Josh Mandel Could Win Ohio

State Treasurer Josh Mandel is the Republican nominee for Senate from Ohio.  He is running against incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown.

Republicans’ ability to do many things after the election—e.g., repealing Obamacare—will depend in part on getting a majority (or possibly filibuster-proof supermajority) in the Senate.  Will they have a majority?  It could go either way.  It may depend on Mandel in Ohio and a handful of other races.

Real Clear Politics currently reckons the outcome of the election at 46 Democrats, 46 Republicans, and 8 toss-ups.  As of this writing, Intrade puts the odds of either (a) Republicans having a majority or (b) the Senate being split 50-50 and Republicans having the White House (vice president breaks any tie) at 54%.

(Intrade puts the odds of Democrats controlling in like manner at 26.4% and “Neither Party to control the Senate” at 24.9%.  Under Intrade’s rules, “any Senate seat held by an Independent who caucuses or votes with the Democrats will be considered Independent and NOT a Democratic seat.”  Real Clear Politics counts them as Democrats, noting, “Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) & Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) currently caucus with the Democrats and former Gov. Angus King is likely to caucus with the Democrats if he wins the open Maine seat in November.”)

So the Senate could go either way.  Does Mandel have a chance of winning his seat?  Is the incumbent vulnerable?

Take a look at Real Clear Politics’ rolling average of different organizations’ opinion polls.  Over the last two months, Josh Mandel has closed the gap from ten and a half points (48.5% for Brown, 38% Mandel) to 3.6 points (46.2 to 42.6).

Click for interactive version on Real Clear Politics’ site.

So yes, I think Mandel has a shot.

Your support could even be part of what pushes him over the top.  Take a look at his Web site, Jobs.JoshMandel.com, and learn more about him.  I think you’ll like what you see.

Here are three quick reasons to support Mandel:

1 — Josh Mandel would simplify and reform the tax code and reduce federal overregulation, freeing businesses to create more jobs.  On regulations:

Even though the Code of Federal Regulations already contained 163,000 pages of federal rules in 2009, scores of new job-killing regulations were still promulgated from Washington each of the past three years.

There’s no way we need that much regulation.  It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that people cannot be held accountable for breaking the law if there is no way they could have known what it was before they broke it.  How would you like to read a 163,000-page book before you can start a business?

On the tax code:

More than 1 in 4 IRS employees, including IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman himself, admits to using a paid tax preparer instead of doing their own taxes.

By some counts, compliance costs alone cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year.  In other words, if the federal government just switched to something simple like a flat tax, it could potentially tax us 20% less and still take in just as much revenue as it does now.

2 — Josh Mandel supports adding a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

Under Senator Brown, the federal government has borrowed more than a third of every dollar it spends for the last three years in a row, as even this source (which tries to give conservatives no quarter) agrees.  Over time, these deficits add up to a mountain of debt, which may reach a tipping point after which we will never again be able to keep up with the interest payments.  See, e.g., this.  We’re already spending 6% of the federal budget on interest payments alone, and I’m told that that’s at historically low interest rates.

3 — Josh Mandel supports fully repealing Obamacare.

Senator Brown is still bragging that he “played a key role in developing and achieving passage of” Obamacare.

Ohioans voted against Obamacare two to one in 2011.