With 102,148 provisional ballots outstanding, and 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial results on the Ohio Secretary of State website, Kulewicz is winning the race with 2,285,117 votes, or 50.31%, compared to 2,256,710 votes, or 49.69%, for Faber.

“I stand before you with a heart full of thanks,” Kulewicz said. “I could not be more honored and excited.”

Faber and Kulewicz faced off to become the state’s chief law enforcement officer and legal counsel.

Faber took the role of state auditor after being a legislator in both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate. He also served as the Senate president during his legislative tenure.

Kulewicz has spent 40 years as part of the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, LLP. He also sits on Upper Arlington City Council. He campaigned on the idea that the state was looking for a change in the attorney general’s office, just as they are looking for change in other statewide offices. He told the Capital Journal before the election that he’d heard from people who believe “36 years of almost uninterrupted one-party rule has gotten us nowhere.”

Both vowed to enforce state laws to the highest degree, including investigations of elder abuse, human trafficking, and cybercrime.

Faber stood against sanctuary cities and emphasized the need for local law enforcement to work with federal immigration enforcement.

“Where you have problems is when local communities decide they want to be a sanctuary community, and they don’t cooperate with federal law enforcement, that leads to all sorts of potential conflicts,” Faber said in a Youngstown Press Club debate.

Kulewicz said he would do what was required under federal law when it came to immigration enforcement, but would prioritize local issues “to the extent that (enforcement) is discretionary.”

Both candidates said they would get the trial related to Ohio House Bill 6’s energy bailouts, and the leaders of FirstEnergy back in the courtroom after the previous case ended in a hung jury.

The previous person elected to the post, Republican Dave Yost, resigned in June to join a conservative non-profit law firm.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

With 102,148 provisional ballots outstanding, and 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial results on the Ohio Secretary of State website, Walsh is winning the race with 2,282,546 votes, or 50.55%, compared to 2,232,758 votes, or 49.45%, for Edwards.

The Ohio Treasurer keeps track of the state’s investments and financial accounts, amounting to $280 billion. The office established programs for small business loans and homebuyer savings, and keeps records on government salaries, revenue, and spending.

Edwards ran on “keeping taxpayer money in Ohio” and promoting young blood in the Republican Party, while maintaining Trump-era ideas. The former legislator wants to update the Ohio Checkbook, a public dashboard that shows budgetary spending, salaries, revenue, and other things.

Walsh ran on building the treasurer’s office’s roles from the ground up, working with community developers and local banks in the future. He said his experience revitalizing the College Hill area of Cincinnati brought about ideas that can be used statewide. What he doesn’t support is using state money for projects like entertainment venues and sports stadiums.

Edwards also spoke against the decision of a plan from state lawmakers to use the state’s unclaimed funds account, saying it was “very negative, what was done in the budget, and I can tell you, if I was finance chair, it wouldn’t have happened.”

A lawsuit was filed after the budget was passed with the measure in place, and a temporary block has been placed on it as the lawsuit continues.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Two slots for the Ohio Supreme Court were open, one currently filled by Republican Justice Dan Hawkins, and the other by the only currently statewide elected Democrat, Justice Jennifer Brunner.

Brunner faced Republican opponent and former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell. O’Donnell spotlighted her time as an immigration judge in Texas as part of her campaign, a time in which she said she never granted asylum for those who were in her courtroom.

With 102,148 provisional ballots outstanding, and 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial results on the Ohio Secretary of State website, Brunner has 2,324,212 votes, or 51.37%, to 2,200,021 votes, or 48.63% for O’Donnell.

Zayays has 2,307,346 votes, or 51.01%, to 2,215,728n votes, or 48.99% for Hawkins.

With two victories, the make-up of the court will be 5-2 Republican to Democratic justices.

O’Donnell also aligned with the many Republican judges she defeated in the primary in supporting “originalism” as the method for interpreting the state constitution during supreme court cases.

“I do not take the view that the Constitution, for example, is a living, breathing document, and so I honor both substantive and procedural judicial restraint,” O’Donnell told the Capital Journal in May.

The former common pleas and immigration judge served in the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, clerked for a federal judge and worked in private practice before being appointed to serve as judge in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. After she left the post in 2023, she served as a federal immigration judge in Laredo, Texas.

She is also the daughter of retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell.

Brunner has been on the bench since 2021, and has been the sole Democrat on the bench since her colleagues Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart were defeated in 2024. Since she started on the bench, the court has seen the chief justice change from Maureen O’Connor to Sharon Kennedy, and considered cases on topics ranging from redistricting, data centers, and education, to abortion, victim’s rights, and gender-affirming care.

A state law passed in 2021 required supreme court races to include partisan labels on ballots, something Brunner sued to repeal in 2023. The lawsuit is still ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and cites the state’s judicial conduct code in arguing judicial candidates are not allowed to participate in political or campaign activities that go against judicial independence or impartiality.

Brunner told the Capital Journal before the election that she sees it as a First Amendment issue which causes voters to assume she agrees wholesale with the Democratic platform.

“And I’m not in in a position to say, ‘well, it’s more nuanced here,’ or ‘no, it’s not the same here,’ or even ‘yes, it is the same,’ because I’ve got the code of judicial conduct,” Brunner said in August.

First District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas is no stranger to campaigning for a seat on the supreme court, but as the campaign moved past the primaries, she said she felt a different energy in the 2026 election.

“I’m seeing how we are losing faith in our court because of politics, and politics has no place in our Ohio Supreme Court,” Zayas said at the Ohio Democratic Party’s primary event in May.

Hawkins was elected in 2024, taking over for fellow Republican Justice Joe Deters, who chose not to run for re-election, but to run for the seat that was held by Justice Melody Stewart. He previously served on the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. He also spent more than a decade as a trial prosecutor, and a decade as director of Franklin County’s Special Victims Unit.

On social media, he campaigned with the idea that there would be no special treatment or “gray areas” in his method of judging.

“The moment justice becomes selective it stops being justice,” a post on his Facebook page stated. “That is a line this court will never cross while I’m on the bench.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“I’m honored and humbled by the opportunity to serve as your next Ohio Auditor of State, but it’s certainly a victory that’s bittersweet,” LaRose said in a statement. “I know we’re disappointed about the outcome of so many other races. We, as Republicans, have a lot of work to do.”

With 102,148 provisional ballots outstanding, and 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial results on the Ohio Secretary of State website, LaRose is winning the race with 2,310,105 votes, or 50.79%, compared to 2,237,955 votes, or 49.21%, for Blackwell.

The Auditor of State is the chief compliance officer for Ohio, conducting performance audits on state entities, local governments like cities and townships, and school districts around the state. The auditor has the power to designate fiscal watches and emergencies for entities who don’t receive clean financial audits. In times when the redrawing of state voting district maps occurs, the auditor has a seat on the Ohio Redistricting Commission as well.

Democratic Maple Heights Mayor Annette Blackwell leads one of the cities who faced fiscal emergency while current auditor Keith Faber led the office. She said her experience bringing the city back from the emergency gave her perspective she planned to use in leading the office.

Her campaign focused on enhancing the role of the office through the use of recommendations for struggling municipalities, and support for those entities as they go through the audit process.

She also said financial modeling needs to be upgraded to allow the state and it’s local governments to better predict their future under lower support from the local government fund, and tax incentives brought in to appeal to industries like data center developers and other large companies.

Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose campaigned for the move to auditor on a platform of accountability, affordability, and transparency. As part of his plan for office, he pledged both to harness the power of artificial intelligence for use within the auditor’s office, and to keep watch over AI’s potential to cause problems for local governments and the agency itself.

He acknowledged public trust in governmental institutions is “at an all-time low,” and pushed for more programs to identify public corruption, including an “Ohio Taxpayer Fraud Bounty Program” to encourage public reports of corruption.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Democrats flipped governorships in Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Texas and defended competitive races in Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to unofficial results from The Associated Press and Decision Desk HQ.

As of 10 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, Democrats are set to hold 28 governor’s offices compared with Republicans’ 20. Races in Alaska and Kansas have not yet been called.

In a historic night, voters elected a record number of four Black governors, including the first Black woman and first Black Republican ever elected governor.

Midterms are always tough for the party that holds the White House, but high prices and growing disapproval of President Donald Trump delivered even stronger than expected results for Democrats Tuesday.

“It’s a blue wave that was bigger than anyone had expected, and it’s having consequences across the country, including here in Texas,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “Overall, Donald Trump has single-handedly turned many red states blue — or at least purple.”

By late Tuesday, Democrats had won races for attorney general and lieutenant governor for the first time in decades and flipped the Texas House.

“One of the real questions will be what do Democrats do with this power, and will they be able to retain it,” he said. “This has effectively opened a door for Democrats across the country.”

Gubernatorial races proved historic for both Democrats and Republicans on Tuesday with the election of the nation’s first Black woman governor and the first Black Republican governor.

But the Democratic party made major gains coast to coast, particularly in reliably conservative states, that could reshape state policy for years to come.

In Iowa, the election of Democrat Rob Sand ends more than a decade of Republican control of the legislature and the governor’s office.

In Ohio, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton’s win marks the first time in 20 years that Ohio voters have selected a Democrat to lead the Buckeye State.

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms will become Georgia’s first Democratic governor since 2002 and the nation’s first Black woman governor.

While governors were on ballots in 36 states, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter had only identified a dozen races for governor as competitive. Those included: Alaska, Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin.

Republicans have controlled a majority of state governments since 2010. Before Tuesday’s election, Republicans boasted a 26-24 gubernatorial advantage over Democrats. But the GOP’s state legislative advantage was even stronger, with Republicans controlling 28 state legislatures and Democrats controlling 18 with divided control of chambers in three states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

By Wednesday morning, Democrats had notched major legislative wins. Democrats broke the GOP supermajority in Florida, flipped control of the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate, and flipped the North Carolina state House.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats won the GOP-held state Senate, seizing  a trifecta – control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature – in Harrisburg.

“Tonight’s earth-shattering victory is undeniable proof that voters are fed up with the MAGA agenda,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a news release.

In Arizona, Democrats declared victory in a yearslong effort to win control of the legislature, proclaiming that Republicans would be in the minority at the state Capitol for the first time in 60 years.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Ohio Capital Journal, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Russo told a crowd at the Ohio Democratic Party’s election night party that voters chose “a picture that is rooted in fairness, accessibility, and transparency, and I am so deeply honored and profoundly humbled to stand before you tonight as your next secretary of state.”

Russo said the office of secretary of state “touches the core of our daily lives.”

“And tonight, Ohioans have sent a very, very clear message, and that is that you want election systems that are secure, efficient, accessible, transparent for every eligible voter, not matter where they live or how they vote,” she said.

Just days before Election Day, a non-partisan election forecaster called Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which is at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the race was no longer leaning toward a Republican win, but was considered a toss-up.

Russo is currently in the Ohio House, and spent time during her tenure there as House Minority Leader. Sprague was also in the Ohio House before coming into statewide office.

In his concession speech on Tuesday night, Sprague said every Republican on the ballot “knew going into this election that we were going to face significant headwinds, and they turned out to be stronger than any of us understood.”

“This was a national wave, and there are a number of good, Republican public servants who deeply love Ohio who were swept away tonight,” Sprague said.

He congratulated Russo, and said the Republican Party has “some soul searching ahead of us.”

The secretary of state has been a Republican since 2011, when current GOP Ohio U.S. Sen. Jon Husted took over from Democrat and current Ohio Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner.

Husted was followed in 2019 by the current Republican, Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

Before Brunner was in office, Republicans Ken Blackwell and former governor Bob Taft had the seat. Taft took over for Democrat Sherrod Brown, who went on to become a U.S. senator, a position he won back from Husted in Tuesday’s unofficial results.

Megan Henry contributed to this article.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Several U.S. Senate and House races remained uncalled by The Associated Press as Election Day ended on the East Coast. But by Wednesday morning**,** Democrats had notched 54 Senate seats to control that chamber and 228 House seats, clearing the thresholds needed to win majorities in each chamber as the party swept virtually all of the races that were expected to be competitive.

Those wins included Senate contests in states Trump won by double digits just two years ago, some of which had not elected Democrats in decades: Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

Democrats also won a seat left open by retiring Republican Thom Tillis in North Carolina, bringing their total of Senate pickups to five, with leads in a handful of other states. And they retained their seat in Minnesota, electing Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan to the Senate.

By the early hours of Wednesday, they’d netted 25 new House seats, putting them on track to start next Congress with a majority that will give House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whom Democrats are expected to make speaker, some room to maneuver. The AP had not yet made a call by midnight that Democrats had control of the House.

Democrats also flipped four governorships, in Georgia, Texas, Ohio and Iowa.

Republicans had not flipped any Democratic-held governorships, U.S. House or Senate seats by midnight, according to race calls by AP.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Brown, 73, was projected the winner Tuesday in a special election. Husted was appointed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to fill Vice President JD Vance’s seat at the start of 2025. 

The call came in the midst of what appeared to be a big night for Democrats amid voter anger at President Donald Trump, a Republican.

Husted has served a 25-year career in Ohio politics. But in the 2026 midterm, he ran in a highly nationalized election.

Husted voted in support of unpopular measures such as tax cuts for the rich, cuts to healthcare, against releasing the Epstein files, in support of the Iran war, and to protect Trump’s tariffs, which many economists say made inflation worse.

Brown also painted Husted as “the face of data centers,” and Brown highlighted Husted’s involvement in a scandal in which an Akron-based FirstEnergy paid $61 million in bribes to get a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout.

Brown said Husted was an out-of-touch tool of wealthy interests.

“They say you’re the company you keep,” Brown said at a rally on Monday night. “I want to talk about the kind of people Jon Husted surrounds himself with. Jon Husted had to testify in a criminal trial in defense of the indicted FirstEnergy utility executives in the state’s largest bribery scandal ever.”

While Brown again poised to carry Ohio, he failed to do it with new support from rural voters, said Lee Hannah, a political scientist at Wright State University.

“From what I can tell, Sherrod Brown is not doing better in rural Ohio,” Hannah said. “But in some of these suburban counties and some of the cities, he’s up about 5% if those margins hold. My guess is that he didn’t convert a lot of people in rural areas, but turnout wasn’t as high there.”

He said Brown has only two years before he has to run again, but he could work as a senator to gain support from rural Ohio.

“I would love to see a scenario where they don’t just investigate President Trump, but they also turn around some of these affordability issues,” Hannah said. “If he shows that he is delivering, we can see a turn in some of those numbers.”

As is the case in so many races Republicans didn’t expect to lose, Trump played a central role in the Ohio U.S. Senate contest.

First, he picked then-Sen. JD Vance to be his 2024 running mate. That required the state to conduct a special Senate election when Vance still would have had four years left in his term. So there wouldn’t have even been an Ohio Senate election on Tuesday.

In addition, then0-Lt. Gov. Husted and then-Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had long been jockeying for the governorship after current Gov. Mike DeWine retired in January. But Trump endorsed Cincinnati billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, clearing them from the field.

That left DeWine to appoint Husted to the Senate seat vacated by Husted, and set up Tuesday’s loss for Republicans. In the end, Husted and Ramaswamy lost in what had been an increasingly Republican state.

Brown, 73, was born in Mansfield. He holds an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a master’s from Ohio State. He was a state representative from 1975 to 1982, Ohio secretary of state from 1983 to 1991, and a congressman from 1993 to 2007.

