Ohio

I’m helping put together a local Democratic event so will tell you all a little about what’s going on in Ohio politics.

On the R side, we have Vivek Ramaswamy. I’m regularly told by online Democrats who don’t live here that Ramaswamy will never win because he is Indian American. Nonsense. It’s a basic misunderstanding of MAGA to continue to insist (despite all the evidence right in front of our faces) that MAGAs won’t support ethnic or religious minorities. In fact, they will be DELIGHTED to do so because it owns the libs. Unless someone strong jumps in Ramaswamy will be the GOP nominee and if he’s the GOP nominee and Democrats can’t field a very strong opponent he will be the next Governor of Ohio. Perfect really, because Ramaswamy and his entire family are crooks and Ohio is horribly corrupt.

We have two candidates coming to the D event – Dr. Amy Acton, who is running for governor and Dr. Bryan Hambly, who is running for Secretary of State.

 Dr. Acton ran the Ohio response to the Covid epidemic so the media and the Right targeted her with vicious attacks. She was jeered at by many sophisticated and savvy political actors for saying Covid had infected 100k Ohians when she took over – the total for Covid in Ohio is 3,449,990 cases with 42,299 deaths. She was right on the money with her 100k initial infection estimate, but you know, girls aren’t good at math so media and Republicans dismissed her warning.

The second candidate is Dr. Bryan Hambley, for Secretary of State. Dr. Hambley lives in Cincinnati about three hours from my town in NW Ohio, so he and his driver are staying overnight at my house after the event. I’ve gotten to know him a little. He has an interesting story. He grew up in rural Indiana, modest means. Eli Lilly is based in Indianapolis and they offer a scholarship to talented Indiana students that pays tuition and costs to any Indiana college where the student is admitted. Bryan was admitted to Notre Dame, where he attended on the Lilly scholarship and met another Lilly scholar, his now wife. He’s an oncologist (blood cancers) and his wife, Jana, is a trauma surgeon.

Bryan is earnest and super smart and wonderful and honestly this corrupt Trumpy state doesn’t deserve such a high quality hire, but I’ll do what I can.

It’s an odd feeling to just go forward with ordinary political organizing in the midst of a fascist coup where the 1^st and 4^th Amendments have been de facto suspended. I always wondered about that when reading about coups in other places – do people just keep going? Yes. They do. We. We do.