State treasurer gets Ohio GOP Senate nomination

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Ohio Repub­li­cans picked a first-term state trea­surer as their U.S. Sen­ate nom­i­nee Tues­day and deliv­ered easy vic­to­ries to a host of GOP con­gres­sional incum­bents, includ­ing House Speaker John Boehner.

Trea­surer Josh Man­del eas­ily won a six-way Repub­li­can pri­mary. He will face Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Sher­rod Brown in November.

Vet­eran U.S. Reps. Marcy Kap­tur and Den­nis Kucinich were jock­ey­ing for the lead in a closely watched bat­tle for a newly drawn con­gres­sional dis­trict link­ing Toledo and Cleve­land along the Lake Erie shore­line. Kap­tur had a 16-point lead with 62 per­cent of the votes counted. Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzel­bacher was trail­ing his oppo­nent, Toledo real estate agent Steve Kraus, on the Repub­li­can side of the race.

In a new Colum­bus dis­trict, for­mer state Rep. Joyce Beatty was hold­ing a slim lead over for­mer U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kil­roy with three-fourths of the votes counted. Two other pri­mary con­tenders were trailing.

The Demo­c­ra­tic face­offs resulted from a revamped con­gres­sional map that shrunk the state by two con­gres­sional dis­tricts, from 18 to 16. Under leg­isla­tive Repub­li­cans who con­trolled the process, only four of the dis­tricts were drawn to favor Democrats.

Repub­li­cans avoided their own pri­mary in south­west Ohio, with U.S. Rep. Steve Aus­tria decid­ing not to run again in a dis­trict shared with U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, the for­mer mayor of Day­ton. Turner joined Boehner among incum­bents who won their pri­maries Tues­day. Oth­ers included Pat Tiberi, Steve Stivers, Bob Gibbs, Bill John­son, Bob Latta, and Mar­cia Fudge.

Also vic­to­ri­ous in his pri­mary was for­mer U.S. Rep. Char­lie Wil­son, who lost his bid for a third term in 2010.

In south­west Ohio, U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt was trail­ing rival Brad Wen­strup, an Iraq war vet­eran. Wen­strup lost in a close race for Cincin­nati mayor in 2009.

Man­del said he was hon­ored to win the Sen­ate primary.

“We look for­ward to putting together a coali­tion of Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans and inde­pen­dents to win in Novem­ber, and go shake up Wash­ing­ton,” he said.

Ohio Democ­rats have crit­i­cized Man­del all year, includ­ing say­ing he has neglected his job as trea­surer to run for Sen­ate. Man­del points to the treasury’s pos­i­tive fis­cal per­for­mance as evi­dence he was pay­ing attention.

Posted by AP News on Mar 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.