Then-Sen. Mike DeWine was the Republican incumbent in 2006 — another midterm year when the Republican president was unpopular.

So from the time Brown entered the race this year, both parties had reason to know it would be a squeaker. They have spent accordingly.

With more than $500 million dropped on ads and ad reservations by the end of October, the Ohio Senate race is the second-most expensive this cycle and one of the 10 most expensive non-presidential races in U.S. history, The Hill reported last week.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Acton’s win marks the first time in 20 years that Ohio voters have selected a Democrat to lead the state. The political newcomer will likely have her work cut out for her. Despite a broadly positive night for her party, Acton will still be working with a Republican-controlled legislature.

Acton declares victory

Tuesday night was a good night for Democrats around the country and Ohio was no exception. In a downtown Columbus ballroom, Acton thanked supporters and told them “Ohio has chosen unity and decency — the healing begins today.”

“This win is for every Ohioan who has longed for public servants again,” she said, “who solve problems instead of making them, and who do not mistake kindness for weakness.”

Acton promised to be a governor for everyone in the state and to work with anyone regardless of party “to make life better for Ohioans.” She committed to making life more affordable, fighting corruption, and helping families get ahead, but she’d need their help to “rebuild and create the Ohio we all dream of.”

Acton will take office in a significantly different state government. Not only did Democrats win the race for governor, they also won the race for secretary of state, and flipped enough seats in the Ohio House to break Republicans’ supermajority.

“As a child, I experienced abuse and neglect, and I could have never imagined going from homeless to being a doctor, Let alone that I would be standing here, the next governor of Ohio.”

Ramaswamy’s concession

A few blocks away from the Ohio Democrats’ party, the mood among Republicans was more subdued. Young men and women in suits milled around in a state of shock. In the last two election cycles, the party had swept every statewide executive office from treasurer to governor.

But in this year’s race, Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy performed worse than every other member of the statewide ticket.

Robert Sprague, the Republican running for Secretary of State said “This was definitely a national wave,” and that a number good Republicans “were swept away tonight.”

The GOP will have plenty of time to in the weeks and months ahead to parcel out blame and try to pick up the pieces. But speaking to the Republican faithful, Ramaswamy tried to turn the page.

“It was a tough race,” he said. “It was bitter at times in both directions. But the time tomorrow is to hopefully have, through her leadership, bring this state together. And I have hope and confidence that she will do what is required to bring Ohio together.”

Ramaswamy thanked his wife and his parents as well as his running mate Rob McColley and his family.

Still, while Ramaswamy expressed hopes for Acton’s leadership he acknowledged “serious concerns about the future direction of our country.”

“I still believe that in the fullness of time — (there) may be some patience required in that — but in the fullness of time, our state’s best days and our country’s best days will still yet be ahead of us,” Ramaswamy said.

How she got here

Acton rose to statewide prominence at the outset of COVID-19 pandemic. In daily briefings alongside Gov. Mike DeWine, she distinguished herself as a communicator.

While Acton’s tenure as Ohio’s health director tipped her for a future in politics, it was also a source of ammunition for her opponent. Ramaswamy criticized her relentlessly — although not factually — as “Dr. Lockdown.” Gov. Mike DeWine has insisted the decision to close Ohio businesses was his and his alone.

Acton’s campaign didn’t get bogged down re-litigating the pandemic. Instead, she stayed focused on issues of affordability. Acton promised a “working families tax cut,” pairing a new earned income credit with a child tax credit. She committed to bringing down utility costs and starting a program to forgive medical debt.

Acton also called for a gas tax holiday a few hours before Ramaswamy embraced the idea.

The ad

In the closing weeks of the campaign, it appeared Acton might be on track to win the race as voters nationally soured on Republican leadership. But then an advertisement started circulating online, featuring Acton’s estranged mother Donna Arthur calling her a liar. Within hours, Ramaswamy’s campaign went from issuing a statement that didn’t deny they made the ad to acknowledging it was theirs.

The ad drew widespread condemnation and seems to have irreparably damaged Ramaswamy’ campaign.

Arthur sided with her husband and Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, when Acton accused him of raping her as a child. Cledith had already faced accusations of incest and pedophilia from a prior marriage. After a Mahoning County grand jury indicted Cledith in the case involving Acton, he and Donna skipped bail and fled the state. Acton said the last time she saw her mother was at the courthouse nearly 50 years ago.

Ramaswamy stood by the ad. He insisted Acton had lied about him, and “that deserves to be corrected.” Vice President JD Vance defended it, too, admonishing GOP critics to “quit whining.”

Speaking in Bexley Tuesday morning after she cast her ballot, Acton criticized Ramaswamy for running the ad. But she refused to credit it with putting her over the top.

“We were by all indications inching out ahead all along,” she said, noting her polling advantage with independents and the number of GOP voters who told her they were supporting her.

“It’s what we’ve seen on the ground,” she said. “It just hasn’t known party.”

“I do know and believe that my opponent crossed the line,” she added. “Five living governors on both sides denounced what he did. I have felt all along that there’s no low he won’t go to. I think he is out of touch. He’s out for himself, and I’ve always felt he was a danger to our state.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The November 2 vote amended Ordinance 2026-61 to include eligible installations dating back to January 1, 2026. Council postponed final passage while Law Director Zachary Fowler prepares the revised legislation, leaving the reimbursement program awaiting approval after weeks of debate over its costs and effectiveness.

The amendment followed testimony from a downtown property owner who described extensive basement flooding and explained why retroactive assistance matters to residents who have already paid to protect their buildings.

Downtown property owner describes severe flooding

Yolanda Gonzalez, who said she and her husband own the building at 190 S. Washington St., told council that flooding earlier this year covered approximately 80 feet of the property’s 100-foot basement. Water entered so quickly that her husband recorded the flooding, she said, and the couple subsequently installed a backflow-prevention device.

The basement has not flooded since the installation, according to Gonzalez, although she reported noticing moisture elsewhere and wondered whether the device had redirected water toward another portion of the building.

“If you don’t backdate it, then it’s useless to me,” Gonzalez told council.

Councilmember John Hays moved to allow reimbursement applications for installations completed before the ordinance takes effect. Councilmember Aaron Jones, who introduced the original grant legislation, seconded the amendment.

After discussing eligibility requirements with Fowler, council agreed to make work completed since January 1, 2026, eligible for consideration. Applicants would have to provide work orders, paid invoices and documentation sufficient for city inspection and review. Applications for previously completed 2026 installations would have to be submitted by December 31.

Fowler emphasized that retroactive reimbursements require a different review process because the city’s existing grant procedures generally involve applications and inspections before work begins. Council also retained the requirement that applicants comply with restrictions on connecting downspouts to the sanitary sewer system.

The amendment passed 5-1, with Councilmember Kevin Roessner casting the lone dissenting vote.

Public works superintendent defends program

The proposal has faced sustained scrutiny since its introduction in September. As TiffinOhio.net previously reported, council deadlocked 3-3 on a motion to table the legislation, requiring Council President Bridget Boyle to cast the deciding vote to delay consideration.

Mayor Lee Wilkinson invited Public Works Superintendent Brandon Burner to Monday’s meeting to address concerns about the devices, which are installed on private sewer connections and designed to prevent wastewater from flowing backward into buildings when the municipal system becomes overloaded.

Burner said the city previously provided assistance for backflow-prevention installations and had seen favorable results among residents experiencing repeated backups. His department generally stopped receiving complaints from those properties after installation, freeing public works employees to respond to other sewer problems during heavy rainfall.

He also addressed concerns that preventing sewage from entering one property could cause it to back up elsewhere. Burner acknowledged that wastewater can seek other outlets within an overloaded sewer system but said his department had not experienced a pattern of new complaints from neighboring properties following installations.

The devices are already permitted in Tiffin. Burner estimated that a typical installation could cost approximately $5,000, with excavation accounting for much of the expense. Property owners are responsible for their sewer laterals all the way to the municipal sewer main, including portions extending beyond their property lines into the street.

Councilmembers Ashlee Decker and Roessner questioned maintenance requirements, possible liability and whether less expensive measures such as drain plugs or standpipes could adequately protect certain properties. Burner said those alternatives depend on each building’s plumbing configuration and the owner’s ability to respond when heavy rainfall occurs.

Roessner’s proposal to cut grants to $300 fails

Ordinance 2026-61 would expand Tiffin’s existing clean-water-removal grant program to reimburse property owners for 50% of eligible backflow-prevention installation costs, including labor, up to $2,000 per installation.

Roessner sought to reduce that maximum reimbursement to $300, approximately the cost of some backflow-prevention devices. His proposal would have limited the city’s contribution to the equipment itself, leaving property owners responsible for excavation and installation expenses.

The amendment received no second and died without a vote.

Funding for the proposed program would come from sewer utility revenue. The city currently budgets $50,000 annually for its existing downspout-disconnection grant program, which officials said has experienced limited demand in recent years. The proposed ordinance maintains a $100,000 annual program ceiling, although only $50,000 has been appropriated for 2026.

City Administrator Nick Dutro told council that financial models incorporating an additional $50,000 in annual grant spending showed the sewer fund remaining solvent through 2040. He noted that the existing program’s spending had not exceeded approximately $12,000 in any of the past three years, leaving capacity within the current allocation.

Fowler explained that sewer revenue is restricted to expenses connected with the system’s construction, operation, maintenance and repair. The discussion centered on how assistance for devices installed on privately owned sewer lines serves the municipal system, including whether preventing recurring backups can reduce demands on public works employees.

The grant proposal emerged after heavy rainfall caused sewer backups affecting Tiffin homes and businesses. City officials have described the assistance as a way to help individual property owners while larger sewer infrastructure improvements proceed over several years.

Final approval postponed

Following the 5-1 amendment vote, Fowler recommended allowing council to review the revised ordinance in writing before deciding on passage. The changes require specific provisions governing retroactive applications, documentation, inspections and eligibility deadlines.

Council agreed to defer final action. Fowler will prepare the amended legislation for another review, with the proposed December 31 application deadline creating a limited window for property owners who paid for installations earlier this year.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

According to AAA, regular gasoline averaged $4.15 nationally Tuesday, surpassing the previous Election Day record of approximately $3.80 in 2022. The U.S. Energy Information Administration also confirmed the record, reporting a national weekly average of $4.153 compared with $3.796 during the 2022 midterm election week. The figures are not adjusted for inflation.

Ohio drivers are paying an average of $4.08 per gallon, up from $2.91 a year ago — an increase of approximately 40%. In the Toledo metropolitan area, which includes much of Northwest Ohio’s regional economy, gasoline averages $4.03 per gallon.

The elevated prices persist despite Ohio’s temporary suspension of its 38.5-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax. Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 519 on Oct. 1, establishing a 90-day fuel tax holiday that runs through Jan. 2, 2027. The measure uses $725 million in state reserve funds to offset the lost tax revenue.

Gasoline prices have climbed sharply during Trump’s second term amid the war in the Middle East. The federal Energy Information Administration has documented higher crude oil prices and refinery margins as the conflict continues to disrupt global energy markets.

Although prices have declined from their September highs, Tuesday’s Election Day record comes as voters decide control of Congress and numerous state and local offices, with the cost of living remaining a major issue nationwide.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click survived by approximately 600 votes, losing Seneca County outright and holding the Republican nomination through a stronger showing in his home county of Sandusky. The three-term incumbent emerged from the contest with a fractured conservative base that continued fighting him publicly throughout the general-election campaign.

On Tuesday, he faces Democrat Aaron Jones of Tiffin, a city council member, U.S. Army veteran and longtime manufacturing supervisor who has secured endorsements from organized labor, teachers and veterans. Jones is challenging Click’s record on school funding, property taxes, government surveillance and the influence of special interests, presenting himself as an alternative to the Republican leadership that has controlled Ohio’s state government for years.

The election follows a bruising year for Click. Conservative organizations endorsed his primary opponent and subsequently attacked his conduct. A Republican county committee member publicly accused him of failing his constituents. Campaign finance records disproved his allegation that local Democrats had funded his primary challenger, and two elected officials disputed his public descriptions of their political support.

A three-term incumbent nearly defeated by a political newcomer

Click entered the May 5 primary with the advantages of incumbency: established fundraising relationships, institutional Republican support and six years of experience representing Seneca and Sandusky counties. His opponent, Tiffin businessman Eric Watson, was making his first run for public office and campaigning to Click’s right on property taxes, digital identification, gun legislation and data center development.

Watson’s campaign featured extraordinary claims about artificial intelligence surveillance. In a recording obtained by The Blade, he claimed data centers could harvest both conscious and unconscious thoughts, including while people were asleep. Click himself described such assertions as extreme and conspiratorial in legislative testimony supporting House Bill 646, which proposed creating a state commission to study data center development.

Click had dismissed Watson early in the campaign, declaring in February, “You move to the right of Gary Click and you’re in the ditch.” His reelection effort enjoyed support from prominent Republican officials, including Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, Treasurer Robert Sprague and House Majority Whip Nick Santucci.

When the votes were counted, Click had received approximately 52.3% to Watson’s 47.7%. Watson won a majority of the Republican primary vote in Seneca County, and Click’s districtwide margin was approximately 600 votes.

The bitterness carried into the summer. In July, Watson told TiffinOhio.net he would never endorse Click, even after the two met following the primary. Watson said their conversation failed to resolve disagreements involving government overreach, digital identification and data centers. He also announced plans to relocate outside District 88.

Click later disparaged the challenger who had nearly defeated him. During a recorded conversation obtained by TiffinOhio.net, the incumbent said he might have voted for Democrat Aaron Jones if Watson had won the Republican nomination.

“If it was between Eric and Aaron, I might have voted for Aaron,” Click said, laughing, “because Eric’s a nut.” He then added: “Don’t you repeat that.”

Conservative groups rebel against Click

Watson’s near-upset exposed a deep divide between Click and conservative organizations focused on gun rights, abortion and election administration. Several backed Watson, criticizing the incumbent’s voting record and his relationships with Republican leaders in Columbus.

Ohio Gun Owners gave Click a C-minus in March, citing disagreements over gun legislation and his refusal to complete candidate surveys. Days before the primary, the organization downgraded him to an F. Click publicly attacked executive director Chris Dorr as a “fraud,” prompting a lengthy rebuttal from Dorr. The competing Buckeye Firearms Association supported Click and awarded him an A rating.

End Abortion Ohio, an organization advocating a complete legal ban on abortion, endorsed Watson and criticized Click for refusing to support its preferred personhood legislation. Click responded by calling the organization “clowns” and declaring that he would refuse its endorsement under any circumstances. Self-identified conservatives and Christians challenged him in the comments beneath his Facebook post.

The Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio, which advocates eliminating electronic voting machines, also endorsed Watson and criticized Click over his withdrawal of support for legislation concerning hand-counted paper ballots. The endorsements brought together several strands of the Republican activist movement in opposition to a sitting legislator who had portrayed himself as firmly conservative.

The conflict continued into the fall. In September, Coalition of Patriots II, a northwest Ohio constitutional conservative organization, accused Click of vindictiveness after he announced a Vivek Ramaswamy town hall in Tiffin shortly before another gathering the Coalition had arranged with the Republican gubernatorial nominee.

