Steve Kraus challenges Caleb Stidham to public debate in Ohio House District 89 race

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Steve Kraus wanted a debate. He wanted it in public, he wanted it on camera, and he wanted it before Ohio’s secretary of state decided whether the man he is challenging would be on the November ballot at all.

He got about a day.

The former state representative, who is running a write-in campaign for Ohio House District 89, challenged Erie County Treasurer Caleb Stidham to a debate in a Facebook post Thursday, attaching two conditions.

“I challenge Calab [sic] to a debate,” Kraus wrote. “SOS Frank LaRose has until August 28th to decide, so let’s have a debate. I’ll debate Calab Stidham anytime/anywhere about who is the better candidate. Qualifier - it must be open to the public and allowed to be video taped. If Calab is so qualified, this should be easy for him.”

LaRose did not take until Aug. 28. He ruled the same day, certifying Stidham to the Nov. 3 ballot and rejecting the argument from the Erie County elections board’s two Democrats that the closed party meeting that produced the nomination was unlawful.

Stidham did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

“The Ham”

Kraus has settled on a nickname. In the debate post he referred to Stidham three times as “the Ham.”

“We all know the story. The Ham will not debate because he doesn’t know what the establishment wants him to say,” Kraus wrote.

“The fact of the matter is that I am the only candidate running that supports……. Ending property tax, you keep more of your hard-earned money because the government doesn’t deserve it… let’s end the theft! If you want to pay more and get less - vote for the Ham,” he wrote.

“Remember…an establishment conservative is just a big government tax and spend liberal in disguise - vote Kraus for less taxes and less government spending.”

He closed: “Write in Steve Kraus!”

No public statement from Stidham declining a debate could be located. Kraus’s assertion that Stidham will not debate is his own characterization.

“Columbus Mafia”

After the certification, Kraus issued a statement.

“It’s not unexpected that the Columbus Mafia would be able to keep their pick in place,” he wrote. “I don’t begrudge Secretary of State Frank LaRose for maintaining a practice that has plagued both parties for the last 30 years. If you want true representation, write in Steve Kraus on your ballot in November.”

How the ballot fight got here

The seat opened Aug. 4, when Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, delivered a letter to the Erie County Board of Elections withdrawing from the November ballot after four terms, saying he was under consideration for another role.

Because House District 89 spans more than one county but fewer than all of them, state law handed the replacement decision to a six-member district committee made up of the chairperson and secretary of each county Republican central committee in the district. Stidham, who chairs the Erie County Republican Party, was one of three applicants. He was also one of the six people entitled to vote. The committee met the afternoon of Aug. 10 and picked him, 4-2.

Four days later the Erie County board deadlocked 2-2 on certifying him. Democrats Edward Leonard and MaryAnn Groot said the committee meeting should have been open to the public and that Stidham should have stepped away from the deliberation and the vote. Republicans John Adams and Gary Smith voted to certify. Under state law, a tie at a county board goes to the secretary of state, whose decision is final.

In a letter to the board explaining Thursday’s ruling, LaRose wrote that Stidham’s application appeared to follow the law and that the Erie County prosecutor’s office had agreed. He rejected the open meetings argument, writing that the Democratic members had not cited any relevant law.

“Respectfully, this certification vote is not the proper forum for an extra-judicial expansion of Ohio’s open meetings laws beyond their established statutory application,” LaRose wrote.

LaRose had headlined an Erie County Republican fundraiser at the Sandusky Yacht Club the previous evening, at an event the invitation said was held in support of Erie County candidates. He is term-limited as secretary of state and is his party’s nominee for state auditor on the same Nov. 3 ballot.

Kraus’s own deadline

Stidham’s name is now settled. Kraus’s is not.

Write-in candidates must file a declaration of intent by 4 p.m. on the 72nd day before the election, under Ohio Revised Code 3513.041. For the Nov. 3 general election, that is 4 p.m. Monday, Aug. 24. Write-in votes are not counted for anyone who has not filed.

The property tax claim

Kraus is running on eliminating property taxes outright, a position he says separates him from everyone else in the race.

The statewide push to do that is not on this year’s ballot. The Committee to Abolish Ohio Property Taxes, which spent more than a year gathering signatures for a constitutional amendment banning taxes on real property, announced in June that it had fallen short of its signature goal and would not file by the July 1 deadline. Organizers said they are aiming for 2027.

The seat Kraus lost

Kraus held House District 89 for seven months in 2015. A jury convicted him of theft from an elderly person, a fifth-degree felony, on July 27, 2015, and he vacated the seat that day.

A court later sealed the conviction. When an Erie County resident sued to keep him off the 2024 primary ballot, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously in January 2024 that he could run, sidestepping the question of whether a sealed conviction counts as an expunged one and holding instead that the office of state representative does not involve the kind of “substantial management or control” over public property that triggers disqualification. Swearingen beat him in that primary.

The rest of the field

Kraus is not the only Republican in the district objecting to how the nomination was handled. GOP consultant Jon Paul Morrow, who worked on Kraus’s 2014 campaign, has said Stidham should have abstained and warned publicly that the nomination could cost Republicans the seat. Statehouse Speaker Matt Huffman and state Sen. Bill Reineke were privately working to secure the nomination for Stidham before the committee met, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Stidham has defended the process, telling NBC4 there was no conflict of interest because he did not lead or chair the meeting that selected him, and that Huron County Chairman Sven Stahl chaired it.

The Democratic nominee is Easton Retzke of Sandusky, a lifelong resident and Ohio State political science graduate who won his party’s nomination on May 5 and has spent the summer campaigning while Republicans argued over who would face him.