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  • Bernie Moreno Claims Blockland Conference Convinced AT&T to Bring 5G to Cleveland

    Bernie Moreno Claims Blockland Conference Convinced AT&T to Bring 5G to Cleveland

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    In December of 2018, Cleveland hosted the first of two conferences aimed at promoting blockchain technology and establishing itself as a destination for blockchain companies. The idea’s biggest booster was Bernie Moreno, who is now the Republican nominee in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race. And Moreno’s plans didn’t stop at the Blockland conference. He launched his own company using blockchain to manage vehicle titles and dreamed of redeveloping the downtown Tower City Center into City Block — a mixed-use space hosting tech companies and startups.

    But three years later, the effort was dead. Moreno, in his first U.S. Senate bid, stepped away from Blockland because he didn’t want the community “tarnished by the divisiveness and vitriol that permeates our current political environment.” Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert announced new plans for Tower City, making no mention of City Block.

    According to Moreno, though, it wasn’t a total loss. In 2019, he claimed the Blockland initiative prompted AT&T to bring 5G service to Cleveland.

    “AT&T is looking at putting 5G in Cleveland,” he told Smart Business Dealmakers Cleveland that April. “That probably wouldn’t have happened without the Blockland effort and the people who were involved.”

    In a Cuyahoga County finance and budgeting committee meeting a few months later, Moreno said, “AT&T has made the decision to roll out 5G in Cleveland — first in Ohio, and probably first fully implemented city in America, if they go on their timeline.”

    The record, however, tells a different story. One in which Blockland was less a draw for AT&T than a new platform to lobby for infrastructure improvements the company was already planning. The episode demonstrates how Moreno interacts with major corporate interests and burnishes his own reputation in the process.

    AT&T’s plans

    AT&T’s earliest announcements about 5G networks come from 2016. In December, the company announced the deployment of a 5G network at Intel’s offices in Austin. Put simply, 5G is just the latest technological standard for mobile devices, following 3G and 4G and eventually to be overtaken by 6G. Its broader rollout was inevitable, and AT&T moved rapidly.

    In April of 2017, before the standards were even finalized, the company began touting what it called “5G evolution” in parts of Austin, TX. The service was essentially a juiced up 4G connection, that the company routinely described as laying the foundation for 5G. AT&T projected it would roll out the technology in 20 metro areas by the end of 2017.

    The following year, AT&T announced plans to introduce true 5G services in a dozen cities, and in April touted the expansion of 5G evolution to more than 100 new markets, including Columbus. The announcement projected they’d bring 5G evolution to 500 markets, Cleveland among them, by the end of the year. That’s more than six months before the first Blockland conference, and while AT&T’s 5G evolution service isn’t a true 5G connection, Ohio’s big cities were part of the company’s planning.

    And at the outset of 2019 — just weeks after Blockland — the company was already looking past cities and predicting it would have “a nationwide mobile 5G footprint” by early 2020. The press release bragged “we took what was typically an 18-month cycle from the time standards were finalized to launching and whittled it down to 6 months.”

    State & local lobbying

    While AT&T was rushing headlong toward 5G coverage nationally, it was also lobbying leaders in the Ohio Statehouse and in Cleveland City Hall. Those efforts began years before Blockland and were aimed at laying the groundwork for 5G around the state.

    Late in 2016, the company secured passage of legislation capping how much municipalities could charge telecom companies for installing “small cell” wireless infrastructure. In a press release, AT&T Ohio president Adam Grzybicki described how that legislation would encourage millions worth of investments in wireless infrastructure. “This investment will also help pave the path to 5G mobile services in the years ahead.”

    But those provisions caught a ride on a bill cracking down on puppy mills and prohibiting cities from establishing their own minimum wage. In all, 80 cities, including Cleveland, sued the state over the caps on wireless development, and courts struck down the measure in 2017 because it violated the single subject rule.

    A year later, lawmakers passed a new measure crafted in consultation with local leaders and AT&T. Again, proponents like Verizon invoked the looming introduction of 5G in committee testimony. Then-Gov. John Kasich signed the bill and it took effect in August of 2018.

    Later the same month, Grzybicki wrote to then-mayor of Cleveland Frank Jackson to complain about the slow permitting process for AT&T’s deployment efforts.

    “AT&T has been working with the (Cleveland) law department and other contacts within the mayor’s office for more than a year to secure a small cell attachment agreement,” he wrote, adding “As you know, small cell technology is crucial to bringing 5G to cities like Cleveland.”

    In contrast, Grzybicki praised Columbus’ diligent efforts to secure a small cell agreement and promised to share information about the deal “in the event you find it helpful.”

    Moreno’s inaugural Blockland conference was held that December, roughly three months later.

    When Grzybicki wrote Mayor Jackson the following February, still frustrated with the slow pace of permitting, he invoked Blockland. But in his telling the conference was less a magnet for AT&T than a warning for the mayor.

    “There was robust discussion surrounding the importance of 5G in securing any momentum for blockchain development,” he wrote. “The blockchain community clearly heard the call to action and is eager to see these technologies deployed.”

    That “robust discussion” came in part from AT&T itself. When Moreno spoke before Cuyahoga County’s finance and budgeting committee he shared a “fireside chat” from Blockland featuring John Donovan, then-CEO of AT&T Communications, and Beth Mooney, the chairwoman and CEO of KeyCorp and a member of AT&T’s board of directors.

    Moreno’s response

    Nevertheless, Moreno still insists Blockland played a major role in convincing AT&T to bring 5G to Cleveland.

    “Bernie is proud to have helped spearhead the Blockland initiative in Cleveland, in an effort to bring blockchain and other leading-edge technology to Cleveland,” campaign spokeswoman Reagan McCarthy said in a statement. “These efforts by the Blockland team, all volunteers, undoubtedly helped AT&T decide to bring 5G to Cleveland, which was a huge win for the city. He gave up his time and resources as a private citizen.”

    AT&T’s declined to comment for this story as did a person who led one of the Blockland conference’s subgroups, referred to as ‘nodes’. Grzybicki did not respond to an email requesting comment. Additionally, Moreno’s campaign recommended a person involved with the conference and AT&T, but that person didn’t respond to attempts to reach them by text and phone.

    In a swipe at Moreno’s Democratic opponent this November, McCarthy added, “By contrast, (U.S. Sen.) Sherrod Brown has done nothing to help NE Ohio attract cutting edge companies.”

    Sen. Brown, of course, has taken a share of the credit for landing the Intel fab currently being built in Licking County. Brown, his former U.S. Senate colleague Rob Portman, and virtually every official in Ohio have argued that facility’s impact will be felt statewide.

    In Northeast Ohio specifically, Brown’s campaign noted he’s lobbied for federal investment in Akron’s sustainable polymers efforts to benefit the rubber industry and he’s pushed the Biden administration to protect steelworkers by blocking the sale of U.S. Steel and combatting unfair trade practices. Brown also supported and voted for the CHIPS Act of 2022, which included historic funding for domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio AG Yost Says He Won’t Explain His Role in Bailout Scandal Because of Other Cases

    Ohio AG Yost Says He Won’t Explain His Role in Bailout Scandal Because of Other Cases

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    Ohio Attorney General’s Office/FlickrCC

    Dave Yost

    Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has given another reason not to explain his involvement in the biggest corruption scandal in state history: There are other cases in the matter — including two he’s prosecuting — and there could be more.

    Regardless of Yost’s position, last year, as they made their closing arguments in court, federal prosecutors seemed to have taken at least a passing interest in his involvement in an important phase of the scandal.

    Former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges, a defendant, in June 2019 told a co-conspirator that he’d had dinner with Yost. That was at a time when the AG was in a position to help stop the repeal of a corrupt law that provided Akron-based FirstEnergy with a billion-dollar bailout. Borges told the co-conspirator that Yost said he’d help where he legally could, the messages said. 

    Since then, the Ohio attorney general has declined to say whether Borges’ statement was true. 

    Regardless of his motivation, Yost on Aug. 12, 2019 dealt a heavy blow to the repeal effort when he rejected a ballot summary of a repeal. Advocates have to get the AG’s approval before they can begin their effort in earnest, and they lost 36 of the 90 days they had to gather 265,000 certified signatures to put a repeal on the ballot.

    Their effort ultimately failed.

    In her closing argument in last year’s criminal trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Gaffney Painter appeared to link Borges’ claims of assistance from the AG to a $10,000 contribution he made to Yost several months later. The money originated with FirstEnergy, was laundered through a 501(c)(4) dark money group and then placed in the bank account of a shell company that Borges had just created.

    Painter explained that it was part of $100,000 in FirstEnergy dark money that went into Borges’ shell company — and she explained that the money wasn’t just for Borges’ personal enrichment.

    “He also used that money to further the goals of the enterprise,” she said, according to a transcript of the proceeding. 

    Just two sentences later, the federal prosecutor added, “And included in those donations was a $10,000 donation to Dave Yost on October 15th, 2019, during the (repeal) referendum period using money that had been funneled to (Borges) from Generation Now.” 

    Generation Now was the dark money group that was used to launder $60 million in FirstEnergy dollars to support the corrupt bailout scheme and was later indicted by the feds and subsequently pleaded guilty.

    Not talking

    The scandal broke in July 2021 when the FBI arrested Borges, former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and three others. When it did, Yost donated the contribution he’d gotten from Borges to charity.

    But as recently as last week, the Ohio Attorney General declined to say what he knew about the origins of the dark money — or what assistance he might have provided to Borges, a longtime friend and consultant who is now serving a five-year prison sentence for his role in the bailout scandal.

    “Regarding the donation, Matt (Borges) had been a long-time supporter of Dave (Yost) so it is not unusual that (Borges) would have contributed to a campaign fund,” Yost spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle said in an emailed response to detailed questions about the contribution’s origins and whether Yost believed it was in exchange for anything he’d done. “After Borges was indicted, AG Yost donated that money to a human trafficking organization to help survivors.”

    Last year, Yost had been named as a possible witness in Borges’ trial and Yost’s office used that as a reason not to comment on messages presented in court in which his name appeared. Ultimately, the AG never took the stand in the case, which also resulted in a 20-year sentence for Householder.

    Yost hasn’t been named as a potential witness in any criminal proceeding related to the scandal — much less gagged by a judge. But his office is saying the fact that he might be called in the future is reason not to comment on the role Ohio’s top cop played in the protection of a bailout law that was fueled by $61 million in corporate bribes.

    “Mr. Borges is appealing his sentence — if he is granted an appeal, there would be a new trial and AG Yost may again be on the witness list for the prosecution,” McCorkle said last week.

    Center stage

    In February, Yost went from the periphery of the bailout drama to a central player when he filed state charges against FirstEnergy’s two top executives when the bailout was conceived and passed. Also charged in the case was Sam Randazzo, Gov. Mike DeWine’s nominee to be Ohio’s top utility regulator. 

    The state indictment revealed a decade’s worth of shady, previously unknown dealings between the executives and Randazzo, who died by suicide in April. In addition, Yost filed separate state charges against Householder in March.

    McCorkle, Yost’s spokeswoman, cited these or any potential cases as a reason for the attorney general not to discuss what he knew and did regarding the corrupt bailout at a time he when was reportedly dining with one of the conspirators, rejecting repeal language and receiving $10,000 in dark money that originated with the utility that financed the conspiracy.