The organization said it had scheduled its event first and excluded Click from its invitation list because of the continuing disagreements following the primary. It accused him of arranging a competing appearance to undermine the gathering. Click advertised his town hall at Tiffin University for 5:30 p.m., one hour before the Coalition’s scheduled event in Risingsun.

The dispute drew criticism from Cary Theis, an elected member of the Seneca County Republican Central Committee representing Eden North. In a Facebook comment beneath the Coalition’s post, Theis wrote: “Too bad Gary doesn’t work for the people.”

Click’s campaign paid to promote HB 6, defended it through May 2026

Click’s public statements have also repeatedly conflicted with campaign finance records, archived websites and other documentary evidence.

His record on Ohio’s scandal-tainted House Bill 6 provides one of the clearest examples. In September 2019, Click’s campaign paid for Facebook advertising promoting HB 6 while Ohioans were gathering signatures for a referendum to repeal the legislation. The sponsored advertisement praised Ohio’s political leaders for supporting the law and included the hashtag “#YestoHB6.”

The campaign continued defending the legislation for years after federal authorities exposed the roughly $60 million bribery conspiracy surrounding its passage and preservation. Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was convicted of racketeering in March 2023 and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

As recently as May 5, 2026, Click’s campaign website described HB 6 as “a necessary investment,” according to an archived copy of the page. The endorsement remained online years after Householder’s arrest, trial and conviction.

During the general-election campaign, Click responded to criticism of his HB 6 record by emphasizing that he had not cast a vote for the original legislation in 2019. He was not yet a state lawmaker when it passed. His paid campaign advertising from that year, however, established his public support for the law, and his own website continued defending it through May 2026.

Click later co-sponsored legislation repealing portions of HB 6. His campaign website has since removed the statement describing the law as a necessary investment and now emphasizes those subsequent repeal votes. The earlier promotion and endorsement remain documented in advertising records and archived copies of the website.

False accusations and claims of political support

In August, Click publicly accused three local Democrats, including his general-election opponent, Aaron Jones, of contributing money to Eric Watson’s Republican primary campaign. He suggested the purported contributions helped explain why Watson had come close to defeating him.

Watson’s campaign finance filings disproved the allegation. Among 104 reported contributions totaling $17,488.05, none came from the three individuals Click named. All three denied making the contributions.

Click deleted his original Facebook post and published a correction acknowledging that his accusation had been “made in error.” The correction omitted the names of the people he had falsely accused.

Other disputes involved elected officials whose support Click claimed during the general-election campaign.

In July, Click’s campaign published a photograph of him with Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner during an Independence Day celebration. Both wore shirts bearing Click’s campaign identification, and the caption said the incumbent was honored to have Roessner’s support.

Roessner said he had attended the community celebration as an elected official, that the campaign supplied the shirt and that he had not endorsed Click. After Click continued publicly defending his characterization of the councilman’s participation, Roessner responded on Click’s own campaign page, reaffirming that he would not endorse anyone in the race and asking Click to “adjust your messaging accordingly.”

A similar controversy emerged during a September NAACP candidate forum in Fremont, where Click told voters that Democratic state Rep. Darnell Brewer of Cleveland supported him over Jones.

Brewer rejected Click’s characterization, explaining that their bipartisan legislative cooperation constituted a working relationship rather than an endorsement. Brewer also affirmed his support for the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus’s endorsement of Jones.

Click’s credibility problems extended into candidate forums. Earlier in the year, he accused the League of Women Voters of the Tiffin Area of effectively excluding him from a primary event, despite the organization’s documented history of repeated invitations. At an October debate before Fremont Ross High School students, he misstated basic facts concerning the Constitution, American alliances in the Middle East and campaign finance rules while urging the students to exercise critical thinking.

Jones challenges Click’s record and political establishment ties

Jones brings a markedly different professional background to the race. He has served on Tiffin City Council since 2024, spent four years in the U.S. Army and worked for more than two decades in manufacturing. His campaign has focused on school funding, property tax relief, government transparency, local control and the concerns of working families.

He has secured support from labor, education and veterans organizations, including the Ohio Education Association and Ohio Federation of Teachers. Those endorsements have provided organized backing for his challenge to a three-term incumbent supported by influential Republicans in Columbus.

Jones has criticized state policies that shift financial pressure onto local schools and property owners. He has advocated stronger local authority over data center development and greater restrictions on government surveillance, connecting those issues to decisions made by state lawmakers that directly affect residents of Seneca and Sandusky counties.

Click’s previous general-election margins demonstrate the district’s Republican voting history. In 2024, he defeated Democrat Dianne Selvey by 35,367 votes to 17,762, receiving approximately two-thirds of the vote. He also won comfortably in 2020 and 2022.

This year, Click enters the general election after nearly half of his party’s primary voters supported another candidate and several conservative organizations continued opposing him after the nomination was settled. Jones has spent the campaign asking voters to judge the incumbent’s record on education, economic policy, government accountability and the priorities of the communities he represents.

Tuesday’s election will determine who represents Seneca and Sandusky counties as Ohio lawmakers confront continued disputes over public school funding, property taxes, data center expansion and government surveillance.

Click is seeking the fourth and final House term permitted under Ohio’s legislative term limits. Jones is asking voters to replace him after a year in which the incumbent’s fiercest political opposition first emerged from within the Republican Party itself.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The arrangement was exposed Friday in a Politico investigation identifying Husted’s landlord as David Lugar, a veteran Washington lobbyist whose clients include Meta, Boeing and Wells Fargo.

Husted rents a separate apartment inside a multifamily house owned by Lugar, who co-chairs the lobbying firm 535 Group and chairs The Lugar Group. Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana also rents an apartment in the building. Lugar told Politico that he does not live or work at the property.

Both Husted’s office and Lugar insist the senator pays fair-market rent. But when Politico asked how much Husted actually pays, neither provided an amount. Husted’s spokesperson described the arrangement as “strictly a landlord and tenant relationship,” while Lugar maintained that he has never lobbied Husted or his staff.

Those assurances leave a central fact undisclosed: the amount of money a sitting U.S. senator pays to a corporate lobbyist whose clients include one of the companies benefiting from Ohio’s enormous data-center expansion.

Federal records confirm Husted’s landlord lobbies for Meta

Lugar’s relationship with Meta is documented in federal lobbying disclosures.

An April 20, 2026, filing, bearing Lugar’s digital signature, identifies Meta as a client of 535 Group. The firm reported receiving $30,000 in lobbying income from the company during the first three months of 2026.

The filing names Lugar as a lobbyist on matters involving online advertising, competition legislation, privacy and encryption. It identifies the U.S. Senate among the institutions covered by those lobbying activities, although it does not identify Husted’s office as a lobbying target.

Politico reported that Lugar acknowledged lobbying the office of his other Senate tenant, Todd Young, during Young’s tenancy. Lugar said he had never lobbied Husted or members of Husted’s staff.

The financial relationship nevertheless places Husted in a privately owned Washington residence controlled by a lobbyist whose corporate clients have significant business and policy interests before Congress.

Husted spent years championing Ohio’s data-center boom

The disclosure comes just days before Ohio voters decide whether Husted will retain his Senate seat in a closely watched contest against Democrat Sherrod Brown, who has made Husted’s record of supporting data centers and corporate tax incentives a central campaign issue.

Before entering the Senate in 2025, Husted spent six years as Ohio’s lieutenant governor under Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. During that period, he repeatedly promoted data-center development, defended tax incentives for technology companies and helped announce major projects across the state.

One of those projects was in northwest Ohio.

In September 2023, DeWine and Husted announced approval of a 75%, 15-year data-center tax exemption for Aligned Data Centers in Perkins Township, Erie County. The development was projected to create just 18 full-time jobs.

The tax exemption was formally approved by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority, but the DeWine-Husted administration publicly championed the project as part of its economic development agenda.

Ohio’s broader data-center tax incentives have since proven vastly more expensive than state officials anticipated. According to the nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission, data-center sales-tax exemptions cost Ohio approximately $1.57 billion in forgone revenue during 2025 alone.

The cost was more than 11 times the state’s earlier forecast of approximately $136 million. In May 2026, DeWine suspended consideration of new data-center tax exemptions while lawmakers examined the industry’s rapidly growing footprint and financial consequences.

Existing agreements, however, remained in place.

Meta’s expansion reaches northwest Ohio

Meta, the company represented by Husted’s landlord, is developing its massive Prometheus artificial intelligence computing complex in New Albany, Ohio, while arranging enormous quantities of electricity to support its growing infrastructure.

Its energy interests extend directly into northwest Ohio.

In January, Meta announced major nuclear energy agreements, including long-term electricity purchases involving the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Oak Harbor in Ottawa County and the Perry nuclear plant in northeast Ohio.

Those agreements connect Meta’s expanding artificial intelligence operations to Ohio’s existing energy infrastructure and the broader regional electricity grid. Meta says it pays the full costs of the energy consumed by its data centers and supports investments to expand electricity generation.

Meanwhile, Husted has attempted to reposition himself on data centers as growing public opposition to corporate tax breaks, electricity costs and the industry’s expansion has become a major political issue.

In July, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, legislation intended to address whether technology companies should pay for the additional electricity infrastructure required by their facilities. The measure would require states to consider standards for allocating those costs, rather than directly mandate them nationwide. It failed to advance in the Senate in September.

That effort followed years in which Husted had publicly defended incentives intended to bring the same industry into Ohio.

Husted’s rent remains undisclosed

The Ohio Democratic Party denounced the rental arrangement Saturday, accusing Husted of benefiting from a sweetheart deal with a lobbyist for Meta.

Husted rents housing from Lugar, Lugar lobbies for Meta, and neither supplied Politico with the amount of rent being paid.

The disclosure comes as Ohioans confront the financial consequences of the data-center industry Husted spent years promoting, including billions of dollars in tax incentives and disputes over who should pay for the electricity infrastructure needed to support massive technology facilities.

Husted has spent months arguing that powerful technology companies should pay their own way. When asked what he pays to live in a property owned by a lobbyist representing one of those companies, however, his office provided assurances that the price was fair without revealing what that price actually is.

Husted faces Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown in the Tuesday, Nov. 3 general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Bradly Ray, 50, of Fostoria, was arrested Thursday, Oct. 29, following a secret indictment charging him with murder in connection with Risner’s March 2006 killing, according to a press release issued by Fostoria Police Chief Gabriel Wedge.

Fostoria police officers, detectives and special agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) took Ray into custody without incident. He was transported to the Seneca County Jail, where authorities said he was being held without bail pending his initial court appearance.

The arrest marks the first publicly announced murder charge in a homicide that remained unsolved for more than two decades, despite the recovery of DNA evidence and years of investigative work.

A brutal killing on Palmer Street

Risner, 50, was discovered dead March 2, 2006, in a garage behind his residence at 116 Palmer St. According to cold-case records maintained by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, responding officers found him lying on the garage floor in a pool of blood.

Fostoria detectives assumed control of the investigation and requested assistance from BCI to process the crime scene. An autopsy performed by the Lucas County Coroner’s Office established that Risner had sustained multiple sharp-force wounds to his neck, including injuries that severed his left internal jugular vein and damaged a major neck muscle. He also suffered blunt-force trauma to the right side of his head, along with multiple injuries to his face and arms.

Risner was discovered after he failed to carry out a familiar morning routine. According to BCI’s account of the case, he regularly drove his former girlfriend’s grandchildren to school. When he failed to appear on the morning of March 2, family members went looking for him and discovered his body.

Investigators determined that Risner had been the victim of a violent homicide, but the case remained unsolved for years.

DNA evidence offered investigators a possible breakthrough

In November 2021, 13abc revisited the investigation and revealed that Fostoria detectives had recovered a DNA profile from an unidentified male. The evidence had been submitted to the national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) in 2013, but the search produced no match.

Then-Fostoria Police Capt. Patrick Brooks told the television station that investigators hoped advances in forensic genealogy could help identify the person whose DNA had been recovered at the crime scene.

The 2021 reporting also revealed that detectives did not believe Risner had been the victim of a random attack. Investigators suspected he knew the person responsible for his death.

Brooks described evidence of a violent confrontation, including injuries to Risner’s face and arms. Investigators had examined a male acquaintance who lived with Risner, but DNA evidence excluded that individual as a suspect, Brooks told 13abc.

The department’s October 2026 announcement does not establish whether the DNA evidence, forensic genealogy or another investigative development ultimately led authorities to Ray. Police have not disclosed what connected him to the killing or how long he had been under investigation.

Renewed investigation leads to murder indictment

According to Thursday’s announcement, the Fostoria Police Department spent the past year working with special agents from BCI’s Cold Case Unit to review evidence and reopen the investigation.

Those efforts culminated Thursday when a Seneca County grand jury returned a secret indictment charging Ray with murder. Seneca County Common Pleas Judge Damon Alt was involved in the indictment and warrant process, according to the department, and officers arrested Ray later that day.

Wedge credited Fostoria Detective Sgt. Brooks Hall and BCI special agents Doug Burke, Lori Braunschweiger and Darien Spann for their work on the case.

“Reaching this point after 20 years is the result of the dedication and careful planning of Fostoria Detective Sergeant Brooks Hall and BCI Special Agents Doug Burke, Lori Braunschweiger, and Darien Spann,” Wedge said.

The chief also praised the relationship between the Fostoria Police Department and state investigators, describing their cooperation as an important resource for a police agency of Fostoria’s size.

The indictment represents a major development in a case that had remained on the Ohio Attorney General’s publicly maintained list of unsolved homicides for years.

Authorities have not disclosed an alleged motive, the relationship between Ray and Risner, or the specific evidence presented to the grand jury. The department said its investigation remains ongoing and that additional information would not be released at this time.

Ray is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The case will now proceed through the Seneca County Court of Common Pleas.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Now the three commissioners responsible for overseeing that department aren’t answering questions about what happened.

Commissioners Anthony Paradiso, Brent Busdeker and Frankart have ignored repeated requests for comment. Emergency Services Chief Nicholas Summers, who acknowledged personally sharing the political post, answered TiffinOhio.net’s initial inquiry but has not provided substantive answers to subsequent questions about the assignment, its costs or whether other political candidates received comparable services.

Frankart, a Republican incumbent, faces independent candidate David Ziegler in the Nov. 3 election.

EMS promoted Frankart’s rally, then changed its caption

As TiffinOhio.net first reported Wednesday, Seneca County Emergency Services shared Frankart’s Facebook post celebrating the Republican “Rise and Rally” he hosted Tuesday.

The gathering featured U.S. Sens. Jon Husted and John Thune, Dr. Mehmet Oz, U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, state Sen. Bill Reineke and state Rep. Gary Click.

At 10:39 a.m. Wednesday, the department published this caption on its official Facebook page:

We were excited to be apart of this special visit! Thanks for the invite 🫶

The message celebrated the political gathering without mentioning emergency operations or public safety.

At 11:42 a.m., 63 minutes later and after TiffinOhio.net began questioning the post, the department edited its caption to add:

This truly highlights our emergency response capability working with Federal, State and Local Public Service Agencies.

The department retained its original message but added an emergency-services explanation that had been absent when it first promoted Frankart’s event.

Summers has not explained who revised the caption or why the change followed the newsroom’s inquiry.

Who requested the emergency deployment?

Summers responded to TiffinOhio.net’s initial questions at 4:05 p.m. Wednesday, before the newsroom’s reporting deadline. He confirmed personally sharing Frankart’s post and denied that Frankart, his campaign or event organizers requested or encouraged the Facebook publicity.

