Democrats Prepare To Roll Out Wave of Messaging Targeting Jim Jordan’s Baggage

As Republicans struggle to gather enough votes to elevate Congressman Jim Jordan to the speakership, Democrats are getting ready to release a wave of messaging focusing on the conservative ahead of the high-stakes 2024 election.Democrats are already hammering Mr. Jordan for his alleged involvement in President Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election results, with liberals like Congressman Adam Schiff, who oversaw the impeachments of Mr. Trump, leading the charge.“Jordan would preside over the counting of electoral votes in the next election,” Mr. Schiff said in a statement. “After he was deeply involved in trying to overturn the last one. Just when you think they can’t be more irresponsible, they prove you wrong,” he said, referring to Republicans.A former District of Columbia police officer who was wounded during the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol told the Associated Press of Mr. Jordan that he “is an insurrectionist who has no place being second in line to the presidency.”Mr. Jordan is also being attacked again over his tenure as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University in the 1980s and ’90s. He has been accused of looking the other way when it came to sex abuse of team members by a doctor. Since 2018, more than 400 victims of abuse at the university and their families have filed lawsuits against the university. Ohio State fought to quash these lawsuits, until the conservative Supreme Court allowed them to move forward earlier this year.Seven former wrestlers, Tito Vazquez, Dan Ritchie, Mike Flusche, Mr. Yetts, Shawn Dailey, Mike DiSabato, and Mike Glane, have accused Mr. Jordan of being aware of the sexual abuse and not takinge action on the issue.“He is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on,” Mr. DiSabato told NBC News in 2018, adding that Mr. Jordan asked him at the time to “please leave me out of it.”In 2020, the brother of Mr. DiSabato, Adam DiSabato also testified to the Ohio state legislature that Mr. Jordan had “called me crying, crying. Groveling. On the 4th of July, begging me to go against my brother,” accusing Mr. Jordan of asking him to refute his brother’s claims against Mr. Jordan in 2018.Mr. Jordan’s office has responded to these allegations, dismissing the testimony in a statement to Newseek as “another lie,” and insisting that the congressman “never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had he would have dealt with it.”Congresswoman Elise Stafanik seemingly addressed these claims on the House floor Tuesday, saying that Mr. Jordan had been a fighter for those in committees and “on the wrestling mat,” drawing an audible gasp from people in the room.While more details on the Ohio State allegations could come out in litigation, which was recently allowed to go forward by the Supreme Court, it’s clear that Democrats already intend to use Mr. Jordan’s nomination for speaker and his potential speakership for political messaging ahead of 2024.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee circulated a memo to House Democrats ahead of a speaker vote Tuesday, titled, “Messaging Guidance on GOP Extremism Under a Potential Speaker Jordan.”“It appears there are no more moderates left in the Republican conference capable of standing up to the far right,” the memo reads. “Jordan will only win the speakership if so-called ‘moderates’ continue to cave and get him there.”The memo goes on to cite eight issues, including the 2020 election and the Ohio State allegations, Democrats can use against Mr. Jordan, such as his alleged support for cuts to Medicare, and his support for a national abortion ban.Other talking points include Mr. Jordan’s refusal to comply with subpoenas related to his alleged role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, accusations that he has espoused “talking points associated with the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory in ofﬁcial government hearings,” which Mr. Jordan denies, and his role as a founding member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.The director of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, Larry Sabato, called the move a “gift” to Democrats, adding that Congressman Hakeem Jeffries “must write a warm appreciative thank-you note.”House Democrats have also fanned out to send the message that they are planning to take advantage of the support for Mr. Jordan within the GOP conference.“If he becomes the face of the Republican House of Representatives, while Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party, I think that a lot of people will vote for Democrats,” Congressman Brad Sherman said in an interview with Forbes. “Unfortunately, so many of the Republicans would rather have the worst possible Speaker than to get a good Speaker working along with Democrats.”Republicans like the former speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, have pushed back, attempting to blame Democrats for the GOP’s inability to elect a speaker and telling Fox News, “Every single Democrat voted to stop one branch of government, they created this mess with eight Republicans.”

Democrats Prepare To Roll Out Wave of Messaging Targeting Jim Jordan’s Baggage

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