Don Leonard
D · U.S. House, OH-15 · Tier 3/4
Tier 3/4, between “Pro-Israel, critical” and “Critical / conditions aid”
He is a former Ohio State planning professor. On the Hilliard Beacon podcast (March 2026), asked about Block the Bombs, he tied a halt to U.S. offensive weapons for Israel to an end to “the genocidal operations in Gaza and the state-sponsored violence being carried out by the settler militias in the West Bank,” vowed “We would never accept money from AIPAC,” and called for rethinking “our relationship with the state of Israel until such time as we get the pathway to a viable two-state solution.” A May 2026 video in which he condemned “the genocide in Gaza” was later deleted from his campaign channel (Washington Free Beacon, Oct 2026); in an October 2026 WOSU interview his only reference to Israel was refusing money from “the Israeli or any other foreign lobby,” and at a Columbus No Kings rally on October 17, 2026 he attacked that lobby again, over the bombs dropped “on innocent children in Gaza.”
A 3/4. His podcast answer names the genocide and makes a halt to offensive weapons conditional on its end — the shape of a withholding pledge, the reach toward 4 — and he refuses AIPAC money. What holds him short of a clean 4 is how thin the pledge is: a single spoken answer (the host outlet summarizes it as support for “halting U.S. offensive weapons exports to Israel during ongoing military operations in Gaza”), set inside a two-state endgame, with the campaign since deleting its May genocide video and saying little about Israel beyond the lobby, though his October 2026 attack on it also faulted the bombs dropped “on innocent children in Gaza.” His criticism of “the Netanyahu regime” does not count toward the critical end on its own. Counter-case: a 4, on the podcast pledge plus repeated uses of “genocide” in his own words.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).