As expected, the “bad mayor” ads launched against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nan Whaley by backers of her opponent Gov. Mike DeWine in early August are driving up negative sentiment toward Whaley, the former Dayton mayor.

According to CrowdSense.Live, a web site devoted to examining the metrics of political contests, the net social media sentiment on Aug. 1 was -58.2% for DeWine and -0.4% for Whaley. In other words, the public was down on DeWine while Whaley was breaking even.

But by Aug. 30 it had all changed, most likely because of the monthlong heavy rotation of the ads demeaning Whaley and her performance as mayor. DeWine improved to -38.5% while Whaley sank into negative territory at -31%.

Now a second bad mayor-themed ad campaign is running on Ohio TV screens, declaring that Whaley as governor would be “dangerously expensive.”

To Whaley’s brain trust’s discredit, they have chosen not to respond directly to the bad mayor charge. Ask Ted Strickland and Richard Cordray how not bright their failure to respond to critical ads was when they ran for governor.

Whaley did place ads suggesting that DeWine’s Ohio was bad for girls and women. What do you bet that DeWine replies quickly and hits back hard?

Get-R-Done Girl, Tamie Wilson, Fights Ohio’s Good Old Boy, Gymmy Jordan

Tamie Wilson is in the fight of her life.

The Democratic Party nominee to represent District 4 in the U.S. Congress, Wilson, of Delaware, is taking on one of the kingpins of the MAGA movement, none other than U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, of Urbana.

So the story goes that Jordan was such an annoyance to the Republican legislative leaders in Ohio during his time in the state legislature, that they tailored a congressional district to get him the hell out of the Columbus.

Sure enough, he moved his traveling extremist road show to Washington, D.C., and they got peace of mind while the nation got, and continues to get, tortured by Gymmy.

I call him Gymmy to remind readers of his sordid past as an assistant wrestling coach at the Ohio State University during which he allegedly looked the other way while the team doctor was molesting athletes under the guise of medical care.

Dozens of former OSU wrestlers are convinced that Gymmy knew and did not tell about their plight. Dozens have been financially compensated by OSU for the horrors inflicted upon them and some are requesting more be done, including censuring Gymmy. Many want the statute of limitations removed legislatively, so they can sue OSU and drag Gymmy into court.

Many of the wrestlers are supporting Tamie Wilson in her campaign as a way of punishing Gymmy. Imagine a busload of burly guys touring the 13-county Congressional District that stretches from western Delaware County to Ashland County to Allen County and down to Gymmy’s home base of Champaign County on behalf of Tamie.

The Ohio State University is the unassailable coin of the realm throughout the district that loves the Buckeyes on the football field and would not consider voting for somebody, Gymmy, who blackened its name.

Of course, Gymmy denies it all.

Plus, he cannot be bothered because he is doing the Lord’s work in trying to restore the MAGA empire of one Donald J. Trump.

While historians will view Trump’s one term as president as a fluke and a one-off, he remains popular with more than half the Republican base and acts like he will run to reclaim the office in 2024 unless he is behind bars or prohibited from running by his blatant disregard for laws regarding storage and possession of national security documents.

Gymmy leads the chorus of know-nothings who believe with all their heart and soul that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by some malevolent force even though he clearly fell short in electoral votes and in popular votes. Gymmy loves to make things up about the virtues of his extremist positions and the evils of any Democratic legislative accomplishments. He lives the Fox News, phony baloney lifestyle that far too many Americans do. Maybe he studied fiction on his way to his masters’ degree at OSU, but that still does not allow him to continually make things up. Apparently, aspects of his OSU education did not translate into clear, rational, fact-based thought processes. He should either ask for his tuition money back or OSU should cancel his degree. The later is not a bad idea. Get me the OSU president on speed dial.

In 2020, Gymmy was comfortably reelected despite mounting criticism. His message in TV ads was “he is one of us.” In other words, if you are a good old boy, born and bred in Ohio, longtime resident of Urbana, OSU grad, ex-OSU employee, successful high school and college wrestler, officeholder, and family guy without a police record, you should merit re-election by the folks in the heartland, especially since you represent their majority political philosophy, which, sadly, was Trumpism.

Trumpism has lost some blood since the election two years ago as its leader has been tagged with inciting a riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as a pretext for staging a coup that, if successful, would have enabled him to stay in office.

Trump himself has been less than infallible as his endorsement of Republicans in primary elections is no longer magical and his social network rants often reflect someone getting farther and farther away from reality. He more and more acts unhinged.

Then, just to prove how stupid – and unhinged – he has become, Trump played hide and seek with federal archives officials seeking to collect for classified documents from his administration that Trump had kept at his Florida home. He lied to the feds about having given up all the docs in his possession only to be ratted out by someone on the inside. That led to an FBI raid and the discovery of many more randomly and sloppily stored supersecret docs and more egg spilled on Trump’s double-wide golf pants.

Despite these gaffes, Gymmy Jordan was right by Trump’s side in full-threated defenses though less so on the last stupid gambit.

Through it all, Gymmy has used his prominence in the MAGA crowd to raise money for his campaigns and for those of his allies. He has millions of dollars at his beck and call and millions more standing by, parked at independent, dark money committees.

While he sloughed off his opponent last time around, Jordan appears to be taking Tamie Wilson more seriously. He is putting up yard signs before Labor Day. He had a big picnic for his supporters the other day and invited Lt. Gov. Jon Husted as a special guest. Husted used to represent part of the new 4th District. Why would Gymmy need to bring in a special guest of Husted’s ilk if he was supremely confident of being a shoo-in?

The surge in women registering to vote in the wake of the anti-abortion court ruling is scaring Republicans around the state. And women like to vote for other women, like, say, Tamie Wilson.

Wilson called herself the “Get-R-Done Girl” in an interview with anchor Colleen Marshall on WCMH-TV in Columbus a few days ago. I hope she adopts and uses the slogan.

District 4 could use a common sense, action-oriented woman serving us in Washington, D.C., trying to do the right thing for our district and our country instead of the MAGA sell-out, ideology-stunted, see something-say nothing Gymmy boy.

He has never been one of us and never will be one of us.

Tamie has had her struggles. She is a single parent trying to make the world a better place. She is a small business owner. She does not have million-dollar backers.

She IS one of us.

Quickies

-Despite public sentiment in favor of forgiving student loans, Whaley and Senate candidate Tim Ryan oppose President Joe Biden’s plan. Dumb de dumb dumb.

-The Columbus Dispatch only runs editorial pages occasionally now, but that did not stop two “breath-taking” editorials from appearing regarding the Columbus teachers’ strike. The first one sophomorically stated that a strike would be the fault of the school board and the teachers. The second sophomorically stated that the settlement would not solve Columbus school problems. Neither was what I would call high school newspaper quality.

(Please send your comments and suggestions for future columns to John K. Hartman, ColumbusMediaInsider@gmail.com)  

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