OH-Sen: Quinnipac Has Ted Strickland (D) & Rob Portman (R) Tied At 42-42

Latest news out of Ohio today courtesy of Quinnipac:

Ohio's U.S. Senate race is in a dead heat, with incumbent Republican Rob Portman and Democratic challenger Ted Strickland each polling at 42 percent, according to a poll released Wednesday.

The Quinnipiac University poll is one of a number of surveys in recent months that show the two candidates tied or Strickland ahead by a very narrow margin.

Wednesday's survey, however, shows Strickland's approval rating dropping since the last Quinnipiac poll of the race in May. Strickland, a Columbus Democrat, received an unfavorable rating from 42 percent of those polled in the new survey, while 38 percent had a favorable opinion of him.

Last month, Strickland got a favorable rating from 37 percent of voters surveyed by Quinnipiac, compared to 31 percent who disapproved of him.

Meanwhile, Portman, a Cincinnati-area Republican, has a job approval rating of 44 percent, compared to 32 percent to disapprove of his performance in office. Last month, 35 percent of voters polled gave him a favorable approval rating, while 22 percent disapproved of him.

"The Ohio Senate race is unusual because it is the rare situation in which the challenger, former Gov. Ted Strickland, is better known than the incumbent being challenged. Only 19 percent say they don't know enough about Strickland to form an opinion of him, while 34 percent, one in three voters, say they don't know enough about Sen. Rob Portman," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement.

Here are the full results:

Gender, age and racial gaps mark the Ohio U.S. Senate race. Portman leads 46 - 37 percent among men, 48 - 36 percent among white voters and 51 - 34 percent among voters over 65 years old.

Strickland leads 46 - 39 percent among women, 69 - 15 percent among non-white voters and 46 - 27 percent among voters 18 to 34 years old.

Ohio voters give Portman a 44 - 32 percent job approval rating and 39 - 25 percent favorability rating.

Strickland gets a negative 38 - 42 percent favorability rating.

Voters approve 44 - 30 percent of the job Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is doing and approve 58 - 32 percent of the job Gov. John Kasich is doing.

Ohio voters are divided on President Obama as 48 percent approve of the job he is doing and 50 percent disapprove, his best score in three years.

Quinnipac conducted it’s poll from June 8th to June 19th and surveyed 971 Ohio voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points. That’s quite a big gap of time to poll this race. As for why Strickland is better well known than Portman, it’s because because of all the dark money coming into Ohio:

Dark money has played a much larger role in the Ohio Senate contest than average for the 2016 cycle. Across all races, dark money groups - 501(c)(4)s and (c)(6)s - have spent $37 million of the over $400 million spent so far, so about 9.2 percent of outside spending this cycle. Of the $15.5 million spent by outside groups in the Portman-Strickland faceoff, 23 percent has been spent by dark money 501(c) organizations — two-and-a-half times the cycle’s average. Most of that has come from the coffers of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the national business lobbying group, and from Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the 501(c)(4) controlled by the Koch brothers.

Eighty-five percent of the $10.3 million that conservative groups have spent attacking Strickland has come from three groups: a super PAC, the Fighting for Ohio Fund; AFP; and another Koch-backed group, the super PAC Freedom Partners Action Fund.

The Koch brothers, through AFP and Freedom Partners, have spent more money - $5.5 million - trying to sway voters in Ohio than they have in any other race this cycle. The billionaires have said that their network of nonprofits will spend $250 to $300 million on politics during the current election cycle, but pledged not to involve themselves in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination. Instead, expenditures on the Ohio Senate race account for 46 percent of the money spent by these two major Koch organizations this cycle.

Like other 501(c) groups, AFP doesn’t have to report its donors, making it a major source of dark money in the last two election cycles. In 2012, AFP spent $33.5 million on anti-Obama attack ads. So far this cycle, AFP has spent only $1.9 million to sway voters. About $1.7 million of that went for ads attacking Strickland. (The remaining $200,000 was spent on attacks against Trump-backed Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.), who lost her primary to fellow Republican Rep. George Holding.)

Freedom Partners Action Fund, the only super PAC that’s explicitly part of the Koch network, has spent $3.75 million attacking Strickland. The super PAC, which is connected to Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a major dark money 501(c)(6) in the Koch network, has also used $30,000 to attack Clinton, and $2.9 million to go after Katie McGinty, the Democrat challenging Sen. Pat Toomey (R) of Pennsylvania.

