Ohio Republicans have until 4 p.m. Monday to put a different name on the November ballot in the 7th Congressional District. To make that possible, U.S. Rep. Max Miller would have to formally withdraw sometime Saturday — enough lead time for the 48-hour notice required before the county Republican chairs in his district could meet and pick a replacement.

Miller has said, repeatedly and on camera, that he is not doing it.

His former father-in-law, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, has said he is unfit for Congress. Ohio’s other Republican senator, Jon Husted, has called on him to resign and leave the race. The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into whether he committed domestic violence. A local Republican group canceled a rally with him over threats.

One thing has not changed. Miller’s name is still listed as an endorser on the campaign website of Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor.

As of Saturday, “Rep. Max Miller” appears under “Ohio Congressional Delegation” on Ramaswamy’s endorsements page, alongside U.S. Reps. Dave Taylor, Jim Jordan, Michael Rulli and Warren Davidson. Moreno and Husted are on the same page, under national leaders.

That page is not hard to edit. Ramaswamy’s campaign has proved it.

What Miller is accused of

Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, is the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno. In court filings and police reports, she has accused Miller of holding a gun to her head, throwing her against a wall and throwing hot water on her. The Ohio Capital Journal reports Miller faces accusations of abuse from three women.

Miller denies all of it. He has never been criminally charged in connection with the allegations. He has sued Emily Moreno for defamation; her lawyers have moved to dismiss the suit. In an Aug. 2 livestream on X, he acknowledged spraying her with the sink sprayer during a 2024 argument but said the water was not scalding and called the incident “horseplay.”

The couple’s 2-year-old daughter suffered a fractured collarbone and bruising. The cause was disputed and was investigated by police in February 2026. Emily Moreno did not accuse Miller of causing the injury but said she could not rule it out. Miller says the child was in a nanny’s care at the time. A child-welfare agency deemed two reports of abuse unsubstantiated. One report recorded an “indicated” finding of physical abuse, meaning investigators saw signs of abuse but lacked sufficient evidence and could not determine who caused it. A court has continued to grant Miller joint custody.

“No court, no agency has ever substantiated any allegation of abuse against me,” Miller said in the livestream. “No criminal charge has ever been filed against me.”

The document dump

Alongside that livestream, Miller posted a link to a folder of hundreds of messages, recordings and images from the divorce. It contained an unredacted photograph of his 2-year-old daughter, with her name visible.

Miller’s personal attorney, Aaron Minc, took responsibility two days later. “I am solely responsible for what happened,” Minc said in a statement, calling the inclusion completely unintentional and a mistake. He apologized to both families and to the child.

Emily Moreno’s attorney, Subodh Chandra, wrote that at least one image could be considered child sexual abuse material because the child’s genitals appeared visible, and demanded an explanation for how it happened. Minc disputed that description, telling Politico the images showed the child without a shirt and that no genitals were visible. He also said it was shameful for Moreno’s lawyers to make a public spectacle of the error.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, the child’s grandfather, did not accept the explanation.

“On Sunday, when he went out and did what he did, including releasing photos of my granddaughter completely naked, that now you have hundreds and thousands of psychotic human beings that have that, and to say ‘oops’ is grotesque,” Moreno told reporters. “This is truly the seventh level of hell.”

TiffinOhio.net reported the details of that release and the responses to it earlier this week.

Two senators, one answer

Moreno went public on Aug. 2, hours after the livestream.

“Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible,” he wrote. “As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

He added: “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.”

Husted, who had said a week earlier that he did not have information about the matter, reversed course Thursday.

“Anyone who commits domestic violence is not fit to serve in Congress,” Husted wrote. “The House Ethics Committee should thoroughly investigate any credible allegations, and any member found to have committed domestic violence should resign from Congress immediately.”

Husted stopped short of judging the allegations themselves. “Given everything they are facing, I do not see how a campaign for Congress benefits any of them,” he wrote in a statement reported by the Ohio Capital Journal. “I believe Max would be making the right decision to step aside as a candidate and resign from Congress to focus on what is in the best interest of his daughter.”

Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana called Miller a “degenerate sociopath.” Donovan O’Neil, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Ohio, called him unfit to serve. Gov. Mike DeWine called the allegations serious and troubling but said the decision belongs to voters. House Speaker Mike Johnson has declined to call for Miller to step down. President Donald Trump, asked whether Miller should resign, said he would look at it, and later told Miller by phone that the race would be tough.

