Complete Story
05/19/2016
Negative ads don't always convey accurate message
All he remembers is it was T-shirt weather in the fall of 2015. He drove up to Wilmington, Ohio, a city on I-71 north of Cincinnati, from his small town about 25 miles from the Ohio River.
He popped in to see a friend, and there was the video camera crew. They were asking about his friend’s job loss at the big DHL facility — one of 7,500 jobs back in 2008.
Botts had lost his job there, too. It was the most difficult chapter of his life, so he was asked to tell his story.
He said he gave them lots of details, but can’t recall who the video production team said hired them or what they would do with his story.
Botts wasn’t seeking fame. He didn’t sell his story. “I just put it out of my mind until someone said, ‘Hey, I saw you on TV,’” said Botts, who partly blames former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland for not doing more to stop the closure.
What he said was enough, though, for a super Political Action Committee, funded by big donors who don’t live in Ohio, to string together pieces of truth that left out lots of important facts in order to take a right hook at Strickland, a Democrat, running against incumbent U.S. Sen. Rob Portman.
