Dewine didn’t stop Trump rally in Circleville
Ten days before Ohio’s general election, Dewine did nothing about President Donald Trump’s rally in Circleville, which featured thousands of mostly mask-less people jammed together for hours.
One week before Ohio was to hold its primary election in March, Gov. Mike Dewine said Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders should cancel rallies they had scheduled in Cleveland.
They complied.
It was the day after Ohio’s first three coronavirus cases were confirmed and a state emergency declared.
Ten days before Ohio’s general election, Dewine did nothing about President Donald Trump’s rally in Circleville, which featured thousands of mostly mask-less people jammed together for hours.
It was the day a record 2,858 new daily COVID-19 cases were confirmed. (And by Friday, the daily number had surged to 3,845.)
Besides those starkly different numbers, what’s the difference?
The March 10 political events came just as the coronavirus was hitting Ohio. It was “very early in the pandemic, and we didn’t know much about the virus,” said Dewine spokesman Dan Tierney.
The governor and health officials quickly decided “nobody should be having large gatherings of any kind.”
That meant a huge scaling back for The Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, cancellation of winter sports at all levels and eventual closure of schools and many businesses.
“What’s different now is that we’ve put out safety guidelines to do all these things, and do it safely,” he said, noting the re-opening of businesses and return of fall sports with limited fans.
Dewine greeted Trump at Rickenbacker International Airport but did not attend the rally.
Tierney said Dewine regards political events and protests as protected by the First Amendment, but the governor stresses that everyone attending should wear a mask and socially distance.
Six days after Trump’s Ohio gathering – which the campaign labeled a “peaceful protest” – Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz limited a Trump rally there to 250 because of the rise in
COVID-19 cases.
Like father...
On the day Ohio coronavirus cases topped 3,000 for the first time, Trump supporters packed into a crowded Columbus restaurant ballroom Wednesday night to hear his son Eric.
Dispatch reporter Anna Staver saw volunteers passing out disposable masks, but the majority of attendees sat bare faced and shoulder to shoulder for more than an hour.
They joked, chanted and even wrapped their arms around their neighbors and danced.
Eric Trump noted that while coronavirus has dominated headlines in recent months, other deaths, like those of veterans waiting for health services, were being all but ignored.
At the end of the event, Staver watched the president’s son pose for photos and shake hands.
Fun facts
About 46% of the campaign contributions from Ohioans to federal candidates and political action committees has gone to Democrats so far this election cycle, per the Center for Responsive Politics. That compares to a mere 21% for the full 2015-16 cycle, when GOP donations likely were boosted by the re-election campaign of Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
About $7.3 million of this year’s $132 million haul comes from Downtown Columbus.
Double foul
The weeks just before an election represent “the silly season,” the late Columbus Mayor Dana G. “Buck” Rinehart often said.
Dispatch reporter Randy Ludlow notes that the Ohio Democratic and Re
publican Parties took each other to task last week over two TV commercials involving the Ohio Supreme Court, but not being aired by their candidates.
First, the Democrats filed a complaint asking the Ohio State Bar Association Judicial Election Campaign Advertising Monitoring Committee calling on Republican Justices Judith French and Sharon Kennedy to disavow a commercial implying French’s opponent is soft on child predators.
The spot from the Republican State Leadership Committee, in misleading fashion, attacks Jennifer Brunner, a judge on the 10th District Ohio Court of Appeals in Columbus.
The Republicans then filed a complaint with the committee asking that Brunner and John O’donnell, a Cleveland judge running against Kennedy, disavow a “false and reprehensible” commercial blasting French and Kennedy being aired by the state Democratic Party. That ad claims the Republican justices “opened the door for corruption” – an apparent reference to the high court increasing the size of maxi
mum campaign contributions to judges – and notes that Kennedy accepted campaign cash from indicted House Bill 6 scandal figure Matt Borges, former chairman of the Ohio GOP.
While the Democrats insisted that French and Kennedy follow the “clean campaign” pledge they signed, Ludlow points out that both Brunner and O’donnell refused to sign the state bar association’s pledge, saying they wanted to be free to speak about the Republican justices’ self-described conservatism on the bench.
The race is especially contentious because Democrats would grab a majority for the first time since the 1980s if both Brunner and O’donnell win.
Late Friday, both ads were rebuked by the bar association’s Judicial Election Advertising Monitoring Committee because the commercials “were in violation of the Advertising Committee’s standards and serve to erode public trust and confidence in our judicial system.” drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland