The smears in Ohio’s gubernatorial race have been coming fast and furious lately, and it was only a matter of time before they officially became silly. I think it’s safe to say we reached that point over the weekend.<\/p>\n
It started last week when Gary Lankford, hired by the Ohio GOP in July as its “social conservative coordinator,” sent an email<\/a> to an undisclosed group of GOP supporters — with instructions to forward it to others — accusing Dem candidate Ted Strickland and his wife of being gay. Lankford was eventually fired and the state GOP distanced itself from the email.<\/p>\n Now, however, Lankford’s old boss, the Rev. Russell Johnson, is following up<\/a> with some innuendo of his own. (via TPM Caf\u00e9<\/a>)<\/p>\n …Johnson perpetuated the rumor by suggesting that the Stricklands file a lawsuit and go to court to prove they are heterosexuals<\/b>. If Lankford\u2019s claim is untrue, Johnson said, “It\u2019s slanderous and they\u2019ve got a case. I\u2019m withholding judgment until the facts are in.” (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m not quite sure what Rev. Johnson has in mind, but how, exactly, would the Stricklands prove their sexual orientation to Johnson’s satisfaction?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The smears in Ohio’s gubernatorial race have been coming fast and furious lately, and it was only a matter of time before they officially became silly. I think it’s safe to say we reached that point over the weekend. It started last week when Gary Lankford, hired by the Ohio GOP in July as its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}