    “If Mr. Borges, or another defendant, chooses to assert any of these allegations when it’s his, her, or their turn to go to trial, we will properly and decisively address them in court (through) evidence, argument, and testimony,” McCorkle said. “Giving Mr. Borges, or any other defendant, a preview of what we would present makes no sense legally or strategically.”

    Yost is widely expected to run for governor in 2026. It remains to be seen whether he’ll see a need to explain to the public his role in the historic scandal between now and then. 

    But his involvement was sufficient for federal prosecutors to spend significant time on it as they tried to leave a final impression with the jury at the end of a six-week trial.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Painter described how Yost had two calls with Householder about the bailout and how Householder then deleted the call logs. She also described how Borges lobbied Yost to interpret the bailout as legally being a tax and thus exempt from a voter-initiated veto.

    And she paraphrased a June 26, 2019 text Borges sent to co-conspirator Juan Cespedes. He said he “had dinner with Yost and put the (repeal) referendum issue on his radar,” Painter said.

    Then she quoted Borges: “Don’t repeat this. But (Yost) said, ‘I would be out front opposing this if it weren’t for FirstEnergy support and your involvement.’ He thinks the issue is bad policy but he wants to be supportive. If there’s any way that the law will allow him to reject the language, he will do it.”

    Then the federal prosecutor shifted to what Ohio’s top law enforcement officer actually did.

    “And what did he do, what did Attorney General Yost do? He rejected the initial petition language,” Painter said. “And (one of the repeal organizers) testified that that initial rejection, it cost them 36 days out of that 90-day period to collect signatures and that was a significant impediment to their efforts.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio GOP Leaders’ Push to Stop Foreign Money Does Nothing About Transparency

    Ohio GOP Leaders’ Push to Stop Foreign Money Does Nothing About Transparency

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    In exchange for putting a sitting president on the state ballot, Ohio’s Republican leadership this week demanded that Democrats agree to a measure Republicans said would protect ballot initiatives from foreign money.

    However, the measures would do nothing to bring transparency to politically active 501(c)(4) “dark money” groups into which foreigners, corporations — even criminal organizations — can contribute unlimited cash without the general public being any the wiser. 

    Two such organizations — one of which was founded by a future aide to Gov. Mike DeWine — funded the biggest bribery scandal in Ohio history. And many of the same politicians who now are warning of foreign money are ducking questions about massive support they received from those groups and company that funded them as they took actions that helped further the company’s interests.

    Presidential problem

    The Democratic National Convention this year falls on Aug. 19, which is after Ohio’s Aug. 7 ballot certification deadline. Legislation was needed to move back that deadline if millions of Ohio voters were to be able to cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice. 

    It’s a problem previous legislatures fixed for both parties as a matter of routine. But this year’s Republican supermajorities demanded a quid pro quo if President Biden was to appear on the Ohio ballot. 

    Republicans are coming off of heavy defeats last year in attempts to make it much harder for voters to initiate constitutional amendments and to block an amendment protecting abortions rights. Now Ohio Republicans wanted to use the ballot fix to again attempt to change rules surrounding ballot initiatives. 

    Legislative Democrats declined to go along, and after a lengthy stalemate, Gov. DeWine on Thursday stepped in and said he was calling the General Assembly into special session. 

    The legislature can only consider matters the governor puts on the “call” for a special session, but DeWine didn’t limit himself to a “clean” call that would have only allowed members to put the sitting president on the state ballot. He also allowed it to consider laws changing the way ballot initiatives are financed.

    On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee appeared to eliminate the need for any special session by announcing that it would meet virtually before the Ohio deadline and officially nominate Biden. But the session went ahead on Wednesday anyway. 

    DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney denied that his boss used the Biden-ballot controversy as a trojan horse to sneak in unrelated legislation.

    “The General Assembly had gone weeks without passing a fix to get the President on the ballot; it would have been foolish to limit the options for the General Assembly to get this done,” he said in an email.

    Foreign funding

    The purpose of the unrelated measures, their Republican supporters say, is to ensure that foreign dollars aren’t driving voter-initiated ballot initiatives.

    “Unfortunately, it has become increasingly evident that decisions intended to be made by Ohioans are being unduly influenced by foreign governments, pouring millions of dollars into our state,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said in a statement posted to social media Tuesday. “To prevent foreign interests from manipulating our government for their own sinister agendas, foreign money must be barred from Ohio elections.”

    It may prove difficult for lawmakers to agree on anything in the remaining hours of the session. Republican leaders in the Senate and the House couldn’t even agree Tuesday on the order in which the bills must proceed through the two houses, or the numbers they should have.

    As to their merits, several observers expressed skepticism that the real motivation was keeping outside money from infiltrating Ohio politics. 

    Last year, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said it was important to harshly limit citizens’ ability to amend the state Constitution to protect against out-of-state interests. Meanwhile, his side of the fight was heavily funded by an out-of-state billionaire who also happened to be a prominent election denier.

    Another reason for skepticism, said Common Cause of Ohio Executive Director Catherine Turcer, is the timing. If the bills being pushed in a special session ostensibly about putting Biden on the ballot are so all-fired important, why weren’t they passed by the supermajorities in a regular session?

    “Why is this legislation such a priority now?” she asked.

    Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, said the mere fact that Democrats and others are opposing the legislation is proof that it’s needed — and now.

    “… the behavior of opponents of the ban since the Governor’s announcement seems to indicate there indeed is foreign influence in these ballot initiatives and that some issue groups are counting on that support as part of their plans to campaign for or against these issues; the outcry would not make sense otherwise,” he said. “The statements and conduct of those opposing a ban have made it more clear to the Governor that such a ban is needed right away.”

    Imposing burdens

    Among the measures being debated are requirements that groups supporting state and local initiatives form political action committees — a move that University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven said would be “a massive imposition for what can be very humble ballot questions.”

    If enacted, at least some of the proposals would take effect prior to the November election, when a constitutional amendment meant to address Ohio’s extreme gerrymandering is expected to be on the ballot. Just as LaRose’s measure last year was meant in part to stop abortion-rights and anti-gerrymandering amendments, there’s suspicion that some of the measures currently under debate are meant to stop this year’s gerrymandering measure.

    Niven said it’s a bigger deal than that.

    “It’s certainly an anti-citizens’-voice effort,” he said. “And I think its consequences would be far grander than making it marginally harder (to put on the ballot and pass the anti-gerrymandering) amendment. It’s creating campaign-finance requirements that would burden every ballot question from top to bottom no matter how obscure — even things Republicans wouldn’t object to.”

    LaRose, the secretary of state, routinely ignores questions about his official actions and public statements — as he did for this story. But in a May 9 press release calling to “ban foreign influence over Ohio’s elections,” he gave a hint of what he is trying to stop.

    It cited a press report saying that nearly $7 million to support the abortion-rights amendment came from the Washington, D.C.-based Sixteen Thirty Fund, which promotes causes such as voting access and the League of Conservation Voters. The fund counts among its more than 500 contributors Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, who has contributed more than $200 million since 2016, the press release said.

    If, as Husted said, such groups are “manipulating our government for their own sinister agendas,” Ohio voters of both parties apparently agreed with that of the Sixteen Thirty Fund. The abortion-rights amendment passed by a 14-point margin.

    Turcer, of Common Cause, said lots of organizations might find themselves similarly situated as the fund — including ones aligned with LaRose.

    “There is a public good in keeping foreign money out of Ohio elections,” she said. “But that’s already prohibited through the rules of the Ohio Elections Commission.”

    She added, “The problem is in the enforcement mechanism. This becomes complicated. Corporations can spend money in a ballot campaign. Let’s take British Petroleum. A good chunk of their money is from out of the United States. Or if the Catholic Church is involved to fight a pro-choice issue, is it possible that some of that money is from Canada or Mexico? There can be a prohibition, but it gets complicated really fast.”

    The undisclosed elephant in the room

    Turcer was also frustrated that even after the biggest bribery and money laundering scandal in state history, the state’s Republican leaders have done nothing to bring transparency to the kind of entity that funded it — 501(c)(4) “dark money” organizations.

    Such groups — which include the Sixteen Thirty Fund — don’t have to name their donors. They’re used by Republicans and Democrats to support political causes and their use has expanded wildly after the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v FEC.

    It said that corporations could make unlimited political donations. The only limitation was that the cash had to go to outside groups that weren’t allowed to coordinate their activities with campaigns.

    Then-President Barack Obama predicted it would lead to abuses, and starting in 2017 in Ohio, dark money fueled a massive abuse. For all the public knew, Vladimir Putin could have been pumping money into an epic effort to pass and protect a $1.3 billion nuclear bailout that mostly benefited Akron-based FirstEnergy.

    But in July 202o, the FBI arrested then-House Speaker Larry Householder, former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges and three others — and the public got a clearer picture of the  money’s origins. The feds had used subpoenas, wiretaps, undercover agents and other means the rest of us don’t have to determine that FirstEnergy itself paid more than $60 million to finance the effort.

    Ironically, that money was used to erect a foreign boogeyman of its own. Supporters of the bailout spent $36 million fighting its repeal, and some of that money financed TV ads falsely claiming that the repeal was China’s attempt to take over the Ohio power grid.

    Sunlight

    At the time of Householder’s arrest, DeWine, Husted, Yost and LaRose each had long-standing ties to FirstEnergy, each received financial support from the company, each played roles in passing the the bailout or stopping the citizen-initiated repeal, and each was mentioned multiple times in Householder’s trial — which netted him a 20-year prison sentence.

    However, they’ve refused to answer important questions about their involvement. For example, DeWine said he didn’t know about millions in dark money FirstEnergy spent supporting his 2018 campaign, while Husted has refused to talk about the $1 million the company spent supporting his.

    Turcer said that if the state’s leaders really were concerned about Ohio politics being polluted with money of unknown, criminal or foreign origins, they’d work to bring transparency to the dark money flooding the state.

    “The thing that’s really irritating is that it’s been nearly four years since Larry Householder was arrested,” she said. “It is very clear to the state legislature what happens when you don’t have greater transparency and you let all sorts of things flourish in a dark money system. They have not taken action for years. Why haven’t they?”

    Asked about this, Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, said there could be constitutional problems.

    He said the governor “would certainly entertain transparency reforms in this area if the General Assembly were to pass such a bill. The Governor has noted, however, that many proposals floated by advocates could conflict with United State Supreme Court caselaw and that the difficulty is indeed crafting a proposal that complies with the standing precedents.”

    However, states such as Arizona have passed laws requiring that 501(c)(4)s that spend a certain amount on political campaigns disclose their donors. In February, a state judge dismissed a second attempt to strike down the law.

    There’s also the fact that in writing the Supreme Court opinion allowing unlimited corporate money in American politics, then-Justice Anthony Kennedy stressed the importance of transparency.

    “The First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way,” he wrote. “This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

    Niven, the political scientist, said that for Ohio Republicans, bringing transparency to dark money is just a bridge too far.