He defended the department’s presence at the rally by citing security concerns surrounding prominent political figures:

Seneca County Emergency Services was present in an official emergency response role because high-value political targets were present.

Summers said personnel participated in emergency planning and staged along the roadway to provide assistance if needed. He acknowledged that department personnel and operational resources were committed to the assignment.

But he has not identified who requested the standby, who authorized it, how many employees or vehicles participated, whether county employees were being paid or what the operation cost.

He also has not said whether event organizers reimbursed the county.

Summers referenced the department’s willingness to cooperate with agencies such as the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Capitol Police. He did not establish that either agency requested the deployment.

Even if EMS coverage was warranted, it didn’t require Summers to promote Frankart’s Republican rally on a government Facebook page.

Did Amy Acton’s campaign receive the same treatment?

Summers has also declined to explain whether Seneca County Emergency Services provides comparable coverage at other political gatherings.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton campaigned in Seneca County in August 2026. Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy held a Tiffin town hall Oct. 1.

Did those appearances receive advance EMS coverage? Has the department provided comparable services at other Democratic or Republican campaign events? Who decides which political gatherings warrant dedicated county emergency resources?

Summers has offered no assignment records demonstrating that Frankart’s rally received the same treatment as other political events.

Nor has he explained whether the department has used its official Facebook account to celebrate gatherings hosted by other candidates.

All three commissioners refuse to answer questions

The county’s official website places Seneca County EMS under the authority of the Board of Commissioners, which consists of Paradiso, Busdeker and Frankart.

Just eight days before the Facebook post, the commissioners’ Oct. 20 meeting agenda included a resolution appointing Summers as chief of emergency services.

All three commissioners have been given multiple opportunities to explain whether the political post was appropriate, whether county policy was followed and whether the board intends to review the incident.

Paradiso and Busdeker have not responded on the record. Neither has Frankart, whose political gathering received the county publicity.

All three commissioners have dealt with this problem before.

County communications promoted and defended Frankart before

This is not the first time taxpayer-funded county communications have been used to promote or defend Frankart.

In May 2024, county media relations contractor Sheri Trusty published an article on the county government’s website celebrating Frankart’s performance during a seven-hour deposition involving the WIN Waste landfill.

The article praised his “typical wisdom and strength” while omitting damaging admissions he made under oath. As TiffinOhio.net subsequently reported, Frankart acknowledged making inaccurate public statements about the landfill and regional solid waste district without correcting them.

Five months later, Trusty used the county’s official website to defend Frankart during a bitter family custody dispute and attack Advertiser-Tribune journalist Kayla Trevino over her reporting.

The custody battle followed the 2022 conviction of Frankart’s son, Zachary Michael Frankart, for attempted rape in Butler County. Zachary was sentenced to prison following the sexual assault of a Miami University student.

After his son’s conviction and imprisonment, Bill Frankart pursued legal custody of his granddaughter, who was then the subject of a dispute between Frankart and the child’s mother. According to Ohio appellate court records, Frankart hired a private investigator to track the mother’s movements during the custody battle.

On Sept. 3, 2024, a Seneca County judge denied Frankart’s request for legal custody and awarded custody to the child’s mother. Frankart appealed, but the Ohio Third District Court of Appeals upheld the decision in June 2025.

It was Trevino’s reporting on that custody dispute and the private investigator that prompted Trusty’s extraordinary response through the county government’s website.

Her article, titled “Fallacies in Advertiser-Tribune Story Exposed,” accused Trevino of conducting a “witch hunt” against Frankart.

Seneca County removed the article following public backlash over the use of government resources to defend Frankart’s personal interests. TiffinOhio.net preserved the original county publication.

The controversy prompted Seneca County Prosecutor Derek DeVine to recuse himself from reviewing the possible misuse of county resources. DeVine asked the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to evaluate the circumstances and investigate if warranted. The Ohio Ethics Commission was also notified.

Despite the controversy, Frankart subsequently moved to renew Trusty’s county communications contract with a proposed $6,500 increase.

His motion failed when neither fellow commissioner provided a second. The February 2025 meeting exposed disagreements among commissioners over the contract and county communications policies.

Paradiso promised tighter controls. Where are they?

Commissioner Anthony Paradiso addressed the earlier scandal at an October 2024 League of Women Voters forum.

As TiffinOhio.net reported at the time, Paradiso told voters:

The position of the commissioners is that we not use the office for personal use.

He also acknowledged that county communications were not consistently reviewed before publication:

Sometimes we review what goes out, sometimes we don’t.

Paradiso said commissioners intended to strengthen their social media and website policies and improve oversight of official communications.

Two years later, another county department has used its official communications channel to promote Frankart just days before an election.

TiffinOhio.net has asked Paradiso whether those promised safeguards were implemented, whether EMS followed county policy and whether the board intends to investigate the latest incident.

He has not answered.

Ohio law restricts political use of public resources

Ohio Revised Code Section 9.03 prohibits political subdivisions from using public funds to communicate material supporting or opposing candidates for public office. It also restricts compensating public employees for activities intended to influence election outcomes.

Summers says EMS personnel attended because prominent political figures were present. He still hasn’t identified who requested the deployment, who authorized it or what it cost.

The original Facebook caption didn’t discuss emergency response. It celebrated a Republican political gathering hosted by a commissioner seeking reelection. The department added its public safety explanation only after TiffinOhio.net began asking questions.

Two years ago, Seneca County used a taxpayer-funded communications contractor to defend Frankart during a personal controversy. The county removed the article after public backlash, and Paradiso promised tighter controls.

Now another county department has used its official communications channel to promote Frankart’s Republican rally.

The commissioners faced this problem two years ago. Paradiso promised to tighten the rules. Now it’s happened again, and not one of the three commissioners will answer for it.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ramaswamy called for classroom cameras at least twice during his 2024 presidential campaign. Then, while running for Ohio governor in November 2025, he proposed eliminating the traditional summer break and extending school hours to reduce parents’ child care expenses.

The proposals were made separately, more than two years apart. Ramaswamy has not publicly presented them as one combined Ohio policy. But both are part of his documented education record, and neither was accompanied by a detailed explanation of how the changes would affect students, teachers or school districts.

For Ohio families, the implications of pursuing both ideas would be substantial: children attending school throughout the year, remaining in classrooms later each afternoon, and potentially being recorded during their lessons.

Ramaswamy called for cameras inside classrooms

On September 8, 2023, Ramaswamy published an education proposal on X that included a call to “Publish curriculum online & cameras in the classroom.”

He made the demand alongside other sweeping changes to public education, including abolishing teachers unions, eliminating the federal Department of Education, expanding school choice and placing three armed security guards in every school.

It was not the first time he had advocated classroom cameras. On April 28, 2023, Ramaswamy included the same proposal in the description of a video posted to his official YouTube channel, outlining what he wanted to change about American education.

In neither statement did Ramaswamy specify who would operate the cameras, whether they would continuously record classroom activities, whether parents or government officials could access live footage, or how recordings of children would be protected.

He also did not establish whether cameras would be directed at teachers, students or entire classrooms. His proposal called for placing cameras inside instructional spaces without spelling out what those cameras would be permitted to capture or how the resulting footage could be used.

Then came his proposal to keep Ohio children in school year-round

On November 24, 2025, Ramaswamy took his education proposals in another direction, suggesting Ohio schools should remain open year-round and extend the school day until 4 p.m. as a way to reduce child care expenses.

In a social media video promoting his affordability agenda, Ramaswamy said: “Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going til 4 o’clock instead of 3 o’clock so you don’t have to pay for childcare.”

His rationale was explicit: keeping children in school longer would reduce the amount of time parents needed to pay for child care.

But extending the school year and daily schedule would shift substantial additional responsibilities onto public school districts. Teachers and support staff would need to cover additional hours or days, buses would operate on expanded schedules, and school buildings would incur additional operating expenses.

Ramaswamy did not explain how Ohio would pay for those changes.

The proposal also proved controversial enough that his campaign removed the original video and published an edited version without the year-round-school remarks. Some of his supporters falsely claimed that a recording of the original proposal was generated by artificial intelligence. The recording was authentic, and his campaign acknowledged the remarks.

Campaign spokesperson Connie Luck subsequently told The Center Square that the discussion was not a formal policy announcement but an exchange of ideas with voters.

Ramaswamy did not categorically reject the idea when questioned about it again in March 2026. Instead, he told Signal Ohio that policymakers should remain open-minded about different approaches to improving education, particularly in poorer communities.

Classroom cameras carry serious privacy implications

Ramaswamy’s earlier proposal to put cameras inside classrooms introduces another dimension to his ideas about public education: the ability to observe what happens inside rooms where children spend much of their day.

Video systems placed inside classrooms can capture students’ academic activities, interactions with teachers, disciplinary incidents and potentially sensitive personal information. Depending on how the system operates, recordings could be accessible to school administrators, technology providers or others granted permission to view them.

Federal law already recognizes that school video recordings can contain protected student information. Under U.S. Department of Education guidance, school-maintained footage that directly relates to identifiable students may qualify as an education record protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

In Seneca County, existing school policies illustrate the importance of defining how surveillance equipment may be used. Tiffin City Schools’ security policy permits cameras inside and outside buildings for safety and security, but requires advance notice to students, staff and parents. It also prohibits placement where people reasonably expect privacy and limits surveillance to maintaining order, safety and security.

Ramaswamy’s classroom-camera proposal did not identify equivalent safeguards. It provided no rules for access to recordings, retention periods, disclosure of student images or preventing footage from being used for purposes unrelated to education.

A costly proposition for already-strained Ohio schools

The financial implications of expanding school operations are particularly relevant in communities such as Tiffin, where public school funding has already been a major issue.

In November 2025, Tiffin voters approved a 0.75% earned income tax levy to support existing school operations, generating approximately $3.2 million annually. District officials have also identified a projected $1.2 million annual revenue loss associated with changes to Ohio property tax law, as TiffinOhio.net previously reported.

Keeping schools open additional days and hours would require more staffing, transportation, utilities and building maintenance. Installing classroom-camera systems would bring additional equipment, infrastructure and data-management expenses.

Neither Ramaswamy’s classroom-camera statements nor his year-round-school proposal explained how districts would finance such changes or what additional funding the state would provide.

Ramaswamy now warns against a surveillance state

Ramaswamy’s previous support for classroom cameras also contrasts with his more recent warnings about government surveillance.

During a July 2026 campaign appearance at the Butler County Fair, he warned that automated license plate readers manufactured by Flock Safety could enable government tracking on a scale resembling an authoritarian surveillance state.

On August 27, he reiterated that position, pledging to prevent Flock cameras from spying on people inside their vehicles and warning against an expansive surveillance state in Ohio.

License plate readers and classroom cameras perform different functions, but both involve questions about how government institutions collect, retain and use information about individuals. Ramaswamy has made those concerns central to his public position on Flock cameras while providing no corresponding privacy framework in his earlier classroom-camera proposal.

As Ohio voters prepare to choose their next governor, Ramaswamy’s record contains two consequential education ideas: placing cameras inside classrooms and keeping children in school throughout the year. One would introduce video monitoring into instructional spaces. The other would extend the amount of time children spend in those spaces.

His campaign has not established that it intends to pursue both proposals together. But the documented statements show that Ramaswamy has advocated each idea, while leaving the costs, student privacy protections and practical consequences unexplained.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The number of incidents are generally increasing, going from 103 in 2015 to 268 in 2025, according to a new report published last week by FracTracker Alliance in partnership with Buckeye Environmental Network.

FracTracker Alliance analyzed ODNR records from 2015 to 2025 for the report. 

“That’s much more (total incidents) than I would expect,” said Gwen Klenke, the report’s author. There were 2,529 incidents recorded in Ohio from 2015 to 2025. 

“Obviously everyone’s human. Everyone makes mistakes, so there’s always going to be some amount of things going wrong, but 2,500 is a pretty massive number for 10 years. … It just feels like it’s more than it should be.”

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources did not respond to the Ohio Capital Journal’s questions by deadline.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Association said the report was not “an objective assessment of Ohio’s energy industry.”

“FracTracker’s conclusions should be viewed for what they are: advocacy, not a comprehensive assessment of the safety, environmental performance and regulatory oversight of Ohio’s oil and natural gas operations,” Ohio Oil and Gas Association Director of External Affairs Mike Chadsey said in an email.

“Ohio’s energy producers remain focused on responsible development, protecting our communities and delivering the reliable energy that powers our state.”

Bev Reed with Buckeye Environmental Network said the findings from this new report are alarming. 

“It’s incredibly important that ODNR and the legislature get their act together,” she said in an email.

“We also received documents showing that an injection well company in Washington County requested that ODNR not suspend its injection well near Marietta, despite the fact that the state had grounds to immediately suspend the well.”

The report showed incident classifications are often unclear. 

“There’s this really pervasive lack of good data throughout the whole data set, which is concerning considering its incidents and spills, things that we would want good details about, and related to that was the characterization of the incidents,” said Klenke, FracTracker’s Midwest Program Coordinator. 

A 2016 incident in Columbiana County was categorized as a “minor” incident, but was described as “static electricity from overhead power lines caused a conventional well’s tank to explode,” according to the report. 

Another incident categorized as “minor” in Gallia County involved an unknown quantity of oil and gas wastewater was released from a well while it was being plugged. ODNR’s records reveal the well had been “flowing overnight with no well control in place.” 

“I pointed out major explosions being categorized as minor incidents, and that just doesn’t seem good for public understanding of these types of events,” Klenke said. 

ODNR has about 25 inspectors who are responsible for Ohio’s 96,000 wells, according to the report. This means one inspector is responsible for 1,500 wells in Harrison County while another inspector is responsible for about 24,000 wells in 26 counties, according to the report. 

“Really any increase, I think I’d be happy with,” Klenke said when asked how many inspectors she wishes ODNR had. 

“If they got 26 inspectors in Ohio, I’d be celebrating.”

More than 1,200 of the incidents were categorized as release/discharge. There 615 gas releases, 108 fires, 94 explosions or fires, and six injuries, according to the report. 

Of Ohio’s 88 counties, there were incidents in 73. Most of the incidents are in the eastern part of Ohio. 

Stark County had the most incidents with 133, followed by Noble County with 129, and Trumbull and Guernsey counties both had 114, according to the report. 

“Residents in those counties should be especially vigilant when they are doing things like going on hikes or walking more rural lanes,” Klenke said.  

“I would hope that residents in those counties would just really keep their eyes peeled for anything that doesn’t seem right. If they see something, they should definitely call emergency services to get them out there to at least check things out.”

Klenke said she hopes to see more oversight and accountability with Ohio’s oil and gas wells.

“It can happen with more inspectors,” she said. 

“It can also happen with just better tracking of the incidents, better follow through, just generally with well owners who may be concerned that something’s wrong with their well.”

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Megan Henry on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Office of Criminal Justice Services found that more than half of all violent crime arrests in Ohio had a domestic violence charge as part of the case, with 70% of the arrests conducted on repeat offenders.

The researchers studied half a century of criminal history data in the state, including about 2 million violent crime arrests from 1974 to 2023, according to a release about the research.

The study also found that from 2014 to 2023, 54% of violent crime arrests involved domestic violence. That statistic went up to 56% in the last five years.

