SANDUSKY, Ohio — The six Republicans who got to choose the next state representative for Erie, Ottawa and Huron counties gave the job to the one applicant who was sitting among them.
Erie County Treasurer Caleb Stidham, who also chairs the Erie County Republican Party, was certified Monday as the Republican nominee in Ohio House District 89, according to a copy of the completed certification form. He was one of three people who applied for the vacancy. He was also one of six people the law entitled to vote on it.
The seat opened Tuesday, Aug. 4, when state Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, delivered a letter to the Erie County Board of Elections withdrawing from the November ballot after four terms. Swearingen told the Ohio Capital Journal he is being considered for a role that appears to involve the federal government, and that seeking another term while pursuing it would not have been fair to voters.
That handed the decision to a body created by section 3513.31 of the Ohio Revised Code: because the district spans more than one county but fewer than all of them, the chairperson and the secretary of each county Republican central committee in the district fill the vacancy. Erie, Ottawa and Huron each get two seats. A majority of the members present decides. The statute assigns the job of calling the meeting to the chairman of the most populous county in the district, which is Erie — Stidham.
The vote breakdown was not available Monday. It is not known whether Stidham voted on his own application, whether he abstained, or who presided over the meeting. Ohio law contains no recusal requirement for a committee member who is also an applicant, and it does not say who runs the meeting once it is called.
The objections came first, in public
The dual role drew days of public criticism from Republicans in the district before the committee ever met, and none of it was quiet.
Ron Coop, who posted about the meeting publicly hours before it convened, framed the choice as a cost the party would pay statewide rather than locally. “The 89th District is a solid 10 point Republican district. A point or two of grassroots staying home will not change local results,” he wrote. “However, it takes away votes from State wide candidates. This year will be a tough election for Republicans. They need all the votes they can get.”
He predicted the fight would not end Monday. “If Caleb is the choice, the next 2 years in the district will be ugly. The grassroots will be vocal, and every vote will be scrutinized. It will probably lead to a well funded primary challenger. An expensive primary is never good for the party,” Coop wrote. He argued the committee could avoid all of it by picking someone without a conflict of interest, and put the decision on Huron County: “Huron County has no dog in the fight. Huron County must decide if they are going to upset the base and vote for Caleb, or unite the party and pick someone the entire party can get behind.”
Former state Rep. Steve Kraus, who has said he wanted the seat, was blunter. “Chairman Calab Stidham actually did us a favor and let the ‘smoke filled room’ door open so you, ‘John Q public’ could actually see how the sausage is really made,” he wrote, adding that Stidham is “Speakers Huffman’s ‘choice’ because, after all, he’s one of them.”
Kraus also said he was cut out of the process. He wrote that he and Stidham were on the phone at 8 a.m. Friday, Aug. 7, and that Stidham did not invite him to the Huron County Republican lunch held that day, where the applicants addressed party members. “And why did my own chairman not invite me?” he wrote. “This is politics as usual and how the sausage is made.”
Kraus held the 89th District seat for seven months in 2015 and was removed after a jury convicted him of theft, a fifth-degree felony carrying an elderly-victim specification. He was acquitted of breaking and entering. A court later sealed the conviction, and the Ohio Supreme Court cleared him to appear on the 2024 primary ballot, where Swearingen defeated him.
Stephanie Stock, president of the anti-vaccine-mandate group Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, ran an email campaign at the two Huron County committee members over the weekend, publishing their addresses and a suggested message. “Please do not bend to the wishes of House and Senate leadership,” the draft read. It asked them not to replace Swearingen “with someone who will do the special interest bidding of Columbus rather than your citizens.”
A 10-year-old interview, back in circulation
Within hours of the selection, Republicans in the district were passing around a decade-old interview in which Stidham criticized the man who now defines the party.
In July 2016, Stidham was a 19-year-old Miami University sophomore from Huron who had traveled to Cleveland for his first Republican National Convention. WCPO in Cincinnati sat down with him and three other Miami students and reported that none of the four had voted for Donald Trump in that year’s Ohio primary on March 15.
Asked what he would say with 30 seconds of Trump’s time, Stidham answered: “I don’t even think there’d be anything worth saying.” He went on to say Trump had demonstrated he would not take direction from advisers, friends or committed supporters who had urged him to soften how he talked and carried himself, and that urging him to drop the border wall would go nowhere. Earlier in the same interview, Stidham called the race unconventional and said he was let down by how negative both campaigns had turned.
The exchange resurfaced Monday in a Facebook post by Mark Pukita, a Dublin technology entrepreneur who ran in the 2022 Republican U.S. Senate primary and who had already objected publicly to Stidham voting on his own application.
Stidham has since built his political career inside the Trump-era party. He chairs a county Republican organization, was elected treasurer in 2024 and has been among the more visible county chairs backing Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump endorsed for governor within hours of Ramaswamy’s announcement.
What TiffinOhio.net reported before the vote
Speaker Matt Huffman and Sen. Bill Reineke were working privately to get Stidham the nomination, a person familiar with the discussions told TiffinOhio.net last week.
Stidham managed Reineke’s 2020 Ohio Senate primary campaign, a bruising race against conservative activist Melissa Ackison in which Stidham issued a run of press releases attacking her business record. Reineke is now the sole declared candidate for Ohio Senate president and is expected to take the chamber’s top job when the next General Assembly convenes in January. His Senate district covers Seneca and Sandusky counties.
Stidham, 29, hosted what the Erie County party called its largest event ever, a Ramaswamy appearance at a Sandusky resort.
The applicants who did not have a vote
The other two applicants were Ottawa County Auditor Jennifer Widmer and Ottawa County Clerk of Courts Christopher Enoch. Neither held a seat on the committee.
Enoch is vice chairman of the Ottawa County Republican Party, but the statute seats only the chair and the secretary — in Ottawa’s case, Chairman Jill Stinebaugh and Secretary Toni DeLuca. Widmer holds no current office in the county party.
Both are also on the Nov. 3 ballot for county office, and under R.C. 3513.052 neither could have held both spots. Selection would have forced one of them to abandon a county race and forced Ottawa County Republicans to fill that vacancy under the same 4 p.m. clock. Stidham’s treasurer term runs through December 2028 and he was not on this year’s ballot, so he was the only applicant the committee could choose without a second scramble.
The county next door handled it differently
Northwest Ohio Republicans faced a similar conflict four months ago and resolved it another way. In April, the Sandusky County Republican Party Central Committee appointed its own chairman, Justin Smith, to a vacant county commissioner seat — but barred him from chairing the meeting because he was a candidate. Vice Chairman Ben Decker presided as acting chair specifically to avoid a conflict of interest.
Nothing in state law required that. It was a choice.
What Republicans are running against
The Democratic nominee, Easton Retzke of Sandusky, has held the nomination since the May 5 primary and has spent the summer building a campaign while Republicans had no candidate at all. A political science graduate of Ohio State, Retzke has centered his campaign on public school funding, housing costs, utility rates and campaign finance transparency. He has picked up endorsements from the Ohio Federation of Teachers and the UAW Tri-County CAP Council.
Swearingen won the district with 58% of the vote in 2024. Stidham inherits that margin, a general election 85 days out, and a bloc of Republicans in his own district who spent the weekend telling anyone who would listen that the process was rigged against them.
Coop wrote his warning before the committee voted. “For people who constantly talk about party unity, this should be a no brainer,” he wrote. “The establishment always tell us we must all come together. However, the establishment also will cause turmoil to make sure their candidates get their shot.”
