Trying to be offensive wastes voters' time

We're back in campaign season (at the newspaper we're sort of always in campaign season) and we're looking at more national, regional and local election efforts that veer into controversy. Locally, this week we saw Jim Hoops' campaign for the Ohio Senate District 1 seat decrying a false photo that Craig Riedel's campaign for the same seat included on mailers sent to residents (both are running in the Republican primary). The photo in question was a manipulated image of Hoops posing with three people who appear to be drag queens flanking him. The mailer goes on to try and draw connections between Hoops and the "woke transgender left," whatever that actually is. In the original photo, Hoops is standing by his wife, a mayor and a state representative. When asked about the falsified image used in campaign mail, Riedel's campaign representative dodged the question and instead used the opportunity to double down on claims against Hoops. This is nothing new. Campaigning has always been like fighting a war, and has often relied on manipulation of public perspective. But it seems that trying to offend has become the major technique of modern political effort. Both Riedel and Hoops have political and occupational experience that matters greatly to voters for this race, and each has represented and advocated for this region of Ohio before. But mailers like these don't talk about these candidates' thoughts about public vs. private education, or their ideas for solving the local childcare crisis. It reduces everything to a soundbyte, more dumb than simple, in this case. Riedel's campaign meant for that photo to stir up simple, emotional controversy, hoped it would. People being offended, people being offensive, these are now politicians' munitions. We rarely go beyond this into policy discussion, because for a lot of new-age politicians, it doesn't appear that they're worried about having platforms built on policy. It's more about who can strike harder across the bow, who can dish out the most epic slam, to use a millennial parlance. We're only singling out Riedel because he and Hoops are vying for a state Senate seat that represents Findlay and Hancock County, and many of our readers have likely seen the mailer in question. You can look anywhere in America right now, on either side of the political spectrum, and find the same tactics. We're tired of hearing politicians and pundits tell us who's more and less "woke." We want to know when politicians are going to start solving our housing crisis in Northwest Ohio, and we want to know how they're going to advocate for policies that make our groceries more affordable. We want answers to real problems, not people trying to stir up fake ones. The Courier editorial board