|
Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Josh
Mandel gets another national
endorsement for U.S. Senate
By Stephen Koff
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
WASHINGTON,
D.C. -- Ohio Treasurer
Josh Mandel looks, acts and raises money like a Republican
young-gun-style
national candidate. Never mind that he said again last week that he is
still
deciding whether to run for the U.S. Senate.
He
put another notch in his
candidate’s belt today with an endorsement from the Club for Growth
PAC, the
electioneering unit of an influential conservative policy group in
Washington.
Like
Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives
Fund, which endorsed Mandel on Monday, the Club for Growth might not
mean much
to a voter in Pisgah. But its PAC bundled $6 million for federal
candidates in
2010, and it ran independent expenditure ads in 16 House races and ten
Senate
races.
Mandel
could still decide not to run.
But he is raising expectations for an impressive fund-raising quarter
and
potentially sucking the oxygen from a primary race.
This
doesn’t mean it’s over for Kevin
Coughlin, the former state senator from Cuyahoga Falls who’s been
courting
conservative voters. Red State Ohio says that Coughlin has the chops to
be an
effective candidate, suggeting that Mandel is a RINO (Republican in
name only)
who needs to focus on the job he just won, namely state treasurer.
But
Coughlin wanted that Club for
Growth’s endorsement. Ken Blackwell might have, too, had he decided to
run. But
he didn’t.
Did
we mention that Blackwell is on
the Club’s board?
“Josh
Mandel represents a bright
future for Ohio and will be a pro-growth star if elected,” Club
president Chris
Chocola said in a prepared statement.
Chocola,
a former congressman from
Indiana, aimed some barbs at Sherrod Brown, of the
stimulus/Obamacare/bailout
variety. Brown is the Democratic senator Mandel or Coughlin would face
in
November 2012. And Brown, too, is putting out
fund-raising appeals, warning Democratic
donors that “special interests”
including Citizens United are helping Mandel already.
The
National Republican Senatorial
Committee finds this amusing, considering that Brown has raised $6.3
million,
or 30 percent of his contributions, from PACs in his long congressional
career. This is
according to the Center
for Responsive Politics. The NRSC also says Brown “currently ranks
third in
contributions from Big Labor.”
It’s
already sounding like a rerun
fromn 2006.
Mandel
was not available for comment
but issued a statement through a spokesman:
“One
thing is for certain, federal
spending is out of control, hurting our economy, our seniors, and
piling debt
on the backs of our children. The fiscally conservative Club for Growth
recognizes that we cannot continue spending like there is no tomorrow.
I am
honored that, after looking at my record as city councilman, state
representative, and state treasurer, they have joined the call for
change that
I have been hearing from people across Ohio.”
Read
it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
