Ohio Senate candidate Mandel continues to defy political gravity. Outside cash keeps Mandel afloat

There isn’t a Senate candidate in the country who has earned a more consistent string of lousy headlines than Ohio’s Josh Mandel.

Yet the 34-year-old Republican state treasurer continues to defy political gravity, inching increasingly closer to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in polls despite repeated stumbles, the cloud of a campaign finance investigation and a prickly relationship with his home state press corps.


So what gives?

Behold the post- Citizens United era of unlimited outside spending, where even a blunder-prone candidate can stay in the game if there’s sustained firepower trained against his opponent.

Big-dollar benefactors helped keep Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum afloat in the Republican presidential primary for months longer than they would’ve lasted otherwise. Now Republican Senate candidates are getting their own boost from wealthy outsiders looking to wrest control of the Senate from Harry Reid.

In battleground races across the country, a torrent of outside money is lifting the fortunes of GOP candidates by battering their opponents. In the past two weeks alone, American Crossroads and its affiliate group Crossroads GPS have unleashed $5.7 million to go after Democrats in nine states, doing the dirty work for Republican contenders such as George Allen in Virginia and Sen. Dean Heller in Nevada.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill doesn’t even have a Republican challenger yet — Missouri’s Senate primary isn’t until August. But whoever it is will probably enter the general election with a head of steam, thanks to a barrage of ads slamming McCaskill.

In the Buckeye State, though, Brown has been hit by a blitzkrieg like no other.

The first-term incumbent has been on the receiving end of $8.3 million in outside attacks through last week. The latest batch, an $800,000 Crossroads GPS buy, slices Brown for voting with President Barack Obama “95 percent of the time.”

Crossroads GPS is one of three groups that have already invested more than $1 million apiece against Brown. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading the charge with $3.8 million and the 60+ Association has spent more than $2.3 million.

“I’m not surprised by it, I’m surprised by the amount of it. Nobody saw this much of it coming,” Brown told POLITICO in an interview. “I’ll bet you in Ohio history there hasn’t been that much money spent in all the races by June.”

No senator has been pummeled by a greater amount of third-party money this cycle — and observers on both sides of the aisle agree Mandel’s more than 4-to-1 advantage in outside help has undeniably made the race more competitive.

Even the ambitious challenger can’t deny the impact.

“I think the outside spending on the conservative side has been very effective and has helped tightened the race,” Mandel said in an interview, stressing that the law bars coordination with such groups. “They see he can be beaten.”

Brown goes further, saying the influx has served as a political life preserver for a lightweight contender.

“This race wouldn’t be close at all if it wasn’t for the $8 million,” he said.

Democratic-aligned groups such as Majority PAC, the League of Conservation Voters and the Service Employees International Union have tried to soften the blow, harnessing $1.7 million for spots against Mandel. But Brown is under no illusion there will be parity.

“I would assume they’ll do half a million to a million a week for the next 20 weeks and 6 days,” he predicted of his outside opponents. “They are in this race in a big way because I’m not going to be bought. It really does give a new meaning to the phrase, ‘Buy American.’”

Brown remains ahead in polls, but even his campaign aides acknowledge the margin has steadily narrowed. The Real Clear Politics polling average of the race places the Democrat in front by 8 percentage points, down from the double-digit cushion he enjoyed at the start the year. His team is privately preparing for a 2-to-3 point race by the fall.

American Crossroads spokesman Nate Hodson steered clear of taking any credit for the tightening contest, saying only that “Brown’s vulnerable because of his own out-of-touch voting record in Washington.”

Yet it’s hard to glance at Mandel’s headlines over the past few months and attribute his ascent to anything other than the carpet-bombing of Brown.

Mandel was forced to return $105,000 in suspect campaign contributions after the FBI began investigating a group of large donations from modest-income employees of an Ohio-based marketing firm headed by a major GOP supporter.

His campaign said it is cooperating with investigators but declined to elaborate.

“We’re going to stick to the statement we put out,” Mandel said in a phone interview, cutting off a spokesman’s interjection when POLITICO asked when he was first aware of the investigation. “It’s OK, Travis. I think it’s a fair question, but at the same time, we’re going to stick with the prior statement.”

Before March, Mandel had been the only state treasurer in three decades not to attend a single meeting of the Board of Deposit, a monthly gathering of financial officials to determine billions of dollars of state investments.

Mandel said his opponents were driving the controversy on Twitter and Facebook and that voters are concerned about other matters. But his lack of attendance drew weeks of media coverage.

In April, the Dayton Daily News ran an exhaustive piece detailing how Mandel hired young, inexperienced campaign staffers for high-ranking jobs in the treasurer’s office. One 26-year-old staffer was dispatched to a beginner’s course to learn the fundamentals of municipal bond law.

Around the same time, PolitiFact Ohio deemed seven of 15 of Mandel’s recent campaign claims “Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.”

That ranking only bolstered Mandel’s reputation of providing evasive, general answers to media queries. A recent YouTube video captured by the Democratic-aligned research and tracking outfit American Bridge showed Mandel dashing from his car into a restaurant as someone tried to ask him about the FBI investigation.

Last year, he was six months late filing his personal financial disclosure form, a detailed listing of investments required of all Senate candidates.

“I’ve never seen a candidate so ill-prepared for a major run and get such awful press as Josh Mandel and still be competitive. The ammunition available to him is amazing,” said Sandy Theis, a former longtime reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer turned Democratic media consultant.

Pressed on the string of unforced errors, Mandel portrays them as Democratic talking points and pivots to his most salient rebuttal: Brown’s falling behind on several years of property taxes on his Washington, D.C., condo.

“In the middle of this campaign he was found to be not paying taxes. One of the most lethal mistakes a public official can make is raising taxes and not paying your own,” Mandel said. “That by far is one the most significant stumbles of any sitting U.S. senator this election cycle. It’s something that’s definitely moved numbers.”

Brown scoffed at that explanation, saying Mandel’s laundry list of troubles would have doomed most candidates in the pre- Citizens United era.

The senator conceded he doesn’t have a lot of options to fight back, save for making his case aggressively in the media.

“People are going to have to see the effects of this unlimited money,” he said, “and then start asking questions.”

This article tagged under: Ohio

Politics

Josh Mandel