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So a guy who put his own skin into the game to the tune of 75K should be written off?
True he needs to crank up the fundraising for adds and such, but that's not a show stopper in my opinion.
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Putting your own money into the campaign is fine. But he isn’t the only one doing it. Gibbons and Timken have both loaned their own campaigns a lot more money AND have way better success getting donations from folks. Mandel has a lot of cash on hand and continues to fundraise well, too.
Your point about ads being expensive and thus one needs money for them is well made. Ohio is a big state with multiple expensive media markets. Shoestring campaign isn’t viable. If it were, Melissa Ackison would’ve done better in the 2018 GOP US Senate primary (she came in third behind Renacci and Gibbons).
One of the initial talking points about Pukita was that he had built up his business and then sold it for like $90 million. Folks thought that translated into, “Rich candidate who can and will self-fund.” We have seen little evidence of that with this quarterly filing. Might he throw millions into his campaign account later? Sure, but why wait? Even a loan (which he could pay himself back) of a cool million would’ve lent his cause credibility. One is left to wonder, “Does this guy really have the cheddar?”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying only rich guys can run. But if ya ain’t rich, then you’d better be good at getting folks to open their checkbook for your campaign. At this moment, he seems to be neither. That’s disconcerting.
Then there’s guys like Moreno and Vance floating around in this mix. Both able to self-fund AND have lots of friends with money. Heck, a single donor dropped $10 million into Vance’s super PAC. How does a guy like Pukita compete with that? Ye olde Mercedes RV??? Yeah…nah….
I get it, folks WANT to believe that a dark horse candidate can win. And on rare occasion they even do, like when Brat beat Cantor. But that is the exception to the rule. If somebody thinks they are the exception then they better be explaining how. To date, I haven’t heard that from Pukita.
Here is another way ya can tell who is in the “outsider lane” and making waves. Mandel is trying to elbow others out from that lane, which is a bit amusing for as long as he has been in politics. Nevertheless, I haven’t seen a single attack from Mandel towards Pukita. I have seen a SLEW of them directed at Vance. Show me who is being attacked and I’ll show you who is feared, Mandel fears Vance; Mandel doesn’t even know that Pukita exists.