Two Campaigns Kick Off In The Midwest: Ben Sasse (R-NE) And Nikki Foster (D-OH)

Let's start with Nebraska, where conservative Republican Ben Sasse began his reelection bid yesterday. He was first elected in 2014 against Democrat David Domina, 64.4% to 31.5%. 347,636 Nebraskans voted for him. Sasse was the first sitting senator to announce he wouldn't support Trump if Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016. Trump easily won Nebraska anyway-- with 495,961 votes (58.75%) to Hillary's 284,494 (33.7%). Sasse won all 93 counties in the state. Trump won 91, losing just the biggest and second biggest counties-- Douglas (Omaha) and Lancaster (Lincoln) to Hillary.

There was some talk of billionaire Trump-supporting wing-nut Pete Ricketts, the current governor, primarying him but Ricketts endorsed Sasse yesterday when he announced. Former Lancaster County Republican Party chairman, Matt Innis, a certifiably insane person, is running against him-- as are 2 Democrats (with two more thinking about jumping in). Innis: "You can’t find anything he’s really accomplished other than bashing the president and giving up his (Senate Agriculture Committee) seat for something more glamorous... I want to make sure that Nebraska is in good hands and they have somebody in Washington that will put their interests first."

As a Judiciary Committee member, Sasse has been a strong proponent of Trump’s judicial appointments, and has piped down about Trump lately, not criticizing all the racism and white nationalism, apparently in the hope that hard core Trump supporters will back him. He's gotten something of a reputation for being all bark and no bite when it comes to Trump.

A few days ago, we looked at how Omaha state Senator Hohn McCollister (R) had called on his fellow Republicans to stand up to Trump's racism. The response from the Nebraska GOP came swiftly, in the form of a press release:

They want him out of the party-- a sitting state senator. Amazing! No big tent there-- ad no standing up to Trump's racism will be tolerated!

The video up top was released yesterday as a campaign announcement for Nikki Foster, a Democrat running for the OH-01 seat (most of safely blue Cincinnati and the very red Warren county suburbs and small towns north of the city) against incumbent Steve Chabot, who would absolutely be vulnerable against a strong Democratic opponent. Is Foster? I haven't spoken with her-- and the video looks good-- but... The former Air Force vet looks more like an identity politics candidate with a nice bio than the kind of candidate who can win a tough race against an incumbent. Her weak garden variety platform isn't going to excite anyone other than committed Democrats who vote for any Democrat who runs, not enough to win OH-01. I suppose some people will want to vote for her because she flew 200 missions over Iraq and Afghanistan or because she was an All-American rugby player. But... no mention of Medicare-For-All or any other motivating policies on her website. Last year she lost a state house race last year against incumbent Paul Zeltwanger in a redder district north of the city. That same year, another weak Democrat afraid to take any strong policy positions, Aftab Pureval, lost to Chabot in the middle of the "Blue Wave." The other Democrat in the race this cycle, Kate Schroder, is the same kind of thing, afraid to motivate the base with any talk of Medicare-for-All or the Green New Deal. Both, like Pureval was, appear to have been persuaded by Republicans and the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to not coming out swinging for cutting edge policies. So they'll get Democrats and some independents who hate Trump, but the kind of people who have given up on the two corporate parties... neither Foster nor Schroder is offering them anything, or at least not anything that's going to change their mind about voting.

What a shame! It looks like a winnable district. The PVI is R+5 and Trump only beat Hillary 51.2% to 44.6%. Trump did worse than either McCain or Romney in the district. If only there was a better candidate who understood what it takes to motivate voters!

Last time, Pureval outraised Chabot $4,069,489 to $1,949,962 and outspent him by a over a million dollars. The DCCC and its allies put another $2,289,840 into slamming Chabot. (The NRCC and it's allies put $3,537,280 into smearing Pureval.) The Republicans are not going to give up this district without a fight to the death and neither Nikki Foster nor Kate Schroder appears to be the kind of candidate who could fight that kind of battle. Again... what a shame. This is just the kind of year and environment where a strong progressive candidate could beat Chabot.

