The fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville Police last year came up in the Ohio Republican Senate race on Saturday.
As 300 Republicans dined on pancakes in the suburbs north of Cincinnati in Sharonville, five Republican Senate candidates outlined why they should succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman.
Venture capitalist and "Hillbilly Elegy" author J.D. Vance spoke first and slammed Republicans he viewed as apologetic in the wake of Louisville Police shooting Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, in her apartment on March 13, 2020. Vance didn't mention any Republicans by name.
Vance didn't mention Taylor by name, but described the case as a shooting in Louisville where police shot a woman after the woman's boyfriend had shot at police.
"It was a shootout with an unfortunate outcome and very few national Republicans were honest about it," Vance said in his address to the Ohio Republican Pancake Breakfast. "Everybody was apologizing for it. Everybody was sort of defensively accepting the idea that the police were at fault."
Vance praised the keynote speaker for the event, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
Cameron's handling of the investigation has sparked controversy. No police officers were charged with Taylor's death and only one officer faced charges of wanton endangerment for shooting into a neighbor's house.
Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at police with a legally owned handgun, hitting one officer in the thigh. He has said he didn't know it was the police who were entering, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. Charges against Walker were dismissed.
Vance, in his speech about standing up against the "mainstream narrative," looked across the Ohio River to Kentucky's Republican attorney general as an example of courage.
"We need somebody who is just honest about the fact that what happens when a violent criminal opens fire on the police is that the police should open fire back to protect our people and to protect our communities," Vance said.
Mandel focuses on religion
Former Ohio treasurer and Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel returned to the Cincinnati area for the breakfast five days after getting kicked out of a Lakota School Board meeting a few miles north in Butler County.
Mandel didn't talk about schools or mask mandates.
Instead, he spoke about religion. Mandel has courted the evangelical vote in churches across the state.
He related the story about his Jewish grandparents in Poland and Italy surviving the Holocaust and World War II. This included a network of Christians in Italy who gave refuge to his grandmother, Mandel said.
He then described himself as a "warrior for religious liberty."
"America was founded and grew strong on those Judeo-Christian values, not radical Muslim values, not atheism, but Judeo-Christian values," Mandel said.
Timken touts Trump
Former Ohio Republican Chair Jane Timken touted her support of former President Donald Trump in her pitch for the Republican nomination. She said she took on the establishment in 2017 with the support of Trump.
She then talked about the need to stop illegal immigration, which she blamed for the spread of drugs and human trafficking.
"We need to secure the border," Timken said. "President Trump was right, we need to build that wall."
Moreno: 'Closing schools is child abuse'
Cleveland area car dealer Bernie Moreno spoke about growing up as an immigrant from Colombia. He mused about the road that led him to a Senate campaign. He said his opposition to the restrictions and shutdowns of businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic last year led him to run.
"I kept saying this is wrong, you are going to destroy small business," Moreno said. "You're going to send the working class back generations, and closing schools is child abuse. Yet those same policies continue today."
Gibbons rails against "wokeism"
Mike Gibbons, an investment banker from Cleveland, talked about his humble upbringing in the Cleveland area. He brandished his blue-collar bonafides of odd jobs he worked when young, including, working at a greenhouse and pouring concrete.
"I’ll be the only senator that will know who can finish your driveway," Gibbons said prompting laughter and applause.
He then turned his ire on President Joe Biden, Democrats and "elites" and "wokeism."
"The administration, media and elites of our country are pushing a Marxist creed called wokeism that wants to divide our country on the basis of race, class and creed," Gibbons said.
Louisville Courier-Journal reporters Tessa Duvall and Darcy Costello contributed.
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