Good news via cleveland.com:
While he didn’t enter the race with
the highest profile, Cleveland-area businessman Mike Gibbons is showing signs
of emerging as a top-tier candidate in Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate primary.
Short report here. Earlier CTP post on RINO Josh Mandel is here.
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Kate Scanlon at The Washington Examiner has an update on the upcoming Ohio primary
for U.S. Senate:
Businessman Mike Gibbons is rising
in early polls of Ohio’s crowded Republican Senate primary, and he is seeking
to introduce himself to voters as the pro-Trump candidate in the race,
according to a new advertisement campaign he will launch Tuesday.
Former President Donald Trump has
yet to make an endorsement in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Rob
Portman, but several Republican candidates are actively courting that
endorsement in a race that has largely been driven by the candidates’ level of
fealty to Trump. Author J.D. Vance recently promoted an endorsement from Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a controversial freshman lawmaker from Georgia who is a
close ally of Trump.
A pair of polls showed Gibbons making significant gains with
voters in recent days. One internal campaign poll showed him in the lead with 23%, with Josh Mandel, the
former Ohio treasurer and the party’s 2012 Senate nominee, trailing him at
10.8%. An independent poll from Co/Efficient also found Gibbons in the lead but
with Mandel in closer proximity.
Read more here. This
primary race is important, and one of my concerns is that at least one Ohio liberty
group is endorsing Josh Mandel. I
posted a few months ago on why I think Mandel is not a good choice for Ohio (“Josh
Mandel Just Another Dishonest RINO” ~ click here). I would expect him to be no different than
Rob Portman in office.
Check out Mike Gibbons's website here.
Mr. Mandel with William Kristol. Not a good look.
Mr. Mandel’s early fund-raising letter attempted to brand him as a Trump-supporter. After what I infer was some push-back, a subsequent fund-raiser instead piggy-backed on the “America First” slogan:
# # #
Josh Mandel and William Kristol. Photo credit: wksu.org
This latest report from BigLeaguePolitics --
"Ohio Senate Candidate Josh Mandel Pocketed Donations Intended for 2018 GOP Nominee, Paid Tens of Thousands to Mistress"
-- will come as no surprise to readers of this blog, although it is of concern that an Ohio liberty group has endorsed Mandel's candidacy for the US Senate seat presently held by RINO Rob Portman. Richard Moorhead reports:
Ohio Republican Senate candidate
Josh Mandel paid tens of thousands of dollars to a woman he was dating during
his 2018 Senate campaign, while married to another woman.
FEC reports show that Rachel
Wilson, Mandel’s finance director and mistress, was
paid more than $100,000 between his 2018 campaign and a PAC supporting
his candidacy.
. . .
Three dozen Republican women,
including three women who left Mandel’s campaign citing a toxic work
environment created by Wilson in her continuing duties with Mandel’s 2020
campaign, have urged Ohio Republicans to reject Mandel, warning he’ll
“embarrass” the party if nominated as a candidate for the US Senate. Mandel
has run for statewide office five times in the past 12 years, with some Ohio
Republicans criticizing Mandel, who has served in elected office since 2003, as
a career politician who’ll put on the act he needs to in pursuit of the next
political gig.
. . .
Questions of Mandel’s ethics go
beyond his financial arrangements with his girlfriend while he was married to
another woman. Mandel broke onto the scene of national politics as a protege of
war criminal Bill Kristol, handpicked as an instrument to advance the
nefarious neoconservative’s political views in the United States Senate in an
ultimately failed 2012 campaign against Sherrod Brown. Kristol, an advocate of
Middle East regime change wars Donald Trump partly ran against in 2016, had
recruited Mandel as a candidate in Ohio’s 2012 US Senate election to
challenge Sherrod Brown.
Read the full – ugly - report here. Mr. Mandel says all the right things in front
of the camera, but he is obviously just another self-serving hack. Candidate Mike Gibbons looks better and
better.
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