Greg Levy’s Ohio Senate campaign has been pulled into a conservative spending push that his team says it did not seek. As of Oct. 19, Enough Promises Ohio had spent over $1.5 million on ads and mailers promoting him, and some students said the outreach left them unsure who was behind it.
The scale of the spending is the clearest fact in the dispute. Politico reporting said the PAC used the money on ads and mailers, while Levy’s campaign said it was not connected in any way to Enough Promises Ohio or other conservative organizing efforts and would have declined the funding if it had been offered.
Oct. 19 spending total
Campaign Manager Chaz Koenigsmark said the strategy was meant to mislead voters. In an email to The Oberlin Review, he said, “These tactics are designed to confuse voters and discredit our movement.” He also said, “The establishment is using a two-pronged attack: first, a deceptive mailer to create confusion and associate our campaign with their dirty tricks; second, the ‘spoiler’ narrative to blame us for their own failures and create a wedge between socialists and the broader working class.”
The spending detail matters because it was not limited to one format. Enough Promises Ohio paid for both ads and mailers, and the mailers used Levy’s likeness and campaign promises. That combination made the materials harder for some students to sort out than a simple campaign handout.
Levy mailers in Oberlin
Students who received the mailers said they could not always tell whether the outreach came from Levy’s campaign or from Enough Promises Ohio. Savannah Wright said she had seen misinformation about whether the campaign endorsed the funding or knew it was happening. She said the campaign had stated that was not the case and that it did not support the spending.
Wright also said the mailers upset her because people supporting Republican campaigns and Jon Husted’s campaign could divide the Democratic vote and make Husted more likely to win. Her comments show how the mailing campaign landed with voters who were already weighing Sherrod Brown and Greg Levy in Ohio.
Zosia Mateja and Holly Swiglo
The dispute followed an Oct. 9 opinions piece in The Oberlin Review by Zosia Mateja and Holly Swiglo, who called on students to vote for Sherrod Brown over Levy. Their piece and the PAC spending now sit on opposite sides of the same race, with Levy’s campaign rejecting any connection to the outside money.
What remains unresolved is how Enough Promises Ohio chose the messaging and distribution strategy for the Levy mailers. For students deciding what to believe in the final stretch, the practical task is simple: treat the sender and the campaign as separate unless the material clearly shows otherwise.
