This week the Ohio Democratic Party sent out two postcards attacking candidates for Dayton City Commission.
The postcards target Shenise Turner-Sloss and Darryl Fairchild. They’re both Democrats, but aren’t officially endorsed by the party.
One of the ads is dark red, and reads in bold letters, “Don’t Trust Shenise Turner-Sloss.” It shows a Tweet from the local Democratic Socialists chapter endorsing Turner-Sloss.
The other ad features a graphic with a bullet hole, and says Turner-Sloss and Fairchild oppose measures to keep Dayton residents safe from violent crime.
At the bottom of the ad is a link to a Dayton Daily News article. The article describes Commissioner Fairchild’s vote against renewing the city’s contract with California tech company ShotSpotter.
Shotspotter is a gun-shot detection technology that immediately alerts Dayton police to the location of a shot. These microphones are exclusively placed in West Dayton, a predominantly Black community.
Fairchild said the grant money used to fund the technology should have gone towards neighborhood development. Many Black community activists and leaders agree, and have spoken out against Shotspotter. They say the technology is ineffective at reducing gun crime and leads to over-policing of Black neighborhoods.
The Ohio Democratic Party said in a statement on Thursday that these ads violated several of their mailer policies.
“ODP Chair Elizabeth Walters has spoken with both candidates listed on the mail pieces in violation and offered her apologies for ODP’s role in the mistake,” Spokesperson Matt Keyes said in the release.
The party says the ads were sent out by mistake and should never have been submitted by the county party in the first place.
Mark Owens, however, disagrees. He is the chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Party, and says he doesn’t see anything wrong with the postcards.
“Sometimes ads can be tough,” Owens said. “These are the consultants trying to get people's attention. I mean, people can make their decisions on whether these things, mailers, or ads, whatever, on their own, that they can make their own decisions.”
Owens said they contracted with an individual from Columbus to design the ads. While he didn’t see the red ad, Owens says the ShotSpotter ad was completely factual, despite localand national reports calling its efficacy into question.
“The police say ShotSpotter improves the safety of our neighborhoods, and the other two do not want to give police departments the ability to improve the safety of the neighborhood,” Owens said. “There’s some opposition to [ShotSpotter]... I know that the NRA pushes out those findings.”
Several state politicians have spoken out in support of Fairchild and Turner-Sloss, including state Senator Nina Turner.
In every way this is unacceptable. It’s deliberate, destructive and decisive. It certainly is a reminder of the lengths some corporatist Dems will go to destroy progressives.
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) October 24, 2021
In a statement released Tuesday, the Ohio Young Black Democrats called the ads “racist dog whistles,” and said they “unfairly crush progressive, diverse candidates.”
“This dirty tactic further exposes deep-rooted racism in our party and speaks to the lengths Democrats will go to attack each other versus actually delivering on issues affecting working communities,” they said.
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