Huge Ohio Crowds Greet GOP Wunderkind Running In Nation's Most Critical Senate Race

by Larry O'Connor 

This picture is the Obama Campaign's worst nightmare.  

This photo sends chills up Harry Reid's spine.
This photo could shift the tide of voter demographics in the critical wowing state of Ohio for the next decade.
This is the crowd that turned up for US Senate candidate Josh Mandel who is running to defeat Obama stalwart Sherrod Brown.  Mr. Mandel, Iraq War veteran and Ohio State Treasurer, was set to introduce Mitt Romney in Chillicothe. Over 5,000 filled the center of the south central Ohio town and greeted Mandel with a rousing Buckeye embrace.

Harry Reid's SuperPAC, SEIU, AFL_CIO and radical environmental groups have lined up against Mandel's candidacy because they know what a young, conservative US Senator like him can do to the future prospects of Ohio's electoral power.  With John Kasich reforming the state in Columbus and rising star Rob Portman already representing Ohio in Washington DC, the young Mandel could change the face of Ohio politics for a generation.

Add to the fact that Mandel is a practicing Jew and Ohio has a significant Jewish population that has grown increasingly wary of the Democratic Party's schizophrenic stance on Israel, and you have a potentially game-changing senate race brewing in the next 2 1/2 months.
Polls show the race to be a dead heat right now, with the incumbent Brown unable to push to a majority. Mandel famously went door-to-door in his very Democratic leaning district when he ran for (and won) a state assembly seat.  If that kind of energy and aggressive spirit continues against the relatively laconic Brown, Romney might end up thanking Mandel for handing him Ohio, and a GOP majority in the Senate.