Another major anti-Strickland organization: the Fighting for Ohio Fund, which has spent $3.3 million against him. The super PAC has drawn $250,000 apiece from megadonors Paul Singer and Kenneth Griffin, and $400,000 from several members of the powerful Lindner family of Cincinnati. Fighting for Ohio has also received $500,000 from Freedom Vote, Inc., a 501(c)(4) outfit in Dayton, Ohio. Freedom Vote’s executive director, James S. Nathanson, was linked to the 501(c)(4) Citizens for a Working America, which spent $2.4 million aiding conservatives during the 2012 cycle, including nearly $1 million benefiting GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

On top of all this, significant amounts of dark money are being spent to help Portman but aren’t being reported to the FEC. For instance, the Karl Rove affiliated dark money (c)(4) One Nation announced earlier this month that it has spent $6 million aiding Portman so far; none of it has shown up in the FEC’s database. That’s possible when a group frames its ads as “issue ads“ that don’t explicitly ask the public to vote for or against a candidate.

David Bergstein, communications director of the Strickland campaign, says that conservative groups are spending heavily because the rich donors who donate most to them have benefited from his policies. “Portman has been a consistent vote and voice for the rich and powerful, and they’re spending a lot of money to try to keep him in Washington,” Bergstein said in an interview with OpenSecrets Blog.

Now Strickland and Ohio Democrats are highlighting some key issues in their attacks against Portman that could make a big difference in this race. First, there’s Donald Trump:

Former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland says his one-time rival Gov. John Kasich has “moral integrity” for holding off on any endorsement of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump is a wild card, and I think totally inappropriate to be the president of the United States, and Sen. Portman is supporting him,” Strickland told reporters at an event at Print Syndicate, a downtown Columbus business best known for its t-shirts depicting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“Unlike John Kasich, who has the moral integrity, I think, to really question whether or not this man should be in the presidency, Rob Portman has not shown that kind of hesitancy.”

Last week, Ohio’s Republican governor told multiple reporters that he would not support Donald Trump unless the businessman had a conversion of biblical proportions.

Portman knows Trump is toxic that’s why instead of being at the GOP convention, he’ll be doing this:

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman plans to spend time restoring inner city homes in the Buckeye neighborhood during the Republican National Convention.

Portman and fellow RNC participants will help Habitat for Humanity use $250,000 in donations to repair Grandview Avenue residences from July 18-20.

The senator faces a tough re-election race in the fall against former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, and has distanced himself from the hoopla of a Donald Trump convention.

Portman supports Trump, but hasn't taken an active role in the billionaire's presidential bid. The senator in April told USA Today that he expects to spend "very little" time inside the convention hall.

A cheerleader for Cleveland's 2016 RNC bid, Portman said he plans to participate in the convention, and that he looks forward to showing Cleveland off to the world.

Then there’s guns:

Ohio Democrats seized on the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass gun control measures to attack incumbent U.S. Rob Portman (R., Ohio), who voted with his party in the mostly party-line votes, and who is embroiled in a tough re-election fight with former Ohio Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland.

Mr. Strickland said Mr. Portman “displayed an astounding lack of courage, and he has failed this test of leadership.

“I believe there can be no reasonable disagreement about common sense gun safety measures like banning suspected terrorists from buying weapons, but Senator Portman disagrees, and in the process Portman has shown once again how out-of-touch he has become with the people of Ohio,” Mr. Strickland said, according to the prepared statement distributed by his campaign.

And Portman's feeling the heat because he’s going to vote for this:

Ohio's Republican U.S. senator expressed interest Tuesday in a compromise gun control measure being offered in the aftermath of defeats this week of other legislation.

Rob Portman said he hadn't seen the final language in Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins' bill meant to block guns from suspected terrorists. Locked in a tight race for re-election, he was criticized by Democrats for his votes Monday against broader gun control measures.

"I'm very interested in finding common ground here because I do think there is a consensus now among Democrats and Republicans for two things," Portman told reporters. "One, that any known or suspected terrorist should not get a gun, but second, that there needs to be a true due process to be able to determine whether you're properly on the list."

Collins' measure would let federal authorities bar gun sales to two groups: the no-fly list with 81,000 people and the selectee list with 28,000 people. Selectees can fly after unusually intensive screening.