As expected, Cleveland businessman Mike Gibbons will run for the United States senate seat to be vacated by Rob Portman next year. Gibbons, a Republican, was one of four prospective candidates vying for the favor of Donald Trump at a secret Mar-a-Lago meeting last month, which Politico documented in detail. The others in attendance were Jane Timken, Josh Mandel and Bernie Moreno.
Gibbons, like Trump and Moreno, is a businessman, not a politician, a status he wields in the opening seconds of an introductory video, (above). He is the managing director of a private investment firm located in downtown Cleveland and calls himself "blunt, plain spoken" and someone who "[tells] it like it is."
Gibbons hails from Parma originally and says that he started his business when he was 37 years old. He has since achieved financial success "beyond [his] wildest imagination." He wants to create an America where others can do the same. According to Gibbons, that means supporting the second amendment and pro-life legislation while battling "cancel culture," (sure to be an ongoing refrain on the Republican campaign trail.)
“I believe that families matter, churches matter, neighborhoods and small towns matter,” he declared.
Cleveland.com reported wryly Wednesday that Gibbons' video used stock footage which had been filmed in both Russia and the Ukraine to illustrate the America he was so proud of.
Gibbons' company, the financial advisory firm Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, happens to be located at One Cleveland Center, which is one of the Cleveland skyscrapers owned and operated by the Optima network. Optima was was ultimately controlled by Ukrainian oligarchs who allegedly laundered hundreds of millions of dollars through U.S. real estate interests.
Gibbons joins a clown-car field of Ohio senate candidates that continues to fluctuate. In addition to Timken, Mandel and Moreno, venture-capitalist Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance will likely soon enter the GOP fray. On the Democratic side, congressman Tim Ryan looks poised to announce his candidacy soon.
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Sam Allard is the Senior Writer at Scene, in which capacity he covers politics and power and writes about movies when time permits. He's a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and the NEOMFA at Cleveland State. Prior to joining Scene, he was encamped in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on an...