    “There’s a very good reason why (the measures proposed in the special session) do nothing to dark money groups,” he said. “Dark money groups are the lifeline to the Republican bacchanalia here. They can’t cut that off.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Longshot Socialist Party Presidential Candidate Claudia De la Cruz Visits Cleveland

    Longshot Socialist Party Presidential Candidate Claudia De la Cruz Visits Cleveland

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    Photo by Jala Forest

    Claduia De la Cruz in Cleveland this week

    Despite the unfathomable odds standing in the way, the crowd assembeled at the Community of Faith Assembly Church on Cleveland’s east side on Tuesday was filled with enthusiasm and hope during a forum and meet-and-greet with Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz and vice-presidential candidate Karina Garcia.

    Organized and hosted by the Cleveland Party for Socialism and Liberation, a political party which focuses on grassroots organizing and community work in the City of Cleveland, the event wasa centered on giving a voice to marginalized communities and addressing neglect that has long plagued those communities.

    Claudia De la Cruz, a mother, educator and community organizer, was born in the South Bronx to immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic. At the age of 13, she began her political organizing work. Karina Garcia, a Chicana organizer and educator, began her political organizing when at the age of 17, and has led campaigns against landlord abuses, wage theft, police brutality reproductive rights, immigrant rights and student financial aid reform.

    Both candidates criticize capitalism, and systemic injustices and want to create representation for working-class people.

    “We live in a society that wants to strip away the politics of the working-class people,” Cruz says.

    That there is no logical way for them to emerge in the upcoming election — the party received about 85,000 total votes nationally in the 2020 presidential election — didn’t stop supporters from coming out. Whether they see a platform that more closely aligns with their beliefs, or simply out on the Biden vs. Trump debate, or newly aware of the party due to recent events, including the war in Gaza, attendees emphasized a local focus.

    “I think [Claudia’s and Karina’s visit] is important for Clevelanders,” says Kameron Damaska, an organizer with the Cleveland PSL. “Cleveland has been a deeply neglected city and I think having candidates come through that are interested in speaking to the grassroots of Cleveland is something that we have not really experienced.”

    With a nearly 60% Black and Brown population, Cleveland is the second poorest large city in the United States. Over 50% of children living in Cleveland live in poverty and over 60% of its population is living near poverty.

    “Conditions [in Cleveland] are unacceptable,” says Damaska. “Like the poverty rate, the illiteracy rate, all these metrics that are very important signs [of a] healthy society where people can thrive. That is not what is being delivered to the people of Cleveland.”

    As November elections move closer, the conversation around voting has focused more on criticizing people who choose to not vote, and less on why candidates are choosing to not vote. According to a 2023 poll released by the Harvard Kennedy School, young Americans are less likely to vote in 2024 than they did in 2020.

    From Biden’s Israel policy to broken promises about student loan debt relief to the American economy to reproductive health care, many young voters do not feel that their values are in alignment with either Democrat or Republican parties, leaving them to feel hopeless and looking for other alternatives to an outdated rule.

    “With everything going on in Palestine, [I’m] branching out to other candidates that are more aligned with my values and my perspective on the world,” says Rikki, a campaign volunteer. “Something that was really frustrating to me was just hearing people [say] ‘Well, I’m just not going to vote because I don’t like the choices,’ and I think that’s not the answer.”

    The campaign pledges a host of radical changes, including seizing the biggest 100 corporations and cutting the military budget by 90%, but also planks defending women’s rights and full equality for LGBTQ people, working to end mass incarceration, and supporting the working class of America.

    But, as De la Cruz told The Guardian earlier this year, while she hopes to garner more votes in 2024 than Gloria La Riva did in 2020, the gains of PSL’s goals will happen through grassroots changes, not elections.

    “It has never happened through electoral politics,” De la Cruz said.“It’s always necessitated mass movements. It’s always necessitated political organizations outside of the two-party system. And that goes for any reform that we have won, whether it is abortion rights, whether it is the right for the LGBTQI community to be able to have access to the most basic rights as people to live in a union; whether it is desegregation, whether it is the end of slavery, it necessitated mass movement to force the hand of reform… Because these people will never give us anything willingly. It will necessitate millions and millions and millions of people in motion to transform society, electoral politics won’t do it alone.”

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    Jala Forest

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  • Ohio Gov. DeWine Said He Didn’t Know of Millions in FirstEnergy Support. Is It Plausible?

    Ohio Gov. DeWine Said He Didn’t Know of Millions in FirstEnergy Support. Is It Plausible?

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal.)

    COLUMBUS, OH — MAY 03: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine joined on stage by First Lady Fran DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Second Lady Tina Husted to celebrate DeWine winning the Republican Party nomination for governor in the Ohio primary election, May 3, 2022, at the DeWine-Husted campaign headquarters, Columbus, Ohio.

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s claim to not know about the millions an Akron utility spent supporting his 2018 campaign for governor simply isn’t credible, an Ohio political scientist said in a recent interview. A spokesperson for DeWine pushed back.

    FirstEnergy provided that support, then spent more than $60 million to pass and protect a $1.3 billion ratepayer-financed bailout that mostly benefited the utility. In 2019, DeWine signed the law within hours of its passage. 

    But now that two GOP officials are in federal prison as part of the scandal and two others involved in the scheme have died by suicide, DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted are downplaying what they knew about FirstEnergy’s support for their campaigns. They’re also downplaying connections between their administration and the utility.

    They say they supported the unpopular bailout because they thought it was good public policy to protect nuclear generation in Ohio.

    However, a batch of records turned over in response to a records request by a group of news organizations — including Floodlight, the Energy News Network, the USA Today Network and the Capital Journal — are showing that the support they’ve gotten from FirstEnergy is greater than previously known.

    Big, dark money

    The company made donations totaling $1 million to 501(c)(4) dark money groups supporting Husted in 2018 before he dropped his gubernatorial bid and joined the DeWine ticket. The records also reveal that the company gave as much as $2.5 million to dark money groups supporting DeWine the same year.

    Husted’s office wouldn’t say whether the lieutenant governor knew about the contributions at the time they were made. DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney last week denied that DeWine knew about the trove of newly revealed FirstEnergy contributions. 

    University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven said there’s a “zero-percent chance” that DeWine’s claim is true. He explained that in 2018, there was a nationwide backlash against the presidency of Donald Trump and support for Democrats was surging. That meant a “razor-wire thin” election for DeWine, a Republican running in a state Trump carried by eight points two years earlier, Niven said.

    DeWine “was running in an election cycle when the tide was going against his party,” Niven said. “The notion that he was just this fumbling, naive grandpa who has no idea about seven-figure flows (supporting) his campaign is perhaps the single most far-fetched thing he’s ever said.”

    There’s also the fact that it’s questionable for a company to make such a huge expenditure and not make sure the public official benefiting from it knew about it That seems especially true of FirstEnergy, which later admitted to paying an outright bribe of $4.3 million to Sam Randazzo just before DeWine nominated him to regulate the company and other Ohio utilities.

    A state indictment of Randazzo and two former FirstEnergy executives says that on Dec. 18, 2018, the executives had dinner with Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Husted and went from there to Randazzo’s condo to arrange the bribe. Randazzo, who was accused of helping to draft and lobby for the corrupt bailout, died by suicide earlier this month.

    Return on investment

    Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, was asked last week why FirstEnergy would spend millions supporting his boss and not make sure DeWine knew about it. Tierney cited rules prohibiting dark-money groups from coordinating their activities with campaigns. 

    “Regarding your question regarding why donors to independent expenditures might not engage candidates directly on the independent expenditures, my guess is that this goes back to the fact that it is illegal for candidates to coordinate with 501 (c)(4) independent expenditure groups,” Tierney said in an email. “I would guess that entities that frequently make such donations are aware of those legal restrictions. I don’t believe you were trying to accuse the Governor of illegal conduct, as he follows the law, but I would vociferously push back on any such innuendo as there is no basis for it.”

    However, merely informing a candidate of a contribution to an independent group doesn’t seem sufficient to meet the state’s definition of “coordination.” That applies to communications “made pursuant to any arrangement, coordination, or direction by the candidate, the candidate’s campaign committee, or the candidate’s agent… ” the Ohio Revised Code says.

    Some special interests have made pious claims that they spend millions supporting candidates not to buy influence, but because they wish to support good governance. Niven, the political scientist, said such a claim would be laughable in the context of FirstEnergy and Ohio’s 2018 gubernatorial election.

    “This is all about return on investment,” said. “This isn’t even primarily about affecting the outcome of the election, it’s about affecting the behavior of the elected.”

    And, Niven said, given that FirstEnergy’s expenditures in 2018 and 2019 won it a billion-dollar bailout, “The return on investment on this thing is spectacular.”

    Who benefits?

    In an email, Tierney questioned press coverage implying that groups supporting DeWine received all of the $2.5 million in dark money FirstEnergy put up in 2018. The donations were made to a dark money group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association, but only $500,000 was specifically labeled “DeWine.”

    “… I am sure Ohio political reporters are laser-focused on Ohio matters, I would point out that FirstEnergy operates in seven states,” Tierney said. “Some of those states have Republican governors, others have had recent Republican governors, and even more have had competitive gubernatorial elections recently as well.”

    However, of those states, only four — Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland — had gubernatorial elections in 2018. And of those, Ohio’s was by far the closest and thus the most likely to be affected by big expenditures. It’s also the the state that had two nuclear plants that FirstEnergy was desperate to bail out.

    DeWine beat Democrat Richard Corday by 3.7 percentage points. The next-closest race was in Maryland, where Republican Larry Hogan beat Democrat Ben Jealous by 12 points — or more than triple the margin in the Ohio race.

    In addition, among the documents obtained by the news organizations are messages that demonstrate FirstEnergy’s interest in plowing dark money into Ohio’s 2018 gubernatorial election. One, from FirstEnergy Vice President Michael Dowling, attempted to ease worries over the company’s massive expenditures through the Republican Governors Association to help DeWine and Husted.

    “Theoretically, DeWine/Husted could have a balance of $10M in their campaign account and the RGA could spend $40M in support of DeWine in Ohio,” Dowling said in an email first reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer. “My point is that comparing the size of a contribution to the RGA to what the DeWine campaign has raised or what the DeWine Campaign’s current balance is can be done, but I’m not sure is logical.”

    Other claims

    In addition to pleading ignorance of FirstEnergy’s dark money, the governor and his staff haven’t explained what senior members of his administration who had close connections to the company knew about about a vital part of the scandal — the relationship between FirstEnergy and the man DeWine picked to regulate it.

    The governor and his staff have claimed that connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy were common knowledge when DeWine took office in 2019. However, there’s little evidence to support the claim. 

    Meanwhile, Randazzo’s state indictment says Randazzo and FirstEnergy had a long, secret partnership that paid Randazzo millions even before his $4.3 million payoff in 2019. It also lays out evidence that both parties were anxious to keep it hidden. 

    Throughout the scandal, DeWine and his staff have staunchly maintained that the governor supported the FirstEnergy bailout not out of any ulterior motive, but because he thought it was good public policy. To support that, Tierney last week pointed to the fact that Cordray, DeWine’s Democratic challenger, also supported keeping FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants open.

