Bringing Home Ohio for Josh

At 4:27 am on Friday, September 14, I woke up at home in Tallahassee…just minutes before my alarm clock was set to go off. Within a half hour I was dressed and walking out the door to drive over to Jacksonville to take the 8:45 am direct flight to Cincinnati. My plane landed shortly after 10:30 am and before 11:00 am I was in my rental car ready to take on the task at hand.

With just 53 days left until Election Day, I had come to Ohio for 48 hours to help my friend Josh Mandel in his race for the U.S. Senate.  I wouldn’t do this for too many other people, but Josh is just a good dude. I met him a few years ago via a mutual friend who had put us in touch so that I could introduce Josh to the State Policy Network and the free-market state think tank movement.  At the time, Josh was a state legislator and he was prepping to run for Ohio State Treasurer.  It was a race he would win, against an incumbent Democrat in the November 2010 election.

But Josh’s road to the State Treasurer’s office started much earlier.  A native of the Cleveland, Ohio area, he graduated from Ohio State University, where he had served as President of the Student Government.  Josh missed his college graduation ceremony because he was lacing up his boots in the Marine Corps boot camp.  He had decided to serve his country as a Marine and did so for eight years.  During that time, he did two tours of duty in Iraq – the second one he volunteered for.  And he even went to law school, staying in the state of Ohio to complete his law degree at Case Western University in his hometown of Cleveland.

But his service to his country didn’t end as a Marine. In 2003, Josh served in the City Council in Lyndhurst, Ohio. They didn’t think this 26-year old could get elected, much less lead the way on the first ever property tax reduction in his county.  With success under his belt, he ran for a state legislative seat, which he won in November 2006.  Representing a district that had a majority of Democrats, Josh won people over by knocking on “approximately 19,670 doors” as he likes to say, wearing out three pairs of shoes.

Sometime last year, while he was doing an effective job as Ohio State Treasurer, many voices in the Republican Party of Ohio came to Josh to encourage him to run for the U.S. Senate against another incumbent Democrat, Sherrod Brown.  I can tell you Josh did not want to run.  He thought there must be other qualified people who had been in office longer.  But the people demanded it.  And he answered the call.

His general election opponent, Senator Brown, has become the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, voting lock step with Barack Obama on every issue from the bailouts to the stimulus to card check to ObamaCare. The party deemed Josh, a 34-year old military veteran, as the best hope to win this seat and help the GOP recapture the majority in the U.S. Senate.  The other side laughed and said it couldn’t be done.

So here I was in my rental car, with my duties in hand. Just a few weeks ago, I looked at the most recent polls and saw Josh had gone from nearly 20 points down a year ago to a dead heat in two polls with less than two months before Election Day.  I wanted to do my part to help him take this seat.  I know Josh is a committed conservative and he has demonstrated that during his time in office and in the many conversations I’ve had with him in the past few years.  But politics aside, he is just a good guy with a heart for Ohio, America, and his fellow man.

On Friday, I volunteered for the campaign.  My assignment was to go to all four of the “Victory” offices the GOP had established in the Cincinnati area.  The Mandel campaign had delivered approximately 2,000 unassembled yard signs to each office. My job was to check to see if they were there and if the staff at each office had them assembled and had a plan to distribute them. The first office had about 100 assembled and told me another 100 had been distributed. I was also supposed to check to see if the giant 4 foot by 8 foots signs that each office had received had been put up.  I had to inform the campaign only one of four offices had them up.

The other part of my job was to take a combined 750 yard signs from these four offices, somehow fit them in my car (I did) and then distribute them to three places in three other counties east of Cincinnati.  This meant a lot of time in the car on Friday.

At that first office in Westwood, one volunteer told me she had already made 20,000 phone calls on behalf of the Mitt Romney campaign.  And she plans to take that number to 60,000!  As I thought about it later in the day, I was just floored. How on earth could someone make that many calls on their own? Kudos to her and the many other people doing their part to save our country from fiscal calamity and liberal insanity.

At the second office I visited, the yard signs were in the same quantity.  About 100 made.  I encouraged them to take time to make more and get them out.  Then I stopped for some Skyline Chili (yum!) before heading to the next office.

The third office had no signs made, but the lead staffer there assured me about 100 had already been made and they just disappeared fast.  She said she just had no time to make them all. So I sat there and made about 50 and she was motivated to do about 50 as well.  I spent about an hour at that office talking to her and making signs and we had 100 made and ready to distribute.

The fourth office in East Gate was on their game.  They had all the signs made.  They told me they had 80 volunteers come in and do them over the previous weekend and they were everywhere.  They also had the giant Josh Mandel sign up and said they could use some more.  I took down all this information and reported it back to the campaign manager who assigned it to me.

Then, I took a drive and distributed approximately 250 signs to each of three locations. Two were people’s home – one in Brown County and one in Clinton County. The one in the middle, Highland County, had a GOP headquarters where the three senior women who were working there gladly accepted the 250 signs and said there had been a lot of positive response for Josh.  It was also neat for me to meet all of these people and see the various areas of Cincinnati and the surrounding countryside.  I even recollected something I almost forgot: I actually have roots here.  Well kind of.  Both of my maternal grandparents were born not far from where I was: my grandmother was born in Marietta, Ohio and my grandfather in Jackson.  While that was almost a century ago, I thought I bet they’d be proud that I was taking my time to help a friend win back the country that gave them so much opportunity.

I finished my duties just before 5:00 pm and drove into downtown Cincinnati. I arrived at the Millenium hotel just before 6:00 pm and now that I was done volunteering for the campaign, I was able to join my friends from FreedomWorks just across the street for their evening reception and meeting at the Hyatt.

