Enough Promises Ohio, which was created last month, has spent a combined $1.58 million to promote Greg Levy and oppose Brown, according to recent filings from from the Federal Election Commission. Levy, a candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is also on the ballot in the tight race for Senate between Brown and Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted. He’s running a long-shot bid, currently polling at 5%, but could siphon away more progressive voters from Brown.
The super PAC spent a total of $828,359 on mailers supporting Levy or opposing Brown. Spectrum News, The Washington Post and Axios previously reported Enough Promises Ohio spent $400,000 on such mailers, but the expenditure has since grown.
The group also poured an additional $753,000 into ads supporting Levy and opposing Brown over the weekend, including one video ad on Google that knocks Brown as someone who “sold us out” and boosts “real progressive Greg Levy.”
Levy himself has distanced himself from the PAC, calling its boosting of him an “attempted deception of voters” that’s “a form of digital blackface.” Levy is Black. His spokesperson, Charlie Koenigsmark, also told POLITICO that he and the campaign “completely condemn this attempt to manipulate voters.”
Speaking of which: Democrats absolutely refuse to do things on a state level that would actually help them, like Ranked Choice Voting. For every third party voter, democrats can run on “we’ll kick back, relax, and do nothing in office” as usual, but people who want the greens and want to keep the GOP out at all costs will simply not rank the GOP and rank dems last. There, now dems can be the semi-retired do-nothings they always wanted to be.
Ranked choice voting does not help democrats, it creates opportunity for third parties which removes power from both the democrats and the republicans. Even in short term there are also third parties who take votes from republicans. I haven’t seen any data that suggests that third party voters on average prefer democrats over republicans.