TIFFIN, Ohio — State Rep. Gary Click falsely accused three named Democrats this week of donating to the first-time Republican candidate who nearly unseated him in May. The campaign finance reports he pointed to without citing show no money from any of them.

In a post to his campaign Facebook page, Click, a Vickery Republican, former community theater actor and former fundamentalist Baptist preacher wrote: “Just curious: does anyone want to speculate why the Seneca County Democratic Party Chair, Gina Grandillo, my Democratic opponent [Aaron Jones], Democratic City Councilwoman Angie Ruiz, and other Dems would have donated to my primary opponent, while other Dems were encouraging Democrats to cross over and vote for him in the primary? I have a clue and it wasn’t because they agreed on policy!”

Sharing it from his personal account, Click added: “But D’s TOLD us that they were crossing over and now we know that they donated too. They don’t believe in their candidate or they would not stoop to such low measures.” He closed with the hashtag #DesperateDemocrats.

A TiffinOhio.net review of the contributions Eric Watson’s committee reported to the Ohio Secretary of State found no donation from Grandillo, from Democratic nominee Aaron Jones, or from Fremont City Councilwoman Angie Ruiz, a Democrat.

Watson’s reports cover 104 contributions from 72 donors totaling $17,488.05, dated from Oct. 31, 2025 through June 5, 2026, and span his 2025 annual, pre-primary and post-primary filings. Ninety-seven of the 104 contributions came from Ohio addresses. Roughly $12,570 came from communities inside the 88th District.

None of the three names Click used appears in any of them. They do not appear in Click’s own contribution filings either, which run from 2019 through his June post-primary report and list 1,055 contributions.

“Eric Watson’s campaign finance reports are public. Aaron Jones isn’t on them, I’m not on them, and Angie Ruiz isn’t on them — not one dollar, from any of the three people Representative Click named,” Seneca County Democratic Party Chair Gina Grandillo said in a statement. “He could have checked in ten minutes before he posted, and he didn’t.”

Grandillo added: “Incumbents who feel secure don’t spend August posting about their opponents. This just adds to a concerning pattern of Gary Click lying to his constituents.”

Watson, who lost the May 5 primary by 599 votes and has since said he is moving out of the district, rejected the accusation and questioned its internal logic.

“Gary Click loves to lie, but the math doesn’t add up here,” Watson said. “The number of voters who pulled a Democratic ballot in the district actually increased this year. If Democrats were supposedly crossing over in significant numbers to vote for me in the Republican primary, you’d expect the opposite. Gary is also publicly claiming that specific Democratic officials donated to my campaign. None of the people he named ever contributed to my campaign committee. The campaign-finance reports are public. Anyone—including Gary—can look at them.”

Watson also pointed to how Click characterized him during the primary. “Throughout the campaign, Gary portrayed me as ‘further to the right and in the ditch,’” he said. “Now he wants everyone to believe Democrats were secretly trying to help elect the candidate he claimed was even further to the right than himself. Which is it?”

The phrasing tracks. Click told the Fremont News-Messenger during the race: “You move to the right of Gary Click and you’re in the ditch.”

Watson attributed his showing to Republican voters. “The truth is much simpler: nearly half of Republican primary voters rejected Gary Click,” he said. “We took Seneca County strongly, beating an incumbent state representative in his own backyard, and came within roughly 600 votes of defeating him districtwide despite being massively outspent. That wasn’t Democrats—it was Republican voters who wanted a change. Instead of confronting why so many Republicans rejected him, Gary would rather invent a story and blame Democrats.”

On that last point, the filings show a wider money gap than a spending gap. Click’s committee reported $69,461.37 in contributions in 2026 through primary day, about four times the $17,488.05 Watson reported across all of his filings. Committee spending was closer: $53,662.58 for Click through May 5 against $42,128.99 for Watson. Of Click’s total, $45,000 consisted of two donations to the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee, the chamber’s Republican caucus fund — $25,000 on Jan. 21 and $20,000 on April 23. Excluding those transfers, Click’s committee reported $8,662.58 in other spending through primary day. OHROC reported contributing $38,611.62 back to Click’s committee between March 9 and April 22.

Jones, a Tiffin city councilman, Army veteran and manufacturing supervisor, was brief.

“I didn’t donate to any Republican primary campaign, and the public filings show that,” Jones said. “I’m spending my time knocking doors and listening to what people here are worried about: their electric bills, their property taxes, their schools. That’s what I’m going to keep doing.”

The turnout numbers

Watson’s turnout argument echoes figures the Seneca County Democratic Party itself released after the primary. In a May 7 statement, the party said Democratic ballot requests in Seneca County rose 43 percent over the 2022 midterm primary while Republican requests rose 3 percent, and said Republican turnout in the county declined by roughly 300 voters.

Click finished the primary with 6,859 votes to Watson’s 6,260, according to unofficial returns from the Sandusky and Seneca county boards of elections. He carried his home county of Sandusky by 15.4 points and lost Seneca County, where Jones lives, by 8.5 points.

Click faces Jones in the Nov. 3 general election in the 88th District, which covers Seneca and Sandusky counties.