Joe Blystone Is Your Typical Ohio Republican

It's been a treat watching establishment Republicans treat him like he's anything other than one of them.

Joe Blystone is a fake cowboy farmer from Canal Winchester who is seeking the Republican nomination for Ohio Governor in 2022. And who can blame him after we all watched a cartoonishly corrupt New York City fake billionaire’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party and successfully recasting it as a workers’ party?

Blystone catapulted onto the scene during Mike DeWine’s “shutdown,” which lasted one month and wasn’t a shutdown at all before he capitulated to the armed militias who staked out Dr. Amy Acton’s house in Bexley, causing her to resign.

This was tyranny to a man with the kind of brain required to campaign against a “socialist takeover of Ohio” while accepting $133,476 in Paycheck Protection Program money from the federal government.

Despite running on his acumen as a businessman, Blystone has only raised a paltry low-six figures in fundraising money and his campaign has been a total clownshow.

From theohiostar.com, which is a right-wing astroturf blog that nonetheless got former campaign staffers to speak on the record:

The core of his campaign staff have either been fired or quit,” writes Jeff Seibert, the former southwest Ohio regional leader, in an August 4 email to other staffers and ex-staffers announcing his resignation.

Later in the email, he writes, “Joe does not like to be questioned, he doesn’t like to hear anything unpleasant; only what he wants to here.”

Sarah Chambers, the former co-campaign manager, said she quit July 7 after seeing Blystone disrespect too many “good-hearted” volunteers. She added that the campaign also remains unorganized in terms of responsibilities.

“I think the campaign is imploding because things aren’t being done right,” Sarah Chambers of Westerville tells The Star. “People are continuing to fall off daily.”

She adds, “I saw too many people treated wrongly. There’s no integrity there.”

Still, I often talk about the “hog mentality” of Ohio’s populace. And nobody better exemplifies that mentality than Republican primary voters, who, again, are dumb enough to believe that DeWine’s pandemic response that killed nearly 21,000 Ohioans equates to tyranny.

So, naturally, there has been an establishment-funded, astroturfed pushback against a campaign from a clown in a cowboy hat who likes to host campaign events at Shaker’s Public House, a biker bar on Georgesville Road across from Columbus’ Casino, where his Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidate totally wasn’t drunk:

Joe Blystone Facts @joe_blystone

Ole Joe said his running mate Joanna wasn't drunk at that event, that she hadn't had a drop of alcohol... Sure...

The latest line of attack is pushing a photo of Blystone wearing blackface at an undated event that probably happened sometime around Halloween, which you can see in the header photo at the top of the article. It’s hilarious that this is supposed to hurt Blystone among Republican primary voters after years of their politicians decrying “political correctness” and “cancel culture.”

There’s a 99% chance Blystone won’t win the nomination since he’s an amateur running an amateur campaign (not that I would know anything about that). But make no mistake: He is the perfect example of what the Republican Party has become in Ohio. He would be welcomed with open arms into the DeWine camp if he kissed the ring and made the obligatory five-figure donation to his campaign.

Instead he’s trying to usurp DeWine’s throne, and Republicans will do their worst to bury one of their own.

Rest easy, Joe Blystone. We hardly knew ye.

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