November 5, 2021

Happy Friday, and welcome to “Buckeye Brawl,” a weekly newsletter from the Ohio Democratic Party highlighting the nasty, chaotic, and expensive Republican primary for Senate. This 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:

FLIP-FLOPPING FLIPPER. A new USA Freedom Fund ad was released this week with possibly the worst jingle we’ve ever heard: “J.D.’s a flip, flip, flip-flopping flipper / deleted his [anti-Trump] tweets / but we have the receipts.” The tweets featured are the same ones USA Freedom Fund used on their attack website nochancevance.com. This ad follows one from last week where they claimed Vance “abandoned the Republican Party” and called Trump an “idiot.” USA Freedom Fund is backing Josh Mandel in the race, and given Mandel’s propensity to go on the attack, it’s clear that Vance will have to continue answering questions about his anti-Trump past – and these questions aren’t going away any time soon!

BORING AND FAKE? In an interview on Breitbart News, J.D. Vance (presumably feeling the heat from the $1 million in ads attacking him for his anti-Trump past) decided to say that what distinguishes him from the rest of the GOP Senate field is that he tries “to not be boring and … not be fake.” He said, “At the end of the day, I think our voters can sniff out when somebody’s just repeating slogans at them instead of talking to them about real issues. I try to talk to them about real issues.” Hmm, is he talking about Timken, Mandel, Moreno, Gibbons, or Dolan? Who’s to say? But as usual, we do know Vance is inflating his credentials here – he is incredibly boring and fake.

BUNCH OF MILLIONAIRES AND GAZILLIONAIRES. This primary has up to five self-funding candidates (and could be more!) – with many of them multi-millionaires – and that isn’t making Josh Mandel happy. At his election lie rally this week, Mandel said he’s running against “a bunch of millionaires and gazillionaires.” Josh Mandel is also a millionaire, no matter how he may try to hide it. It’s why we’ve been calling this primary a millionaire melee!

“CLUB FOR CHINESE GROWTH.” In responding to Club for Growth’s attack ad against him, J.D. Vance said on Charlie Kirk’s show the group was the “Club for Chinese Growth.” Vance then discussed how RINOs (like him) did not support Trump’s first run for president. That’s correct, J.D.! This primary is phonies attacking each other for being phonies when everyone’s a phony. It’s hard to keep up.

SILICON VALLEY AND WALL STREET RINOs. At his election lie rally, Mandel this week said that all of the RINOS running against him for U.S. Senate are financially backed by Silicon Valley and Wall Street. This isn’t the first time Mandel has bashed Vance for his Silicon Valley millionaire past. In September, 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 J.D. 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.” Vance isn’t alone…Mandel has also made thousands off Big Tech as well.

Thanks for reading along – that’s all for the Buckeye Brawl this week. If you have questions, my email is mbeyer@ohiodems.org. Have a great weekend!