The America First Marine combat veteran running to represent Ohio-13 in Congress told RedState he is doing so because of national security threats facing the country.
“A lot of the work I've done overseas is partnering with and working with other entities to support their nation or defeat our enemies,” said Christopher Banweg, who continues to serve as a colonel in the Marine Reserve.
“When we use these lines like: ‘We're bleeding Russia with Ukraine at the expense of $160 billion, we're not bleeding Russia. We’re bleeding,” said the Hudson, Ohio, city councilman.
Banweg said his specialty has been in military-political and government stabilization operations. “I'd been focused on counterinsurgency through civil affairs and intelligence work for the last probably 20 years,” he said.
“To keep it simple, it's not if we should be there; it's how we should be there. We should not be bankrupting ourselves. There's a better way,” said the Akron, Ohio, native, whose father was born in an Austrian refugee camp. His paternal grandfather was there with his wife after he escaped a Communist work camp in Yugoslavia.
Banweg said the U.S. government granted his grandparents refugee status.
"They came over on a U.S. Navy ship with three wooden boxes and started life, so I joined the Marine Corps because growing up, I had a really good appreciation of what lived outside of our nation's borders," he said.
The colonel said he had two deployments to Afghanistan, and the third was with a Marine Raider-led combined joint special operation task force out of Baghdad with missions throughout the Middle East.
Banweg said a leader in the state legislature asked him to run in Ohio-13, challenging Democrat Rep. Emilia Sykes, but he demurred. The district is like a north-south column that sits roughly 20 miles south of Cleveland, includes all of Akron, and runs all the way down Route 77 to Canton—home of the NFL Hall of Fame.
“She asked me to pray and reflect on it, so I asked my wife and my kids, and I said: ‘Hey, we're being asked to do this,’ this is not something I aspire to,” he said.
After three overseas tours, the family was not enthused, he said. “Their initial response was: ‘No, you've been gone too much. We want you home—they had said no, and they came back a couple days later and said: ‘You need to do this.’”
Banweg said when he takes office in January 2025, he has his eyes on two primary problems: first China and then federal spending and inflation.
“It's not just direct competition with China,” he said. “Unfair trade, undermining our economy, pumping the sources of fentanyl into the borders.”
The city councilman said China will not be satisfied until they have destabilized the world and America’s place in the world.
"That affects the global economy, which trickles down to our domestic economy, so there's a whole bag of challenges with China," he said. "China's not a competitor, they're an adversary."
Banweg said the damage federal spending and inflation have done to the economy are also a national security threat.
“The way we're managing our budget — inflation, overspending — guts out the strength that we have as a nation to be able to go to or support national defense,” he said.
Vance endorses Banweg for Ohio-13
The combat veteran also received a key endorsement from fellow Marine Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance.
“As a businessman and battle-tested leader, Chris Banweg will be someone I trust to get things done northeast Ohio,” Vance said.
"I am endorsing Chris because America needs fighters who deliver policies that cut inflation, secure our borders, and deliver high-quality jobs for Ohio families. I am glad to see him taking on this challenge," the senator said.
Banweg said Vance’s endorsement is a validation of his approach to the campaign.
“I'll say that DC and our nation's trajectory won't change if we keep electing the same people,” he said. “I'm proud to have JD Vance's endorsement as another outsider who could see that what got us here into this mess won't get us out.”
Vance and President Donald J. Trump are on the same frequency, he said.
“It’s the same thing President Trump would say,” he said. “It's the same place he is with policy, is the career politicians have lost their way, lost connection with the average voter, with the working family, and it shows up in our policies.”
Banweg said he is a strong supporter of Trump because he wants Trump's policies back.
“When I look at this as an American between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, it is clear that from the Middle East to the cost of a box of Cheerios, our nation under Donald Trump was better off,” said the colonel, who was commissioned in 2000 out of the University of Illinois ROTC program. “You can take that to any of the indicators domestically or internationally.”
Banweg said he supported Trump from the beginning. “I will tell you, when I look at the election in 2024, I mean clearly some people don't like the way Donald Trump says things, but he's going to be the Republican nominee,” he said. “Trump led since Day One in the primary, and that's about to get wrapped up.”
The colonel also said it is essential to understand that Democrats may not contest Ohio as a top-tier battleground state, but Ohio is not so much a Republican state but actually a Trump state.
“I think the reason people in Ohio support Trump and relate to President Trump more than they do the Republican Party in general is because of his positions,” he said.
“His policies were about the American working family, and we've had different monikers — Make America Great, Keep America Great — but at the end of the day, it's about taking care of working people,” he said.
“It's the same thing that when they asked me to run,” he said. “The only reason I'm running is the American working family deserves a fair shot. Less and less Americans today have a shot at the American dream.”
A flippable seat?
In the 2022 cycle, Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, an attorney and former Miss Ohio USA, challenged Sykes but fell short with 47 percent of the vote to the Democrat's 53 percent. Banweg announced his campaign after Gilbert took a job as a Republican National Committee spokeswoman rather than take another shot at Sykes.
A national conservative operative active in MAGA campaigns and with a working knowledge of the Ohio-13 race told RedState although it is a majority Democratic district, it is within grasp.
“Look, it’s definitely a flip,” the operative said. “We could flip it, and I don't know if it's D-plus five, but it's one of those, where if we flipped the narrative nationally, that it is the type of race you've got to win.”
The operative said that Trump supporters have to learn the lessons from the 2022 cycle when the Republican establishment did not support MAGA-aligned nominees in the general election.
"I think it's one of these things where: 'Are you going to make the same mistakes over again?'"
