The upcoming senate race for Ohio to replace the Rob Portman seat is coming up fast. There were some good elections in 2021, but that’s all behind us now. It’s time to go or get off the pot for endorsing someone for the Ohio Senate Race of 2022. I like many of the candidates; I think they all have some great attributes. The key to something like this, which still has many months of campaigning, is to pick the person who will best serve that seat a few years from now, not necessarily where politics is presently. And I think, especially after reading The Nixon Conspiracy by Geoff Shepard and The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that the political world of tomorrow will be much different than what it has been over the past decade. Picking candidates for the climate we are coming into is essential because the political terrain will be robust with political stunts, media hype, and the ability to shame candidates on the senate floor and still ride the elevator back to the parking garage after. It’s not going to be for the political lite but rather those who can most withstand betrayal and scandal and support the Trump America First Agenda without hesitation. And my pick to be that guy is Josh Mandel.
I like Jane Timken a lot, but after meeting with her a few times and watching her campaigning now for several months, she’s too conventional. She’s a bridge-builder, and we’re talking about a senate that needs to get rid of people like Mitch McConnell in the leadership and who will instantly harass Chuck Schumer right out of the gate. Even sitting in the bathroom stall, they need to shame all the comfortable senate members like Lindsey Graham. Retaking the Senate as a Republican majority is a war, including even the RINOs who are there now who have not been protecting the American Constitution the way they need to. Jane talks about herself being a fighter, and I think she is, perhaps for some time in the past or the future. But not for the 2022 race extending past 2025. She’s just too nice for that environment, for what has to be done. I have nothing against her, she has done an excellent job with the Republican Party in Ohio, and I think she can work the Trump endorsement that she no doubt would get once the primary is over. Still, she’s just too conventional to excite people into action.
The other guy I had been rooting for whom I was happy to meet is J.D. Vance. His problem is that he was a Never Trumper, and in a Trump-heavy election, that is coming back to bite him. He has a lot of money pouring in to support him, a lot of the big conventional money would rather have a Trump hater than a Trump copy, so J.D. Vance is raising a lot of money and has a shot to keep things close. But what it comes down to is he’s too nice of a guy. Like Jane, he might make a great senator in a different time when people played nicely together, and a legislative agenda was more important. But these are not those times; what matters is America First and nothing else, and the ability to fight with peers on the senate floor the way Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are in the House. Radicals have overtaken the Democrat Party, I would say for the last 40 or 50 years.
The masks of communism are off now, but the radicalism is deep in their culture, especially as it extends into the media and global investment brokers. To undo all that, it will take a lot of political theater and members on the Hill who will write legislation endorsed by the Trump White House and fight for it on the floor, perhaps even physically. It’s not what you see on TV that anybody must worry about; it’s what happens in the halls, the offices, and during the commute that requires aggression and boisterousness. The Democrats are the enemy, and the fight has to be taken to them. J.D. Vance is a nice guy who does pretty well on Tucker Carlson and can come up with some one-liners. But when it comes to fighting, he’s not the guy for the battlefield. Like I said, maybe during a different time.
The rest of them in the field, such as Mike Gibbons, are to the left of J.D. and Jane, and I don’t consider them relevant in this race. They may make some noise, but they don’t have what it takes for this Senate seat that essentially needs to pressure Sharrod Brown’s supporters to fall off the earth. None of this hand-holding that Rob Portman has started with the Brown camp is what Ohio voters have been wanting. Democrat progressives need to be destroyed. There were three things that Josh Mandel did that solidified my opinion about him. He worked with Darby Boddi at Lakota in gaining the support of the growing number of angry moms there, and he did a fantastic job on 55 KRC with Brian Thomas to talk about it. I personally spoke to Josh at a Republican event privately and on stage in front of a really big audience with big-time Republican members in the audience such as Jim Jordan and Frank LaRose, about his commitment to the election fraud that robbed Trump of the Executive Branch in 2020. And the third thing was an event at the Solid Rock Church in Monroe where he had the Tea Party religious right showing great support. He appeared on stage with Jena Ellis from the Trump legal team and was very evangelical. Now, that particular assemblage of the electorate is only about 30% of the total conservative vote, but they are passionate, and when they are winning, they are contagious. When Trump gives out endorsements in the summer of 2022 after this primary race is over, it’s going to be Trump for Renacci for governor and Mandel for Senate, and these people will be the ground troops who fill the crowds.
When people wonder if Josh Mandel can win the general election, as he obviously can win the primary, the answer to that will be yes. Even though he will come across as weak and vulnerable in a general election to Democrats and media members, the people who actually vote will put everything on the table for a hard-core Trump supporter, especially as Trump does many campaign stops in Ohio during that election season. Any scandal that follows Josh Mandel around, as he is a little on the wild side, won’t matter just as it hasn’t for Trump. Mandel will have the evangelicals, and they will be his foot soldiers to success. People in Ohio will vote for someone attached to Trump’s hip, and none of the candidates in this race has more openly embraced Trump than Josh Mandel by sticking to the election fraud issue more. Trump will reward Josh with an open endorsement as he will be campaigning for Renacci anyway. At that point in the race, the other candidates would be nowhere near as exciting to Ohio voters as someone who isn’t afraid of political stunts and sticking to them when the pressure is most significant. And when it comes to taking the fight to the Senate floor in Washington D.C. I asked Josh the same thing. I asked the other candidates how prepared they were for the battle to come. Only Josh Mandel gave me the correct answer about actually showing light in his eyes when the talk of fighting liberals personally and directly came up. And I’m convinced that with Josh Mandel, there will be many uncomfortable elevator rides for the opposition in the years to come.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 