Richard Cordray’s Struggling Ohio Gov Campaign Faces Growing Criticism From The Left

Embroiled in a divisive primary race with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich for the Ohio Democrat gubernatorial nomination, Washington D.C. Bureaucrat Richard Cordray is receiving growing criticism from the left as he struggles to unify Democrat voters. The American Prospect recently published a scathing column blasting Cordray’s campaign for repeating past mistakes by Ohio Democrats who have “offered almost nothing in the way of concrete economic platforms.”

The column notes Cordray’s lack of any substantive policy agenda despite having “more than a year” to plan on running where he could’ve developed one while also emphasizing that Cordray “can’t count on his personal story” to defeat primary opponents like Dennis Kucinich.

John Russo writes in the American Prospect:

“After two decades of losses, you might think that the Ohio Democratic Party would have figured that out. But for the most part, it has not. Instead, the current crop of Democratic candidates has focused on critiques of Trump, Kasich, and the Ohio legislature. They’ve raised concerns about gerrymandering and voter suppression, the opioid crisis, Ohio’s pitiful record on women’s issues, and the almost uniformly bad performance of for-profit charter schools. Valid concerns all, but the Democrats running for office in 2018 have offered almost nothing in the way of concrete economic platforms.

The website of gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, for instance, features only biographies of him and running mate Betty Sutton and a button to donate. It’s not as if he hasn’t had time to develop a coherent policy agenda, since he has been planning to run for governor for more than a year. Nor does the website identify any specific plans for addressing Sutton’s ‘kitchen table issues’: jobs and wages, education, health care, and a secure retirement. Cordray has raised considerable money, but he can’t count on his personal story to defeat primary opponents like Dennis Kucinich, the former congressman and mayor of Cleveland.”