For Immediate Release: Friday, December 14, 2018




OHIO GRASSROOTS WILL NOT ACCEPT PADUCHIK AS TRUMP OHIO CAMPAIGN HEAD FOR 2020

Akron, OH:  Today, Tom Zawistowski, President of the Ohio TEA Party organization, the We the People Convention, and Executive Director of the Portage County TEA Party, reacted to the news that former RNC Co-Chairman Bob Paduchik was picked by President Trump's re-election campaign to oversee the President's Ohio campaign for 2020. Paduchik was brought in at the last minute to head up Trumps successful Ohio Campaign in 2016.



Zawistowski said, "In a typical Washington Friday news dump, it was announced today that Bob Paduchik was "picked" by Trump's re-election campaign to oversee the Ohio 2020 Campaign. The fact is that Paduchik was fired from his position at the RNC because the President and his staff finally recognized that Paduchik was not on his side. Paduchik has made a very profitable living taking full credit for the Trump victory in Ohio in 2016, but the fact is that he greatly exaggerated his role in that victory in order to gain the President's trust. Since being named Co-Chairman of the RNC as a reward, he has actively worked to defeat state and federal candidates who supported Trump, he lied to the President about Mike Gibbons as the potential Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, he encouraged the President to endorse and support candidates in Ohio and elsewhere who are in fact anti-Trump, and he has blocked qualified pro-Trump applicants for jobs in the Administration. In short, Paduchick is an anti-Trump Republican Establishment operative who worked in the Bush Administration, and for the Bush campaign in 2004, and who ran the campaign for RINO Senator Rob Portman. We want nothing to do with Bob Paduchick in Ohio and we will not work with him if he remains involved with the Trump campaign."



Zawistowski continued, "On Tuesday, our organization took out a full page ad in the Washington Times with the headline "Mr. President, what ever made you think that We the People expected you to do this alone?" The purpose of the ad was to message the President that he and his advisors must engage and communicate with the grassroots if he is going to survive and win re-election in 2020. This move to put Paduchik in charge of the 2020 Ohio re-election campaign is a perfect example of how the President and his advisors are making critical errors because they are not connected to the people on the ground who elected the President in the first place. The fact is that establishment Republicans like Paduchik and Reince Priebus and others have undermined this President starting the first week after the 2016 election when they advised him to support Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House. Since then they have succeed in walling off the President from communicating with his base and the result has been that a full two years into his Presidency he has yet to take control of his Administration. We are hopeful that the President will choose Mark Meadows to be his new Chief of Staff as a sign that the President now recognizes who really are his friends and who are his enemies."

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