A Josh Mandel update

We have written a lot here about Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel. Joel Mowbray first brought Josh to the attention of our readers when Josh was running for reelection to the state legislature in the 2008 post “Star on the rise” (a post which hasn’t made the transition to our new archives yet). Josh completed two terms in the Ohio legislature before winning the race for state treasurer last year. Josh narrowly yielded the spot for top vote-getter statewide to Rob Portman, who was elected to the Senate. As between the two, however, Josh’s achievement might have been the more impressive in that he was running against an incumbent.

When Josh first ran for state representative, he wore out three pairs of brown leather shoes while knocking on 19,679 doors in his Democratic-leaning district. When Josh visited Minnesota in early 2010, he brought a pair of the worn-out shoes along as an exhibit. The shoes also featured in the Fox News Channel’s 2009 profile of Josh (video below).

Josh is a Marine with two tours in Iraq to his credit. When he ran for reelection in 2008, Josh’s Democratic opponent tried to make an issue of Josh’s return to service during the surge. Joel Mowbray covered the story in “Iraq war vet’s service attacked in Ohio campaign.” Joel updated his column for us here.

Josh is now gearing up to undertake the race to unseat incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in the 2012 election. Joel Mowbray filed an update on Josh for us this past March. Earlier this month Josh chatted about the race with Hotline on Call’s Sean Sullivan, who filed a report. In the new issue of the Weekly Standard out this morning, Kate Havard recaps the story to date in previewing the race against Brown.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer noted last month in reporting Mandel’s fundraising success — please consider contributing here — Josh hasn’t formally announced his candidacy in the race. This promises to be one race that we will be returning to frequently as a barometer of 2012.

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