McCain, Christie campaign for Ohio GOP candidate

JULIE CARR SMYTH

AP State­house Correspondent

COLUMBUS — For­mer Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date John McCain offered his first U.S. Sen­ate endorse­ment of this elec­tion cycle, com­ing to Ohio to throw his sup­port behind fel­low mil­i­tary vet­eran Josh Man­del in a cam­paign heav­ily sup­ported by GOP national interests.

McCain said Mon­day that Man­del, a 34-year-old state trea­surer seek­ing to unseat Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Sher­rod Brown, “rep­re­sents the new gen­er­a­tion of lead­er­ship” needed to con­trol spend­ing, improve the econ­omy and boost national security.

“Josh Man­del believes in integrity, he believes in the care­ful stew­ard­ship of the taxpayer’s dol­lar,” McCain said dur­ing an event at the VFW in Hilliard.

Polit­i­cal heavy­weights and lots of cash from out­side Ohio are rolling into the crit­i­cal bat­tle­ground state ahead of what will be one of the nation’s most watched U.S. Sen­ate races. New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed and raised money for Man­del out­side Cleve­land on Mon­day, as Sen. Marco Rubio had done earlier.

The early vis­its by well-known Repub­li­cans will serve as a boost to Man­del, who doesn’t have nearly the name recog­ni­tion of Brown, who was first elected to Con­gress in 1992 and served in statewide office and at the State­house before that.

Brown’s cam­paign crit­i­cized Man­del for lax atten­tion to his job, includ­ing miss­ing the first 14 meet­ings of a pow­er­ful deposit board he chairs and trav­el­ing on a week­day to the Bahamas for a Sen­ate fundraiser.

“Josh Man­del can bring in one big name Repub­li­can after another and raise as much money as he wants from Wash­ing­ton insid­ers and spe­cial inter­ests, but it won’t change the fact that he’s not doing his job, can’t be trusted, and isn’t on the side of Ohio’s mid­dle class,” said cam­paign spokes­woman Sadie Weiner.

Both cam­paigns have been impres­sive in their fundrais­ing abil­ity so far, lean­ing heav­ily on donors and out­side groups beyond Ohio’s bor­ders. Brown raised $6.5 mil­lion through mid-February, while Man­del raised $5.8 mil­lion over the same period, accord­ing to cam­paign finance reports reviewed by The Asso­ci­ated Press.

Man­del had col­lected well over half of his indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions — about $2.8 mil­lion — from peo­ple out­side Ohio dur­ing that period.

Most of Brown’s indi­vid­ual con­tri­bu­tions dur­ing the same period came from in-state donors, but he also received nearly $1 mil­lion from polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees based out­side the state, includ­ing many national labor unions.

Brown’s cam­paign said last week it had $6.3 mil­lion on hand fol­low­ing the first three months of this year. Man­del had not yet released his lat­est cam­paign finance reports, which are due this week.

Those totals don’t include money com­ing in from out­side groups, such as for­mer Bush strate­gist Karl Rove’s GPS Cross­roads, which is run­ning ads favor­ing Mandel.

Brown’s cam­paign sent out a fundrais­ing let­ter last week telling sup­port­ers that spe­cial inter­ests have spent $5 mil­lion on attack ads against them. “We are fac­ing the largest spe­cial inter­est spend­ing gap of any Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign in Amer­ica,” the let­ter said.

McCain, a U.S. sen­a­tor from Ari­zona who lost his bid for the White House in 2008 to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, praised Mandel’s char­ac­ter on Mon­day and defended him against crit­i­cism he’s neglected his state job to pur­sue higher office.

He said out­side rat­ing agen­cies val­i­date Mandel’s han­dling of the state treasury.

“As long as he’s doing his job, and the judg­ment of his peers is that he’s doing an excel­lent job, then I don’t think the vot­ers are con­cerned about that,” McCain told The AP after an endorse­ment event. “They rec­og­nize that you’ve got a cam­paign (going on). I’m sure Sen. Brown will be miss­ing votes this Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber as he cam­paigns for his own re-election.”

McCain said Mandel’s two tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine make up for his youth and rel­a­tive polit­i­cal inex­pe­ri­ence. Man­del was elected to the Lyn­d­hurst City Coun­cil at age 26 and later served in the state House for four years before he was elected trea­surer in 2010.

“I found in my own case, and that of my son Jim, there’s very few things as matur­ing as serv­ing in com­bat,” McCain said.

Posted by AP News on Apr 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.