Eric Watson will 'never' endorse Gary Click, says he is moving out of House District 88

TIFFIN, Ohio — Eric Watson, who came within 599 votes of unseating controversial state Rep. Gary Click in May’s Republican primary, said Thursday that he will never endorse the incumbent — and that he is moving out of Ohio’s 88th House District.

“I have not endorsed Representative Gary Click, and I never will,” Watson wrote in a statement emailed Thursday to TiffinOhio.net.

The declaration hardens a position Watson first took on primary night, when he conceded the race, said he had called Click to congratulate him, and told supporters only that “the topic of endorsements will not be discussed at this time.” Thursday’s statement removes the qualifier.

In the same statement, Watson said he and his wife are relocating to Wayne County, roughly 90 miles southeast of Tiffin and well outside the district he spent the first half of the year campaigning to represent.

“After much prayer and many conversations with my family, my wife and I have made the decision to move to Wayne County,” he wrote. “We recently found a beautiful property outside House District 88 that we simply could not pass up, and we are excited to begin this next chapter of our lives together.”

Click’s campaign could not be reached for comment.

A private meeting, and what Watson says came of it

The sharpest passage in Watson’s statement concerns a conversation he says he had with Click after the May 5 primary.

“Following the primary, Gary and I had a long conversation. It was respectful and positive, and I appreciated the opportunity to speak candidly with him,” Watson wrote. “During that conversation, I expressed my concerns over many of the bills and issues he has supported and co-sponsored—particularly those involving government overreach, digital identification, and policies that I believe fail to adequately protect the interests of the people we sought to represent.”

He said the meeting did not change his assessment.

“Unfortunately, I walked away believing that while Gary was polite and told me many of the things I wanted to hear, we ultimately came to no real understanding,” Watson wrote. “I did not see the willingness to reconsider the positions that concerned me most.”

Watson said he was not disputing the outcome of the race. “As I said immediately following the election, I congratulated Representative Gary Click on his narrow victory,” he wrote. “He won the election, and I have never attempted to take that away from him.”

He framed the refusal as a matter of what the campaign had been for: “I did not spend months challenging a three-term incumbent, endure constant attacks and false accusations, face a campaign that outspent us nearly four to one, and fight for the principles we believed in simply to endorse the very establishment we were working to change.”

Watson did not provide figures to support the four-to-one spending characterization, and TiffinOhio.net has not independently confirmed it against campaign finance filings. He also said the Ohio Republican Party “poured significant resources into defending the incumbent” in the closing days of the race, a claim this outlet has likewise not independently verified.

“Representative Click has not earned my support, and he will have to earn back the trust of the thousands of voters who stood with our campaign,” Watson wrote. “Those 6,260 votes were never mine to give away. They belong to the people who cast them.”

Data centers, and the bill Click owns

Watson built much of his campaign around opposition to large-scale artificial intelligence data centers in rural Ohio, and he returned to it Thursday.

“One of the defining issues of our campaign was our fight against the unchecked expansion of massive AI data centers across rural Ohio,” he wrote. “I firmly believe that local communities—not powerful corporations or distant decision-makers—should determine the future of their own communities.”

Watson did not name a specific bill. Click is the joint primary sponsor, with Rep. Kellie Deeter of Norwalk, of House Bill 646, which would create a state Data Center Study Commission. The Ohio House passed it unanimously on March 18. It has since been introduced in the Senate and referred to the Financial Institutions, Insurance and Technology Committee, where it remains.

The bill directs the proposed 13-member commission to study environmental impacts, effects on the electrical grid and consumer utility rates, water usage, noise and light pollution, farmland, and the local economy. As TiffinOhio.net reported in February, the legislation also directs the commission to examine reports of foreign propaganda intended to generate opposition to data centers.

In a statement issued when the House passed the bill, Click said the legislation came out of his district. “This legislation originated in the heart of the 88th district, in response to my constituents. They have questions that deserve answers. They are not alone,” he said.

A residency fight, reversed

Watson’s move ends a residency argument that ran through the entire primary — from the other direction.

Click spent the closing weeks of the race branding Watson “the Arizona Kid,” a reference to the roughly four years Watson spent in Arizona before returning to Seneca County in 2022. Watson’s supporters answered by pointing to his family’s generations in the county; TiffinOhio.net reported in April that Click himself moved to Ohio from Indiana in 2006, about a year before Watson’s family marked 175 years in Seneca County.

Watson addressed the departure directly in Thursday’s statement. “While this means I will no longer call Seneca and Sandusky Counties home, it does not change the gratitude and love I have for the people who welcomed my family, believed in our campaign, and stood beside us every step of the way,” he wrote.

He said he is staying in politics elsewhere. “I am honored to have accepted a position serving on the State Council of the MAHA Institute,” Watson wrote, referring to the Washington, D.C.-based organization that operates state-level councils and endorses candidates for state office. The group does not publish a roster of its council members, and TiffinOhio.net could not independently confirm the appointment.

“My commitment to opposing government overreach, Big Tech influence, and the unchecked expansion of AI data centers will not end simply because I have changed addresses,” he wrote.

What it means for November

Click, now seen as a deeply unpopular and vulnerable incumbent, won the May 5 primary with 6,859 votes to Watson’s 6,260 — 52.28 percent to 47.72 percent. He lost Seneca County to Watson by 8.5 percentage points and held the seat only on a 15.4-point margin in Sandusky County, where he lives.

Click, a Vickery Republican and former pastor first elected in 2020, is term-limited after this cycle. He faces Democrat Aaron Jones, a Tiffin City Council member, U.S. Army veteran and production supervisor at JVIS Tiffin USA, in the November 3 general election. Jones ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and lives in Seneca County — the county Click lost.

Watson closed his primary-night statement in May by saying, “This is not the last the people of District 88 have seen of Eric Watson.” Thursday’s statement said the move “may be the end of my time representing House District 88,” while adding that it is “far from the end of my commitment to the conservative movement and to the State of Ohio.”