“Anecdotally, we suspected that domestic violence was among the most frequent violent crimes in the state, and this data confirms it,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement.

“The data also reinforces the fact that Ohio must continue to be innovative in its work to protect both domestic violence survivors and the law enforcement officers who respond to calls for help.”

Ohio had its second highest amount of deaths from domestic violence-related incidents in 2025, according to data released this month from the Ohio Domestic Violence Network. The report showed 134 deaths in 101 cases.

The year before was the highest amount of deaths since the network began collecting fatality statistics 11 years ago. In 2024, Ohio had 157 deaths in 108 cases. Over the last two years of data, the network found that in 49% of cases, the victim was attempting to leave the situation.

“These homicides are not random,” said Maria York, the network’s director of policy and communications, when the report was announced. “They are the final act of control.”

As part of a recent announcement of funding set aside for “specific domestic-violence-related projects,” the governor’s office said an additional $1 million will be directed toward the state’s domestic violence shelters recognized by the Office of Criminal Justice Services.

The 55 shelters across the state will each receive a one-time grant of $18,000 for “immediate shelter and meeting the critical needs of family violence victims and their dependents,” according to the governor’s office.

The Office of Criminal Justice Services announced another $4 million in “federal emergency shelter and supportive services grants for domestic violence victims and their dependents,” in an Oct. 27 press release.

The funding is from the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act Formula Grant to States and Territories, administered through the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

The state office said 64 projects in 46 counties will be funded for one year, from July 2026 through June 2027.

The grant amounts ranged from $115,000 going to Stark County’s Domestic Violence Project, Inc., to $30,000 awards for Greene County’s Violence Free Futures, Geauga County’s Womensafe, and Summit County’s Asian Services in Action, Inc.

Law enforcement will also be receiving state funding meant for programs related to domestic violence, like one to provide training on “lethality assessments,” which are used to decide how much a survivor risks future domestic violence based on the situation to which law enforcement are responding.

The funding announced by the governor’s office is also set to help establish “co-responder partnership models.”

Those models would partner victim services advocates with law enforcement “to help ensure that trauma-informed support is immediately available on-scene for survivors after law enforcement responds to a domestic violence incident,” according to the governor’s office.

A separate grant is also set aside to fund “ballistic shields,” which would be used by law enforcement when responding to “high-risk calls like domestic violence incidents.”

In addition, DeWine tasked the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board to develop standards for responses to domestic violence, and investigations of it, using the Ohio Domestic Violence Network’s handbook for law enforcement working with domestic violence survivors.

The network praised the new grant funding and the work to set law enforcement standards.

“We are especially pleased to work with the Ohio Collaborative to provide law enforcement with more guidance about responding to domestic violence calls, which can be the most dangerous calls police get,” said ODVN’s senior director for survivor services, Alicia Williamson, in a statement.

The network worked with the Office of Criminal Justice Services on a training initiative to offer seven regional, in-person trainings, and seven virtual trainings for law enforcement in Ohio.

According to a press release from ODVN, topics in the trainings will include trauma-informed investigations, lethality assessments, strangulation and brain injuries, protection order enforcement, and victims’ rights.

The first of the trainings is scheduled for Nov. 18 in Columbus.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Revenue from the gas tax is mostly used to build and maintain roads and bridges. And as electric vehicles and hybrids proliferate, a “vehicle miles traveled fee” would ensure a stable source of funding, the thinking goes.

When asked whether that would be more efficient than a gas tax, a panel of Ohio economists divided, according to a survey conducted last week by Scioto Analysis. Sixteen said it would be, 11 said it would not be, and four were uncertain.

In the comments section of the survey, Lucas Englehardt of Kent State University agreed that a miles-traveled fee makes sense in terms of funding road maintenance. But he said policymakers need to be cognizant of other expenses created by gas-burning cars.

“In as far as the goal is funding roads, it makes sense to proportion the fee to the use of roads — miles traveled being a reasonable approach, and much more representative of the benefit than ‘fuel used’ is,” he wrote.

“The one wrinkle here: the gas tax is part road user fee but also part emissions charge. So, for the question of road funding, a per-mile charge is more efficient — but that doesn’t mean that it’s more efficient overall.”

David Brasington of the University of Cincinnati disagreed that a miles-traveled fee would be more efficient for a practical reason. He said people probably wouldn’t go along with its implementation.

“If you use GPS tracking of Ohio drivers, it would be feasible, but people would probably have big privacy concerns,” he wrote. “Other ways of implementing a miles-driven system have high costs of administering the system compared to a gas tax.”

Ali Enami of the University of Akron said he thought a miles-traveled tax would be more efficient than a gas tax. But he said that if the purpose is to maintain roads, vehicle weight should also be taken into account.

Research has shown that a loaded, five-axle truck does as much damage to a road as hundreds or even thousands of cars, depending on the road’s condition.

“I would add that other factors, such as vehicle weight, should be included in the calculation of the fee,” Enami wrote. “That is, holding vehicle miles traveled constant, a road used by heavier vehicles would require more frequent repairs.”

When it comes to fairness, Ohio already digs a little deeper into the pockets of those who drive the most fuel-efficient vehicles. Owners of hybrids pay a $100 annual fee while those who have plug-in hybrids pay $150 and owners of full EVs pay $200.

Kevin Egan of the University of Toledo said that means that those driving fully electric vehicles are already paying more than the average gas-powered motorist is paying in gas tax.

“Ohio’s $200 annual registration fee on electric vehicles (vs. $35 for a gas car) is already a little more than the average gas car driver pays in state gas tax so this change already makes-up for lost state gas tax revenue from an electric car,” he wrote.

“The advantage is it is easy to implement as it is just a higher annual registration fee. Yes, a vehicle-miles-traveled fee would be more efficient as those driving electric cars more would then pay more, but it would require tracking each vehicle’s annual mileage, which is not currently done.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The department’s chief, Nicholas Summers, acknowledged personally sharing the post and denied that Frankart or his campaign requested it. Summers said emergency personnel were present at the event for an official public safety assignment.

But the department’s original Facebook caption said nothing about emergency operations. It celebrated the political gathering and thanked someone for an invitation. The agency added an explanation about its emergency response capabilities only after questions were raised.

The incident also follows earlier controversies in which Seneca County’s official communications channels were used to promote or defend Frankart, including a county website article that attacked a reporter covering his private legal affairs.

County account celebrates Republican event

The original post came from Frankart, who described hosting Tuesday’s “Rise and Rally” event in Clyde.

The gathering featured prominent Republicans, including U.S. Sens. Jon Husted and John Thune, Dr. Mehmet Oz, U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, state Sen. Bill Reineke and state Rep. Gary Click.

Frankart’s post included photographs of political figures walking through the venue, addressing attendees and interacting with participants.

At 10:39 a.m. Wednesday, Seneca County Emergency Services shared the post on its official Facebook page, adding:

We were excited to be apart of this special visit! Thanks for the invite 🫶

The message contained no reference to medical standby, emergency planning, ambulance deployment or any other public safety function.

Frankart is president of the Seneca County Board of Commissioners and the Republican nominee for another term in the Nov. 3 general election. He faces independent candidate David Ziegler, a three-term Eden Township trustee.

Frankart’s position is confirmed by the county’s official website, while his campaign website confirms his reelection bid.

Post changes after questions

TiffinOhio.net contacted county emergency services officials Wednesday morning to ask why the department had shared the political post, whether public resources had been used and whether Frankart or campaign officials had requested the publicity.

At 11:42 a.m., the department edited its caption.

Facebook’s publicly accessible edit history shows the original post was published at 10:39 a.m. and revised 63 minutes later.

The department retained its original message expressing excitement about the visit but added:

This truly highlights our emergency response capability working with Federal, State and Local Public Service Agencies.

The edit followed TiffinOhio.net’s initial inquiry. The timing is documented, although the department has not explained why the revision was made.

The added sentence introduced an emergency response justification that had been absent from the original caption.

Chief admits sharing post, denies campaign involvement

At 4:05 p.m. Wednesday, Summers responded to the news outlet’s initial questions by email, ahead of a 5 p.m. reporting deadline.

He confirmed that he managed the department’s Facebook feed and personally shared Frankart’s post.

I managed the department’s Facebook feed and shared the post.

Summers said the department’s presence at the gathering was an official emergency response assignment because of the prominent political figures in attendance.

Seneca County Emergency Services was present in an official emergency response role because high-value political targets were present.

According to Summers, department personnel participated in emergency planning and staged along the roadway to provide assistance if needed. He said additional emergency resources remained available throughout the department’s service area.

He also acknowledged that department personnel and operational resources were committed to the assignment.

However, Summers did not identify the employees who attended, specify how many personnel or vehicles were assigned, or directly answer whether those employees were receiving county compensation.

He also did not provide a cost estimate or say whether event organizers reimbursed the county.

When asked whether Frankart, his campaign, event organizers or other elected officials requested or encouraged the Facebook post, Summers said no.

He said the decision was his and that the intent was to demonstrate the department’s emergency response capabilities and raise awareness of rural EMS, not support a political campaign.

That explanation addresses the department’s presence at the event. It does not fully explain its separate decision to share a politician’s celebratory account of the gathering through an official government communications channel.

Earlier county communications promoted and defended Frankart

This is not the first time Seneca County’s official communications channels have been used to promote or defend Frankart.

On May 29, 2024, then-county Media Relations Coordinator Sheri Trusty published an article on the county’s official website titled “Resilient in Battle: Commissioner Bill Frankart endures seven-hour WIN Waste deposition.”

The county-funded communications contractor portrayed Frankart’s handling of a deposition in litigation involving WIN Waste as a display of his “typical wisdom and strength.” The article featured Frankart declaring, “I took a hit for the constituents, and I’ll do it every day.”

The flattering account did not describe the substance of his sworn testimony. As TiffinOhio.net reported earlier this month, an examination of the deposition transcript later exposed admissions that Frankart had made inaccurate public statements about the landfill and failed to correct them.

Another county website publication became a much larger controversy in October 2024.

Trusty published an article defending Frankart against coverage of his personal child custody dispute by Advertiser-Tribune reporter Kayla Trevino. The county article accused Trevino of conducting a “witch hunt” and attacked her reporting while praising Frankart.

The article, titled “Fallacies in Advertiser-Tribune Story Exposed,” was published on the official county website on Oct. 14, 2024. The county removed it the following day after criticism over the use of a government communications platform to defend a commissioner’s private interests.

TiffinOhio.net reported the removal and preserved an archived copy of the county’s original article.

The controversy prompted Seneca County Prosecutor Derek DeVine to ask the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation to evaluate the circumstances and investigate potential misuse of government resources if warranted. DeVine stepped aside from overseeing the review. TiffinOhio.net reported the referral on Oct. 22, 2024.

At a League of Women Voters candidates forum that month, Commissioner Anthony Paradiso acknowledged problems with oversight of county communications.

Sometimes we review what goes out, sometimes we don’t.

Paradiso said the commissioners were working to improve their website and social media policies. He also said the board’s position was that the county office should not be used for personal purposes, according to TiffinOhio.net’s contemporaneous reporting.

Four months later, in February 2025, Frankart moved to renew Trusty’s county media relations contract with a proposed $6,500 increase. The motion failed for lack of a second, ending her contract with the county. The proceedings were reported by TiffinOhio.net.

The earlier episodes establish that official county communications have previously been used to promote or defend Frankart. They do not establish that he directed this week’s EMS Facebook post, which Summers says was his own decision.

Ohio law restricts political use of public resources

Ohio Revised Code Section 9.03 prohibits political subdivisions from using public funds to communicate material supporting or opposing candidates for public office. It also restricts compensating public employees for activities intended to influence election outcomes.

The Ohio Auditor of State’s Office has warned that public resources and official government communication channels must not be used for election advocacy.

Whether the EMS Facebook post constitutes prohibited political activity has not been established. Providing emergency medical coverage at a political event is not, by itself, evidence of improper campaign activity.

Summers cited the Seneca County Board of Commissioners Personnel Policy Manual, which contains provisions governing political activity and social media.

The manual imposes restrictions on certain partisan activities by classified employees. Its social media policy also states that the county has an overriding interest in determining what is communicated on its behalf.

Summers said he could not identify a provision specifically addressing partisan content published through an official government social media account. He did not establish whether the commissioners’ manual had been adopted as the governing policy for his department.

Department publishes reporter’s questions on Facebook

The department later used the original rally post to publicly respond to TiffinOhio.net’s reporting.

In a comment beneath Frankart’s post, the official emergency services account identified TiffinOhio.net before reproducing questions submitted to county officials and the department’s responses.

The comment began:

Here was some questions posed by Dylan from Tiffinohio.net

The department’s public explanation repeated Summers’ position that emergency personnel had attended in an official readiness capacity because prominent political figures were present.

The comment appeared while TiffinOhio.net was continuing to seek answers about the original Facebook post, its subsequent revision and the resources assigned to the political gathering.

Staffing, costs and Facebook edit remain unexplained

Following Summers’ initial response, TiffinOhio.net submitted additional questions about why the department shared Frankart’s political post instead of publishing a neutral account of its emergency assignment.

The news outlet also asked who revised the caption at 11:42 a.m. and why, whether the department provides comparable publicity for events featuring Democratic candidates and who requested the emergency standby.

Further questions sought the number of personnel and vehicles assigned, whether employees were receiving county compensation and whether the operation generated additional costs.

Summers had not provided further substantive answers as of 5:53 p.m. Wednesday.

Frankart was separately contacted for comment but had not responded as of that time.

Summers says the department’s presence at Tuesday’s event was an emergency readiness assignment. But the original Facebook post said nothing about emergency readiness. It celebrated a Republican political gathering hosted by a commissioner facing voters six days later.

The department added its public safety explanation only after TiffinOhio.net began asking questions. Who made that revision and why remain unanswered.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 34 million people have either gone to the polls to cast a ballot or have mailed in their vote, and the current tally is on track to surpass early voting in the 2022 midterm elections, said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at University of Florida who runs the UF Election Lab that tracks early voting.

With one week until Election Day on Nov. 3, McDonald said he’s not sure if voters will surpass record-breaking early voting of 2018, but it’s clear that the surge in early voting will eclipse turnout in the 2022 midterm elections, where nearly 46 million Americans voted early, according to the UF Election Lab. 

“Right now, the data that I can see, it looks like we’re running at least even to the 2018 election. If the voting continues through Election Day, we would be somewhere around that number,” he said. 

“That’s a high water benchmark,” McDonald said, adding that the 2018 election was the highest turnout for a midterm election since 1914. 

Motivations for the surge

Some states are reporting heavier voter turnout.

Twenty-seven states record party affiliation, and of the roughly 16 million early voters in those states, 45% are Democrats, and about 31% are Republicans, with 24% unaffiliated with either party, according to the UF Election Lab. 

McDonald said he can’t tell from the data the motivation behind a surge in early voting, but he has two ideas. The first is a post-COVID 19  explanation, where voters are less likely to partake in mail-in-ballots, so “we’re sort of reverting back to a normal election.”

“The other is the potential that (President Donald) Trump’s potential threats with trying to monkey around with the U.S. Postal Service, has made some people decide that they don’t want to vote by mail and vote in person instead,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court in September kept in place a lower court’s order blocking Trump’s embattled plan to place new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s midterm elections.

