Two months ago, I had never even heard of Tom Ganley, until I saw his name in the newspaper in regards to this race. I started doing some research and was pleasantly surprised at what I found. Tom is a very strong pro-life/pro-family Catholic from Cleveland. He is a self-made businessman who put himself through school and built the largest automobile dealer operation in the state of Ohio. He is married to his grade school sweetheart and has four wonderful children. Tom is a small businessman who has taken one AMC Rambler dealership in the 1960s and turned it into an empire employing over 2000 people. He has lived the American dream and he wants to make sure more of us get to live the dream as well.That is an excerpt from an email sent out to some folks from the campaign manager. We received it from one of our sources and thought it was substantial enough to talk about.
As you'll see in the coming weeks and months, Tom is a big supporter of the second amendment and is very tough on crime and corruption. In fact, his work with the FBI and as the head of Crime Stoppers in Cleveland earned him the Lou Peters award, which is the highest honor bestowed by the FBI on a civilian. Tom has a gigantic heart and his philanthropic endeavors are legendary. I am convinced you will be pleasantly surprised, as I was, once you get to know this man. I also believe his bipartisan support in the Cleveland community will be his ace in the hole to win the General election in 2010.
Tom Ganley is not a career politician. He is a small businessman who understands how to create jobs. Tom Ganley knows how to get us out of the economic situation facing our country because he has done it. I believe Ohio is thirsty for solutions, not more of the same. Typically a person with no political background would have a difficult time finding the resources to get his message out in a statewide race. Fortunately God has blessed Tom with the resources to eliminate this problem. People who underestimate Tom Ganley will do so at their own peril. This is a man who is quite accustomed to winning life's challenges.
Our friends in Columbus can't be too happy about this and it wouldn't surprise me if there have already been a few of those "Have you considered running for dog catcher?" conversations. Ultimately, the party has little control over whether or not this guy runs because it appears he is capable of self-financing a campaign and so long as he is willing to do so, he calls all the shots.
Apparently the Ganley name is a pretty big deal in the Cleveland area. We'll just have to wait and see if this is going to be a Cleveland-only campaign or if this is going to be a full-blown 88-county race. I think Ganley has the bigger challenge in this regard because he is new to politics and Portman has built himself up quite an organization across the state.
The positive that I see in this is that there is somebody in the race now so we can finally start asking Rob Portman some serious questions on policy...
UPDATE: I see Kyle is hearing some things too...
UPDATE 2: I have heard that the NRSC is solidly behind Rob Portman. Question: Is that good or bad?