    But there’s some important context. FirstEnergy gave dark money to support DeWine and oppose Cordray. In addition, DeWine’s chief of staff, legislative-affairs director and his choice to regulate the industry all had lucrative financial connections to the company either contemporaneously or in the recent past.

    “It’s just laughable,” Niven said. “They find themselves in the literal center of the biggest corporate-political swindle in the state’s history and their answer is, ‘Well anybody would have done this.’”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Lt. Gov. Husted Won’t Say If He Knew About $1M FirstEnergy Dark-Money Contribution

    Ohio Lt. Gov. Husted Won’t Say If He Knew About $1M FirstEnergy Dark-Money Contribution

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    (Pool photo by Graham Stokes.)

    Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted at the Governor’s Inaugural Gala, January 7, 2023, in the Atrium at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

    Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted is refusing to say whether he was aware of a $1 million contribution in 2017 to a political group that was supporting his bid for governor. Instead, his office is only reiterating that the group wasn’t affiliated with the Husted campaign.

    The massive donation came from Akron-based FirstEnergy, which over the next two years ponied up more than $60 million in bribes in exchange for a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout — a law that Gov. Mike DeWine signed just hours after it passed.

    The donation was discovered among a trove of documents that a group of news organizations including the Capital Journal requested from the Office of Ohio Consumers’ Counsel.

    As reported last week by the Energy News Network and Floodlight, the documents also contained emails indicating that Husted was lobbying DeWine to support the bailout. The lobbying came just 11 days after Husted abandoned his gubernatorial bid and joined DeWine’s ticket on Dec. 1, 2017.

    “Jon Husted called me to say he was meeting with DeWine on our issue to try and get him aligned to help keep the plants open,” a Dec. 12, 2017 email by FirstEnergy lobbyist Joel Bailey said.

    The plants were money-losing nuclear and coal plants that FirstEnergy wanted to prop up with the bailout and then spin off.

    FirstEnergy in 2021 signed a deferred prosecution agreement in which it admitted to paying bribes to elect a friendly Republican majority to the state House, which would elect a friendly speaker who would pass and protect the corrupt bailout. 

    The company also admitted to paying a $4.3 million bribe to Sam Randazzo, DeWine’s pick to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, who died by suicide last week. A state indictment said that FirstEnergy executives arranged the bribe with Randazzo the same night they discussed his suitability as a regulator at a dinner meeting with Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Husted on Dec. 18, 2018.

    The ensuing scandal has landed former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, in federal prison for 20 years, and former Ohio GOP Chair Matt Borges for five. Two others have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. Another defendant, lobbyist Neil Clark, also died by suicide — clad in a “DeWine for Governor” T-shirt.

    DeWine and Husted haven’t been charged in case, and they adamantly deny wrongdoing.

    However, they haven’t publicly discussed just what they knew about Randazzo’s long-standing relationship with FirstEnergy, or what they knew about the torrent of dark money flooding from FirstEnergy into Capitol Square to pass and protect the bailout. They also haven’t discussed what senior administration officials with close ties to FirstEnergy might have known.

    Among the documents turned over once FirstEnergy made its agreement with federal prosecutors was a spreadsheet listing 501(c)(4) political contributions the company made in 2017. 

    Such donations are called “dark money” because recipients don’t have to disclose their sources. By law, dark-money contributions can’t go directly to candidates, but they can go to groups that support them, but aren’t supposed to directly coordinate with them.

    The FirstEnergy spreadsheet is only now becoming public because the FBI investigated the scandal and the U.S. Department of Justice brought a prosecution. During the battle over the bailout law in 2019, there were suspicions that FirstEnergy was bankrolling the effort, but the press and public couldn’t know because the money was being funneled through dark-money groups — without which U.S. Attorney David DeVillers said the conspiracy would have been impossible.

    Now that FirstEnergy’s 2017 donation to a Husted-aligned group is known, it raises new questions.

    Special interests sometimes piously claim that they spend millions on politics solely in the interests of “good government.” But as was shown in Householder’s lengthy trial last year, corporate political donations are often — if not usually — intended to buy influence with people in government.

    In order for that to happen, a government official would have to know that a special interest had contributed on his or her behalf. But Husted — who is eyeing a 2026 gubernatorial run — won’t say whether he knew that FirstEnergy in 2017 gave a million bucks to a group supporting his earlier bid.

    His spokeswoman, Hayley Carducci, was asked if Husted knew of the contribution and if he did, when he learned of it. She was also asked if Husted persuaded DeWine to support the FirstEnergy bailout; what Husted knew about Randazzo’s links to FirstEnergy when he was picked to regulate the company; and whether he knew that FirstEnergy was flooding Cap Square with dark money in its effort to pass and preserve the bailout.

    In an email, Carducci repeated her earlier statement: “The Husted campaign never received this donation and is not affiliated with any of these groups.”

    She added, “As for your other questions, we will not be commenting.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Transgender Student Bathroom Ban Bill Passes Out of Ohio House Higher Education Committee

    Transgender Student Bathroom Ban Bill Passes Out of Ohio House Higher Education Committee

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    A bill that would ban transgender students from using the bathroom and locker room that matches up with their gender identity passed out of the Ohio House Higher Education Committee Wednesday by a 10-5 party line vote.

    State Reps. Beth Lear, R-Galena, and Adam Bird, R-New Richmond, introduced House Bill 183 which would require Ohio K-12 schools and colleges to mandate that students could only use the bathroom or locker room that matches their sex assigned at birth. It would also prohibit schools from allowing students to share overnight accommodations with the opposite sex.

    HB 183 now awaits further consideration in the House, which is next scheduled to be in session April 24. 

    Parents, grandparents, and school superintendents asked Bird for this bill, he said. 

    The American Medical Association officially opposes policies preventing transgender individuals from accessing basic human services and public facilities consistent with gender identity.

    HB 183 would not prohibit a school from having single-occupancy facilities and it would not apply to someone helping a person with a disability or a child younger than 10 years old being assisted by a parent, guardian, or family member.

    State Rep. Gayle Manning, R- North Ridgeville, thought about bringing an amendment to the committee that would have carved colleges and universities out of the bill, but she decided against it. 

    “I’m hopeful we will continue to have these discussions on the removal of higher ed,” she said. “The reason being, we’re talking about adults. Universities are similar to a city with the number of students that they have. Frivolous lawsuits that will increase the cost of tuition eventually and the cost of our families.” 

    Manning voted in favor of the bill even though she hopes lawmakers can continue conversations to “find a better solution.”

    Bird opposes taking the higher education component out of the bill. 

    “The reason I oppose that is because we have college credit plus in Ohio,” he said. “We seventh graders going to college, kids in high school going to colleges and in that college environment, we got to make sure they are protected.”

    State Rep. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, vocalized his disdain for the bill before the committee voted. 

    “Here we are again … taking away school districts and colleges’ ability and their leadership to make decisions that are best for providing safe, equitable access for all Ohio students,” Miller said. “I hope that this doesn’t see the floor and doesn’t see the governor’s desk.”

    More than 100 people submitted opponent testimony on HB 183 and more than 30 people submitted proponent testimony. 

    “We do love and care about all kids,” Bird said when asked about all the backlash the bill has received. “Me and my Republican colleagues have heard from constituents all across the state. They may not have been loud. They may not have been vocal. They may not have come with a sign to the Statehouse, but we are here representing the vast majority of Ohioans who want protections.” 

    Trans advocates speak out against HB 183

    Transgender advocates hosted a press conference following the House Higher Education Committee to voice their opposition to HB 183.

    Trans Ohio Board Member Carson Hartlage said HB 183 is harmful to all students, including cisgender students.

    “Most trans non binary and gender non conforming students only begin using restrooms that align with their gender identities after they’ve experienced some form of trauma when using a restroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth,” Hartlage said.

    Thirty percent of LGBTQ+ students said they were prevented from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender, and 26% were stopped from using the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to Ohio’s 2021 state snapshot by GLSEN, which examines the school experiences of LGBTQ middle and high school students.

    When looking specifically at transgender and nonbinary students, 42% were prevented from using the bathroom that aligned with their gender and 36% couldn’t use the locker room that aligned with their gender, according to the Ohio GLSEN report. 

    Ohio’s first openly transgender public official and member of the Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools’ Board of Education Dion Manley shared his concerns. 

    “As a trans man is I’ve been going into men’s restrooms for 25 years without incident,” Manley said. “I go visit the schools on a regular basis. So these legislators want me to go into a girls restroom in the elementary school, middle school, and high school.”

    Mallory Golski, civic engagement and advocacy manager at Kaleidoscope Youth Center, said how Ohio was recently at the center of history in a positive way with Monday’s eclipse.

    “We’re here reflecting on how we’re at the epicenter of another piece of history,” she said. “And unfortunately, we’re at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlike the fleeting blackout of the total solar eclipse, the history I’m talking about here today at the statehouse leaves transgender youth in the dark.”

    Jeanne Ogden’s daughter would be directly impacted by this bill. Her daughter’s college classroom building does not have single-use restrooms in the building, forcing her daughter to go across the street to use the restroom. 

    “These kids getting bullied and yes, their mental health is suffering,” said Ogden, the executive director of Trans Allies of Ohio. “Trans people are tired. Parents are exhausted.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio’s House and Senate Leaders Both Express Interest in Changing Term Limits. Others Skeptical

    Ohio’s House and Senate Leaders Both Express Interest in Changing Term Limits. Others Skeptical

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    (Photos by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal.)

    Left, Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens. Right, Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman.

    Last year, Ohio Republicans focused their political efforts on getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would make future amendments harder to pass. It was bumpy road to a sharp cliff. Despite that defeat, Ohio’s House and Senate leaders appear interested in putting an amendment before voters again.

    “Term limits have essentially reduced the ability of the legislature to be effective, and those are the people who are most closely aligned with voters and citizens,” Senate President Matt Huffman told reporters recently.

    He was echoing a point made at the end of last year by House Speaker Jason Stephens. The Speaker has one two-year term left in the House before he’s term-limited. Huffman, who’s already term-limited in the Senate, is running for a House seat this November.

    Huffman referenced the idea of a 16-year term limit applying to service in both chambers of the General Assembly instead of the 8-years at a time restriction currently in the state constitution, but he didn’t commit to a specific set of changes.

    “I think the Speaker and I are aligned on the concept, the specifics of that, you know, we can probably get worked out,” he said.

    Although academics have questioned the wisdom of term limits since a wave of states began passing them in the early 1990s, there has been no public outcry to roll back Ohio’s restrictions. If anything, term limits are broadly popular.

    Nevertheless, the idea’s lawmaker backers might stand to benefit from any changes. Former Speaker Larry Householder was working on a similar 16-year term limit idea before he was arrested on corruption charges. Under Householder’s plan, sitting lawmakers would get a clean slate — which might have opened the door to an 18-year term as House Speaker for Householder.

    “A pox on all your houses”

    Part of the reason so many voters support term limits is their general distaste for lawmakers.

    “Term limits is a proxy for ‘a pox on all your houses.’ It’s a proxy for voter disenchantment with politics and the political process itself,” former Columbus Dispatch editor and state lawmaker Mike Curtin explained.

