On Sunday, three Democrats running in the Ohio governor’s race, including former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, spoke at an event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim group with ties to the terror organization Hamas and involved in a terror-funding scheme.
“Join CAIR-Columbus for a Governor Candidate Forum starting at 2:00 PM at the Dublin Community Recreation Center on Sunday Feb. 11th! Doors will open at 1:30,” read an announcement at Progress Ohio.
The event included three candidates for governor: state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, former state Rep. Connie Pillich, and former Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Former Congresswoman Betty Sutton represented former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. Sutton is his running-mate.
CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding case by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to radical Islamist terror.
It is still early in the race, but Cordray holds an early lead. In a January poll conducted by Fallon Research, Cordray, who recently resigned as head of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, led with 23 percent, and Kucinich took second place with 16 percent. Schiavoni took four percent, and Pillich two percent. Bill O’Neill, former justice of the Ohio Supreme Court who recently resigned to run for governor, took three percent. A whopping 52 percent remained undecided.
O’Neill grabbed the spotlight last November following the sexual assault allegations against Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). He released a statement claiming to have been “sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females.”
Hilariously, O’Neill claimed to have slept with “a gorgeous personal secretary to Senator Bob Taft (Senior),” but the way he phrased the release made it seem like he was claiming to have had sex with the senator himself.
O’Neill may end up a joke candidate, while the other more serious candidates have willingly partnered with CAIR.
CAIR’s founder, Nihad Awad, claimed last December that President Donald Trump was “empowering Christian religious extremism.” He pointed to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which many previous presidents had promised to do. Coming from such an organization, that claim seems ironic indeed.
If Democrats wanted to reach out to a Muslim group without any terror ties, they could have teamed up with the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. The group’s president, M. Zuhdi Jasser, is a devout Muslim but emphatically rejects the ideology behind radical Islamic terror. He called for the Obama administration to call a spade a spade on Islamist terror, in the interest of empowering peaceful Muslims.
It seems Democrats in Ohio are doubling down on identity politics, and teaming up with Islamists rather than patriotic Muslims. Perhaps this will bode well for Republicans in November…
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