In rare bipartisan agreement, Ohio election observers conclude that only the candidate Buckeye State’s voters truly trust to expand and protect the state’s economic future will head into the November election with the support of a cross-section of voters needed to prevail.
Voters know the drill: everyone claims to be for job creation and economic opportunity, and everyone rails against U.S. companies shipping factories and jobs off to China and other far-away places. Fortunately for Ohio voters, records speak louder than campaign rhetoric. Only one Senate candidate has an honest history of promoting “Made in Ohio” jobs, manufacturing and investment, while the other candidate made a fortune in and around the slimy business of making a buck in Beijing.
Not surprisingly, with a 20-year voting record and his position as co-chairman of the Congressional Manufacturing Caucus, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is seeing a surge in his campaign for Senate in Ohio, building on the trust he’s earned from Buckeye State voters. Tim Ryan repeatedly has demonstrated his commitment to Ohio jobs and economy, most recently this month with Intel’s $20 billion semiconductor development project groundbreaking in Central Ohio.
“Today we broke ground on a future that every Ohioan can be proud of,” Tim Ryan said of the project that is expected to provide 3,000 manufacturing jobs with an average salary of $135,000. “This multi-billion-dollar investment is a culmination of an unprecedented collaboration between federal, state, and private sector leaders that will transform Ohio’s economy and provide future generations an opportunity to build a stable middle-class life right here at home.”
The Intel semiconductor project will compete in an industry in which 90 percent of chips are currently produced overseas, and will create another 7,000 construction jobs in Ohio, as well as support jobs and revenue for local businesses. It’s all part of Tim Ryan’s “Cutting Workers In on the Deal” agenda.
“Throughout his career, Tim Ryan has been a reliable partner for Ohio’s building and construction workers, and we can count on him to bring that fight and commitment to the U.S. Senate,” said Mike Knisely, executive secretary of the Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council, a labor organization with a reputation for backing Republicans yet in this race is putting its trust and support behind the Democrat Tim Ryan.
Jobs are returning to America this year faster and in bigger numbers than at anytime this century since “reshoring” data began being collected. Even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal trumpeted the good news with an article headlined, “U.S. Companies on Pace to Bring Home Record Number of Overseas Jobs.” Building on that momentum, Tim Ryan has made it a point to emphasize job security and national security depends on bringing home the supply chain from China and other foreign lands and reshoring those jobs and products in manufacturing states like Ohio.
It all comes down to trust. Tim Ryan is the only candidate in the race we can trust on expanding the reshoring movement and protecting the Ohio economy – just ask current and former Republicans.
Tom Laakso of Columbus, a lifelong Republican until 2016, sees the issue of trust connected to how politicians frame themselves, especially the candidate’s personal record of where he worked, who he is backed by and who he is beholden to. So for Laakso, an Ohio State graduate who studied political science, the purely cosmetic reinvention of Trump-backed J.D. Vance is a makeover too far for Ohio.
“To me, someone campaigning as an outsider is like someone applying for a job with no references or prior job experience,” Laakso wrote recently in The Columbus Dispatch. “If it were my business, would I hire someone without experience solving these problems and who I don’t trust?”
At the center of Vance’s trust problem with Ohio voters is his resume and his chief backers, all of which reflect a record of a businesses with cozy relationships with foreign adversaries like China, and policies that cost Americans money, jobs and economic opportunity. A longtime resident of San Francisco up until his decision to run, Vance worked for Silicon Valley companies that invested and operated overseas, some even representing Chinese real estate interests and Chinese online retailer Alibaba.
Vance’s lousy reputation for cashing in on offshoring U.S. manufacturing jobs and investing in overseas manufacturing is a dark but well-deserved pedigree. Vance’s is the protégé of venture capitalist and Maga-darling Peter Thiel, having worked for his Silicon Valley investment firm and landing a whopping $10 million contribution from Thiel that kicked off Vance’s campaign for Senate.
Among the Big Tech fat cats, Thiel is a billionaire that enrages Republicans and Democrats alike, and he has cast a dark shadow on Vance’s lounging campaign. In an attempt to separate himself from who he really is, Vance naturally tries to score points on the campaign trail (when he actually does show up to campaign) by bad-mouthing Big Tech, the very foundation of his wealth, but even Ohio Republicans see right through that hypocrisy.
“The problem is, there’s a large disconnect between that rhetoric and the reality since J.D. left the state for Silicon Valley fortunes and Hollywood dreams,” Republican Rep. Bill Seitz, majority floor leader of the Ohio House of Representatives, wrote in The Enquirer of Cincinnati the week Vance announced his run for Senate in Ohio.
In fairness, Vance is a good talker, much like his best-known backer, Donald Trump. But as the sayings go, talk is cheap, and action speaks louder than words. Trump's idea of economic stimulus was ignoring the middle class and giving billionaires and corporations a free cash giveaway, which even Republicans say laid the foundation for the rampant inflation Ohio is now suffering through.
And, it’s hard not to forget Trump’s claim that “trade wars are easy to win,” but then he failed to get a single major industrialized allied nation to join him in raising tariffs on Beijing. Done right, economic pressure could have worked against China, but because Trump already had lost the trust of world leaders, his trade war instead turned out to be easy-to-lose – and he did. Trump’s go-it-alone tariffs set in motion the supply chain problems now choking America, especially Ohio.
Vance of course is banking on being able to fool people into thinking he’s not an owned man, but Ohio voters aren’t stupid. They know owing favors to Trump and Thiel will not be good for the state, its people, and economy.
The DSCC sums it up well: “J.D. Vance is a fraud who only cares about himself and will hurt Ohio to get what he wants. He will say or do anything to get elected and Ohio voters cannot trust him in the Senate.”
Written by Ken Bazinet. Ken is a respected, longtime national political reporter and freelance writer based in rural Maryland.