    Curtin referenced Gallup polling from last summer showing Congress ranks dead last when it comes to Americans’ confidence in institutions. He compared trying to extend term limits in the current atmosphere to “riding into 100 mile an hour head winds” and argued any immediate effort would get “obliterated.”

    Still, Curtin said, that doesn’t mean maintaining the current standard is a good idea.

    “I’ve always felt this,” Curtin said, “I feel that eight years is too tough, too draconian, too stern a limit because you’re limiting the expertise of the legislature.”

    Curtin noted lawmakers are responsible for appropriating more than $100 billion every other year, and the current limits don’t give them adequate time to really learn the ropes. That’s right in line with the arguments Speaker Stephens and Senate President Huffman have raised.

    Catherine Turcer, who heads up Common Cause Ohio, has heard that argument before, and she’s skeptical.

    “Because of the ability to go back and forth between the two chambers, we both have term limits, but legislators who are committed to remaining in the Ohio General Assembly can in fact, continue to seek election — it’s just a little more complicated.”

    She also noted both men are angling to be Ohio House Speaker in January 2025, and it’s hard to separate their personal ambitions from their policy proposals. Turcer said it might make sense to change how term limits work, but without redistricting reform it could easily turn into an “incumbency protection plan.”

    “I think once we thoroughly address gerrymandering,” she said, “well then we can start looking at other systemic kinds of changes. But we should always be a little leery of proposals for making it easier to stay in office.”

    Rhine McLin was the first African American woman elected to the Ohio Senate in 1994, and she published a study on the effect of term limits in the University of Toledo Law Review. McLin explained she never thought term limits were a good idea. In 1989 she was appointed to complete her father’s term in the Ohio House, and described relying on the expertise of more experienced lawmakers.

    “You know you come up with an idea, you think you’re coming up with some epiphany,” she said, “And they’ll say, well back in such and such and so we tried this, and we tried that, this is not how you go about doing this — you know, those kinds of things help!”

    She also argued that with a ticking clock, lawmakers have less reason to build camaraderie across the aisle or between chambers. If you’re a senator, she explained, that representative from your backyard might be your opponent in a few years, “so we can’t afford to get too buddy, buddy.”

    Pointing to Michigan as a model, McLin said she could support a 12-year lifetime limit. But like Turcer, she invoked redistricting reform as a necessary element if Ohio wants to actually scrap its term limits.

    “If they were talking about 12 years and then banned, I could vote for it,” McLin explained. “If we’re talking about removing term limits, period, I would have to see that we were going to pass something about gerrymandering and develop fair districts before I would want to give that blanket opening there.”

    At the end of the day, Curtin argued “there’s never a bad time” to consider an issue like term limits.

    “I don’t care who raises it,” he said, “there’s always self-interest — you’re never going to eliminate self-interest.”

    His biggest concern is how the idea gets presented to voters. Curtin worries if lawmakers push the issue forward without getting voters’ buy-in first, it could backfire spectacularly.

    “You just don’t lose this time, you lose opportunity down the road,” he argued.

    “If this is worth reconsideration — and I think it is,” Curtin said, “to rush it and get defeated by a big margin — which I think would happen — now you take it off the table for the next ten or twenty years.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Supreme Court Democratic Candidates Look to Rise Above Party Labels in General Election

    Ohio Supreme Court Democratic Candidates Look to Rise Above Party Labels in General Election

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal.

    The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio, September 20, 2023, at 65 S. Front Street, Columbus, Ohio.

    The three Democrats running for Ohio Supreme Court in November criticized the 2021 law that added party labels to the state high court in a press call Wednesday, saying the politicization of the judiciary branch should be a major concern to all voters.

    Incumbent justices Melody Stewart and Michael Donnelly joined with appellate judge Lisa Forbes on a post-primary election press call organized by the Ohio Democratic Party, to talk about next steps in their general election campaigns and flaws in the process of getting to the bench.

    Forbes was the only candidate on the call who had a contested race Tuesday. She defeated fellow judge Terri Jamison, receiving nearly 64% of the vote in unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office.

    Donnelly will be in a race against Republican Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan, and Stewart will be defending her seat against an internal challenge from her colleague, Republican Justice Joe Deters.

    With her win in the primary, Forbes will now face Republican Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Dan Hawkins in the general election.

    Though the Democratic candidates want to focus their message on the importance of an independent judiciary as they speak to voters over the next few months, the idea that a liberal swing could come to the court if all three win their races in November wasn’t lost on them.

    “We are at a point where we’re about to make it all one-party control of our government, maybe even more so that way,” Stewart said on Wednesday. “In a system of checks and balances, having one-party control of all three branches of government gives that party free reign.”

    Ohio lawmakers added party labels to Ohio Supreme Court races in 2021. Republicans won all three supreme court races in 2022. The court currently has a 4-3 Republican majority.

    If the Republicans sweep again, they will have 6-1 control over the court, with Justice Jennifer Brunner the only remaining Democrat on the court. If Democrats sweep the three races, they would flip the court from 4-3 Republican to 4-3 Democratic.

    The justices and judge on the call criticized 2021 legislation that puts party labels on state supreme court races. Justice Brunner is suing the state over the law as well.

    “The politicization of the judiciary … it should be one of the major concerns of all voters throughout the state who expect their judiciary to be as independent as possible,” Donnelly said.

    Forbes said forcing political party affiliations in judicial races is resulting in “a less diverse set of candidates” and “unfortunately, is really eroding people’s confidence in and respect for the functioning judiciary here.”

    As they plan to meet with voters and garner support for their campaigns, the judicial candidates said their strategy is educating Ohioans on their credentials and their record.

    “When people are given the full complement of information … about who we are, what we stand for and the importance of this race, then they vote their self-interest,” Forbes said. “And the self-interest of Ohioans is to protect their rights under the constitution.”

    Deters, Shanahan, and Hawkins did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Redistricting Reform Supporters Outline Problem and Proposal in Panel

    Ohio Redistricting Reform Supporters Outline Problem and Proposal in Panel

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal)

    The Ohio Redistricting Commission meeting, September 20, 2023, in the Lobby Hearing Room at the James A. Rhodes Office Tower in Columbus, Ohio.

    Some of the leaders of a campaign to reform redistricting in Ohio say the process of drawing districts may be complicated, but making necessary changes to end gerrymandering isn’t: “Political insiders have no business being in the process.”

    In a Monday panel discussion on Ohio State University’s campus, retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, League of Women Voters of Ohio Director Jen Miller, political science professor Ange-Marie Hancock, law professor Steven Huefner, and the Brennan Center Democracy Program’s Yurij Rudensky discussed the impact of gerrymandering on political power, and why a third try at redistricting reform needs to be on the public’s radar if it hits the ballots in November.

    The panel members urged support for an initiative created by the coalition Citizens Not Politicians, in conjunction with O’Connor and what she calls “a group of brainiacs,” who developed the proposed ballot measure to undo the “failings” of voter-approved reforms made in 2015 and 2018 through separate constitutional amendments.

    “These two amendments were sold as the greatest thing since chocolate milk and sliced bread,” O’Connor said. “I mean, they just thought this was going to be the answer. It was not.”

    The drafters had perhaps known the amendments would not go as far as voters hoped, O’Connor posited.

    “As a result, there’s language in (the previous amendments) that limits the power of the people and enhances the power of the legislature,” according to the retired chief justice.

    Rudensky went so far as to argue that the 2015 and 2018 measures weren’t reforms at all because the measures “didn’t change anything.”

    “The reality is what those amendments demonstrated is that political insiders have no business being in the process,” Rudensky said. “As soon as they got the pen after those amendments, what they said are the safeguards are just there as aspirations.”

    In the last two years, the redistricting process was overseen by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a group fully made up of elected officials, the majority of which were members of the GOP. Bipartisan co-chairs led the efforts, along with Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, Republican Auditor of State Keith Faber, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and Republican state Sen. Rob McColley in the most recent round of commission meetings. The two Democratic seats that completed the commission were most recently filled by House Minority Leader Allison Russo and Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio.

    This version of the commission was the only version to adopt a district map with bipartisan agreement, something that helped the Statehouse district map, adopted in September 2023, when it was challenged in the Ohio Supreme Court. Justices cited the agreement as a key reason the majority ruled to leave the map in place, despite arguments that the newest ORC map is unduly partisan.

    The five other versions of maps adopted by the commission were struck down by the court due to unconstitutional partisan lean. The makeup of the court was different than the court that oversaw the challenge of the September map in one important area: then-Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor served as the swing vote that resulted in the rejection of those five Statehouse maps, and for that matter, the only two U.S. congressional district maps ever drawn.

    The congressional map that is currently being used is still one ruled unconstitutional by the O’Connor-led state supreme court.

    “The resulting maps clearly opened the door so that a supermajority will be established, and once that happens, unless there’s a change, such as the constitutional amendment that’s going to be on in November, this is self-perpetuating,” O’Connor said in the Monday panel. “This will go on and on and on.”

    The new measure would depart from previous redistricting reforms, the supporters said on Monday, by bringing about an independent commission to redraw the district maps, a commission that would be chosen through a vetting process done by judges and bipartisan members of a screening committee.

    This main goal of the new constitutional amendment – which is still in the signature-collection stage before it can be approved to appear on the November general election ballot – would take the map-drawing process for Statehouse and congressional districts out of the hands of elected officials, something those on the panel said has been the downfall of the previous reforms.

    But with the previous reforms not far off in Ohio’s history, panelist addressed concerns that voter exhaustion over the redistricting issue could come into play and cause Ohioans to wonder why yet another redistricting reform would matter.

    “The biggest thing I get as a concern is once again the court would not have the power, or concern that there would still be loopholes,” Miller said. “I’m proud to say that a lot of brilliant folks designed this policy to make sure that we have lots of guardrails, so that we can truly end gerrymandering.”

    The implementation of a new constitutional amendment on redistricting wouldn’t necessarily flip the political makeup of the state on its head, and it may not even change the majorities in the state, but it would bring Ohio’s partisanship down to levels that match voting trends, O’Connor argued.

    “There will be, in all probability, more Republicans members of the Ohio General Assembly than Democrats when this is done, but it won’t be a supermajority,” according to O’Connor, a registered Republican herself.

    Without the “wildly inflated numbers” in the majority, O’Connor said the impact will be widely seen, bringing more difficulty in overriding a governor’s vetoes, for example, and creating an legislative environment that will “force the representatives to work with one another.”

    “There will be products that are not extreme,” she said. “In other words, their legislation will be tempered by the fact that there’s a new mindset: we’ve got to work together and we need to work for the citizens; not lobbyists, not the people who funded our campaigns, not political bosses in Columbus or in my local county.”

    Despite their hope for change through the proposed amendments, the panelists didn’t mince words about the work still to be done even if the reforms are approved by voters.

    “Yes, there are changes that would come about as part of this, but there’s also … a lot of oversight and implementation that would have to take place afterward as well,” Hancock said.

    That would include making sure redistricting meetings are public and the work is done before the eyes of Ohioans.

    “Voters want to know that folks are not taking advantage, that folks are doing what they’re supposed to do, what their oath of office demands,” Hancock said.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Donald Trump Makes Last Minute Push for Bernie Moreno in Ohio’s U.S. Senate Primary

    Donald Trump Makes Last Minute Push for Bernie Moreno in Ohio’s U.S. Senate Primary

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    (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)

    Former President and 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Dayton.

    A couple thousand Ohio voters spent a blustery Saturday on a Dayton tarmac waiting to see Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In front of bleachers done up with bunting, Trump promised the largest “deportation operation in American history” and compared immigrants to animals. He warned reelecting Joe Biden could be the last election in the country’s history and described people convicted of wrongdoing on January 6 as “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” Trump pledged a return to “MAGAnomics,” and threatened a renewed trade war with China.

    After running the gauntlet of salesmen hawking “47” hats and Trump t-shirts, Margaret Wilkes said she thinks Trump is “the most important person in the world right now.”

    “I love him dearly,” she added. “I think he’s a wonderful person, and I appreciate his leadership.”

    Her friend Jackie Shook compared the country’s challenges to “our generation’s Pearl Harbor.”

    But Trump’s visit was less about his own electoral prospects than those of his endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Westlake entrepreneur Bernie Moreno. The former car salesman has faced headwinds in recent days and Trump’s visit appeared calibrated to improve his chances on Election Day.

    Polling has been light for the most part, but a flurry of recent surveys have shown a substantial share of undecided voters. A recent poll from Emerson University, for instance, gave state Sen. Matt Dolan a narrow lead within the margin of error. But even more notable, the biggest share of respondents remained undecided about who to support. A poll a conducted by Florida Atlantic University found reached a similar conclusion.

    Moreno has also found himself fending off controversy after the AP reported his email address was associated with a profile on Adult Friend Finder. He quickly dismissed it as a prank by a former intern. After the founder of the website described the profile as “consistent with a prank or someone just checking out the site,” Moreno’s campaign claimed it “completely debunked” the story.

    Moreno’s stump speech

    On stage, Moreno cast Tuesday’s primary election as a stark choice for Republican voters.

    “This is the last gasp of breath of the swamp RINO establishment in Ohio,” he said. “And I need you on Tuesday to stab it right in the heart and make it clear that in Ohio we put America First.”

    To Moreno, that so-called RINO, or Republican in Name Only, establishment is personified in Matt Dolan. In the last two weeks, Dolan has picked up the endorsements of former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and Gov. Mike DeWine, despite the latter previously stating he wouldn’t weigh in.

    And although Moreno is undoubtedly correct that Trump is very popular among Ohio’s GOP voters, Trump’s appeal isn’t unlimited. Both of those more centrist politicians, for instance, outperformed Trump the last time they went before voters. In 2016, Portman did six points better than Trump, and DeWine’s 62% share in 2022 is about 10 points better than either of Trump’s showings in Ohio.

    In terms of policy, Moreno filled out the conservative bingo card — energy dominance, protecting the Second Amendment, eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. But perhaps his biggest response came from hard-line immigration talking points.

    “If you’re in this country illegally,” he said, “listen clearly — listen very clearly. Starting in January 2025, you will be deported.”

    Although Moreno’s opponents, Dolan and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose have made immigration and border enforcement the centerpiece of their campaigns as well, they’ve criticized Moreno’s deportation promises as unrealistic.

    And in a reminder of how deep-seated COVID-19 conspiracy thinking is among Republicans, Moreno also got a huge applause from tying the pandemic to international organizations like the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization.

    “To the WEF and the World Health Organization, if you think that you can fool us ever again by unleashing a virus on America, locking us down, forcing us to get vaccinated forcing us to get masks, you’re wrong,” Moreno said.

    In response to the pandemic and its associated recession, the WEF proposed what it called the Great Reset, which emphasized sustainability and equity as governments rebuilt. On darker corners of the internet, however, that has morphed into conspiracy theories asserting global elites either created the virus or are took advantage of to seize control of the global economy and take away peoples’ rights.

    After Moreno invoked COVID policy, the crowd began chanting his name, “Bernie,” over and over again.

    On his way out, Bill Lobl explained he was supporting Moreno, and that Trump’s endorsement didn’t make a huge difference for him.

    “If you can start business and run it just like Trump did with his and become a person of the people then more power to them,” Lobl said.

    Shauna Diedling insisted “Bernie Moreno is for the people of Ohio. Bernie Moreno is going to be change. Bernie Moreno is going to be good and he’s not going to be corrupt.”

    James Sheets traveled from Columbus because he wanted his kids to see Trump. He explained Trump’s endorsement mattered a lot in decision to support Moreno. Margaret Wilkes and Jackie Shook are supporting Moreno as well, and Wilkes dismissed the Adult Friend Finder story with a simple, “I don’t believe it, basically.”

    Still, it’s unclear how many undecided Ohioans he swayed. Every one of those voters were in Moreno’s camp before the rally.

    Trump’s speech

    Trump rallies have a kind of standard format — digressions, quips, threats, and attacks that get repeated over and over. The persistence of some lines is reliable enough that his supporters notice and comment on new twists in delivery.

    On a slogan about Trump standing in the way of opponents coming after his supporters, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH told the crowd, “We were out in Iowa with him during the caucuses and he changed that one a little bit. I like it even better now. He says they’re coming after my freedom because I’m fighting for yours.”

    But with heavy wind, Trump’s teleprompters wobbled enough that he had trouble reading from them. “Great job, fellas, don’t pay these suckers please,” Trump said of the supposed teleprompter company. Without a reliable script, his speech was looser, his attacks sharper.

    He cursed more than usual, too. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-AL, won her Senate seat over Mo Brooks because “people don’t want to hear bulls—,” Trump claimed. What people had heard was Trump-endorsed Brooks encouraging Republicans to move on from 2020 stolen election conspiracies. After that Trump switched his endorsement to Britt who went on to win. He described California Gov. Gavin Newsom as “a bulls— artist,” and dismissed advisors urging him to tone down attacks on Republicans with “I don’t give a s—.”

    That looser format gave rein to Trump’s already bombastic rhetoric. After warning China’s Xi Jinping that he’d place a 100% tariff on cars produced in Chinese-owned, Mexican factories, Trump clarified “if I get elected.”

    “Now if I don’t get elected,” he continued, “it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country. That’d be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”

    The Biden campaign was quick to pounce on the phrasing and connect it to the violence carried out by Trump’s supporters on January 6. In a press release after the fact, Trump’s campaign insisted he meant a metaphoric, economic bloodbath rather than a literal one.

    While Democrats have seized on Trump’s own statements about taking dictatorial power, Trump insisted electing Biden could lead to the end of democracy.

    “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country,” he said. “Does that make sense?”

    He did not elaborate on his reasoning.

    Trump promised to begin the “largest domestic deportation effort in American history” on day one of his administration. He argued countries in central and south America are sending their criminals to the U.S.

    “If you call them people,” Trump began, “I don’t know if you’d call them people, in some cases. They’re not people in my opinion, but I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”

    “These are bad — these are animals, ok?” he added.

    Trump also made the dubious warning that illegal immigration imperils Social Security and Medicare. Although they benefit from neither program, illegal immigrants earning money in the U.S. pay taxes that contribute to the programs’ trust funds. Even if immigrants gain legal status, they may not work long enough to meet eligibility requirements. A 2018 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center found that while it’s not a silver bullet, increasing pathways for immigration would help bolster the Social Security system as the population of retirees grows.

    As for Moreno, Trump told the crowd, “We have to elect Bernie to get in there and to seal our border, stop inflation, crush the deep state — we started that when we got rid of Comey, drill, baby drill, and prevent World War III.”

    Without directly mentioning the Adult Friend Finder story said Moreno is “getting some very tough Democrat fake treatment right now, and we’re not going to stand for it because I know this man. We all know this man. He’s a hero. He’s a winner.”

    Ironically, though, Moreno is actually getting some last-minute help from Democrats. An ad paid for by a group connected with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ‘criticizes’ Moreno as “too conservative for Ohio.” The unspoken goal, of course, being to strengthen Moreno’s position in the primary and potentially set up an easier general election contest for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Big Loans, Outside Spending Stand Out in Final Campaign Reports Ahead of Ohio’s U.S. Senate Primary

    Big Loans, Outside Spending Stand Out in Final Campaign Reports Ahead of Ohio’s U.S. Senate Primary

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    (Pool photo by Jeremy Wadsworth from the Toledo Blade.)

    From left, Mike Kaylmyer moderates a U.S. Senate Ohio Republican primary forum between state Sen. Matt Dolan, Secretary of State Frank Larose, and businessman Bernie Moreno Monday, February 19, 2024, in the TLB Auditorium at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio.

    Next Tuesday is Election Day in Ohio, and the final batch of campaign finance reports sets the stage for what could be close race for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. Entrepreneur Bernie Moreno has seen a burst in fundraising from individuals since picking up former President Donald Trump’s endorsement. But the campaign finance picture gets more complicated with candidates’ personal fortunes and well-funded outside interests thrown into the mix.

    Whoever emerges on the Republican side, however, will face a well-funded Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. The incumbent senator seeking a fourth term in office is walking into the general election with $13.5 million in cash on hand — more than five times as much as his closest Republican challenger. His campaign also has no outstanding loans.

    Although Brown doesn’t face a primary challenge, he isn’t just twiddling his thumbs while the Republicans duke it out. During the reporting period, he spent more than $3 million on television ads and another $1 million on digital advertising. He even dropped close to half a million bucks on direct mail.

    Running for the Republican nomination to face Brown in November are state Sen. Matt Dolan, businessman Bernie Moreno, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

    Bernie Moreno

    The former car salesman from the Cleveland area has pulled away from his Republican competitors in individual contributions. During the first two months of 2024, he raised $1.1 million, while LaRose and Dolan brought in about $350,000 and $275,000 respectively. Moreno also loaned his campaign another $1.2 million, bringing its total debt to $4.2 million.

    Moreno got contributions from political action committees representing builders and contractors as well as from the private prison operator the GEO Group. Conservative U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, and Rand Paul, R-KY, cut him checks as well.

    Although Moreno’s campaign cracked a million dollars in contributions, that didn’t keep up with his expenses over the two-month period. He reported spending roughly $2 million — about three quarters of which went to campaign ads.

    In terms of outside spending, groups backing Dolan and LaRose plowed more than $3 million into ads attacking Moreno. But Moreno has gotten some outside help of his own. The Club for Growth, a conservative dark money group, has spent $3 million promoting Moreno or attacking Dolan.

    Frank LaRose

    Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State raised roughly $350,000 through the end of February, but the latest filing depicts a campaign that’s outgunned by its competition. Moreno and Dolan both report $2.3 million in cash-on-hand. LaRose has less than $600,000.

    The almost $15 million Moreno and Dolan have loaned their campaigns explains that discrepancy, but the source of the money doesn’t change the math. To compete, LaRose has relied on outside spending to get his message to voters. During the reporting period, LaRose’s biggest expense was $139,000 for digital fundraising. A handful of line items relate to digital ads, but he doesn’t list a single television ad buy.

    Instead, the Leadership For Ohio Fund, has spent liberally to prop up LaRose and attack Moreno. Since the beginning of this year, the super PAC has spent more than $5 million on advertising. About $3 million went to ads supporting LaRose’s campaign, while another $2.2 million covered ads attacking Moreno.

