It’s getting ugly in northeast Summit County as political operatives launch dubious attacks from Columbus to sway local voters in one of the tightest races for the Ohio House.
Questionable mailers and claims have arrived in Stow, Macedonia, Hudson and Twinsburg in these final days before residents of the 37th Ohio House district decide whether to re-elect Republican Rep. Kristina Roegner or replace her with Democrat Casey Weinstein.
The two Hudsonites are competing in what Ohio Democrats, who hope to capture at least three seats in the Republican-dominated House, consider “hands down one of the most competitive races.”
And the tighter the race, the nastier and more far-fetched the mudslinging.
Two fliers mailed out this week by Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges claim Weinstein “doesn’t think kids are worth” educating and that after spending half his life in the Air Force, the 34-year-old “has no faith in our military.”
The adverts follow attacks by Democrats who cast Roegner — campaigning on her bipartisan accomplishments — as an “extreme” right-winger who cut “billions” from education, voted to deny women mammograms (in a bill that defunded Planned Parenthood) and drove around on expired vehicle tags while collecting taxpayer-funded travel reimbursements.
In each attack, crafty messengers have cultivated a seed of truth to harvest an exaggeration.
“Most of it’s lies,” said James Taylor, a Stow resident and Goodyear retiree who paid little attention to the Republican mailer this week before tossing it on his kitchen table. “I just assumed that so much has been taken out of context with the two that are running … They’re twisting the truth.”
Bad tags
On Oct. 13, the Ohio House Democratic Caucus, which works closely with the Ohio Democratic Party to identify competitive races, went after Roegner for not renewing her vehicle registration while in office.
“Kristina Roegner was driving back and forth from Columbus, collecting thousands of dollars in mileage reimbursements from the taxpayers of Ohio, for 480 days without bothering to pay her vehicle registration fees,” charged Aaron Fisher, the group’s executive director.
Roegner called the issue “an innocent oversight on my family car.” The small Ford Fiesta she bought in 2010 to make routine trips to Columbus has been registered and bears state representative plates. That’s the car she racked up $4,600 in mileage reimbursements, not the family SUV with expired tags.
Roegner said the Ohio Democratic Party has spent more than $200,000 attacking her, and Weinstein has spread their message on social media.
Outdated endorsement
On Oct. 20, the Weinstein campaign assailed Roegner for sending out mailers with an outdated endorsement.
Stow Mayor Sara Drew, a Democrat, had withdrawn her support for Roegner on Oct. 4. But the mailer carried Drew’s picture and outdated endorsement.
Before withdrawing her support, Drew explained on Oct. 3 in a polite email to Roegner that Weinstein “most closely mirrors my public policy positions.” Roegner said she and Drew had a “quite cordial” conversation, during which Roegner explained that printing had already begun on the mailer with Drew’s endorsement and that it would not be used again in future campaign ads.
Wasted eduction
This week, the Ohio Republican mailers began landing in mailboxes.
One lifts a line from Weinstein’s campaign website: “Our state wasted $1 billion of taxpayer money on unaccountable charter schools and I find this to be unacceptable.”
But the advertisers used only the first half of the sentence then took a leap in logic. “Our state wasted $1 billion of taxpayer money ...,” the ad attributes to Weinstein before concluding that “Ohio increased state education funding by $1 billion. Casey Weinstein doesn’t think our kids are worth it.”
The Beacon Journal asked to speak with the developers of the ad. The Ohio Republican Party, instead, emailed a response. “The state funds both public and charter schools as part of an overall funding stream. There are tens of thousands of students in Ohio that attend charter schools, so to say that money spent on their education is hardly a waste of money,” GOP spokesperson Brittany Warner wrote.
Unpatriotic?
The second Republican mailer out this week indicates that Weinstein, who spent 15 years in the Air Force before receiving an honorable discharge, “sued our soldiers” and “has no faith in our military.”
The ad footnotes a story about a lawsuit filed by Weinstein and other cadets in the early 2000s.
The back story apparently didn’t fit on the letter-sized mailer.
Weinstein comes from a Jewish, military family. He graduated in 2004 from the Air Force Academy, where his father went before him and his brother after. His wife, Amanda, a Christian, is a captain in the Air Force reserves. The couple were stationed together at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. They’ve kept separate religions as they raise a family in Hudson.
During Weinstein’s time at the academy, he and other students — including atheists and Jews — said school leaders and chaplains forced cadets to evangelize so they filed a lawsuit. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ played in the mess hall as students ate.
Amanda Weinstein told her husband how chaplains said she would “burn in the eternal fires of hell” if she failed to do her part in converting nonbelievers to the Christian faith.
An internal survey conducted by the military in 2009 found that one in five Christians and nearly two in five other cadets said they experienced religious intolerance at the school.
A federal judge dismissed the First Amendment lawsuit after Weinstein graduated. The experience, including his own encounters with alleged anti-Semitism, encouraged Weinstein’s father to launch the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Today, the group represents Muslims, Jews, atheists and — mostly — Christians who face alleged religious persecution and harassment.
The gospel
Again, the state GOP that put out the ad defended its authenticity.
“This piece is factual,” Warner wrote. “The quote on the front of the piece refers to [a] lawsuit that was pursued by Mr. Weinstein. He sued the U.S. Military and sought to bar the promotion of religion in the military.”
Warner, responding to a follow-up question, dismissed the notion that the Ohio GOP condones the “promotion of religion in the military.”
“That’s not what the piece says,” Warner wrote. “The piece informs voters that he sued the U.S. Military.”
Warner wouldn’t explain whether the piece asserts that Weinstein literally “has no faith in the military” or, in its play on words, supports a separation of church and state.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .