Jim Renacci's lack of advertising in Senate race increasingly alarms Ohio Republicans

Rep. Jim Renacci's marked lack of advertising during this year's Senate race increasingly has caused alarm in Ohio Republican circles.  (Sabrina Eaton, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Past Senate races in Ohio have been a slugfest on the airwaves, marked by tens of millions of dollars spent by Republicans and Democrats.

But to the alarm of Ohio Republicans, when it comes to political advertising, this year's race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and his GOP challenger, Wadsworth Rep. Jim Renacci, has been a dramatically one-sided affair. It's led them to question whether Renacci has thrown in the towel, if he's waiting for national support that hasn't arrived, or if he's simply reluctant to part ways with the $4 million of his own money he's loaned his campaign.

"Jim's good on social media. Jim's good on getting around the state. But I can tell you that many people in the social conservative movement have asked me directly, 'How come we haven't seen Jim on TV?'" said Mike Gonidakis, a Republican lobbyist who leads Ohio Right to Life, a prominent anti-abortion group that has endorsed Renacci. "I don't have an answer to tell them. But I think it's noticed far and wide."

"Let me be clear," said Nick Everhart, an Ohio Republican political strategist who works on races across the country. "In 2018 you absolutely are not going to win a tier-one U.S. Senate campaign against anyone in the country, let alone as tough a political candidate as Sherrod Brown without using the most powerful communication and advertising tool on earth -- paid TV."

Heading into this election cycle, Republicans saw the Ohio race as an opportunity to unseat Brown, who has grown increasingly prominent in national Democratic circles. They saw Trump's surprisingly large victory here in 2016 as the latest sign of Ohio's move to the political right. But as the race has unfolded, Republicans increasingly have grown discouraged with the campaign Renacci has run -- namely, the widening disparity in the money spent by each campaign.

Since the May primary, Brown has spent or reserved more than $12.5 million on TV and radio ads, according to Medium Buying, a political media firm Everhart founded. That's roughly 25 times more than Renacci, who during the same period has only spent $481,000 on a single flight of ads that ran in June on cable TV across the state.

For comparison, in 2012, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, a strong fundraiser, spent around $12 million on broadcast advertising when he unsuccessfully tried to unseat Brown. That doesn't include the tens of millions of dollars outside groups also spent on ads supporting him. Those same outside groups largely have been silent this year, passing over Ohio's race for other Senate races seen as more competitive.

For months, Ohio Republicans have waited anxiously to see if Renacci, a multimillionaire who largely has self-financed his campaign, would begin TV ads. But as election-calendar milestones have passed without any ads, frustration from Ohio Republicans has grown. Accordingly, Renacci has struggled to gain traction since President Donald Trump's political team recruited him to get in the race. Public polls -- including separate polls released last week by a pair of nationally respected firms -- generally have shown him losing by at least 10 points, while showing other statewide races as a toss-up or even a slight edge for Republicans. In turn, national Republican groups largely have written the race off as a loss.

Renacci's campaign declined to share details of its strategy. In a statement, spokeswoman Leslie Shedd said: "Our campaign has the resources we need to win in November."

Mark Weaver, another Republican strategist in Ohio, said it takes millions of dollars to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator, particularly one as well-known and entrenched as Brown.

"I think a lot of people are concerned that the numbers are not narrowing," Weaver said. "The closer we get to early voting, the more troubling it is."

Republicans had hoped that Renacci's spending would pick up after Labor Day, viewed as the unofficial start to the final leg of any political campaign. They assumed an August fundraiser, headlined by Trump, would give Renacci a financial boost he'd need to begin advertising in earnest. But with early voting beginning on Wednesday, there's still has been no sign of what he plans to do.

One Ohio Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity said donors and party officials have expressed their frustration to Renacci and his campaign directly.

"There are a lot of people who are upset because if this was Josh Mandel, this thing would be a nail-biter, number one in the country," the Republican said.

Another Ohio Republican said: "I think there's a lot of conversation of late that's sort of referencing whether Renacci's campaign has thrown in the towel. I think there are lot of folks who are wondering whether Jim's campaign ever even picked up the towel."

A spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party declined to comment for this story.

A silver lining for Republicans -- if there is one -- is that Brown's performance in polls hasn't changed much since he began airing commercials in May, despite the dramatic disparity in advertising. They still see a chance for Renacci to possibly narrow the gap with a more aggressive campaign strategy, especially as polling has begun detecting increased Republican enthusiasm amid the ongoing controversy surrounding the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Right now there's a golden opportunity to kind of capture the anger among Republicans in how Kavanaugh's been treated... but that would require Renacci to either raise some money or put in his own money in," said a Republican in Washington D.C. close to Senate races across the country. "If the tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

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