Social media erupted last week over Democratic Ohio attorney general candidate Elliot Forhan’s 40-second video post.
“I want to tell you what I mean when I say that I am going to kill Donald Trump,” Forhan said.
Forhan explained he would do it through a hypothetical scenario in which he successfully tries and convicts Trump of (unspecified) crimes “resulting in a sentence duly executed of capital punishment.”
Whatever possessed the former one-term state representative to call for Trump’s death through the legal system is anybody’s guess. But tossing a lit match into the tinderbox we all collectively inhabit is crazy dangerous — especially from a candidate who aspires to be Ohio’s top law enforcement official.
Obviously, Forhan went for clickbait over measured dialogue and succeeded in making himself national news for all the wrong reasons. He provoked an online firestorm that screamed retorts from “evil psycho” to “this guy belongs in an insane asylum.”
Even GOP Texas U.S. Sen Ted Cruz weighed in on the unhinged Facebook rant.
“These people are nuts. Genuinely deranged,” he said.
Current state Auditor Keith Faber, a Republican campaigning to replace term-limited Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, howled about Forhan’s “vile comment.” Faber immediately called on other Democratic candidates to castigate Forhan who, Faber said, showed “just what kind of individuals the Democrats are running for attorney general.”
Long-time Columbus lawyer John Kulewicz is also a Democratic candidate for Ohio AG and actually appears to be the preferred, if not yet endorsed, choice of the Ohio Democratic Party.
Kulewicz rightly condemned Forhan’s comments as “disgraceful” and stressed that the “serious responsibility” of the state’s chief legal officer to enforce laws and influence lives with broad authority is “not a political game.”
The abhorrent rhetoric of Kulewicz’s primary opponent provided an opportunity for Ohio Republicans to cast aspersions on other Ohio Democrats by extension, like a post by Alex Triantafilou, chair of the Ohio Republican Party.
“Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown (running for governor and U.S. Senate respectively) are just the next two extreme Democrats who want to fool Ohio families into believing that they are not part of the extremism wing of the Democratic Party. Ohioans will not be fooled. For Attorney General Ohioans must support Keith Faber over this diabolical lunatic.”
The Republican frontrunner for Ohio governor, Vivek Ramaswamy chimed in with a dig at his Democratic opponent.
“This is what Amy Acton and the Ohio Democrats implicitly endorse. Utterly shameless,” Ramaswamy said.
Forhan’s stunt seems like a social media post generated for shock value. It is not the first time he has courted controversy. Forhan sparked backlash for alleged “abusive behavior” in the Ohio House three years ago and was removed from his own Democratic caucus for a “pattern of harassment, hostility and intimidation of colleagues and staff.”
The 40-year-old has a rocky history that just added another disturbing chapter. His latest exploit raises major questions about his suitability for the attorney general role — and it should.
But the track record of any candidate angling for that position in state government deserves close scrutiny to meet the bare minimum standard of integrity, independence and impartiality necessary to uphold the rule of law and protect the rights of Ohioans.
We should expect judiciousness from the AG we hire in November not provocations to score political points. Faber, the current Ohio auditor, deliberately waded into partisanship with a recent op/ed in the Columbus Dispatch that justified the Minneapolis killing of Renee Good by a masked federal agent days after Alex Pretti was gunned down in another shooting death of a U.S. citizen by federal agents. Bad timing. But Faber still played fast and loose with facts about Good’s death—as if frame-by-frame images of the lethal shooting didn’t exist.
Instead, he parroted Trump talking points about Good that are demonstrably false and scoffed at portrayals of the dead woman as an innocent mother and poet.
“She panicked and accelerated her vehicle into a law enforcement officer,” Faber claimed despite video evidence showing Good trying to turn away from the agents.
He declared “she did not have the right or any justification to interfere with law enforcement” and inferred, like Team Trump, that the victim was to blame for being shot in the head at close range as she tried to drive away.
“Her death did not have to happen,” deduced Faber, who suggested it could have been avoided if Good had complied with federal stormtroopers in the street. “One would hope lessons would be learned,” he concluded.
It was a stunningly tone-deaf screed unmoored from reality. Like a Facebook post that went viral about killing Trump via capital punishment.
Forhan’s reprehensible garbage gave Faber cover for his. Candidates in both political parties running for AG stoked division and hate to get a rise out of their base. But they also did Ohio voters a favor with the reveal about their judgment before ballots are cast for a job based on discernment.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.
