Ohio Republicans doing damage control after Trump 'assault' on Goodyear infuriates workers: report

According to a report from the Associated Press, Republicans in Ohio have their work cut out for them after being hit with the double whammy of Donald Trump attacking one of the biggest employers in the state while popular former Republican Gov. John Kasich led a chorus of high profile GOP officials endorsing his opponent, Joe Biden.

With Trump's re-election hopes hinging on hanging onto Ohio's 18 electoral votes, this past week has been a disaster for the Ohio Republican Party whose job it is to deliver victory to the president.

Reporting, "One of their best-known politicians threw his support behind Democrat Joe Biden, their Republican state attorney general challenged the Trump administration, and the president took on an iconic Ohio company in an area of the state where loyalties to job security ran higher than to party four years ago," AP adds, "With early voting set to begin in less than seven weeks, Democrats are enthused about their possibilities in a state crucial to Trump, one he carried by 8 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s a striking turnaround for a party that just last year was wondering if the one-time swing state had moved out of its reach."

One of the biggest problems they face is the president's attack on Goodyear which employs over 65,000 workers in a state already hungry for jobs to come back.

"Trump’s call Wednesday to boycott Akron-based Goodyear Tire while inaccurately claiming the company had announced  a ban of MAGA hats gives the party new material as it tries to return struggling blue-collar workers to the fold who Trump did surprisingly well with in 2016." the report explains. 

According to Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, "... it’s too soon to predict whether Trump’s assault on Goodyear Tire & Rubber, an integral part of Akron’s 'Rubber Capital' history, will cost him among northeast Ohio auto industry voters who backed Trump in 2016," however Democrats and union officials have already seized upon it.

"I’ve never seen anything like this,” explained Bill Conner, a United Steelworkers union local official in Akron, adding that Trump's boycott demand hurts “an American company, American workers.”

As Kondik noted, "Trump is still favored to win Ohio, but faces a 'significantly closer' race than before. Democrats note even without winning Ohio, they are forcing Trump to use resources and time that could have gone to other battlegrounds to defend it."

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