Miller’s answer

Miller filed an ethics complaint against himself. The House Ethics Committee announced Tuesday it had opened an investigation into whether he “may have engaged in domestic violence and abuse or illegal drug use.” TiffinOhio.net covered the committee’s announcement when it was made.

He then let the Wednesday deadline pass — the one that would have allowed Republicans to hold a special primary to replace him. TiffinOhio.net reported that deadline coming and going with no withdrawal.

“People have asked me, what are you going to do? Are you going to drop out of this race? Are you going to resign? Are you going to get out before the deadline?” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “And my answer to you, Jake, is no.”

He has since loaned his campaign $1 million in two installments. “I am in this for the long haul,” he said. “I know there are some people that are concerned about my ability to win this race right now, but I don’t share that.”

The concern is measurable. A Co/efficient survey of 615 likely general-election voters in the district, conducted Aug. 5 and 6 with a margin of error of 3.94 points, put Democrat Brian Poindexter at 47 percent and Miller at 33. A survey from the previous week had the margin at five points. Miller’s unfavorable rating moved from 41 percent to 57 percent in that span. Awareness of the domestic violence allegations went from 53 percent to 86 percent.

Poindexter, a union ironworker and Brook Park city council member, has not softened. “No one credibly accused of holding a gun to his wife’s head and breaking their 2-year-old daughter’s collarbone belongs in the halls of power,” he said after the livestream. He told Politico the allegations are credible and outrageous, and that if they prove true, Miller should be in jail.

On Friday, the Strongsville GOP canceled a rally it had scheduled for Monday featuring Miller and U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida. Chair Shannon Burns cited threats, writing that their number and nature had made the event untenable. The group blamed Miller’s political opponents.

The page Ramaswamy already knows how to change

Asked about Miller at the Ohio State Fair on Wednesday, Ramaswamy did not weigh in.

“I wish everybody’s family well,” he said. “My prayers are with the granddaughter who’s involved in that situation. And I think that is the most important thing.”

He did not say whether Miller should resign, whether Miller should leave the ballot, or whether the endorsement still stands. The Ohio Democratic Party has called on him to reject it.

The reason the endorsements page matters is that Ramaswamy’s campaign has already demonstrated how quickly it can be edited when reporting makes a name inconvenient.

In April, TiffinOhio.net reported that the campaign was promoting the endorsement of state Rep. Rodney Creech, who was accused by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents. Two days later, Creech’s name vanished from the page — along with that of state Rep. Gary Click. Web Archive snapshots captured both removals. The campaign announced nothing.

Click’s name reappeared roughly two hours after TiffinOhio.net documented the change. He then told followers on Facebook that reports of his removal were “greatly exaggerated,” a claim TiffinOhio.net checked against the archive.

Creech’s name was never restored. It is still absent from the page today, four months later.

So the campaign has a record on this. When reporting attached a cost to a name, the name came off within 48 hours. When the cost eased, another name went back on within two hours. Miller’s name has now survived a week that included a sitting senator calling him a danger to his own daughter, a second senator calling on him to resign, an ethics investigation, and the release of a nude photograph of a 2-year-old. TiffinOhio.net first reported that the endorsement remained live a week ago.

Creech is still on the ballot too

Creech offers the closest available comparison, and it is not a reassuring one for anyone expecting the party to police itself.

The allegations against him date to 2023 and became public in May 2025. According to Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents, a minor female relative said Creech climbed into bed and under the covers with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, along with other inappropriate touching. Creech acknowledged to investigators that he had gotten into bed with her in his underwear. He denied the sexual nature of the allegations and has called them “demonstrably false.”

The accuser is his daughter. In February 2026, she spoke publicly about the alleged conduct, and Creech responded on his official Facebook page by calling her account “textbook parental alienation” and saying she was trying to make him look bad.

The Preble County sheriff and the county prosecutor both recused themselves because of personal relationships with Creech, and BCI did not open its investigation until four months after the allegations were first reported. Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, a Republican brought in as special prosecutor, closed the case in October 2024 without charges.

“After a full review I find that (Creech’s) behavior during the time of the investigation was concerning and suspicious,” Driscoll wrote. “However, the evidence falls short of the threshold needed for prosecution.” He added: “I find the statements of (the victim) to be persuasive but find no independent evidence to support their claims.”

House Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of four committee assignments, removed him as chair of House Agriculture, and asked him to consider resigning. “I told him that this, on its face, was very serious and I did not think that he could fill out his duties effectively as a legislator,” Huffman said at the time.

Creech did not resign.

Nine months later, Huffman restored his committee seats, explaining that no state or local authorities had taken action, and signed a letter asking the Ohio Republican Party to endorse Creech for reelection. The party obliged. He won the May 5 Republican primary in House District 40, defeating former state Rep. J. Todd Smith 58 percent to 42 percent. No Democrat filed for the seat. He is the party’s nominee on the Nov. 3 ballot, facing a Democratic write-in candidate and Libertarian Joshua Umbaugh.

State Rep. Phil Plummer, who is now Creech’s rival in Republican politics, told BCI investigators that Creech’s comments about the allegations were appalling. Plummer and Creech both appeared on the same Ramaswamy endorsement graphic in March 2026.

TiffinOhio.net has tracked the full arc of the party’s reversal on Creech and the way his endorsement moved on and off Republican websites in the weeks before the primary.

Gary Click never walked away

The Republican who represents Tiffin and Fremont has been Creech’s legislative partner throughout.

In a June 2021 Facebook post celebrating House Resolution 57, state Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery) thanked “my good friend Rep. Rodney Creech” for photobombing his testimony.

It was not a one-off. Two months earlier, Click posted about House Bill 248: “What the Heck? Not on our watch! I’m with you Rodney Creech & Jennifer Sherwood Gross #HB248.” In July 2021 he commented on a Creech post: “My Grandparents used to take me there to see the Christmas lights each year! Great job Rep Creech!” In a December 2021 exchange he wrote “same here bud!” and “Rodney Creech you make my cut every day!”

Those posts predate the public release of the BCI records by more than three years. One item does not. In January 2025 — after the conduct BCI investigated, and after the special prosecutor closed the case — an inauguration-related Instagram caption named Creech alongside Click, state Rep. Thomas Hall and Vivek Ramaswamy.

What Click has not said, in the years since, is anything else. He has not publicly called on Creech to resign, has not criticized his conduct, and has not said whether his view of his good friend changed after the investigative records and the special prosecutor’s findings became public. No such statement appears in the endorsement materials, campaign statements or public reporting TiffinOhio.net has reviewed.

What is on the record is the opposite: a legislative partnership that continued after Huffman stripped Creech of every committee assignment and asked him to quit.

Click and Creech are both cosponsors of House Bill 649, the Child Care Fraud Prevention Act, which would require video surveillance of every licensed child care center in Ohio with live remote access for state officials and establish an online portal tracking child care attendance. Both are also cosponsors of House Bill 249, the Indecent Exposure Modernization Act, which its Republican sponsors described as a child protection measure and which critics call a public drag ban. The House passed it 63-30 on March 25. It is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Three weeks after Creech dismissed his own daughter’s account as “textbook parental alienation,” Click introduced House Bill 693, the Affirming Families First Act, which would write a version of that same framework into Ohio statute. Parental alienation is a disputed concept that a 2023 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women described as unfounded and unscientific, and which is frequently raised in custody disputes to undercut abuse allegations.

Click has built his political brand on protecting children. He was the primary sponsor of House Bill 68, the law restricting gender-affirming care for minors. TiffinOhio.net has documented the pattern of the two men’s shared bills and shared endorsements since April.

Seneca County Democratic Party Chair Gina Grandillo raised the question publicly in July, noting that Creech admitted getting into bed with his minor daughter, that a Republican speaker stripped his committees and asked him to resign, and that Click has continued to campaign on child protection while saying nothing about it.

Why this reaches Seneca and Sandusky counties

Voters here do not cast ballots in the 7th Congressional District or in House District 40. They cast ballots for governor, and they cast ballots in House District 88, which covers all of Sandusky and Seneca counties.

Click is on Ramaswamy’s endorsements page today. His name came off it in April, two days after TiffinOhio.net reported on the Creech allegations, and went back on the same afternoon the outlet published the removal. Creech’s name never returned. Miller’s has not moved.

Ohioans vote Tuesday, Nov. 3. Ramaswamy faces Democrat Amy Acton in a race the Cook Political Report moved from Lean Republican to Toss Up in July.

An endorsements page is one of the cheapest things a campaign can change, and this campaign has changed it inside of two days when it wanted to. Whatever happens to Miller’s candidacy between now and 4 p.m. Monday, the page is a decision, and it is being made in public.