The GOP is vying to maintain its narrow majority in the House and Senate, though Democrats remain heavily favored to win back the majority in the House, and Senate races continue to move in the party’s favor, according to elections forecasters. 

The party of the president historically loses seats in the midterm elections. Trump is also facing anemic approval ratings amid the war in Iran and its impact driving up gas prices. 

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted 19 House races in the direction of Democrats on Oct. 23. The elections forecaster lists 17 races as toss-ups, with Republicans defending 12. 

In the Senate, the Cook Political Report identified seven toss-up races across the country, including in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas.

Early voting in the battlegrounds 

As early voting continues in key battleground states, Republicans are aiming to hold on to their majority in the upper chamber.

In Alaska, as of Monday, more than 46,000 people have voted already, according to the UF Election Lab. Former House Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola is seeking to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.

In Iowa, as of Tuesday, nearly 307,000 people have cast their vote early, as Democratic state legislator Josh Turek and U.S. House Republican lawmaker Ashley Hinson compete in a toss-up race for the U.S. Senate seat.

GOP incumbents Susan Collins of Maine and Roger Marshall of Kansas are also trying to keep their Senate seats in tough challenges from Democrats. In Maine, more than 196,000 people have voted, according to Monday data from the UF Election Lab. And in Kansas, more than 245,000 people have voted as of Tuesday, according to the UF Election Lab. 

More than 1.3 million people have already voted early in Michigan as of Tuesday, according to the UF Election Lab. 

The Wolverine State is home to a highly competitive Senate race in an open seat between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed that the Cook Political Report has declared a toss-up. 

In Ohio, as of Tuesday, nearly 1.2 million people have voted early as well, per the tracker. A tight Senate race also listed as a toss-up by the Cook Political Report features Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted and Democratic candidate and former Sen. Sherrod Brown. 

In the Lone Star State, more than 5 million people have cast their ballots as of Tuesday, according to the UF Election Lab. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and James Talarico, a Democrat, are battling it out in a race dubbed a toss-up by the Cook Political Report. Trump was campaigning in Texas on Tuesday.

Big turnout in some states  

As early voting takes shape across the country, some states are seeing sweeping turnout figures during the beginning days of early voting compared with earlier elections. 

In Tennessee, midterm early voter turnout stood 57% higher compared with the 2022 midterms in the Volunteer State during the first eight days, according to a Monday report from the Tennessee Lookout. 

Meanwhile, North Carolina is witnessing an eagerness among unaffiliated voters, who cast 34% of ballots in the first five days of early voting in the Tar Heel State, NC Newsline reported. 

The Louisiana Illuminator reported that Black voters comprised a larger share of participants on the first day of early voting in the Pelican State compared with nearly every other election over the past 18 years. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Over the summer, Ohio campaigns report what they raised on a monthly basis, but not what they spent. So, when it comes time to make their final filing ahead of Election Day, they’re reporting two weeks of fundraising but more than four months of spending.

The gulf between the two in Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s report is large. While his campaign brought in $1.5 million, it spent $51.1 million. Ramaswamy also reported making another $5 million loan to his campaign. That brings its total outstanding debt to $41.3 million.

Continuing a recent trend, Democratic candidate Amy Acton reported raising far more than her Republican competitor. Acton’s campaign reported bringing in $3.9 million — more than double Ramaswamy’s take — while spending $26.2 million.

Ramaswamy’s report

Among Ramaswamy’s donors making contributions of $10,000 or more are American Electric Power, the Ohio branch of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, Elevance Health — formerly Anthem, and a political committee representing Ohio banks.

The Winkelvoss twins, who notably almost invented Facebook, both made maximum donations to Ramaswamy’s campaign. The brothers now run a venture capital firm and head up a cryptocurrency Super PAC called Digital Freedom Fund.

That PAC has spent another $5.9 million in Ohio attacking Democrat Sherrod Brown or boosting his Republican opponent U.S. Sen. Jon Husted.

Ramaswamy’s campaign spent more than $35 million on media and television ad placements between July and Oct. 14. The biggest single media expenditure is the most recent — nearly $8 million on Oct. 8.

From the outset of his campaign, Ramaswamy faced criticism for crisscrossing the state in a private jet. In September, NBC reported on growing unease among GOP officials who urged him to “park the damn jet.”

Ramaswamy didn’t take their advice.

The pre-general report includes nearly $870,000 in charges related to Ramaswamy’s private jet travel. The campaign maintained two concurrent aircraft leases totaling almost $386,000. In addition, Ramaswamy’s campaign reports spending nearly $484,000 with the private jet charter company Talon Air.

Ramaswamy also reports making two in-kind contributions to Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s campaign to fly to campaign events.

Acton’s report

The biggest contributions Acton reports are a pair of donations totaling about $262,000 from the Ohio Democratic Party candidate fund. She also got donations of $10,000 or more from committees representing Franklin County Engineer Adam Fowler, Columbus teachers, the Ohio life sciences industry, and the Ohio Hospital Association.

But the OHA appears to be hedging its bets. Every contribution its PAC has made since Oct. 2025 has gone to Republicans. And although it gave Acton $10,000, it gave Ramaswamy a maximum donation of $16,615 two weeks prior.

Two notable individual donors backing Acton are executives with the defense company Anduril, which is building a manufacturing facility called Arsenal-1 just outside Columbus. CEO Brian Schimpf and COO Matthew Grimm both gave Acton maximum donations.

Acton’s campaign reports spending about $22.3 million on advertising placements and production. Roughly $1.7 million of that was later refunded to the campaign bringing the total closer to $20.6 million.

Like Ramaswamy, Acton’s campaign logged a lot of flight miles. But because they fly commercial it cost a lot less. Despite scores of airfare reimbursements, Acton’s total bill was about $57,600 — or less than a month and a half of Ramaswamy’s cheapest aircraft lease.

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

That includes Ohio’s 10th Congressional district, where 12-term Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Turner faces a late surge from Democratic challenger Kristina Knickerbocker for a chance to represent the Dayton area in Congress.

The data from Ohio reflects a national trend of both parties redirecting spending to newly competitive battlegrounds in traditionally Republican areas.

House Majority PAC, a super PAC aligned with House Democratic leadership, released a poll Wednesday showing Democratic nominee for the 15th Congressional district Don Leonard up 3% over Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Carey. It was one of six polls showing Democratic challengers leading in Republican strongholds.

Both districts were rated “Solid Republican” by Cook Political Report until August. On Oct. 16, the election forecaster shifted both to “Lean Republican.”

“For the first time in years, Democrats have genuine pickup opportunities deep into Trump territory, in districts that were once considered entirely out of reach,” House Majority PAC said in a press release.

Congressional candidates must file several financial disclosures throughout the year of their election. Reports for the first two weeks of October were due Oct. 22.

Democrats widened cash advantages in the 7th and 9th Congressional districts, which are rated “Toss-Up” by Cook Political Report, and in the 1st and 13th Congressional districts, which are rated “Likely Democratic.” Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, who represents the 10th Congressional district, was the only Republican to outraise his opponent.

Even as independent polls of the Congressional generic ballot point to a favorable environment for Democrats, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Zach Bannon said the GOP is “on offense” across the state. 

Although the NRCC spent on ads supporting Turner in recent weeks, neither incumbent is on the organization’s list of vulnerable Republican congressmembers.

“Congressmen Mike Turner and Mike Carey are battle-tested leaders who have delivered real results for their communities and earned Ohioans’ trust,” Bannon said.

Democrats had the largest fundraising advantages in the two districts rated as toss-ups.

Democratic nominee for Ohio’s 7th Congressional district Brian Poindexter reported over $3.1 million in direct contributions from July through the first half of October, far more than incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller’s $180,000 in reported donations.

Miller put $1 million of his own money into the race in August after allegations of domestic abuse prompted several national Republicans, including both of Ohio’s U.S. Senators, to call for him to drop out. 

He spent almost $2.4 million in the third quarter, but just over $22,000 in the first two weeks of October, leaving him with around $135,000 in cash on hand. Poindexter reported a cash balance of around $793,000, making Miller the only incumbent in any of Ohio’s competitive Congressional districts with less cash on hand than his opponent.

“After Max Miller loaned himself $1 million to try to buy himself out of trouble, tens of thousands of grassroots supporters stepped up to help send a union ironworker to Congress,” Poindexter said in a press release. “I am grateful for their support.”

Meanwhile, Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur spent over $3.2 million in the third quarter of her rematch with Republican nominee Derek Merrin. It’s the most Kaptur has spent in a single quarter over her 44 years representing Ohio’s 9th Congressional district, and more than her spending in all but two election cycles.

Kaptur beat Merrin by 0.7 percentage points in 2024 despite President Donald Trump winning the district by seven percentage points. The Ohio Redistricting Commission redrew the district’s boundaries in 2025; had the 2024 election used the new map, Trump would have won the new 9th Congressional district by 10.6 percentage points.

Kaptur is spending more of her own committee’s money and getting less outside help compared to the third quarter of 2024. Back then, super PACs spent over $4.4 million to support her or oppose Merrin while she spent just $2.2 million. Super PACs make independent expenditures, meaning that they are barred from coordinating with candidates by federal law.

Kaptur reported around $697,000 in cash balance to Merrin’s $430,000 cash on hand.

Ohio’s 1st and 13th Congressional districts were within Republicans’ sights at the start of 2026. 

Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes won reelection to the 13th Congressional district by just 2.2 percentage points in 2024. Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman’s 1st Congressional district was redrawn from one that favored Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by seven percentage points to one that would have favored Trump by three percentage points.

Cook Political Report rated the 1st Congressional district “Toss-Up” and the 13th Congressional district “Lean Democratic” in March. The National Republican Congressional Committee added 1st Congressional district nominee Eric Conroy to its “MAGA Majority,” a list of challengers to vulnerable U.S. House Democrats, in April.

As the national environment deteriorated for Republicans in the summer and fall, the outlook for Republicans in both districts worsened.

Democrats and Republicans cut back on previous commitments to spend in the 1st Congressional district in October. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership, pulled all remaining advertising after announcing it would spend $4 million in the district. Their Democratic counterpart, the House Majority PAC, canceled around $192,000 in future advertising on Oct. 19.

A significant portion of that money is instead being spent on two ruby-red Congressional districts that Democrats believe they could flip.

Turner is in his 24th year of representing the Dayton area, which the 10th Congressional district encompasses entirely. He won all 12 of his regular Congressional election campaigns by 10 percentage points or more.

He was outraised from July through the first half of October by Democratic nominee Kristina Knickerbocker, who reported around $642,000 in direct contributions to Turner’s $417,000. He still has around $191,000 more in cash on hand from previous campaigns.

Carey reported around $772,000 while Democratic challenger for the 15th Congressional district Don Leonard received around $550,000 in campaign contributions over the same span. Carey had a cash advantage of around $272,000 as of Oct. 14. 

Although the NRCC spent on ads supporting Turner in recent weeks, neither incumbent is on the organization’s list of vulnerable Republican congressmembers.

“Congressmen Mike Turner and Mike Carey are battle-tested leaders who have delivered real results for their communities and earned Ohioans’ trust,” said Bannon, the NRCC spokesperson.

Independent polls are yet to be conducted for either district, but outside spending from both sides soared in October. Independent-expenditure groups spent a combined $5.4 million on ads in the two districts just in the week between Oct. 16 and Oct. 23.

A Democratic dark money group called Your Community PAC has spent close to $3.9 million in both races, making it the second-biggest spender in the two districts behind the party leadership-affiliated House Majority PAC. Knickerbocker and Leonard reject corporate PAC donations, and both have called for campaign finance reform.

Neither have any control over outside groups’ decisions to boost their campaigns, said Atiba Ellis, a Case Western Reserve University professor who studies campaign finance. 

“Candidates certainly could denounce ads that cut against their message. But at the same time, that could spin off into other misunderstandings that could affect the electorate,” he said. “So, even if it’s not a contribution, the outside spending and the commercials that result define the campaign in ways that it’s really hard for politicians to fight against.”

It reflects a larger trend of outside groups holding increasing influence on elections, even for campaigns with mostly grassroots donor bases, Ellis said. Republicans hold a large spending advantage in Ohio’s U.S. Senate and governor’s races despite being outraised by Democrats, largely because of outside groups.

These outside groups often spend on attack ads against candidates’ character, Ellis added, which can take attention away from important policy issues.

“Their premise is to motivate people using the least common denominator they can find concerning the candidate they oppose,” he said. “It’s ironic that in the name of getting out the vote, we’re being distracted from having serious debates about the issues that should guide people on how to vote.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s morally incomprehensible hit piece against Democrat Dr. Amy Acton in the Ohio race for governor will be studied and deconstructed (in all its atrociousness) long after the 2026 midterm elections are over. You know why.

The decision to platform a mother complicit in the rape of her daughter — as an obscene strategy to blindside a political opponent — went way beyond the pale of personal attacks in the heat of a campaign. It was a sick act by a struggling candidate to capture voter attention that few saw coming.

The ad featured the estranged mom of Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial rival. Donna Arthur fled Youngstown 48 years ago with Acton’s alleged rapist after the then 12-year-old victim testified against him in court.

The 80-something woman in Ramaswamy’s toxic ad chose to live on the lam with Acton’s fugitive stepfather, Cledith Arthur, until he died in 2004. Neither Acton nor her younger brother saw or spoke to their mother since she skipped town in 1978 with the man arrested, charged, and indicted by a grand jury for raping Acton.

It was this troubled character, who abandoned her daughter and son as children, that Team Ramaswamy brought direct to camera with scripted venom. Arthur delivered. The performance was staged in a cozy, softly lit kitchen to exude warmth in chilling scene from a twisted story.

Acton, whom Arthur rejected as a shattered tween in a courtroom, called her now 60-year-old daughter a serial liar with mental health issues who needed help. She warned Ohio voters “don’t let her become your governor.” The message was meant to stop people cold. It did. But after the bombshell went viral so did the backstory.

The tables turned. So did stomachs as viewers (across the political spectrum) realized how next-level despicable the ad was in elevating an aging abusive mother with a checkered past who ditched a traumatized daughter to run off with the child rapist who assaulted her. 

The Ramaswamy obscenity, thrown on the air less than two weeks before the election, has been widely vilified as the re-victimization of young Acton to win power at any cost.

Imagine the buried pain it must have triggered. The ad is still running in a shortened version — as if that sanitizes reprehensible. Tellingly, not only does Ramaswamy stand by his viral outrage, but vows to promote it with more than $4 million in bought airtime across the state.

As disgust grew (and grows by the day) over the exploitation of a tortured childhood for political sport, Ohio’s finger in the wind Republicans responded on a scale from minimal to militant.

“I would not have run the ad” was the mealy-mouthed comeback from Ohio U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, running in a tight race with former Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown to keep his seat, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, running for a placeholder spot as state auditor against Annette Blackwell, a third-term Cleveland-area mayor.

“I hope the ad will be taken down,” said an equally mincing former Ohio U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, who added the rising incivility in politics “should concern us all.”

It took Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine a full day to denounce the weaponization of childhood sexual abuse that gut punched his former state health director who was instrumental in helping Ohioans navigate a frightening and fatal pandemic.

“It’s just plain wrong,” he said. Finally. “Deeply, deeply troubling.” DeWine also said he stood by his endorsement of Ramaswamy despite the vileness manifested in his contemptible ad for the ages. Ever the profile in cowardice.

