Tom Ganley, owner of the largest chain of car dealers in Ohio, has filed his papers to run in the Republican primary for Congress in Ohio’s 13th district. The seat is currently held by Betty Sutton (D).
Sutton was one of the lead sponsors for the Cash for Clunkers program last year. Ganley and his company, the Ganley Auto Group, benefited greatly from this legislation, making money and car sales that they otherwise wouldn’t have in the down economy.
Ganley previously announced his intentions to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Voinovich (R), where he was actively courting the tea party vote.
However, former Bush OMB Director Rob Portman is such a front-runner in that primary race, that I think few people even remembered Ganley was in it. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Republican insiders convinced him to drop out of the Senate race and instead pursue the 13th district seat, based on internal poll numbers showing him doing well there.
Before Sutton was first elected in 2006, this seat was held by Senator Sherrod Brown (D), and is generally considered a fairly safe Democratic seat. However, Ganley is a well known name due to the size of his dealership and the awful commercials featuring his son that air all the time throughout northeast Ohio. This one could be close and worth keeping an eye on, assuming he wins the primary.
What I found even more interesting though, is that Mr. Ganley is considered a favorite among teabaggers, at least according to the Plain Dealer anyway. He seems like a very unlikely person to be a favorite among this group – a multimillionaire businessman who benefits greatly from government programs like Cash for Clunkers and the overall bailout of the auto industry. Plus, car salesman might be the one profession that has more of a reputation for dishonesty than politicians. I couldn’t get more details about his platform because his website has been temporarily taken down to see how teabagger he is.
I think Sutton has the upper-hand in this one (not in terms of money though where he has a $1.6 million to $210,000 advantage, largely self-financed). If Ganley starts going the "anti-government, no bailouts" route she will be able to rightly point him out as a hypocrite. She could also chastise him for selling foreign cars, which I personally think is an idiotic argument, but it might work in her district which is heavily blue collar. This should be a good matchup between a progressive Democrat (Sutton is also a leader on cap and trade) and a tea-partying dolt.
UPDATE: Anastasia P wrote a similar diary yesterday you can check out for more info.