In the latest example of Retread Ted’s sputtering senate bid, The Atlantic details how the campaign “turned into a dud.”
In case you missed it, read more:
How Ohio’s Marquee Senate Race Turned into a Dud
The Atlantic
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Ohio was already going to be a crucial presidential battleground in 2016. With the Portman-Strickland battle, it could have the added significance of determining control of the Senate.
Yet two months before Election Day, the vaunted match-up is looking more like a dud. Portman is ahead comfortably in the polls after outside groups spent millions blanketing the state in ads hammering Strickland. Some Republicans are already banking an early victory, and national Democrats are redirecting money to other Senate races in the first signs they might abandon the under-funded Strickland altogether.
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Democrats aren’t publicly conceding the race, of course. But their spending moves over the last two weeks indicate they are losing hope that Strickland can recover. Both the Senate Democrats’ official campaign arm and the Senate Majority super PAC have scrapped millions of dollars in ads reserved for the next several weeks supporting Strickland’s bid. That money will likely be sent to other priority races in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Florida, or North Carolina. But the decision to pull back has angered Ohio Democrats who believe the party is cutting Strickland loose too soon and hurting his chances for a comeback.
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Strickland won election in a Democratic wave in 2006 and was swept out in the GOP wave four years later. In the years between, Ohio’s economy tanked along with the nation’s, and Republicans have harped on Strickland’s decision to tap—and drain—the state’s rainy-day fund to maintain services when tax revenue fell off. According to a tally by Democrats, Portman and GOP-backing outside groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers, and the NRA, have spent over $45 million against Strickland—a total that exceeds Republican spending against any Democratic candidate in the nation, including Hillary Clinton.
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Yet for all the complaints that Strickland was swamped by conservative cash, Democrats shouldn’t have been surprised. This was always going to be an expensive race, and it’s not as if the party has had trouble raising money of its own this year. Strickland, however, struggled to build a war chest in 2015, and while he dispatched a much younger Democratic rival, P. G. Sittenfeld of the Cincinnati city council, officials in both parties say the primary challenge hobbled him financially and politically.
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“Rob Portman has run a much better campaign than Ted Strickland when it comes right down to it,” said David Cohen, a professor of political science at the University of Akron. “He’s a pretty low-key guy, and people may mistake that for a lack of energy. But it really isn’t.”
“I’m not sure if 2016 was the right year to bring out an old familiar name.”
Ohio political veterans said Portman has simply been more visible across the state than Strickland. Both Cohen and Jerry Austin, a longtime Democratic consultant who worked for Sittenfeld, wondered if, in hindsight, the party made the right move by luring an aging star out of retirement. “I’m not sure if 2016 was the right year to bring out an old familiar name,” Cohen said. Austin put it a little more directly: “Strickland is 75. He’s not as active as he used to be.”
Strickland’s campaign, naturally, rejects that suggestion. “There’s still a lot of race left to run, and there’s no one who knows Ohio better or is a stronger grassroots campaigner than Ted Strickland,” spokesman David Bergstein said.
He noted that Strickland only recently began running ads on television [WOW] and said he would be helped by the strong field organizing and turnout operation driven by the state party and Clinton’s campaign, which already had more than 100 offices in Ohio.
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