In May 2025, Sen. Jon Husted asked federal taxpayers to put $5 million toward a private school in Cincinnati that has not been built, planned by the charitable arm of a billionaire Dayton-area real estate investor.

Three months later, that investor wrote his first checks to Husted’s federal campaign — $507,000 of them, all on the same day.

Federal Election Commission records show Larry Connor, founder of the Miamisburg-based Connor Group, gave $250,000 to Team Husted, the senator’s joint fundraising committee, and $250,000 to Ohio Flyer PAC, an independent-expenditure super PAC that has spent more than $1.6 million against Democrat Sherrod Brown, on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025. He gave another $7,000 directly to Husted for Senate the same day.

Those were the largest political contributions of Connor’s life, and the first federal money he had ever given Husted — a politician whose calendars show him meeting with Connor about school plans six years earlier.

Congress did not fund the school. The Cincinnati project appears nowhere in the earmark table attached to the fiscal 2026 spending package that became law on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. Eight other projects Husted requested did make it in, worth $27.4 million to Ohio — an airport in Youngstown, a road in Wooster, a community college in Columbus, parks in Chillicothe and Vinton County.

This spring, Husted asked for the $5 million again.

What the record does and does not show

Nothing in the public record establishes an agreement, an understanding, or any connection between Husted’s funding request and Connor’s contributions. Earmark requests are public by design, and Husted submitted dozens of them. The stated recipient is Kids and Community Partners, the Connor Group’s charitable arm, not the for-profit real estate firm — a distinction Husted’s own paperwork turns on.

In the certification letter accompanying the request, Husted wrote that “none of the entities for which I have requested congressionally directed spending are for-profit entities,” and certified that “neither I nor my immediate family has a pecuniary interest” in any of the projects. Both statements are required under Senate Rule XLIV.

Connor also spread money widely that August day, giving $228,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $10,000 to the Ohio Republican Party. In November 2025 he gave $206,768 to V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims, the super PAC backing Vivek Ramaswamy’s run for governor, joining a roster of billionaire donors that includes Elon Musk and Jeff Yass.

What the record does show is a sequence, and a relationship that runs back two decades.

“School Planning,” 2019

Husted’s official calendars from his time as lieutenant governor record at least five contacts with Connor in 2019 and 2020.

A call was scheduled for Thursday, July 25, 2019. On Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019, Husted met Connor at the Connor Group’s Miamisburg headquarters. On Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019, he met Connor at Connor’s own office for 30 minutes under the subject line “School Planning.” On Monday, Nov. 4, 2019, a call was scheduled under the subject “Dayton School,” with a note that Connor would reach Husted on his personal cell. Another call was set for Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020.

The Greater Dayton School, the Connor Group’s first school, opened four and a half years after that “School Planning” meeting.

The request

On Thursday, May 15, 2025, Husted submitted his fiscal 2026 spending requests to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. Among them, listed on his own Senate website, was $5 million for the “Connor Group Kids and Community Partners Fund” for “Construction of Greater Cincinnati School and School Based Health Center on Site.”

The project would replicate the Greater Dayton School, which the Connor Group calls Ohio’s first private secular school built to serve under-resourced students. The Connor Group’s published materials say the Cincinnati school is expected to open “in 2028 or 2029” with a one-time capital investment of $5 million — roughly the amount Husted asked the federal government to supply.

Seven weeks after the spending package became law without it, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins named Husted to the Appropriations Committee, filling the vacancy left when Sen. Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as Homeland Security secretary. Husted is the first Ohioan on the panel since George Voinovich left the Senate in 2011. He was assigned to six subcommittees; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development — the panel that would decide the Cincinnati request — is not among them.

In his fiscal 2027 requests, published this spring, the Connor project appears again at $5 million. On that same list, Husted requested $1.326 million to expand a Sandusky County Park District facility in Fremont and $2 million for infrastructure at a Sandusky County community park in Jackson Township. Combined, the two northwest Ohio park requests total less than the single Cincinnati school request.

A program Husted created, and a school that depends on it

At the Greater Dayton School’s March 2024 grand opening, then-Lt. Gov. Husted spoke alongside Connor. “I remember thinking that starting a school is hard, and that starting a school like this seems impossible,” Husted said, in remarks the Connor Group published on its website. “… I knew Larry well enough that he had a plan and he would work to overcome every barrier that got in the way and make it a reality and never give up.”

The school’s model leans on EdChoice, Ohio’s private school voucher program — and Husted takes credit for creating it. Writing to the Upper Arlington school board in 2024 to discourage it from joining a lawsuit against the program, he said: “I know because I created it in 2005 when I served as Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.” The Greater Dayton School’s founding principal, identified by the Dayton Daily News as Stich, credited the program at the opening: “It takes Larry Connor, it takes the state of Ohio being dedicated to scholarships for student choice to fund an operation like this.”

EdChoice began as a program for low-income students in low-performing districts. That changed under the administration in which Husted served as lieutenant governor: the state budget signed Tuesday, July 4, 2023, extended eligibility to families at up to 450% of the poverty line. Ohio spent more than $1 billion on private school vouchers in fiscal 2025. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page has since found the program unconstitutional while allowing it to continue during appeals; the Tenth District Court of Appeals heard argument Tuesday, May 12, 2026, in the suit brought by the Vouchers Hurt Ohio coalition, and a ruling is expected within months.

Connor’s support for Husted in Ohio tracks that history. He has given $51,885.41 to Husted’s state campaign committee since 2003, and his wife, Christine, another $17,552.35 — $69,437.76 between them, according to Ohio Secretary of State records reviewed by TiffinOhio.net. His largest state contribution came 22 days after the voucher expansion was signed: $15,499.69 on Wednesday, July 26, 2023, the maximum an individual could give under Ohio law at the time. Thirty-nine contributions at exactly that figure went to Husted’s committee that year.

The stakes are not abstract in Seneca County, where Tiffin City Schools is absorbing a $1.2 million annual funding loss from property tax legislation that took effect in March.

A recurring question in Husted’s race

Campaign finance questions have followed Husted through the campaign. TiffinOhio.net previously reported that he accepted $116,892 from billionaire Les Wexner between 2001 and 2025, including a contribution two months before he voted in September 2025 to block a Senate amendment directing release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents; his campaign later said it would give the money to charity. He also testified as a defense witness this spring in the trial of two former FirstEnergy executives accused of bribing state regulators to pass House Bill 6, the utility bailout he championed as lieutenant governor. Husted has not been charged in either matter and has denied wrongdoing.

He faces Brown in the November general election for the remaining two years of the Senate term he was appointed to in January 2025.