Luxury travel, 5-star resorts, and corporate money: Inside Gary Click's campaign finance records

There is a line in Gary Click’s 2020 campaign finance records worth understanding before reading anything else.

Click had taken $200 in cash out of his own campaign account — a personal withdrawal, not a campaign expense. He put it back three days later. And he made sure his treasurer wrote it down: “CASH TAKEN OUT, BUT PUT BACK IN 10/8/20.”

He knew the rules. He followed them. He documented it. This was the Gary Click who called himself a servant-leader, a pastor, a man accountable to his congregation and his constituents in equal measure.

That was 2020. By 2025, things were different.

In September of that year, Click’s campaign paid $313.48 for a Columbus hotel stay. His own filing labeled it “overnight in Columbus - Non legislative.” Three weeks later, another Columbus hotel, $129.80 — “overnight in Columbus - Non legislative.” Then $77.29 on October 9, same label. Then $51.52 on November 14. Four stays. Four times his own campaign told the public in writing that the expense had no legislative purpose. Four times it was charged to donors anyway. Not one of the four was ever paid back.

The man who once returned $200 in three days and wrote himself a note about it apparently had nothing to say about $572.09 in hotel bills his own filings called personal.

That contradiction sits at the center of what a TiffinOhio.net review of Click’s complete campaign finance record — covering his entire tenure as the representative of the 88th House District — has found. What the records show is not a pastor-legislator spending modestly to serve Sandusky and Seneca counties. They show a man who has used donor money to travel the country in considerable comfort, attend conferences at luxury resorts and Christian nationalist organizations, throw catered golf tournaments at a private Tiffin country club every year, and build a national platform that has almost nothing to do with the people who sent him to Columbus.

In December 2024, Click’s campaign paid $1,204.14 to stay at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Arizona — a AAA Five Diamond resort, the highest rating the American Automobile Association awards, with nightly rates beginning around $650. His filing calls it a “CONFERENCE.” That same month, his campaign billed $1,043.45 in a single American Airlines transaction for what he described as travel to that conference. He had already spent $881.91 at the Hyatt Regency Denver the previous July, $772.89 at the Marriott Orlando the July before that, $376.62 at the Renaissance Inn Chicago in November 2023. Across his entire tenure, Click’s campaign has spent $19,055.33 on conference travel and expenses — billed to donors who gave money to help him represent a two-county district in northwestern Ohio.

Not every conference was at a luxury hotel. In September 2025, Click’s campaign paid $307.97 to attend a conference at WallBuilders in Aledo, Texas — the organization founded by David Barton, whose central mission is promoting the theory that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy. His filing calls it a “Legislative Conference.” Earlier that year, his campaign paid $101.49 to the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. — one of the country’s most prominent anti-LGBTQ advocacy organizations — described in his records as “RESOURCES.” Click has spent his entire legislative career as one of Ohio’s most vocal opponents of LGBTQ rights.

Then there is the golf. Every year, Click’s campaign throws a golf outing. Every year, donors pay for all of it — the green fees, the catering, the beer, the signage, the pastries. The 2025 edition ran $5,653.85: $3,140 to Mohawk Golf and Country Club in Tiffin, $1,944.39 to Ironwood Steakhouse for catered food and drink, $383.16 to Washington Street Consulting in Tiffin for custom signs, $89.53 to Walmart for supplies, $96.77 to Ideal Bakery in Fremont. The 2021 outing billed $2,890 to Mohawk and included separate Walmart runs for coolers and canned beverages. The 2022 outing charged donors $2,636.12 for Ironwood Steakhouse food alone. In total, Click’s campaign has spent $12,044.72 on golf outings since he took office — a private country club event, catered and signposted, on the donor’s dime, every single year.

The financial relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council — ALEC, the corporate-funded organization that drafts model legislation for conservative state lawmakers — is worth examining separately. Click’s campaign has paid ALEC $2,125 in dues and conference fees. ALEC has contributed $7,307.78 back to Click’s campaign over the same period. That is not a typo. The organization Click attends conferences at has given his campaign $5,182.78 more than he has paid them. He goes to the conference. They refill the account. He goes back.

What Click was doing at all these conferences, in all these cities, became clearer in February 2026. TiffinOhio.net had reported that Click quietly stepped down as pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple — a role he held for 19 years and that formed the foundation of his political identity — in March 2025, without any public announcement to his constituents. The church’s website continued listing him as the active pastor for nearly 11 months. When the story spread on social media, Click replied on X to deny it — “Actually, it was very public. You just missed it” — then went silent when asked to name the announcement. Four days later, he gave an interview to the Advertiser-Tribune. The church website was updated the same week.

In that interview, Click explained where he had been. He had been traveling to California, Colorado, Alabama, and cities across Ohio, preaching on what he called “the justice and biblical role of Christians in civil government.” He had tied this work to HB 486 — the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act. He had filed paperwork to establish a nonprofit called “We the Church.” He was, in other words, building a national Christian nationalist platform on donor money.

Click is seeking what would be his final term under Ohio’s term limits. He faces Republican challenger Eric Watson of Tiffin in the May primary. Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin is running in the general election.

A review of where that campaign money came from is its own story. Of Click’s $312,984 in career contributions, only 20.1% — roughly $62,954 — came from donors inside Sandusky and Seneca counties, the district he was elected to represent. The remaining 79.9% came from elsewhere in Ohio or out of state. PACs and corporate entities account for 65.5% of his total fundraising — $205,113.

Among the most striking contributors are the unions. Click has received $60,525 from labor PACs over his career — including $40,000 from Political Education Pattern, the political arm of IUOE Local 18, the International Union of Operating Engineers, headquartered in Cleveland. Click has never been described as a friend of organized labor. The operating engineers have bankrolled him anyway, year after year, making them the single largest organizational donor in his campaign’s history.

The largest individual donor in the current election cycle gave $5,000 in November 2025. His name is Ronald Wilheim. Click’s filing lists no employer or occupation. Public records show Wilheim is the President of the Long Term Care Division of CommuniCare Health Services — a company operating more than 85 skilled nursing facilities and assisted living communities across Ohio and neighboring states. Wilheim also sits on the board of the Ohio Health Care Association, the nursing home industry’s chief lobbying organization in Ohio.

Click sits on the House Children and Human Services Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee. Both committees have direct jurisdiction over Ohio Medicaid policy — the reimbursement rates that determine whether nursing homes like CommuniCare’s are profitable. The nursing home industry lives and dies by what happens in those rooms.

No direct connection between Click’s committee work and CommuniCare’s specific legislative interests has been established by TiffinOhio.net. Attempts to reach Click’s office for comment on any of the matters described in this report were unsuccessful.

What a $5,000 check from a nursing home executive buys a candidate on the Medicaid committee, nobody is saying. What Gary Click spent on five-star hotels and private golf tournaments and Christian nationalist conferences while calling himself a servant-leader, his own filings already said.