Poggione Quoted on Establishment Republicans Rallying Behind Gonzalez

Dr. Sarah Poggione

Dr. Sarah Poggione, Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Ohio University, was quoted in a Center for Public Integrity story headlined “Negative Energy: An Ohio legislator defied energy lobbyists. Then a “dark money” group helped sink her congressional campaign.”

Christina Hagan, a state representative who was running in the Republican primary for Ohio’s 16^th Congressional District seat, said a group called the Conservative Leadership Alliance targeted her with a barrage of attack ads after she declined to support legislation that electric company FirstEnergy, based in Akron, Ohio, had lobbied her to help pass….

Sarah Poggione, associate professor and chair of the department of political science at Ohio University, said establishment Republicans rallied behind Gonzalez, and they spent significant money to back him, because they saw Hagan as especially formidable.

“Both sides were seeing this as really competitive, and the possibility that either one could potentially take it,” Poggione said.

Read more at the Center for Public Integrity.