They had a bunch of tea party patriots prepping for some get out the vote efforts for the next day as well as a big rally at the FreePac Ohio event which would feature Glenn Beck, Josh Mandel, and many other speakers – not to mention training sessions by the FreedomWorks staff. What an amazing operation they had!

After the meet and greets and attending a meeting of some patriots from Tennessee who are already gearing up for their 2014 Senate race (They want to take out Lamar Alexander and they were plotting to do so), I joined my friend Brendan Steinhauser and some other FreedomWorks staff and guest speakers for dinner and drinks in the hotel bar of the Hyatt.

The next morning I met back up with some of the volunteer activists at 9:00 AM.  My intention was to go do some neighborhood walks with them on behalf of Josh Mandel, but apparently the walkers had already left.  So, they put me on the phones and I made approximately 100 calls on behalf of Josh, using the FreedomWorks connector phone service. This is an easy system (once you get the hang of it) to use and it can be used from home via your cell phone. I will probably end up making a few more calls before Election Day now that I know how to use it.  The response on the phones for Josh was overwhelming.  I didn’t have a single person tell me they were voting for his opponent.  I encouraged them to get to the polls on November 6 or vote in advance by absentee ballot.

By noon, our phone banking was over and it was time to shift gears to prepare for the FreePac event which started at 1:30 PM and would last until around 7:00 PM.  All I had to do was cross the street one more time to head over to the Duke Energy Convention Center.  I was amazed at how many people were there.  There were a dozen or so tables set up representing various tea party groups around the state, people selling books and t-shirts and even giving out free stuff (I got a “Who is John Galt?” t-shirt marketing the new Atlas Shrugged Part Two movie being released in October).

By the time things got underway, over 6,000 people attended – and this event had an entrance fee of $20.  Luckily, there was a ticket set aside for me (I guess all my hard work paid off).  I had expensed my own trip to get here – flight, hotel, and rental car plus gas and food.  But I did it to be here.  I was rewarded with a few complimentary meals by my friends and the opportunity to be backstage for as much of the event as I wanted to be.  I went out in the crowd a few times to see the event from that perspective, but it was neat to be backstage and talk to the various guest speakers, including Dana Loesch, who is a radio host in St. Louis and a frequent conservative guest commentator on CNN.

But I was most happy to see my friends Brendan Steinhauser and Josh Mandel take the stage to address the 6,000 people in the crowd who were cheering loudly for them and other speakers, including the keynote, Glenn Beck.

Josh brought the crowd to their feet and hundreds of people in that crowd were waving giant “Mandel” signs.  He had a great narrative and a number of examples of how his commitment to fiscal responsibility in office has helped the people of Ohio.  He also gave example after example of how he has frequently been pressured to tow the party line or not bring certain issues to the floor and how he has instead done what he believed is the right thing.  He said the $16 trillion debt in Washington is not just the fault of Democrats, but also Republicans.  He got a standing ovation.  “The only way to change Washington is to change the people we send there!” he said.  Another standing ovation.  He absolutely killed it and I have to say I was proud and excited.

I was able to join Josh and three of his campaign staff for dinner later that evening and it was great to hear their perspective of how things were going.  Josh also asked my advice and constructive criticism on his speech and anything else I witnessed in his campaign.  My advice was simple: you’re being yourself and that’s what has gotten you this far. Don’t stop doing just that.

The only “negative” on Josh is that he is young. He will be turning 35 years old by the end of this month, but he looks like he is 19.  That doesn’t help.  But he has shown incredible leadership, poise, honesty, and sincerity during his time in office and in his relationships with his friends and constituents.  And in my opinion, it’s about time we send some fresh blood to Washington.  The tea party activists I met during my weekend were incredibly supportive of Josh.  I have said for a long time that the tea party isn’t just about limited government and Constitutional principles.  Yes, it is about that.  But it’s also about electing representatives who listen to you, who care about what you have to say, who are honest and transparent and care about being a representative, not a member of the ruling elite.  Josh represents all of these qualities.  And that’s why they love him.

The week before I came to Ohio I challenged all my friends via some postings on Facebook that I would match any of their donations to Josh dollar-for-dollar up to $500. We met that match.  Then another friend challenged me to go higher and he would contribute an additional $250.  So I challenged all my other friends again to go higher and split the difference with me.  Let’s just say at the end of the day between me and 18 of my friends we raised $1550 for Josh.  I was able to cover a bit more than a third of that.  I brought my check to Josh while in Cincinnati and also made him aware of all the donations my friends had contributed to force me to meet this match. He was very surprised, but then of course he told me he had been following some of my posts and thanked me for all I was doing for him.

As I told him, he’s a different kind of politician than I’m used to seeing.  Nine months ago I wrote a blog post on how I would be separating myself from electoral politics for good.  I want to note here that in that same post I made one disclaimer: “I do have a few friends that are running for political office right now. I’m sure I’ll have other friends running for office in the future. And on that level – as a friend – I will continue to support and promote them. Shoot, you may even catch me hosting a fundraiser or two. But I will involve myself in the electoral process on a very limited scale (think: necessary evil).”

Well Josh is a friend.  And he’s a committed conservative.  And he’s just a good guy.  I told him that he has made a believer in me that a good guy might still have a shot.  He’s got good people surrounding him and I hope it stays that way.

There are 50 days left until Election Day and Josh is tied in the polls with Sherrod Brown.  We have a chance for a good guy to make it into the “elite” body that is the U.S. Senate.  We have a chance not only to change the balance of power in Washington, but to champion a true conservative who has a genuine heart for public service.  You can certainly be a part of this campaign to change Washington and help Josh make a difference.

If you want to be inspired more, watch this video of Josh from an event he spoke at in Ohio this summer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBu8Ggsdnfc – trust me, it’s worth your time and attention.  Let’s bring home Ohio for Josh!