Of course he would:
Ohio Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel voiced support for conspiracy theories that "liberal forces" and possibly the "deep state" were behind the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-racism protests in 2020, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol that was actually carried out by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Mandel has expressed staunch pro-Trump views and has already been endorsed by the former president's former legal adviser Jenna Ellis. The GOP Senate hopeful made his conspiratorial remarks during a recent interview with American Media Periscope.
He said that with "respect to coronavirus, [the] January 6th [Capitol riot] and all—the entire BLM [Black Lives Matter] and Antifa riots and looting—I think a lot of this stuff were organized operations and a lot of it was funded by [liberal billionaire George] Soros and money liberal forces."
Mandel continued, saying that his "guess is that the deep state was very involved with a lot of these operations as well."
Mandel is just one of two awful major pieces of shit in the GOP primary:
Piety has always been required of those seeking higher office. That’s especially true in Republican primaries, which often come down to who better positions themselves as Jesus’ BFF. So it came as a shock when two leading Ohio Senate candidates brazenly defied the Word of God.
The Bible, as we know, is lathered with edicts about loving they neighbor and welcoming strangers. One might conclude it’s the overriding theme. Yet as Afghan refugees arrived in America, Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance both offered the kind of receptions usually reserved for ex-husbands.
“These planes are now being emptied into Cleveland, Toledo and other places in the heart of America,” Mandel tweeted. “To protect our kids, our communities and our Judeo-Christian way of life, we must FIGHT this with all our might.”
"This is exactly how we ended up with America-hating, Christian-hating, Jew-hating, Ilhan Omar infiltrating the U.S. government," he later added.
Though the refugees served American forces as aides and interpreters, Vance was quick to color them as terrorists, fearing they’d “destroy our own sovereignty.”
The candidates’ words seemed a clear defiling of Scripture. But both plead innocent. Their defense: God didn’t really mean the squishier parts of the Bible.
Vance claims they were merely added as window dressing in the early days of Christianity, when The Lord was desperate to expand market share. Nobody was expected to believe them.
Mandel offers a somewhat darker explanation. He says “the Vatican Deep State” secretly inserted the decrees in medieval times, part of a plot to shove harmony down everyone’s throat. That it failed is proof Our Savior has little interest in kindness.
More importantly, both assert they can’t win the Republican primary if forced to care about others. Mandel, a millionaire Beachwood lawyer, and Vance, a Yale-educated venture capitalist, are locked in a heated duel to reinvent themselves as angry, everyday working men. The road to victory, they believe, lies in claiming the mantle of Donald Trump, who favored more inspirational Biblical figures like Judas and Pontius Pilate. The former president twice won Ohio through a recipe of malevolence and cruelty. If the Good Word prevents Vance and Mandel from mimicking that strategy, there’s little chance of igniting the conservative base.
The two men grudgingly admit Afghans risked their lives to aid America. But the refugees are now destitute and homeless, with nothing more to give.
“What’s the point of friendship if there’s nothing in it for you?” Mandel asks.
Vance says the Afghans only have themselves to blame. “Had they done their due diligence, they’d know we always screw the help. This is on them.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Tim Ryan (D. OH-13) continues to be the frontrunner in his primary:
Rep. Tim Ryan's (D-Ohio) Senate campaign on Wednesday said it had raised a record $2.5 million in the third quarter of the year.
The haul, which the campaign said is the most-ever for an Ohio Senate candidate in the third quarter of an off-year, brings Ryan's total cash-on-hand to $3.6 million.
Ryan's campaign said that 96.6 percent of donations were $100 or less and that the campaign brought in 22,522 donations in the third quarter alone.
“Tim’s historic grassroots fundraising is the latest sign of the momentum he’s building to flip Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat,” Ryan's spokesperson Izzi Levy said in a statement.
Ryan, who is considered the front-runner in the Democratic primary, is facing progressive Morgan Harper in the state's Democratic Senate primary. Harper announced this week that she brought in $530,000 from 4,117 donors since announcing her candidacy six weeks ago.
And he’s laying out a way his strategy to win:
To Ryan’s allies, he is everything that a Democrat needs to be to win in Ohio ― a walking, talking breath of blue-collar culture who has lived his whole life in exactly the kind of down-on-its-luck industrial region where Trump co-opted huge swaths of the Democratic electorate. In October 2016, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s victory over Trump looked inevitable, Ryan recognized Trump’s appeal with his constituents, delivering a memorable put-down of the then-GOP presidential nominee that spoke to class interests rather than objections to Trump’s character.
