Buckeye State Republicans last cycle thought they had Kaptur on the ropes after they utterly transformed her formerly safe seat, but all that changed after Majewski unexpectedly beat Riedel 36-31 in the primary. Kaptur and her allies, as we recently detailed, soon launched a series of commercials highlighting the nominee’s presence at the Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol (Majewski claims he never actually entered the Capitol building) to argue he was a danger to law enforcement. Democrats also utilized ran ads highlighting Majewski’s ties to QAnon, his pro-secession comments, and him rapping in a video titled “Let’s Go Brandon Save America.”
National Republicans still stuck with the badly funded Majewski until September, when the AP reported that military documents showed that their nominee, an Air Force veteran who had previously said he “lost my grandmother when I was in Afghanistan,” had never been stationed in the country. The NRCC quickly canceled its planned TV spending and left the self-described “combat veteran,” who was beset by more unflattering stories about his actual military career, to fend for himself.
Majewski continued to insist that he’d been honest about being in Afghanistan despite all available evidence to the contrary, and he was hardly deterred by his double-digit loss in November. “Last cycle we started a movement,” he stubbornly declared Wednesday, adding, “This cycle we win.”