    Oddly enough the guy paying for those Moreno attack ads was also a major contributor to the group currently backing Moreno. The Illinois billionaire and conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein contributed $3 million to the Leadership For Ohio Fund — more than 60% of its war chest. During 2023 alone, however, Uihlein gave $8.7 million to the Club For Growth, which is supporting Moreno. He also poured millions into the campaign last summer to make it harder to amend Ohio’s state constitution.

    Leadership For Ohio Fund began its life as 527 political organization raising money for LaRose while he was not officially running for office. It’s at the center of an FEC complaint alleging LaRose abused the “testing the waters” period to raise money for his eventual bid with fewer reporting requirements.

    Matt Dolan

    Dolan, of Chagrin Falls, raised just $272,000 while spending $4.75 million during the reporting period. Nearly all of that — more than $4.3 million — went to television ads.

    Dolan was able to burn through cash at that rate because of his considerable personal fortune. As of the latest report, Dolan has loaned his campaign $9 million. That’s more than double what Moreno has lent his campaign.

    And the Dolan family’s wealth isn’t just apparent in candidate’s loans. Dolan’s parents, Larry and Eva, contributed $1 million each to the super PAC Buckeye Leadership Fund. So far that group has spent $3.5 million on ads backing Dolan and attacking the field.

    The bulk of Dolan’s fundraising came from individuals, but he did pick up a $5,000 contribution from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce PAC.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • More Than 48,600 18-Year-Olds Are Registered to Vote in Ohio, a 35% Increase From Late August

    More Than 48,600 18-Year-Olds Are Registered to Vote in Ohio, a 35% Increase From Late August

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal.

    On the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

    Ohio has seen a recent spike in young voter registration.

    More than 48,600 18-year-olds are registered to vote in Ohio as of Jan. 6 — a 35% increase compared to late August, according to data analyzed by the Civics Center, a nonpartisan organization trying to increase voter registration. 

    “What we typically see is that registration rates, especially for the youngest voters, can go up very significantly when young people become more aware of elections in which their votes will matter,” said Laura Brill, founder and CEO of Civics Center.

    2024 is going to be a big election year between the presidential election, Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, a potential anti-gerrrymandering amendment proposal, three Ohio Supreme Court races, and the Ohio House of Representatives elections. Oct. 7 is the deadline to register to vote for the Nov. 5 general election. Early voting for the March 19 primary started Wednesday and the deadline to register to vote was Tuesday. 

    “When young people are registered, they tend to turn out at high rates when they know that their votes will make a difference,” Brill said. “I think a lot of it depends on whether the candidates and parties are really getting the word out to young people about what’s at stake.”

    Ohio’s November 2023 election enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution and legalized recreational marijuana. 

    “There were multiple, very high profile elections going on in Ohio,” Brill said. “It provided a concentrated deadline for people to focus on to get registered.” 

    However, there is still a long way to go with getting young people registered to vote. More than 100,000 18-year-olds in Ohio remained unregistered to vote as of January, according to the Civics Center. 

    Buckeyes For Voting Rights

    Ohio State University senior Cassie Mohr helped launch Buckeyes For Voting Rights, a nonpartisan organization that helps students register to vote. 

    “We just want every student at Ohio State that’s eligible to vote … to be able to cast their ballot comfortably and easily,” said Mohr, who is studying political science and public affairs. 

    She first started helping people register to vote back when she was a senior at Westerville North High School, just north of Columbus. 

    “I realized that a lot of students, a lot of 17-18 year olds, want to register to vote, but they don’t register to vote if nobody presents them with the opportunity,” Mohr said. “If nobody helps guide them through the process and helps them fill out the form and everything, then it’s something that people forget about.”

    Nearly 90% of Ohio State students were registered to vote for the 2020 presidential election and 75% of students voted in that election, according to the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education.

    “The hope is since voting is a habitual process, that we can get them engaged to talk about what issues matter to them,” Mohr said. “And then once we can get them engaged, then hopefully we can make them a lifelong voter.”

    Ohio’s photo ID law

    A law went into effect last year that makes it harder for out-of-state college students to vote in Ohio. 

    Under the new law, Ohioans must show a photo ID in order to vote, meaning an unexpired Ohio driver’s license, a state ID card, U.S. passport or military card. A college or university ID does not count as a photo ID. 

    Out-of-state college students who want to vote in Ohio must get a state issued ID card, but that invalidates their driver’s license in another state. 

    Because of this, Mohr is concerned it will prevent some people from being able to vote — especially since Ohio State has more than 12,000 out-of-state students.

    “I think that it’s going to put a huge strain on county board of elections offices,” she said. “This photo ID law is going to create a lot of chaos in November.”

    Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin are all strict photo ID states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Key Takeaways From Monday’s U.S. Senate Ohio Republican Primary Debate

    Key Takeaways From Monday’s U.S. Senate Ohio Republican Primary Debate

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    (Pool photo by Jeremy Wadsworth from the Toledo Blade.)

    From left, Mike Kaylmyer moderates a U.S. Senate Ohio Republican primary forum between state Sen. Matt Dolan, Secretary of State Frank Larose, and businessman Bernie Moreno Monday, February 19, 2024, in the TLB Auditorium at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio.

    Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate primary candidates met for their second of three debates at the University of Findlay Monday evening. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, and entrepreneur Bernie Moreno sat side-by-side on stage. The winner of the March 19 primary will face Democratic Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.

    On familiar issues like immigration, the economy and abortion, the candidates filled out the bingo card. There was no shortage of “finish the wall,” “cut taxes,” and “protect the unborn.” But even as the candidates played the hits their performance uncovered a bit of new territory and offered hints about the race ahead.

    Team up on Moreno

    Westlake businessman Bernie Moreno has secured a series of endorsements including several county parties, high-profile Ohio Republicans in Congress like U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, and of course, former President Donald Trump. The combined weight of those supporters is hard to ignore, and both of Moreno’s competitors obliged, giving him plenty of attention.

    LaRose in particular peppered Moreno with attacks all evening. He criticized Moreno over a Massachusetts wage theft lawsuit and for sitting on a board that made donations to Planned Parenthood. He brought up past op-eds in which Moreno advocated for greater wind and solar subsidies or more lenient immigration laws.

    “He wrote an article that said there should be a path to citizenship and my team will share it,” LaRose said. “It’s his own words. But now that he wants to try to convince people he’s a conservative, he’s changed his tune on that. Which Bernie are we going to get in Washington?”

    “Both of you guys are reinventing yourself on the issue of immigration,” Dolan chimed in.

    “Frank, you were wrapping your arms around No Labels which had a clear path to citizenship,” he continued. “And Bernie you are quoted as saying you want a path to residency, and you think it’s important that all illegals become U.S. citizens.”

    But Moreno pushed back, arguing “this is what they do, this is what career politicians do, they don’t want businesspeople and outsiders in their game,” after LaRose brought up the wage theft suit. In that case, a judge determined Moreno destroyed evidence despite a court order to preserve it.

    After LaRose criticized him over an energy subsidies op-ed, Moreno quipped “I was against HB 6. These guys weren’t.” He continued, “They’re going to have to answer for their involvement in that scandal to a different audience than the one that’s here tonight.”

    Minimum wage?

    Moreno and Dolan are both wealthy. They’ve both been able to write multi-million dollar checks to help float their campaigns. LaRose’s net worth isn’t in the same category, but he nevertheless loaned his campaign a quarter million dollars. In short, all three candidates are very far removed from life on minimum wage.

    But when asked, very directly, if there should be a minimum wage at all, not one said yes.

    Moreno argued, “the markets are the best way to determine what wages should be.” He insisted in his experience as a business owner that paying good wages gets good workers.

    “At the end of the day, the markets will flush that out,” he said, “and make certain that you get workers that get a good job.”

    LaRose landed in a similar place. “The challenge with these government interventions like so-called minimum wage is that it has a distorting effect on the market,” he said. “The market is the best way to set wages.”

    All three took turns beating up on the idea of a livable wage.

    “Look,” Dolan said, “the minimum wage is not intended to be a livable wage.”

    “I’ve employed people,” he added. “We started some people at minimum wage, the purpose of doing that was to inspire them to work harder.”

    Moreno also insisted the minimum was never meant to provide workers enough to get by, and LaRose warned about a potential ballot initiative to establish a $15 minimum wage in Ohio.

    Throughout the evening the candidates hammered on the cost of gas and groceries, but explicitly opposing minimum and livable wages would seem to hurt the Ohioans pinched most by higher prices.

    In a press conference prebuttal hosted by Ohio Democrats, Ohio Federation of Teachers president Melissa Cropper argued, “The Morenos of the world see us workers as expendable line items there to help them maximize the profits, while paying us the least amount that they can pay us.”

    Peeking toward the general

    Still, the Republican candidates took pains to differentiate themselves based on the threat they pose to Brown.

    Dolan repeatedly pointed to his record addressing issues raised in the debate at the state level.

    “I’m glad to hear that my opponents are talking about all the things that I’ve been able to do here in Ohio that we need to do at the Washington level, so experience matters,” he said.

    But Dolan also offered a reality check on abortion, noting Brown won reelection in 2018 with only 16 counties. In 13 of those, Dolan said, the abortion rights measure, Issue 1, out-performed Brown’s 2018 figures. He argued Moreno and LaRose’s recent positions on abortion — no exceptions and a 6-week ban respectively — will taint them in the general election.

    Responding to missing out on Trump’s endorsement, LaRose pointed to the backing of pro-gun and anti-abortion groups in Ohio.

    “I’m the one that doesn’t just say it, I’m the one that has proven it, but I’m also the one that can defeat Sherrod Brown,” LaRose argued. “We need to defeat Sherrod Brown and replace him with someone who actually shares our values. I’m the one that checks both of those boxes.”

    Meanwhile, Moreno leaned on Trump’s decision to endorse him.

    To LaRose, Moreno said, “He knows who you are. He knows who I am. And he knows that I’m the one who’s going to have his back and I’m going to win this primary.”

    “We’re going to change this country over the next four years in a deeply conservative way,” Moreno added.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Fresh Bailout and Bribery Indictments Raise Questions About What Ohio Gov. DeWine Knew and When

    Fresh Bailout and Bribery Indictments Raise Questions About What Ohio Gov. DeWine Knew and When

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal

    COLUMBUS, OH — JANUARY 31: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine gives the State of the State Address, January 31, 2023, in the House Chamber at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

    The announcement Monday of new felony indictments against players in Ohio’s massive bribery scandal is again raising questions about what Gov. Mike DeWine knew before and after he nominated Sam Randazzo to be the top utility regulator in the state.

    The indictment contained new allegations of a long, nefarious relationship between Randazzo, one of the state’s biggest utilities and a group of industrial users. On Thursday, DeWine’s spokesman reiterated that the governor believed in 2019 that Randazzo was qualified to be the top regulator because of his prior representation of utilities and large ratepayers. DeWine on Wednesday conceded that the appointment was a mistake.

    Randazzo was indicted along with the former top executives of Akron-based FirstEnergy for their alleged roles in a scheme to pay more than $60 million in bribes in exchange for the 2019 passage of a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout that was mostly intended to prop up two nuclear plants. Former House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, was convicted of his role in federal court last year and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

    Randazzo, DeWine’s 2019 pick to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, was indicted by the feds in December. 

