Ohio governor's race: A call to #LockHerUp ... and we're not talking about Hillary Clinton

COLUMBUS - After weeks of largely ignoring his primary competitor, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine traded his folksy charm for a Donald Trump-style attack, accusing Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor of a crime using the president's trademark #LockHerUp.

With just over a month until the May primary, the Republican race has turned nasty.

On Wednesday, a DeWine campaign-affiliated Twitter account wrote:

The tweet attacked Taylor for using a state plane in 2011 to drop her off near her home. She repaid the state $1,039.50 for the use of the plane, at the direction of Gov. John Kasich, although she never faced criminal charges.

The tweet also used one of Trump's chief insults, but against a fellow Republican.

In 2016, Trump frequently used the phrase "lock her up" to refer to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and her handling of the 2012 attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

DeWine later said the tweet was a mistake.

"This was a staff tweet that didn’t get authorized by (DeWine)," campaign spokesman Ryan Stubenrauch said. "When he saw it the next day, he said it was too far."

The DeWine campaign's Trump-style attack came after weeks of publicly ignoring Taylor. The lieutenant governor, meanwhile, has done the exact opposite, repeatedly bashing "D.C. DeWine" online and in interviews.

At one point, Taylor – considered an underdog in the GOP primary for governor – said she wouldn't vote for DeWine in November if he were the party's nominee. She mocked the Ohio Republican Party's endorsement process, calling it a "coronation" of DeWine, who got the nod. Taylor demanded gubernatorial debates, which DeWine declined and the state GOP isn't pushing.

Through it all, DeWine did little to punch back at Taylor. Then, this week, Taylor's political action committee, Onward Ohio, spent $700,000 on a television advertisement smacking DeWine for not being conservative enough.

"If you like President Trump, then you won't like Mike DeWine," according to the TV ad.

Shortly after, DeWine's campaign joined Taylor's allies on the airwaves, saying she was "unfit and unqualified to be governor." The ad referenced the plane trips and Taylor's staff turnover.

Then came the Trump-style attack: #LockHerUp.

"I’m not going to dignify the tweet with a response," Taylor spokesman Michael Duchesne said.

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DeWine spokesman Stubenrauch said Taylor would not have repaid the money if she wasn't worried about how it looked. "It was well documented by Ohio newspapers that Mary Taylor used the state plane for personal reasons, some trips even being described as 'errands,' which Ohioans would probably unanimously see as unethical and illegal," he said.

But why go after Taylor now? A recent poll showed DeWine leading Taylor in the primary 4-to-1. And DeWine has national support. On Thursday, Republican National Committee co-chairman Bob Paduchik, who ran Trump's presidential campaign in Ohio, said Trump needed DeWine as the state's next governor.

For one, Taylor is taking her anti-DeWine message to television viewers. DeWine doesn't want to be left out of that conversation.

"There comes a time when you’re getting attacked constantly that you have to hit back and educate voters," Stubenrauch said. "This is a 35-point race, and we want to keep it that way."

And the new ad also sends a message: DeWine is willing to spend money in the primary, forcing Taylor to do the same. DeWine and running mate Jon Husted have more than $10.5 million in the bank. Taylor and running mate Nathan Estruth have $3.5 million on hand – much of it from their own bank accounts.

Taylor's campaign has another theory: "They are scared about the way this race is going," Duchesne said.