Just 22 days to go until the election and what is the Trump campaign doing in the state on top of their “must-win” list? Attacking Ohio Republican Party chief Matt Borges of course.
Understand how successful the Ohio GOP has been in recent elections. Republicans hold every major statewide office and have huge majorities at the statehouse. But Matt Borges is a loyal supporter of Gov. John Kasich, and he hasn’t been overwhelmed by Trump or his campaign. And that has really, really bugged the billionaire from New York City.
The animosity started back in August when Trump bumped Ohio’s GOP delegates — the hosts of the national convention in Cleveland — from their usual front row seats to against the back wall behind the Pennsylvania delegation. It was in retaliation of Kasich’s refusal to jump aboard the Trump Train.
In fact, it was a petty and childish move against the one delegation Trump must have working for him in order to have any chance of being president.
Fast forward to 22 days before the election when Trump’s Ohio director Robert Paduchik fired off a two-page hate letter aimed at Borges. The GOP chairman in the state you must carry.
You can’t make this stuff up.
“It’s no great secret that Chairman Borges was never fully on board, but his actions over the last week demonstrate that his loyalties to Gov. John Kasich’s failed presidential campaign eclipse his responsibility as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party,” said Paduchik in the letter. “The chairman is also driven by an apparently insatiable need for publicity.”
Paduchik announced that Borges no longer represents or speaks for Trump and “he no longer has any affiliation with the Trump-Pence campaign.”
Seriously? This is the biggest concern of Paduchik with the Trump campaign on fire and needing Ohio to have any chance of winning?
If you need any evidence that the Trump campaign is likely to go down in a big, bright orange fireball this is it.
What prompted Trump’s most recent anger is a Borges quote asking when this “nightmare” election would end. It is a question many battleground Republicans have been asking privately, but Borges had the guts enough to say it publicly.
The Trump camp, if they knew what they were doing, would have kept smiling and encouraging Borges and the Ohio GOP operation to keep helping. No Republican nominee in the history of our nation has ever won the White House without first winning Ohio’s electoral votes. If Trump can’t carry Ohio, he will never be president. Thus why the attack on Borges doesn’t “seem to make much sense” in the words of national GOP strategist Kevin Madden.
Trump had an edge in all the major polling in the Buckeye State for months. The general consensus was that white working class voters in traditionally Democratic areas had abandoned Hillary Clinton. But then a tape surfaced of Trump making lewd and vulgar comments about women.
In Ohio, perhaps more than any other battleground, you could hear the momentum quickly begin to shift.
Almost immediately Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman condemned Trump’s comments and announced they were not voting for him. Kasich had skipped the GOP convention in Cleveland, and Portman rescinded his previous endorsement.
Then the conservative editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch, for the first time in 100 years, endorsed the Democratic nominee, saying Trump “has proved himself a liar of epic proportion, he is a bigot, a braggart and an admirer of foreign thugs.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer, in the southwest corner of Ohio where Republicans must win big to carry the state, had previously endorsed Clinton calling Trump “a clear and present danger to our country.”
Trump and Paduchik have bigger fires to put out than attacking the state GOP chairman who is the least of their concerns. It is becoming clear that the Buckeye State could very well make Trump a dreaded “loser” on election day.
Pick up a copy of Jim’s book Front Row Seat at the Circus to learn more about why Ohio is such a critical battleground state in presidential elections.