The Senate Majority PAC, one of the biggest groups helping to elect Democrats to the Senate, is once again rolling out Segway Guy to lambaste Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. Last time, our besuited Segway rider visited Wall Street; this time, he wheels past the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, where he says they're "probably giving Rob Portman an award for being China's best senator" on account of his support for various trade deals. We've expressed our serious displeasure with this theme in the past, and this ad's no different, featuring repeated shots of the Chinese flag waving gently in the breeze and, once again, the same photo of Portman and a Chinese trade official that appeared in a previous SMP ad.
And Portman's Democratic opponent, ex-Gov. Ted Strickland, is only compounding matters. Strickland's campaign has been handing out fortune cookies at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, with the message "Rob Portman: The Best Senator China's Ever Had" written inside. When asked by a reporter whether the cookies were racially insensitive, Strickland flailed awkwardly, stammering, "No. Ah, no. No. Ah, no. You know, you know, when I say he's the best senator that China's ever had, I'm not saying anything bad about China," before aides eventually pulled him away from the awkward encounter.
Whatever he may believe, though, Strickland doesn't get to decide whether or not his message is offensive. As one Chinese-American activist explained, Strickland is "banking on people's negative feelings about China, and that affects us here as Chinese Americans." That's a terrible thing to do to people you are seeking to represent. Put another way, could you imagine an ad that declared someone Israel's best senator? Everyone would flip out, and rightly so. It's no more okay to use any other country.
Especially in light of Donald Trump's terrifyingly invidious campaign, this kind of race-baiting is beneath the Democrats. If international trade agreements are unpopular in Ohio (and they very probably are), then by all means use them to attack Portman. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do so, and this isn’t the right way.