Citing Trump’s history of stiffing building contractors in his employ, Ryan told a crowd at a Clinton rally in Youngstown, “He will gut you and he will walk over your cold dead body, and he won’t even flinch.”
Ryan, a tall and brawny former Catholic high school quarterback, has a reedy accent that betrays his northeast Ohio heritage. He can often be found sporting Cleveland Browns apparel, but he does not fit easily into the stereotype of an old-fashioned jock. He wrote a book in 2012 about how he had benefited from mindfulness meditation and, by extension, how the country could profit from it if the practice were more widely adopted.
An attorney who got his start in politics as an aide in the office of former Youngstown Rep. James Traficant Jr., Ryan nonetheless always hearkens back to the opportunities that his Irish and Italian immigrant forebears had thanks to the Mahoning Valley’s thriving steel and manufacturing industry ― and the unions that made sure those industry’s profits were shared with workers.
Democrats “used to believe and like people who showered after work and not before work, people who don’t have a college education but go to work and work hard,” said Dave Betras, a lawyer who used to chair the Mahoning County Democratic Party. “That’s the kind of guy Tim Ryan is. He values those people. He understands that you should be able to go to work, retire with dignity and go on vacation with your family once a year.”
Those types of pronouncements ― that Ryan can appeal to the forgotten working-class voter ― can sound to some progressive activists like code for a candidate who appeals narrowly to aging white men.
But Youngstown Mayor Tito Brown and other local Black officials and community leaders told HuffPost that they see Ryan as a critical ally. Ryan joined Brown and other officials in a march for Black civil rights in Youngstown, which is 42% Black, a few days after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in May 2020.
“He was hurt and distraught,” said Rev. Michael Harrison, pastor of Union Baptist Church in Youngstown, who said he contacts Ryan on his cellphone when he needs him. “It really affected him because Tim is a people person.”
Ryan’s focus on jobs, which he has helped steer to the region through his post on the House Appropriations Committee, is also of particular importance to Black workers, since they are often the most vulnerable to economic disruptions that affect the entire workforce.
Brown is especially grateful for Ryan’s role in securing a $10 million federal transportation grant for Youngstown in 2018 that aimed to connect the city’s growing education and health care campuses with the city’s downtown.
“All the time that he’s been a congressman, he’s never changed,” said Brown, who sees Ryan doing his own grocery shopping in the community. “He’s always been Tim Ryan from the Valley ― Tim Ryan for the Valley.”
And Biden’s agenda could still be very beneficial for Team Blue:
Northeast Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) and Morgan Harper, a progressive attorney, are the two Democrats hoping to succeed retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman next year.
They both are convinced that Biden’s infrastructure agenda — a $1 trillion roads and bridges infrastructure package and a separate social spending plan that could be worth as much as $3.5 trillion — will help them flip Ohio blue.
“I'm talking about this everywhere I go,” Ryan told Spectrum News. “I think every Ohioan that hears about this will recognize that this is needed.”
Harper made similar comments in a separate interview.
“The people in Ohio that I'm talking to understand how much this could benefit them,” she said.
But the agenda is currently stalled because Democrats in Congress disagree over what order it should be voted in and how much the social spending plan should end up being worth.
Biden and most Democrats have called for a $3.5 trillion package that would fund universal preschool, free community college, care for the elderly and more. But moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona want a much smaller plan, closer to $1.5 trillion.
Ryan and Harper each said they view something as better than nothing.
“If it's not as big as I want it to be, I'll still be down with it because it's something that is so necessary,” Ryan said.
Harper added: “We have to show people that Democrats can deliver. That's the only way that we're going to be able to keep our state from going deeper into this GOP domination that is hurting us.”
The two Democrats made clear that they view getting Biden’s agenda passed as necessary for their campaigns to succeed.
Ohio political scientist David Cohen, a professor at the University of Akron, said continued delays on Capitol Hill could even end up helping Ryan and Harper, if the policy proposals remain as popular as public polling indicates they are.
“They can certainly spin this to an argument of here's why we need even more Democrats in the U.S. Senate, so we don't have to rely on the Manchin’s and the Sinema’s,” Cohen told Spectrum News.
Democracy and Health are on the ballot next year and we need to get ready to flip Ohio Blue.
Click below to donate and get involved with Ryan and his fellow Ohio Democrats campaigns:
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Nan Whaley for Governor
John Cranley for Governor
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