Ted Strickland, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, retweeted Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump Thursday night.
The official Twitter account for Strickland, former governor of Ohio, shared a post from Trump’s account about current Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who defeated Strickland in the 2010 election. Like Trump, Kasich is pursuing the Republican nomination for president in 2016.
"I want to do negative ads on John Kasich, but he is so irrelevant to the race that I don’t want to waste my money," Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday evening.
Strickland’s account retweeted the post, according to an image obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The Ohio Senate candidate’s team has since deleted the retweet, and it does not appear on Strickland’s current Twitter feed.
An Ohio Democratic Party official speaking on behalf of the Strickland campaign told the Free Beacon that Trump’s post was not retweeted by anyone "authorized" to tweet for the campaign.
"The retweet was not sent by Ted nor anyone authorized to tweet on behalf of his campaign. As soon as the campaign discovered the retweet, they immediately deleted it and changed the Twitter account password," spokeswoman Jennifer Donohue said.
Strickland’s most recent tweet accuses incumbent Sen. Rob Portman (R.) of sending Ohio jobs overseas by voting in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Strickland failed to win reelection as governor of Ohio in 2010 after Kasich attacked him over the loss of 400,000 Ohio jobs.
Trump’s message was one in a series of tweets hitting Kasich for his "failed campaign" after the Ohio governor’s Super PAC announced that it would spend $2.5 million on campaign advertisements to question Trump’s qualifications for president.
Strickland’s retweet comes after the Ohio Democrat called Portman his "enemy" and "the enemy of those of us who hold Democratic values" at an event in Cincinnati last month. He called Portman the wrong name, referring to him as "Bob," during the same speech.
Strickland and Portman are locked in a statistical tie in the Ohio Senate race, polling released in October showed. However, the share of Ohio voters who hold an unfavorable view of Strickland is twice that who feel the same about Portman.
Before challenging Portman in the general election, Strickland will need to defeat P.G. Sittenfeld, a 31-year-old Cincinnati city councilman, in the Democratic primary.