“Josh Mandel kept afloat by outside cash,” Politico whines

Politico is unhappy that Josh Mandel, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, has made a race out of it with incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown. The Real Clear Politics average for May polls has Mandel, who formerly trailed by double-digits, within 8 points of Brown. The latest Rasmussen Poll, from the end of May, has it at Brown +5. And according to Politico, the Brown campaign expects a closer race than that.

Politico and the Brown campaign attribute the closeness of the race to outside money. Brown “has been on the receiving end of $8.3 million in outside attacks through last week,” Politco moans. “The latest batch, an $800,000 Crossroads GPS buy, slices Brown for voting with President Barack Obama ’95 percent of the time.’”

Apparently, it hasn’t occurred to Politco that Brown may be struggling because he has consistently voted with an unpopular president. It’s a case of blame the messenger, not the message, I suppose. Oh for those happy pre-Citizens United days when a Senator could cast unpopular votes in peace and quiet, with the liberal MSM covering for him.

Politco finds it so unfair that the voters of Ohio are taking Mandel seriously. After all, his campaign is under investigation over certain contributions and he has “a prickly relationship with his home state press corps.” But Sen. Brown failed to pay property taxes on his Washington, DC condo for several years. And a prickly relationship with the press is not necessarily a badge of dishonor.

The bottom line is that Sen. Brown is way too liberal for Ohio. His ACU ratings from 2010 and 2011 are zero. His lifetime rating is 7.4. Any Senator who is that far out of line with the views of the voters in his state is going to struggle in a re-election campaign, provided that his opponent is able to get his message out.

You can help Josh Mandel get his message out, and annoy Politico, by contributing here.

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