Ohio Republicans had months. Then they had days. On Wednesday they had until 4 o’clock, and at 4 o’clock they still had U.S. Rep. Max Miller.

The deadline came and went with no withdrawal, killing any possibility of a special primary to replace Miller as the Republican nominee in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District. One lever is left, and it is a short one: if Miller withdraws by the close of business Monday, county Republican chairs can pick a replacement at a meeting they must give two days’ notice to hold. After that his name is on the November ballot and it stays there.

Two days before the clock ran out, volunteers hung a banner over Interstate 90 in Cleveland. NO MORE MILLER. NO MORE CREECH. The second name belongs to state Rep. Rodney Creech, and the two men have this in common: their own party’s leadership asked each of them to step aside, each refused, and both are on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Miller says he is not going anywhere, and he denies all of it. “No court, no agency has ever substantiated any allegation of abuse against me. No criminal charge has ever been filed against me,” he said in a livestream Sunday, according to Roll Call. “Every single one of these allegations were already investigated, and I cooperated fully every single time because I had nothing to hide and I have nothing to hide now.” That is accurate as far as it goes. He has not been charged with a crime, and a court has continued to grant him joint custody of his daughter — a point his campaign has repeatedly pressed.

What is also true is that a sitting Republican U.S. senator spent Sunday telling the country that Miller is dangerous, and that six days later Miller is still his party’s nominee.

The pressure that produced nothing

Bernie Moreno is Miller’s former father-in-law. He had said nothing publicly for months. Then, hours after Miller’s livestream, he posted this: “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives.” Moreno added that Miller “needs serious psychological help” and that he holds his breath “every minute he has custody of my granddaughter,” according to The Associated Press. On Tuesday he told reporters the past stretch had been the “seventh level of hell” for his family.

Miller’s answer, within hours: “If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable. You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political.”

President Donald Trump called Miller on Monday and, per CBS News, told him the race would be tough. Publicly, Trump said only that Miller is “a good person” and that he would “let the families figure that out.” Speaker Mike Johnson said in July that allegations are allegations and the Ethics Committee has a process. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, asked Tuesday whether members facing domestic violence allegations should step down, would not say. “It is a family matter; I don’t have any observations beyond that,” he told reporters. Those decisions, he added, “are going to be made ultimately by the people of Ohio.”

They will be. That is what the deadline was for.

The investigation he asked for

On Tuesday morning Miller announced he was filing paperwork requesting a congressional ethics investigation into himself. “I have absolutely nothing to hide,” he wrote. The House Ethics Committee opened one that afternoon, into whether Miller may have engaged in “domestic violence and abuse or illegal drug use,” while noting that opening a review “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.”

It is worth knowing what that panel is. Ethics is the only standing House committee split evenly — five Republicans, five Democrats — which by design hands either party a veto over anything it does. The chair comes from the majority. It is also a committee that has drawn public criticism this year over how long its work takes. Miller asked for a referee whose rules make a tie the likeliest outcome, and got one, roughly 32 hours before the deadline that could have removed him from the ballot.

The other name on the banner

Creech represents West Alexandria, roughly three and a half hours southwest of that overpass. His path is the one Miller is currently walking, except Creech already reached the end of it — and it ended well for him.

In May 2025, Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of all four of his committee assignments, including the chairmanship of House Agriculture, and asked him to consider resigning. The trigger was Bureau of Criminal Investigation records reported by the Statehouse News Bureau, in which a minor relative accused Creech in 2023 of climbing into bed with her while wearing only his underwear. Creech told investigators he had gotten into bed with her in his underwear. He denied the sexual nature of the allegations. “This, on its face, was very serious,” Huffman said at the time.

Creech was never charged. The Clark County prosecutor declined in October 2024 to take it further, writing that Creech’s “behavior during the time of the investigation was concerning” but that “the evidence falls short of the threshold needed for prosecution.” Creech has called the allegations “demonstrably false.”

He did not resign. And ten months later, Huffman handed everything back. In February, the speaker restored Creech’s committee seats and signed a letter asking the Ohio Republican Party to endorse his re-election. The party obliged. Huffman’s explanation was that nothing had come of it: the allegations “either weren’t true” or “it wasn’t clear if they were true,” and “there are no authorities taking any action.” Creech said he was “stronger, wiser and more committed than ever.” In May he won his primary with 58 percent.

He sits on the House Public Safety Committee.

Along the way Creech dismissed his own daughter’s public statements about his conduct as “textbook parental alienation” — a theory researchers and child welfare advocates have described as pseudoscience used in family court to discredit children who report abuse. She pushed back publicly: “You continue to post trying to nail my mother and blame her, instead of taking blame for your own inappropriate actions.” In the closing weeks of the primary, a super PAC funded by DraftKings’ parent company mailed voters material boosting Creech, one piece of which featured a photograph of a young girl. His daughter said the group used family photos of children he “has not contacted or seen in years.”

Why this lands in Seneca and Sandusky counties

Creech is a frequent legislative partner of state Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), who represents House District 88 covering Sandusky County and part of Seneca County. Both men were listed as endorsers on Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign website until April, when both names vanished from the page after this outlet reported on them. Click’s name reappeared within about two hours. Creech’s did not.

Which is its own kind of answer. Ramaswamy’s campaign could work out quickly enough that one of those names was a problem. The speaker of the Ohio House, the Ohio Republican Party, and a DraftKings-funded super PAC reached the opposite conclusion and spent money on it.

What is actually on the ballot

Miller faces Democrat Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker with Ironworkers Local 17 and a five-term Brook Park city councilman. Inside Elections rates the Cleveland-area district Likely Republican; Trump carried it by 11 points in 2024 while Miller won a second term by 15. Poindexter’s post Sunday: “No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head and breaking their two-year-old daughter’s collarbone belongs in the halls of power.”

In House District 40 — Preble County and parts of Butler and Montgomery — Creech faces Democrat Timothy Hornbacker, who took the nomination as a write-in, and Libertarian Joshua A. Umbaugh.

The people on the overpass

The Burning River Brigade describes itself as the Northeast Ohio chapter of the national Visibility Brigade, volunteers who put messages on highway bridges. In a public post with photographs of Monday’s display, the group said Creech had blocked its Facebook page the previous morning, complaining that it is not in his district.

Creech’s district is 88 counties wide when he is voting on public safety policy and one county wide when someone objects.

Every institution with the power to move these two men off a ballot declined to use it. What went up over I-90 on Monday was a bedsheet.