On Saturday, the We Are Ohio campaign issued a new ad called “Zoey,” which featured a Cincinnati grandmother talking about how she was, in no uncertain terms, voting against Issue 2 because it impacts the safety and ability of firefighters to respond. Firefighters like the ones who saved her granddaughter’s life.



This morning I saw a new Building a Better Ohio ad that looked awefully familiar running in Cincinnati. It was familiar because it literally lifted select portions of the grandmother’s statements in the We Are Ohio ad, including using the same footage of firefighters fighting a fire. Building a Better Ohio ad then spliced the misappropriated “We Are Ohio” ad footage to their latest ad “No,” which the Columbus Dispatch‘s “Ad Watch” feature had already declared was misleading before Better Ohio decided to splice it up by misappropriating a grandmother’s endorsement for the opposition to appear that she supported it.

Perhaps. But there’s one small detail left out of this ad. The Republicans who support Senate Bill 5 also cut state funding to local governments by $633?million and to schools by $779?million in the current two-year state budget. These cuts, of course, will force those entities into some serious decisions unless revenue goes up. … But the added pressure local governments and schools will be under if Issue 2 fails — as in pressure that wasn’t already there because of dwindling local tax receipts or rising labor costs — was created by state funding cuts.

This is got to be a new campaign low. A campaign taking an ad in which an elderly grandmother endorsed your rival campaign and twisting it to appear she endorsed you instead? An ad in which the grandmother originally gave her endorsement because of the folks who saved her granddaughter’s life?

We’re still working to get an embeddable copy of Better Ohio’s spliced ad , but I’ve seen it this morning and confirmed through an independent source that Better Ohio had spliced We Are Ohio’s ad.

[UPDATEx2:] We have the BBO ad:

[UPDATE:] Even worse, the Building a Better Ohio campaign apparently decided to splice the grandmother to mislead people into thinking she was endorsing them after blasting her reasons for supporting We Are Ohio on its campaign website.

This is yet another phony endorsement problem for Building a Better Ohio. First they used stock photos to imply support by law enforcement and teachers. Then they passed off a GOP County Party Chairman as an educator’s endorsement. Now, they downright lifting We Are Ohio’s endorsement and passing it off as their own… after calling that grandmother, essentially, a liar just a few days ago. Pathetic.

Someone should be publicly fired for this. How’s that for employee-management accountability?

[UPDATEx3] We may have missed this before, but it appears the ad was uploaded to the BBO YouTube channel yesterday and it’s still up. I wonder for how long?