    On Monday, law enforcement authorities led by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost again indicted Randazzo, this time on state felony charges. Also indicted were former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and former Vice President Michael Dowling. They all pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

    Among the new allegations was that Randazzo had a corrupt relationship with the FirstEnergy executives stretching back to 2010.

    As part of it, Randazzo allegedly served as general counsel to the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio while secretly being paid as a consultant for FirstEnergy. In those capacities, Randazzo settled disputes over electricity rates on terms that were acceptable to the energy companies, then channeled the settlement money through shell companies where he skimmed off a portion, the indictment said.

    In 2015, FirstEnergy also paid out $8.5 million in supposed “consulting fees.” 

    The indictment said the money was really intended to be a cash payment to the industrial users so they would drop their opposition to a rate hike FirstEnergy was seeking. Through that “side deal,” a powerful utility paid off powerful industries to grease the skids for a rate hike on all FirstEnergy customers, if the allegations are true.

    Between 2016 and 2019, FirstEnergy paid $13 million into Randazzo’s shell companies, the indictment said. Of that, Randazzo passed $7.75 million to the industrial users and pocketed the rest, it said.

    On Thursday, DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney said that as his boss was entering the governor’s office at the start of 2019, DeWine saw Randazzo’s relationships with FirstEnergy and big electricity users as a special qualification to be the top regulator.

    “Governor DeWine knew of Mr. Randazzo’s relationship to FirstEnergy as a paid consultant prior to the Governor’s appointment of Mr. Randazzo,” Tierney said in an email. “As we have previously stated, Mr. Randazzo was appointed due to his expertise and having represented many sides of utility rate issues, having represented both utilities as well as large ratepayers (in) whose interest it is to pay as little as possible for utilities.”

    The connections between FirstEnergy and the incoming administration of Mike DeWine and Jon Husted were strong. DeWine’s chief of staff, Laurel Dawson, was married to a man who had been a paid lobbyist for FirstEnergy — and who had received a $10,000 loan from Randazzo in 2016, the indictment said. 

    DeWine’s legislative affairs director, Dan McCarthy, had also been a FirstEnergy lobbyist. When he was, McCarthy founded Partners for Progress, a 501(c)(4) dark money group that FirstEnergy admitted was used to funnel tens of millions of the corporation’s dollars into the effort to make Householder speaker and pass and protect the bailout. Once in the administration, McCarthy acted from that perch to help pass House Bill 6, the bailout legislation.

    And, on Dec. 18, 2018 — just before DeWine and Husted took the oath of office — they met at the Columbus Athletic Club with Jones and Dowling, the top executives for FirstEnergy. Among the topics was whether Randazzo would be acceptable to regulate the executives’ company, the indictment said.

    According to the state indictment, Jones and Dowling went from that dinner to Randazzo’s German Village condo, where they seem to have negotiated a payment that FirstEnergy later characterized as a bribe. Shortly after, Randazzo sent the executives a text message requesting $4.3 million over a period of years, according to copies filed as part of Randazzo’s indictments. Jones responded by saying it would be paid in a lump sum, the messages said.

    In January, as Randazzo was being vetted to chair the PUCO, he told Dawson, DeWine’s chief of staff, about the $4.3 million payment, but he did not tell her about the other millions he had received from FirstEnergy, the state indictment said. Randazzo didn’t report any of the payments to the Ohio Ethics Commission, it added.

    A former aide gave DeWine a dossier reporting shady financial connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy on Jan. 28, 2019. But Tierney said that Dawson never told the governor about the $4.3 million payment before DeWine nominated Randazzo to chair the PUCO on Feb. 4, 2019.

    According to the state indictment, Randazzo spent the rest of the year and part of the next helping to draft and openly lobby for the corrupt bailout. He also took other moves on behalf of FirstEnergy, including canceling a rate review that likely would have forced the utility to lower rates, thereby lowering stock prices and costing Jones and Dowling personally, the indictment said.

    Householder and four others were arrested in July 2021. But it wasn’t until the following November — when the FBI searched Randazzo’s condo — that Dawson finally told the governor about the $4.3 million payout, Tierney said.

    “The Governor had previously stated he had a conversation with Laurel Dawson in November 2020 about Sam Randazzo when Mr. Randazzo’s property was the subject of a federal search warrant,” he said. “The contractual termination payment was part of that discussion.” 

    Subsequently, DeWine has staunchly defended Dawson, much as he defended McCarthy, the former aide and FirstEnergy lobbyist.

    July 2021 brought the lengthy, specific federal indictment of Householder, FirstEnergy, and others on the heels of Randazzo’s questionable work in support of HB 6. But DeWine apparently didn’t suspect that the company’s $4.3 million payment to Randazzo might have been a bribe — until federal agents searched his condo.

    “Please note that the payment was never alleged to our office to be a bribe until later in 2021, well after any such conversation or initial PUCO vetting of Mr. Randazzo,” DeWine’s press secretary said Thursday.

    Interestingly, the indictment unveiled on Monday contained a message from a FirstEnergy lobbyist briefing his top bosses on how to talk to DeWine.

    “Explain things like he doesn’t know anything about it — and be surprised when he does,” the lobbyist wrote. “Sometimes he knows what you’re talking about. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he does and pretends he doesn’t.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance Slams “Elites” Despite Shared Backgrounds

    Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance Slams “Elites” Despite Shared Backgrounds

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    Photo Credit: Joshua A. Bickel/Ohio Debate Commission.

    Ohio U.S. Senate Republican candidate J.D. Vance during Ohio’s U.S. Senate Republican Primary Debate at Central State University.

    While it’s impossible to know what’s in his heart, Ohio Republican J.D. Vance has been taking some positions against so-called elites that would seem to be squarely opposed to… guys like him.

    They include statements he’s made about people trying to disqualify former President Donald Trump from running again.

    It’s widely thought that Vance is lobbying to be Trump’s running mate. And last week he received a lot of attention by telling ABC host George Stephanopoulos that in 2020 he would have given Trump’s phony slates of electors a chance to contest the election in Congress.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence, of course, refused to do such a thing. So Trump attacked him via Twitter during a violent insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That prompted some of the marauders to chant “Hang Mike Pence!” while Pence was still in the building.

    Vance’s current statements contrast with the time before Trump took power. “My god what an idiot,” Vance tweeted of soon-to-be President Trump in 2016.

    And his statements to Stephanopoulos last week were part of a series of head-scratchers Vance has made in recent months. On Jan. 4, for example, he published a 494-word post on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

    In it, Vance bitterly criticizes “elites,” who he says got their positions not through working hard and being smart, but because they “checked a box.”

    Vance starts with Claudine Gay, the Harvard University president who was forced out amid multiple allegations of plagiarism.

    “The most important point about Claudine Gay’s plagiarism isn’t that she was fired, but that she had the job — the most prestigious job in higher education — after an extremely thin record of accomplishment,” Vance wrote of Gay, who is Black. “Claudine Gay has never published an article — even a plagiarized one — that really mattered, or significantly advanced scholarship. She got her job not through merit, but because she checked a box.”

    Vance then cast a wider net, writing, “Our entire elite is like this. People who got their jobs because they checked boxes, not because they achieved something amazing or accomplished something meaningful.”

    Vance’s despised “elites” apparently don’t include Trump, who inherited at least $413 million, only to declare six bankruptcies, be indicted on 91 felony counts, lead the Trump Organization to a criminal tax fraud conviction, and to be found  to have committed sexual abuse in a civil proceeding.

    Ohio’s junior senator also wouldn’t talk about where he falls in the privilege scale.

    His office didn’t respond on the record when asked how, as a sitting U.S. senator and a graduate of Yale Law School, Vance himself is not an “elite.” And in terms of “box-checking,” his office didn’t respond to a question asking whether he played up his Appalachian ancestry on his Yale admission essay — thereby checking a “box” of his own.

    But where his argument perhaps is most confusing is when Vance turns his attention to lawyers trying to keep Trump off the ballot on the rationale that the former president violated 14th Amendment by engaging in insurrection. It seems to be a reasonable question, given Trump’s lies about his loss, his elaborate attempts to overturn it, and the violent attack he stoked as Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s victory.

    The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments on the issue. During them, the justices seemed poised to reject Colorado’s attempt to disqualify Trump for fear of sowing chaos by allowing individual states to decide presidential elections. 

    But the debate didn’t delve very deeply into a pretty important issue: whether Trump had engaged in insurrection and what looms for the country if he’s allowed to run again, win or lose.

    In his post last month, Vance himself tried to disqualify lawyers for even making the argument that Trump had disqualified himself by attempting to overturn the election results and the will of 80 million American voters.

    “This is why you should scorn the attorneys who tell you that Donald Trump committed ‘insurrection’ and should be thrown off the ballot,” Vance wrote. “They have no special legal knowledge. They are political hacks pretending to be lawyers, and they are not smart or accomplished, they have a credential from an institution that cares more about box checking than merit.”

    That’s an interesting claim when you look at the credentials of three attorneys who have played major roles in the effort to disqualify Trump.

    Two are Michael Stokes Paulsen and William Baude. 

    In August, the conservative law professors wrote an article. It said that Section 3 of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment was written for just such an eventuality as Trump seeking reelection after doing so much to overturn the result of one he’d already lost. 

    The Colorado Supreme Court cited the pair’s argument when it ruled that Trump couldn’t be on the ballot in that state and their article came up again in Thursday’s oral argument.

    As for the professors having “a credential from an institution that cares more about box checking than merit,” that’s a surprising statement for Vance to make. 

    Both hold law degrees from Yale University, the same school that awarded one to Vance. His office didn’t respond when asked in a follow-up question if Vance believed his degree came from an institution that is more concerned with “box checking” than merit.

    Then there’s the senator’s claim that proponents of the 14th Amendment argument “have no special legal knowledge” and “are not smart or accomplished.”

    Before he was elected to the Senate in 2022, Vance worked in corporate law, then in venture capital, and wrote a memoir about his Ohio roots. Baude is a law professor at the University of Chicago and Paulsen at the University of St. Thomas.

    Whatever their relative merits, all three resumes seem to pale next to that of another prominent believer that Trump should be disqualified from the 2024 election.

    That would be J. Micheal Luttig. In 1991, George H.W. Bush appointed him to the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals — a bench on which he sat for 15 years. Before that, Luttig served as assistant attorney general, assistant counsel to then-President Ronald Reagan and clerk and special assistant to then-Chief Justice to Warren E. Burger.

    Instead of ad-hominem attacks against people who disagree with him, Luttig made an argument on historical and constitutional grounds.

    “The January 6, 2021 insurrection sought to prevent the vesting of the authority and functions of the Presidency in the newly-elected President,” said a brief Luttig co-authored urging the Supreme Court to disqualify Trump. “The Civil War generation certainly understood that the threat and use of force to prevent a newly-elected President from exercising executive power is an insurrection. Indeed, the activities of federal officials to prevent Lincoln’s inauguration were one basis for Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.” 

    That’s an argument with which Vance doesn’t seem to have engaged.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.



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    Marty Schladen, The Ohio Capital Journal

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