Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel can’t stop obsessing over gender and pronouns
Republican candidate tweets jabs at trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming community to bolster conservative credentials.
Josh Mandel, considered the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate election, recently mused several times about gender identity and pronouns as he seeks to position himself as the preferred choice of social conservatives.
An internal poll from Remington Research Group released by Mandel’s campaign in June found that the 43-year-old former state treasurer leads the field with 35% of the vote, ahead of Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken, who earns 16% of the vote, and venture capitalist and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, who stands at 6%, with 34% of likely Republican voters saying they are undecided. In a head-to-head matchup with Timken, Mandel leads 45%-22%.
Yet despite leading the field in his own internal polling, Mandel has sought to rally Republican voters behind his cause, doubling down on his commitment to social conservatism by attacking political correctness, the so-called “radical left,” the media, “Big Tech,” advocates of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the transgender and gender-nonconforming community.
“I just saw they/them in someone’s bio. What in the world does that mean?” Mandel tweeted on July 21.
I just saw they/them in someone’s bio. What in the world does that mean?
— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) July 21, 2021
Three days later, he followed up that tweet with another reading: “There are only 2 genders. Science.”
There are only 2 genders. Science.
— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) July 24, 2021
The following day, he tweeted: “Stop the insanity. There are only 2 genders. Boys. Girls.”
Stop the insanity.
There are only 2 genders.
Boys 🙋🏻♂️
Girls 🙋🏽♀️https://t.co/5fur06fZwo— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) July 25, 2021
The next day, he tweeted: “Male and Female. That is all.”
Male and Female.
That is all. pic.twitter.com/5nz4JwLWY4
— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) July 26, 2021
See also: CPAC speaker proudly tweets about rejecting her transgender child
As the Washington Examiner reported, Mandel has focused his campaign on a Trump-aligned brand of cultural conservatism, attacking the “secular Left” as the source of the country’s problems and calling for a “Judeo-Christian revolution” in the United States.
“The secular Left is waging a war right now on faith, and they’re trying to water down the Judeo-Christian bedrock of America,” Mandel told the right-wing newspaper in an interview. “We should be doubling down and instilling belief in God in the classroom, in the workplace, and throughout society.”
A former Marine reservist and state representative before serving as treasurer, Mandel previously ran for the Senate in 2012 against Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), but ended up losing by five points. He launched a campaign to challenge Brown again in 2018, but dropped out of the race before the primary.
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