OH-01: Pure(val) Lesser Of Two Evils Politics

There's been a lot of silly talk by click-hungry pundits about how there's no blue wave coming. Unless, they're smart enough-- and they're not-- to be explain that there's no blue wave because it's actually an "anti-red wave," just ignore them and they'll slither back under their rocks. Ask a Republican incumbent if they feel a wave coming. Today Politico's Elena Schneider reported on how the wave is impacting once-safe GOP seats by focussing in on one, OH-01, a very carefully-drawn district which includes most of Cincinnati. She wrote that "Republicans who represented some of the safest congressional seats in their party for years are suddenly under intense pressure in 2018, with Democratic challengers threatening to overwhelm them in suburban districts where President Donald Trump has struggled." It's not the best intro for the post about OH-01 she wrote.

A little background: Ohio lost 2 seats after the 2010 census and the Republican legislature gerrymandered the state very effectively, The congressional delegation when from 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans in 2008 to 13 Republicans and 5 Democrats in 2010. Part of that was a flip in Cincinnati, The first district has basically the whole city (aside from parts of the affluent east side) and it's a Democratic city. The western suburbs aren't nor are the parts of Warren and Hamilton counties tied to the district to make sure it would elect Republicans. Romney beat Obama here 52.4% to 46.3%. But during the 2016 race the suburbs started shifting away from Trump. The PVI went from R+6 to R+5 and Trump didn't do as well as Romney did (51.2%) but Hillary was such a wretched candidate that she blew it and did worse than Obama (44.6%). The district, though, just rarin' to vote against Trump now.

Steve Chabot had been elected to Congress in the massive 1994 red wave. The 2006 blue wave shook Chabot up but he managed to hold onto his seat, narrowly-- 52.2% to 47.8%. Two years later, in the general, the blue wave was extended and Chabot lost to conservative Democrat Steve Driehaus, 155,455 (52.5%) to 140,683 (47.5%). Dreihaus, former minority whip of the state House, was an unimpressive congressman, an anti-Choice jackass unable, for obvious reasons, to inspire the Democratic base... so they didn't bother showing up for him in 2010. He voted the way the DC Democratic leadership determined a Democrat in a purple district should vote, GOP-lite. In 2010, Chabot wanted his old seat back. 103,770 (51.5%) voters agreed while just 92,672 of the 140,683 voters who had swept Driehaus into office 2 years earlier made their way to the polls. Why bother to re-elect an inauthentic Democrat who was just voting with the Republicans anyway. Too bad the DC Dems are incapable of learning anything from that.

This cycle, Hamilton County clerk, Aftab Pureval, was unopposed in the primary. His website indicates he's the kind of Democrat who will be playing defense rather than offense, working to protect the status quo rather than pushing forward with a progressive agenda. He's definately running a Republican-lite campaign that would make any progressive want to puke. If he wins it's because of the anti-red wave and because of the related Trump-exhaustion. Schneider asserts he's outraging and out-working Chabot. (As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Pureval had raised $1,569,432 to Cahbot's $958,196.) He refused to sit down for an interview with Politico for Schneider's story.

NRCC chair Steve Stivers (R-OH) did the interview instead. "It just took a little while to get him, you know, built back up and run a race because he hasn't been targeted since 2010, and he won pretty comfortably then. But Steve never lost touch with his constituents and that's why he's in good shape... now [he] has his organization up and humming the way he used to when he was in tough races." Schneider wrote that "Another national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, had a harsher assessment: 'The question is, can some of these incumbents, including Chabot, be defossilized?'"

Pureval is pitching himself as an independent voice to voters in Chabot's district. "As a Democrat, I reduced the size of government and saved the taxpayers nearly $1 million," Pureval said in an interview with Politico, echoing his first round of TV ads.

He is running like a lot of red-district Democrats across the country. Pureval, who got his start in politics as student body president of Ohio State University, has vowed not to support Nancy Pelosi for speaker and rejected some proposals popular among liberals-- like Medicare-for-all or abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Pureval also found some room for agreement on trade with Trump, with an eye toward the 51 percent of the district that voted for him in 2016.

"American workers have been getting a raw deal for a very long time," Pureval said, while adding that he thought Trump's approach to trade deals has been "ham-fisted."

Those attitudes aren't putting off Democratic voters hopeful of notching a win. "Being less partisan is a good thing around here," said Keri Arinsmier, a 36-year-old voter who showed up to Pureval's recent opening of a field office in Warren County. "This guy is a shooting star of a candidate because he's practical," said Valerie Naughton, another Warren County voter.

And Republicans acknowledge a close race is brewing. "Chabot is a name brand and Aftab is the new product on the market," said Mark Weaver, a Republican consultant in the state. "It'll come down to the west side of Cincinnati, who know Chabot well, but you also can't deny the Democratic enthusiasm."