Notably, all the Ohio Republicans who had something to say about the appalling Ramaswamy ad that revictimized the girl who grew up to become the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor — still stand with the GOP nominee for governor who launched the unconscionable clickbait and has never stopped defending it.

Ramaswamy blames backlash to the ad, which has generated massive national and local attention, on (wait for it) a “flawed and failed media” that is “lying about an ad that is about lying.”

JD Vance, a confessed liar who admitted creating stories out of thin air to command similar exposure, piled on by declaring his disgust not with the vicious strike against a child rape survivor but with Republicans “whining” about it.

The ad is “not really my concern,” sniffed the smug, amoral veep from Middletown. Couldn’t care less about whether resurfacing Acton’s MIA mother to score political points was appropriate or abhorrent.

Vance, who also survived an abusive childhood, summoned no compassion or moral clarity about the depravity that drove Team Ramaswamy to malign yesterday’s abused and neglected child for political sport. With JD, power trumps principal. Winning is paramount. Decency is an indulgence. Republicans can’t get hung up on humane if they want control.

Vance’s boss doubled down on defense of the indefensible. Trump embraced the Ramaswamy ad as a gift from heaven and urged the candidate to leave it up.

He was thrilled the ad blowing up on social media “was hitting pay dirt” and insisted his party own it. But when you stand with vile — smearing a child rape victim to win dirty — you reveal much about yourself.

Which Ohio Republican will stand with Trump when he returns to Ohio Wednesday? The president welcomes vileness as a means to an end. He demands supporters follow suit or be branded as “disloyal to the Republican Party. Watch who joins him on the stage at the Chillicothe rally. Always revealing. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

And there are many of you. Even among those registered, ten percent do not cast ballots. In the 2024 national elections, fully ten percent of registered voters did not turn out. That is 18 million registered non-voters in a closely fought election decided by two million votes. 

When I was quite a bit younger and before I knew much history I had little understanding about the long struggle for the right to vote and the democracy of which it is a key part. Most of humanity for most of our history has been governed by narrow cliques of thieving oligarchs or autocratic royals, many of whom relied on violence and terror to retain power. 

At the start of the democratic era it took great courage to stand against the powers that be. But many thousands of people did so anyway, even realizing that they might well pay with their lives to resist. Great numbers of them had to know that they themselves would be unlikely to ever live to exercise the right to vote. They sacrificed their own lives and welfare so that the rest of us could live in a democratic society. Among those epic struggles were the American and French revolutions, but they were not the first. The people of ancient Athens also rose up against tyranny for democracy. Of course there were also many others.  

So I argue that we owe a debt to those who struggled on our behalf. We have a duty to them to vote, and to do so intelligently as best we are able. It is easy to forget that women and minorities were excluded from voting in the United States for long periods of time, and had to struggle mightily for the voting franchise. Some of them paid with their lives. By voting, we can show respect their sacrifices. 

Another argument against voting is that our votes do not count for much. Well, there is some truth to that in the United States, especially with an Electoral College winner-take-all presidential system in which our votes do not count at all if our candidate loses in our state. But on the other hand, there are many state and local offices, as well as school, park, health, safety and other local levies, for which our votes can matter a great deal. And in fact, local elections have a significant impact on the quality of our lives. 

We also hear it said that politicians in general are corrupt and “all the same”. There is a grain of truth to that point of view. Many politicians are indeed narcissistic sociopaths to whom the idea of the public good is close to meaningless. But they are not all like that. In fact, politicians and parties vary in their truthfulness and honesty – at least a third of them are reasonably honest and worth supporting. It is your job as a voter to do some research and support the best of them. If you do not vote, you enable the bad guys. Nowadays it is hard to argue that there are no differences in the two major US political parties.  

To be fair, there are real barriers to voting including onerous registration procedures, long lines at the polls, billionaire dark money in campaigns, and lazy “horse race” journalism that avoids issues. Negative ads and hate media increase public cynicism and increase polarization, of which we have too much already. The consultants who produce untruthful and fear-inducing media know exactly what they are doing.  

It is your job to meet these challenges and support those who are working hard to address them.

If your vote did not matter, they would not work to keep you away from the polls. With freedom comes responsibilities. Voting is one of them. 

Arnold Oliver is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, and is a member of Veterans For Peace. He is grateful to his former students and colleagues who taught him about the importance of voting.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A recent study by the Urban Institute, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, showed that more than a quarter of American adults reported medical debt for them or someone in their family in 2025, and more than half of those who reported medical debt owed at least $1,000.

Of those who reported debt, 26% were adults with current health insurance.

“Health insurance does not shield people from rising healthcare costs and the crushing burden of medical debt,” Katherine Hempstead, senior policy officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said in a press release announcing the study.

“Historic cost increases and coverage losses are forcing impossible tradeoffs between healthcare and other basic needs.”

The study found that for those with medical debt, 1 in 7 Americans have past-due medical bills or bills they couldn’t pay at all. Adults ages 45 to 54 represented the largest population with medical debt, but 17.6% of those in the study who were on Medicare also reported owing medical debt.

Researchers at the Health Policy Institute of Ohio have also been studying medical debt and the impact it can have on families, as well as overall health outcomes in the state.

“As expected, being uninsured is a major risk for experiencing medical debt,” HPIO researcher Brian O’Rourke told the Capital Journal. “However, recent data in Ohio suggests that this is not just a problem for our uninsured population.”

Citing the Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey, O’Rourke said more than 1 in 5 Ohio adults were struggling to pay off medical bills in the last year.

While the data shows the highest population of people having trouble paying off medical debt are those who don’t have insurance, a quarter of Ohioans with private insurance were also struggling to pay.

In the Urban Institute study, researchers found that hospital services resulted in the largest debt reported, with 52% of adults with medical debt citing hospital costs.

Debts also came from specialists, dental care, and general doctor services, according to the research.

O’Rourke said out-of-pocket medical spending is “a significant burden in Ohio,” with the average family’s out-of-pocket medical spending in the state exceeding the national average.

The Ohio institute has released several pieces of research showing the potential impact cuts to Medicaid through the federal budget spending bill (also called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act), and reduced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act could have on Ohio’s uninsured population.

Ohio’s population in the ACA Marketplace has already seen a drop of 100,000, and the HPIO projects as many as 300,000 Medicaid participants will be dropped because of newly imposed work requirements, which O’Rourke said will likely leave “many uninsured and with limited resources to pay off medical bills.”

The Urban Institute study also noted anticipated changes, including worsening medical debt, from rising health insurance costs, along with Medicaid and ACA changes.

“This analysis shows medical debt is pervasive, affecting adults across age groups and income levels, and people with and without health insurance,” said the Urban Institute’s Michael Karpman, in a statement.

“It will be important to monitor how the burden of medical debt shifts as policies restricting access to Medicaid and (the ACA) Marketplace coverage take effect.”

More uninsured Ohioans on the books and a higher amount of medical debt certainly causes strain on households, but O’Rourke said state providers, particularly those in rural or underserved areas, will also see impacts.

“More uncompensated care can lead to closures and possibly even raise healthcare prices even further in the state,” O’Rourke told the Capital Journal.

The Ohio legislature is on break until after the Nov. 3 election, but one bipartisan bill that could see action as the lawmakers return is a bipartisan measure addressing medical debt.

Ohio House Bill 257 was introduced in May 2025 by sponsors Rep. Michele Grim, D-Toledo, and Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland.

The bill would cap the interest rate for medical debt at 3% annually, and bar methods like wage collection to pay the bills.

The bill would also keep healthcare providers or collections agencies from reporting nonpayment of medical debt to consumer reporting agencies.

The bill has seen several hearings in the Ohio House Health Committee, garnering support from groups like the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and the American Diabetes Association. Gary Dougherty, director of state government affairs for the ADA, said limiting interest on medical debt in particular would help patients like those with diabetes.

“People with medical debt have reported it as a driving factor for delaying care or not filling their prescriptions,” Dougherty wrote in June testimony to the House Health Committee.

“For people with diabetes, it is critical that we eliminate financial barriers that may result in them forgoing the care they need to manage the disease.”

Groups speaking out against the bill include the Consumer Data Industry Association, and  the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals, that argued the bill would “take an overly broad approach to limiting medical billing and collection practices that … would lead to unintended negative consequences for Ohio consumers and providers of medical services in the state.”

The bill has until December to make it through the General Assembly, or it will need to be introduced again in the new year, with the beginning of the new two-year General Assembly term.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The award was made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 30. 

The program is explicitly intended to create a “statistically significant sales lift” in Kroger stores as the company buys out its competitors. 

Progress toward those goals will be monitored by Kroger’s data-gathering subsidiary, 84.51°. That operation is already generating more than a third of corporate profits by surveilling customers and selling their information to other businesses.

The award to Kroger is part of the Make America Healthy Healthy Again program spearheaded by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer and vaccine skeptic — not a health professional. 

Kennedy’s MAHA program says it will “build a healthier, stronger America.”

Kroger and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to questions for this story. 

The taxpayer grant to Kroger is part of MAHA’s Eat Real Food campaign.

By encouraging consumption of whole foods such as fruits and vegetables, it purports to address what is a real health crisis in the United States. 

The Stanford University School of Medicine reports that 60% of calories consumed by U.S. adults and 70% of those eaten by children are ultraprocessed, or non-whole foods.

Nutritionists and doctors report that high intake of ultraprocessed foods is associated with a 32% higher risk of obesity, a 37% higher risk of type 2 diabetes, a 32% higher risk of hypertension, and a 23% higher risk of pulmonary heart disease.

Kennedy’s MAHA movement has its critics. The independent, nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest said MAHA’s initial assessment of public health “selectively picks from the scientific literature to support Kennedy’s predetermined biases in favor of specific diets and products such as animal fats, and against vaccines and exposure to electromagnetic radiation — anti-scientific beliefs that Kennedy has raged about for years.”

When it spotted the Kroger grant, the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Food Business saw what it thought was another problem — that the taxpayer grant seemed aimed at as much increasing the grocery giant’s sales as at promoting healthy eating. It also appeared to feed Kroger’s lucrative data-gathering operation.

“Kroger will not only have more of its sales boosted, it will be getting more of that customer data funneled through 84.51°,” Taylor Warren of the Center for Responsible Food Business said in an interview. “I don’t think taxpayers want to be funding Kroger’s customer-surveillance program.”

That the taxpayer grant seeks to boost the Kroger sales is undeniable.

It lays out program activities such as vouchers for whole foods and in-store cooking classes. It also describes local and social media outreach. But among the goals it lists is a “statistically significant sales lift in featured whole foods categories at participating stores.”

Success in meeting that and other goals will be determined through “post-event measuring and reporting via Kroger’s 84.51° data platform,” it said.

Warren sees conflicts in the arrangement.

“So Kroger gets the $3 million and it’s grading its own homework,” he said. “When (the department of Health and Human Services) goes to determine the success of the program, it’s determined by Kroger.”

He added, “Why are we subsidizing any part of what Kroger is doing when they have profits in the billions?” 

Kroger turned a $1.25 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone. While rising input costs are responsible for much of customers’ sticker shock, in at least some instances, company profits rose even faster.

In a 2024 trial to block a proposed merger with Albertson’s, the Federal Trade Commission presented testimony from a Kroger executive who said the company hiked the price of milk and eggs above the rate of inflation.

The compensation of the company’s top executive also raises questions from critics in an era of sky-high grocery prices: Kroger CEO Greg Foran’s pay is more than $17 million a year.

“For a company as large as Kroger and the profits they’re already making, when they learn they’re taking taxpayer money, people don’t like it,” Warren said. “It just feels so unfair.” 

Warren and his group find another use to which the federal grant money might be put to be particularly nefarious. 

It has to do with “dynamic pricing” — the ability to use electronic price tags to quickly change prices, similar to the electronic signs used by gas stations.

“We believe there’s a machine built around dynamic pricing that they are putting together and this has implications for that because this grant going to Kroger will be measured by none other than their own data subsidiary 84.51°,” Warren said.

“They’re using this data on us to determine the highest prices we would be willing to pay through things like dynamic pricing, which is very enabled by things like digital price tags that can change at a moment’s notice.”

Kroger has said the labels would allow it to save employee labor and rapidly update prices to reflect changes in supply and demand. But skeptics, including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and then-Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penna., in 2024 expressed suspicions.

“Widespread adoption of digital price tags appears poised to enable large grocery stores to squeeze consumers to increase profits,” they wrote in a letter to the company.

Warren, of the Center for Responsible Food Business, said Kroger’s data subsidiary already hoovers up information from 63 million loyalty members every time they scan their Kroger card. 

From that, the platform builds customer profiles estimating income, family size and things like whether they have pets. It can also monitor customer behavior and make educated guesses about what the maximum amount one is willing to spend on an item and dynamically price it accordingly, Taylor Warren said.

As it is, Kroger’s 84.51° subsidiary sells the data it gathers from customers to other businesses. In 2025, those sales accounted for 35% of Kroger profits, according to Consumer Reports.

The $3 million taxpayer grant Kroger received envisions engagement with between 1.2 million and 1.8 million customers. Warren said their data likely will be sucked into Kroger’s data operation and commodified along with all the rest.

“This is very unsavory,” he said. “It’s very concerning.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The rebuke came Friday, one day after DeWine publicly condemned a Ramaswamy campaign advertisement attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton through her estranged mother, despite the family’s documented history of childhood sexual abuse.

DeWine has demanded that Ramaswamy withdraw the advertisement, defended Acton’s honesty against its accusations and now ruled out campaigning alongside his own party’s nominee for governor. Yet he refuses to withdraw his endorsement, citing his earlier commitment to support the Republican ticket.

“We have some really good people on that ticket,” DeWine told WEWS reporter Morgan Trau, according to the station’s October 23 report.

Asked whether Ramaswamy was one of them, the governor paused before explaining whom he meant.

“Well, I was really talking about people I’ve worked with … for years and years. I’ve served with them in public office in Ohio.”

Ramaswamy, a businessman and former presidential candidate, has never held elected office.

DeWine’s answer left little ambiguity about whom he was praising. Given an opportunity to include his endorsed successor among the Republicans he considers “really good people,” the governor instead described longtime public officials with whom he had served — a group that does not include Ramaswamy.

With the November 3 election approaching, Ohio’s sitting Republican governor is keeping his endorsement of Ramaswamy while refusing to stand beside him on the campaign trail.

DeWine defends Acton’s honesty, contradicting Ramaswamy’s attack

The governor’s refusal to campaign with Ramaswamy follows an even more direct disagreement over the Republican nominee’s treatment of Acton, who served as DeWine’s health director during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ramaswamy’s advertisement features Donna Arthur, Acton’s estranged biological mother, accusing her daughter of lying about her childhood. The attack centers on a family history involving abuse, neglect and criminal charges against Acton’s stepfather.

Court records obtained by WEWS show that Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with sexually abusing her when she was a child. He fled before trial and later died. Acton’s mother lost custody of Acton and her brother, and Acton has said she has had no contact with her mother since she was 12.

Ramaswamy nevertheless put Arthur in a campaign advertisement attacking Acton’s credibility. He subsequently acknowledged that the advertisement came from his campaign and announced plans to spend $4 million promoting it on television and digital platforms.

DeWine called reporters to the Ohio Statehouse on Thursday to condemn the advertisement and demand its removal.

