You know, it’s really interesting. When Democrats win a race narrowly (as they did in Pennsylvania by about 400 votes recently) it’s a great victory. It has significant meaning. It gets huge coverage by the mainstream press. There’s a blue wave coming.
When Republicans win a race narrowly (as we did by about 1,700 votes in the 12th Congressional District around Columbus last night) it’s “essentially a tie.” Oh it shouldn’t have been close. “It’s a moral victory for Democrats.” There’s a blue wave coming.
One thing that should be kept in mind. Even though the Republican, Troy Balderson, is ahead of the Democrat, Danny O’Connor, by a little less than 2,000 votes as of last night, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily over. There are over 5,000 absentee ballots and nearly 3,500 provisional ballots to be counted. (Provisional ballots are ones that are questionable as to an address, the voter’s identity, etc.) Anyway, it looks like the Republican won, but we may not know for sure for a while.
So what does this race mean for the upcoming midterm elections? Not all that much in my humble opinion. Although it’s clear that the liberal base is energized this time around, principally because they hate Trump so much. Turnout was pretty decent for both Democrats and Republicans yesterday. Yes, the last Republican won by a lot more, but this was a special election, and in the summer a lot of voters are on vacation with their families. I think the fall election will be much closer to a normal off year election turnout model. But of course we won’t know for sure until then.
Now let’s shift gears, and focus on the race right here in the First Congressional District of Ohio. If you’ve watched any TV for the last month-and-a-half or so, you’ve surely seen the misleading attack ads against me. The ads are full of lies, and they’re paid for by a shadowy, left-wing group with a lot of money. Their sole purpose is to damage me and help my opponent, Aftab Pureval.
Now it’s our turn. The difference is, in our ad, we tell the truth. And the truth is that when my opponent was running for Clerk of Courts, he promised that, if elected, he would remove political patronage from the Clerk’s office. Well, he was elected, and then did just the opposite.
Aftab immediately began firing long-time employees and replacing them with his own political cronies, including the son-in-law of the Hamilton County DEMOCRATIC Party Chairman. He got his political team together, including his current Congressional campaign manager, and drew up non-disclosure, non-disparagement agreements. He then used our tax dollars to buy the fired employees’ silence. According to the agreement the fired employees signed under duress, if they said anything bad about Aftab, they risked losing their severance pay.
The bottom line is, people deserve to be treated a lot better than they were by Aftab Pureval. And taxpayer dollars should never be used as hush money.