Pureval's-- and the DCCC's-- theory of the race is that Democratic voters will have no choice but to vote for him no matter how crappy and uninspiring he is because they hate Trump and his rubber-stamps, like Chabot, so much. That gives Pureval the space to take Democrats for granted and just go after Republican-leaning independents and moderate Republicans. There are garbage candidates like Pureval-- lesser of two evils-- wherever the DCCC was able to prevail in the nominating process. What they don't understand is that no matter how right-of-center their policy agenda is, the Republicans will call them the most far left candidate in the history of the known universe and that no matter how much they shame themselves and make fools of themselves by denouncing Nancy Pelosi, the Republicans will always denounce them as Pelosi-puppets.

Pureval's positioning reflects Democrats' knowledge that it won't be easy to turn this seat blue. Former Hamilton County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Burke called Chabot "a very dangerous candidate who has surprised people with the races he's won before."

But Burke added that the district was "designed to ensure that Chabot be protected, [and] he's not protected in the same way anymore."

The 2016 election foreshadowed the district's new competitiveness: While Trump romped to a 9-point victory in Ohio, he got a lower share of the vote in Chabot's 1st District than Mitt Romney did in 2012, when Romney lost the state to former President Barack Obama.

That happened in only one of Ohio's 11 other GOP-held districts: the 12th District, a longtime Republican stronghold where the GOP flirted with a disastrous defeat in a recent special election before pulling out a narrow lead that is still awaiting certification, with provisional ballots still being tallied in the Columbus-area district.

"That was a huge indicator of what's to come in the suburbs," said former Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus. "The turnout you saw in Franklin and Delaware counties, and voters moving very strongly toward the Democratic candidates, tells you a lot about the mood out there."

Chabot's campaign panned talk of a Democratic surge in the suburbs, pointing to the raw vote total in the May primary, when 20,000 more Republicans voted in the primary than Democrats.

Pureval is seeking to emulate Driehaus, who unseated Chabot in the last Democratic wave election in 2008. "Those populations shifts, happening late in the decade, 2008 and 2018, the tremendous advantage Chabot once had isn't there anymore," Driehaus said.

But Chabot and his campaign see a key difference in the 2018 campaign, believing that Pureval is the "most liberal candidate I've ever had," the Republican told the Cincinnati Enquirer in August, making him "so much more vulnerable." Pureval, unlike Driehaus, is pro-abortion rights.

Chabot's campaign spokesman Cody Rizzuto called Pureval a "far-left liberal," adding that he's "confident the voters will soundly reject his extremist views and associations."

Chabot is also taking his argument to the airwaves, attacking Pureval for his tenure at the Hamilton County clerk's office. The ad shows a clip of Pureval saying, "The era of political patronage-- of 'it's more important who you know than what you know'-- is over." Then, a narrator cuts in and says, "Aftab broke that promise on his very first day in office.

"He started firing longtime employees and used your tax dollars as hush money to buy their silence. Aftab replaced them with his own political cronies, including the son of the Democratic Party chairman."

Pureval's campaign responded with its own ad, calling the attacks "simply [not] true," adding that "it's not surprising that Chabot is running a negative campaign."

"He's a politician who's been in Congress for 22 years and has little to show for it," the narrator of Pureval's ad continued.

Predictions: Pureval will win and be as uninspiring a congressman as Driehaus was, and then lose in 2022, since 2020 will be another good cycle for Democrats.

The DCCC Can Make OH-01 Into A Real Race-- But They're Not Going To

By the numbers, the craftily-gerrymandered first congressional district of Ohio looks nearly impossible for a Democrat. It includes most of Cincinnati-- Lyle Park and Prospect Hill but not Mount Adams-- but not all of it (which would turn it blue) and enough of Warren County to guarantee Republican majorities. Since the district was redrawn-- after Obama’s 55-44% win against McCain-- Romney won it with 52% and Trump won it 51-45%. Still it looks more possible than almost any other red district in Ohio-- and Lord knows, the moribund Ohio Democratic Party doesn’t do squat in congressional elections and neither does the DCCC. The PVI is R+5, far from impossible in a wave election. But the Democrats don’t seem to have been able to find a Randy Bryce to believe enough in himself or herself to take on longtime incumbent Steve Chabot. SO, instead, it looks like a small gaggle of vanity candidates running in an election which could actually land one of them in Congress.

