never just about one candidate, it’s about what we rally around and our principles and at the end of the day what we can deliver,” she said.
- When asked during the same interview about Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, the Rocky River Republican who voted to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 riot, Timken politely disagreed with his decision to impeach Trump.
- Three months later, after getting into the Senate race, she called for him to resign from office.
- But Gibbons has said there are things about Trump’s personality that turn him off. In 2018, he called Trump “not my style,” and in a May 2021 Jewish Insider interview, distinguished his personal political views from Trump’s while also saying he agreed with the moves Trump made as president.
- Some media outlets noted, however, that Mandel and other Ohio Republicans avoided mentioning Trump by name during a speech at the July 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
- But Mandel also kept a low profile following the November 2016 election, and then dropped completely out of the public eye after he abruptly quit the U.S. Senate primary in January 2018.
- Timken’s campaign argues he was AWOL for Trump, dropping out of the public eye during his presidency. Mandel has said he worked behind the scenes to boost Trump’s candidacy – saying he helped coordinate more than $500,000 in donations to Trump from others, and signed on to a letter with 700 other veterans defending Trump in September 2020.