OH-Sen: This is simply one of those "we can't do better than the headline" moments:
Senate candidate Jim Renacci uses strip-club owner's private plane to campaign in Ohio
And still, several details make this story even weirder and more problematic than even the headline alone can convey. For starters, the club owner, Don Ksiezyk, didn't just loan his plane to Renacci: He's a licensed pilot in his own right and appears to have repeatedly ferried Renacci around the state himself, according to flight records that the Columbus Dispatch matched with the dates and times of Renacci's campaign events as shown in his Twitter feed.
In fact, it appears that Ksiezyk served as aerial chauffer to Renacci at least two dozen times, and possibly more. We can't know the true total, though, because Renacci's campaign has refused to offer any substantive comments, and Ksiezyk won't talk at all. However, we do know that Renacci has reimbursed Ksiezyk just $2,500 for the 13 flights he took in the first half of the year, which of course is far less than it would cost to fly this many times commercial, let alone private. (The other dozen or so flights have taken place since July, a period for which Renacci has yet to file campaign finance reports.)
Renacci's campaign against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was already going poorly: He trails badly in the polls, and outside Republican groups are doing almost nothing to help him. But why should they? As this latest development shows, he's not doing much to help himself, either.