The last time I looked, a Berniecrat, Sam Ronan, had decided to run as a Republican. But now I can’t tell what he’s running as. His website doesn’t indicate which party and neither does this video he made.



Howard Wilkinson, reporting for WVXU, did a pretty thorough job on the race, although he left Ronan out entirely. He reports that the 2016 candidate, Michele Young, who lost to Chabot 210,014 (59.2%) to 144,644 (40.8%), is about to jump in a primary that already includes Robert Barr, a rabbi, whose website doesn’t mention any issues act all. The DCCC searched-- unsuccessfully-- for a credible candidate.

At the top of the list was Hamilton County commissioner Todd Portune, who has proven he can win cross-over votes from Republicans. But, in the end, Portune gave the DCCC a thumbs-down.

Then there was Mark Lippert, a former Navy SEAL who was ambassador to South Korea under the Obama administration. Another no-go.

And P.G. Sittenfeld was approached by the DCCC. So, too, was state representative Alicia Reece. So far, nothing has come of that either.

The filing deadline for candidates is February 7. Still time for some Bigfoot Democrat to wade into the race, but the clock is ticking.

He reported that Michele Young will officially jump in in early February. He seems more obsessed with the rabbi though.

Today, one month away from the candidate filing deadline, the most active candidate to take on Chabot in Ohio 1 appears to be one who would make history if he were elected.

His name is Robert Barr; and what makes him unique is that he is a rabbi-- and no rabbi has ever been elected to Congress. Catholic priests, a couple; Protestant ministers, a bunch.

But never a rabbi.

And Barr is the only rabbi to run who is a "pulpit rabbi"-- meaning that he leads a congregation, performs weddings, burials, bar mitzvahs and other functions. Thirty-seven years ago, the 62-year-old Barr, a product of Cincinnati's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, founded Congregation Beth Adam in Loveland, which he still leads today.

"I am not running to become the first rabbi to be elected to Congress," Barr told WVXU. "I am running to be a congressman who happens to be a rabbi."

Barr said he made the decision to run "by watching what was going on in politics in this country. I was extremely disheartened. I saw people who had been good friends stop talking to each other. The atmosphere has been poisonous."

Some of his own friends, he said, tried to discourage him from running.

"The first thing I heard from some of my friends was, 'Bob, running for Congress is going to be awful,'" Barr told WVXU. "But the more they talked about how bad it was, the more I wanted to do it."

Barr is discouraged by what he sees coming out of Washington today-- the acrimony, the name-calling, the extreme partisanship that grinds legislation to a halt and results in nothing positive getting done.

"Politics in Washington is so balkanized, so divided," Barr said. "People on both sides appear to be unwilling to talk to each other because they are afraid of being seen as weak or as a loser."

As for Chabot, Barr said, "after 20 years, I've not seen him work to repair that damage."

Barr is idealistic, but he is not delusional. He knows perfectly well that defeating Chabot would be a steep climb in that heavily-Republican district.

"I just have this feeling that, right now, people are looking for someone who has worked in the community, someone who is authentic," Barr said. "I've been doing that for 37 years."

Last week, he announced an impressive group to serve as his campaign co-chairs.

They are retired Judge Nathaniel Jones of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Barb Rinto, the former director of the University of Cincinnati's Women's Center; and Sallie Westheimer, the retired CEO of 4C for Children.

He is not going to run a campaign on duct tape and bailing wire; he plans on raising serious money for this campaign-- although he knows that, in a general election, Chabot and his allies, would outspend him by a large margin. Chabot already has over $1 million in his campaign account.

Barr told WVXU that as of about two weeks ago, he had raised $150,000 for his campaign since he officially became a candidate on Oct. 15. He won't say how much he has now, but said that when he files his first quarter campaign finance report with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) it will be "substantial."

The only Democratic candidate in Ohio 1 to have filed a campaign finance report so far with the FEC is a little-known transgender dentist named Laura Ann Weaver, who has a little over $8,000 in the bank.

While Barr is out raising money and putting together a campaign organization, Young is organizing. her campaign.

Sabato's Crystal Ball managing editor is Kyle Kondik, an Ohioan and he told Wilkinson that "The Democrats can win back control of the House without picking up a single seat in Ohio” which explains why they are ignoring the state and why “Ohio 1 will not end up being a prime target” for the DCCC. They use similar excuses all over the country, part of the explanation for a decade of pitiful failure.