“It’s deeply, deeply, deeply troubling,” DeWine said. “It needs to come down; it’s just wrong to continue to run it.”

DeWine did more than object to the campaign’s decision to involve Acton’s estranged mother. He directly defended Acton’s truthfulness, rejecting the accusation at the center of Ramaswamy’s advertisement based on his own experience working with her.

“In regard to telling the truth, my experience with her and working closely with her every single day was that she certainly told the truth; that’s my experience,” DeWine said.

DeWine’s assessment directly contradicts the advertisement’s portrayal of Acton as a liar. The governor worked closely with her during one of the most consequential periods of his administration, while Ramaswamy’s campaign has relied on accusations from a mother who lost custody of Acton decades ago.

Ramaswamy has defended the advertisement rather than withdrawing it. His campaign has maintained that Arthur’s accusations concern Acton’s credibility, not the sexual abuse she experienced as a child.

DeWine has rejected that separation, arguing that the family’s documented history makes the advertisement especially wrong.

DeWine keeps his endorsement but refuses to campaign

Despite condemning the advertisement and refusing to campaign with Ramaswamy, DeWine has insisted that his endorsement will remain in place.

“I’m not changing the endorsement. I endorse the whole ticket,” DeWine told reporters Thursday.

He explained that he had committed to supporting Ohio’s Republican candidates, many of whom are longtime colleagues. But his comments Friday drew a distinction between those Republicans and the gubernatorial nominee whose advertisement he had just condemned.

The governor’s position leaves Ramaswamy with an endorsement from Ohio’s highest-ranking Republican state official but without his willingness to campaign alongside him.

DeWine has also previously praised Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, Ramaswamy’s running mate and a Republican from Napoleon in northwest Ohio. McColley has worked with the governor as a legislative leader, unlike Ramaswamy, who entered the gubernatorial race without prior elected-office experience.

The distinction matters for the Republican ticket. DeWine’s refusal to campaign with Ramaswamy does not extend, at least publicly, to McColley or other statewide Republican candidates. The governor has not announced whether he intends to make separate appearances with them before Election Day.

Nor has DeWine publicly identified any previously scheduled appearances with Ramaswamy that were canceled. What he has established is that he will not campaign with the Republican seeking to replace him.

Trump and Vance defend the ad as Ohio Republicans split

The dispute has divided prominent Republicans in the final weeks of the governor’s race, with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance defending Ramaswamy while DeWine and other Republican figures have criticized the advertisement.

Trump defended the attack and encouraged Ramaswamy to continue airing it. Vance, appearing in Ohio on Wednesday, criticized Republicans objecting to the advertisement and praised Ramaswamy for confronting Acton.

Other Republicans have publicly rejected the campaign’s tactics. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, DeWine’s former lieutenant governor, said he would not have run the advertisement. Secretary of State Frank LaRose made a similar statement, while former U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci urged Ramaswamy to move away from the controversy.

Those criticisms have not amounted to a coordinated withdrawal of Republican support for Ramaswamy. DeWine’s position, however, goes further than disapproving of an advertisement: He has now ruled out campaigning with the nominee himself.

That refusal comes as the Republican ticket seeks to hold the governor’s office following DeWine’s two terms. Ramaswamy and McColley face Acton and her running mate, David Pepper, in the November 3 election.

DeWine has made clear that he will not withdraw his endorsement. He has also made clear that he will not campaign with Ramaswamy, and when asked whether the nominee belonged among the “really good people” he praised on the Republican ticket, he declined to include him.

With Election Day approaching, Ramaswamy retains the governor’s endorsement — but not his willingness to share a campaign stage.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Axios White House correspondent Marc Caputo reported Friday that Ramaswamy personally wanted the advertisement despite opposition within his campaign. Staff members tried to use voter testing to demonstrate that the attack would be unpopular, Caputo said, but the video leaked from that testing process and provoked widespread condemnation.

“From what we understand at Axios, Ramaswamy was the one who wanted the ad and his campaign didn’t,” Caputo said during an October 23 appearance on MS NOW.

Caputo’s account followed similar reporting two days earlier from conservative political commentator Ryan Girdusky, who said he contacted Ohio political consultants after the advertisement surfaced and learned that Ramaswamy had pursued it despite warnings from others.

“Vivek was the one who wanted the ad. Apparently, a lot of people said, don’t do this,” Girdusky said during an October 21 appearance on WABC’s The Greg Kelly Show.

The reports place responsibility for the controversial advertisement on Ramaswamy himself, rather than campaign professionals acting without his direction. His campaign subsequently announced a $4 million statewide advertising effort, embracing an attack that prominent Republicans, including Gov. Mike DeWine, urged him to withdraw.

Campaign tested attack using questions about Acton’s childhood sexual abuse

The reported internal objections are accompanied by documented details of the advertisement’s pre-release testing that directly contradict Ramaswamy’s effort to portray the commercial as unrelated to Acton’s childhood sexual abuse.

On October 21, National Journal reported obtaining a survey distributed through market-research company Dynata that tested the advertisement before it became public.

Before showing respondents the commercial, the survey asked whether they believed Acton had been sexually abused as a child and whether she had lived in a tent. Participants then watched the minute-long advertisement twice before answering questions about whether it was persuasive, influenced their vote or was excessively sensational.

The testing explicitly examined Acton’s childhood sexual abuse before presenting voters with a commercial that omitted the criminal case against her stepfather, the circumstances that separated Acton from her mother and the decades of estrangement that followed.

Yet two days later, Ramaswamy insisted the advertisement had nothing to do with that abuse.

“Our ad had nothing, nothing to do with childhood abuse, sexual abuse,” Ramaswamy told News 5 Cleveland during a Friday campaign appearance in Strongsville.

The survey had expressly asked voters about the very abuse Ramaswamy was publicly insisting had nothing to do with his advertisement.

That history was hardly obscure. Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested in July 1978 and indicted that September on a charge of raping his 12-year-old stepdaughter. He pleaded not guilty but failed to appear for court proceedings and remained a fugitive for years. Acton and her younger brother were removed from their mother’s custody, while Donna Arthur remained married to Cledith Arthur until his death in 2004.

As TiffinOhio.net previously reported, Donna Arthur acknowledged in a 2020 interview that she supported her husband during the proceedings and left Ohio with him. Acton has said she has not seen her mother since 1978.

The advertisement nevertheless presented Arthur as an authority on her daughter’s childhood, without disclosing why she had lost custody of her children or why Acton had been estranged from her for nearly five decades.

Despite reported objections, Ramaswamy committed millions to the attack

Ramaswamy’s campaign publicly claimed the advertisement performed well during testing among voters considered persuadable, an explanation it provided to both Axios and Ohio’s Statehouse News Bureau after confirming Tuesday that it had produced the commercial.

The campaign has not released the underlying polling results to substantiate that claim.

Caputo’s reporting describes campaign staff attempting to demonstrate that the attack would be unpopular. The hostile public reaction to the leaked advertisement does not establish the numerical results of the campaign’s voter testing.

Despite the reported objections, Ramaswamy embraced the advertisement, and his campaign announced a $4 million statewide effort to promote it.

Campaign manager Jonathan Ewing defended the decision, telling Axios that the advertisement could end Acton’s candidacy. Ramaswamy himself continued defending the commercial even as Republicans publicly condemned it, including DeWine, who called for its immediate withdrawal.

President Donald Trump took the opposite position. During a Thursday rally in Iowa, Trump said he had spoken with Ramaswamy about the controversy and advised him to continue running the advertisement. Vice President JD Vance also defended the attack and criticized Republicans objecting to it.

Campaign removes disputed claims after new court records emerge

On Saturday, October 24, Ramaswamy’s campaign began running a revised, 30-second version of the advertisement that removed two of its most disputed allegations.

The shorter commercial eliminates Donna Arthur’s assertion that Acton lied about living in a tent as a child. It also removes Arthur’s suggestion that her daughter needed personal help, according to The Washington Post.

The revisions followed the public release of additional court records corroborating details of Acton’s childhood account.

On Thursday, the Mahoning County Clerk of Courts released redacted records from the 1978 criminal proceedings against Cledith Arthur. The records, examined by The Washington Post, listed his address as Terrace Lake Park on Ohio Route 7. A subsequent sheriff’s note documented that he had camped there.

That is the same area where Acton recalled living in a tent as a child, an experience she described publicly in a 2019 Youngstown Vindicator interview, years before entering the governor’s race.

After spending days defending the original advertisement, Ramaswamy’s campaign cut both the disputed tent allegation and Arthur’s suggestion that Acton needed help. The campaign has not publicly explained its reasons for making those changes.

The edits came as Ramaswamy continued insisting that the advertisement concerned Acton’s honesty rather than her childhood sexual abuse, even though the pre-release testing survey explicitly addressed that history.

Ramaswamy’s own advisers reportedly warned against the attack. Its pre-release testing examined Acton’s childhood sexual abuse. The candidate nevertheless backed the advertisement, committed millions to promoting it and defended its claims before his campaign removed two of the most disputed allegations.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“Too bad Gary doesn’t work for the people,” Cary Theis wrote in a Facebook comment beneath a September post by Coalition of Patriots II, a northwest Ohio conservative group that accused Click of trying to sabotage its event with Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy.

Theis holds the elected Republican central committee seat for Eden North. In the May 5 primary, he defeated James D. Cline, a member of the Seneca County Board of Elections, by 135 votes to 95 — 58.7% to 41.3% — according to the county’s certified election results. The Board of Elections lists Theis as serving a four-year committee term beginning May 20. Republican Party meeting minutes also record his successful July motion to establish a committee to review party bylaws.

A conservative feud that survived the primary

The comment appeared amid an unusually public dispute between Click and activists to his political right. As TiffinOhio.net reported Sept. 19, Coalition of Patriots II accused Click of acting out of vindictiveness after the organization left him off the invitation list for a private Oct. 1 question-and-answer session with Ramaswamy.

The group said it had arranged its gathering first. Click then promoted a separate Ramaswamy town hall in Tiffin, scheduled to begin one hour before the Coalition’s event in Risingsun. The Coalition alleged that Click organized the competing appearance to undermine its meeting and retaliate against conservatives who had supported his Republican primary challenger, Eric Watson. Those claims about Click’s motives were the Coalition’s accusations; the timing and separate announcements of the events were documented.

Both appearances ultimately took place. Click’s town hall, initially advertised for Tiffin University’s Marion Center, which accommodates up to 500 people in theater seating, was moved to the roughly 50-seat Reino’s Party Room downtown. Ramaswamy later attended the Coalition’s gathering in Risingsun.

The controversy followed Click’s narrow victory over Watson in the May Republican primary. Watson won Seneca County and came within roughly 600 votes of defeating the three-term incumbent districtwide. The Coalition said conservative activists had supported Watson because they opposed portions of Click’s voting record, and the group’s criticism continued after Click secured the nomination.

Click faces Democrat Aaron Jones in the Nov. 3 general election. The Seneca County Republican Central Committee sponsored Click’s Ramaswamy town hall; Theis, an elected member of that same committee, was publicly saying the lawmaker did not work for the people he represents.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In an October 24 candidate questionnaire published by the Advertiser-Tribune, Frankart was asked to identify his biggest achievement since taking office. He pointed to his efforts involving the WIN Waste landfill, including his testimony before state lawmakers, meetings with legislators and the deposition conducted by attorneys representing the landfill operator.

Frankart said he “sat through a seven-hour deposition” and repeated his earlier declaration that he would “take that hit for our constituents every day.”

What Frankart omitted was what he acknowledged during those seven hours of questioning.

What Frankart admitted under oath

In May, the Advertiser-Tribune published an investigation based on the deposition transcript, obtained through a public records request to the Ottawa-Sandusky-Seneca Joint Solid Waste Management District.

The newspaper reported that Frankart acknowledged making false public statements about the landfill and the regional waste district, including claims contained in signed testimony submitted to the Ohio Senate. He also admitted that he had taken no action to correct those statements.

Among the inaccuracies was Frankart’s assertion that Seneca County had been consistently outvoted by the other two counties on matters involving the solid waste district. Under questioning, he acknowledged that the claim was not accurate during his tenure on the district’s board.

Frankart also could not identify specific examples supporting his previous assertions about a recent pattern of regulatory violations at the landfill. When questioned about evidence of health impacts or operations exceeding regulatory thresholds, he indicated that he had no such evidence, according to the newspaper’s reporting.

The deposition took place May 28, 2024, in connection with litigation filed by WIN Waste involving the regional solid waste district. The findings were also reported by TiffinOhio.net ahead of the May 2026 Republican primary.

Now, Frankart is presenting that same deposition as evidence of his commitment to Seneca County residents, without acknowledging the false statements exposed during his testimony.

County portrayed deposition as a heroic battle

Frankart’s latest account repeats a narrative his own county government published immediately after the deposition.

On May 29, 2024, then-Seneca County Media Relations Coordinator Sheri Trusty published an article on the county’s official website titled “Resilient in Battle: Commissioner Bill Frankart endures seven-hour WIN Waste deposition.”

The county-funded communications contractor described Frankart as having been pushed onto a battlefield by the company’s legal team and praised his handling of the questioning as displaying his “typical wisdom and strength.”

It featured Frankart’s declaration: “I took a hit for the constituents, and I’ll do it every day.”

The county’s account celebrated Frankart’s endurance without describing the substance of his sworn testimony. The Advertiser-Tribune’s subsequent examination of the transcript exposed the admissions that had been absent from that portrayal.

More than two years after the deposition, and less than two weeks before voters decide whether to give him another term, Frankart is again citing the experience as one of his greatest accomplishments.

Legislation changed landfill oversight, not landfill operations

Frankart also cited the passage of Senate Bill 147, sponsored by state Sen. Bill Reineke, as evidence of his work on the landfill issue.

Signed into law in July 2025, the legislation allows counties to withdraw from joint solid waste management districts without requiring approval from the other participating counties. It also authorizes additional fees on construction and demolition debris, giving Seneca County a path toward greater local control over waste-management revenue.

The legislation did not close the WIN Waste landfill, stop waste shipments from other states or establish that Frankart’s earlier claims about the landfill were accurate.

In the questionnaire, Frankart credited Reineke, state Rep. Gary Click, county health officials and his fellow commissioners for helping secure the legislation. He said Seneca County was developing its own solid waste management district and plan.

But the legislative victory is separate from the false public statements Frankart acknowledged making and leaving uncorrected.

In another answer in the same October 24 questionnaire, Frankart described the lessons he had learned during his first term as commissioner.

“And I’ve learned that accountability matters,” he wrote.

The deposition he now celebrates was the same proceeding in which he acknowledged failing to correct his own false statements.

Frankart faces independent challenger David Ziegler, a three-term Eden Township trustee, in the November general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

On March 29, 2006, Latta was among 57 Ohio House members who voted against restoring a one-year window that would have allowed survivors to file lawsuits over childhood sexual abuse dating back as far as 35 years. The amendment to Senate Bill 17 was defeated 57–38.

The vote was documented in a March 30, 2006, report by The Toledo Blade, which explicitly identified Latta among northwest Ohio Republicans who opposed restoring the provision.

The proposal would have given adults whose childhood sexual abuse claims were already barred by Ohio’s statute of limitations a new opportunity to seek damages. It also could have allowed survivors to use the civil discovery process to obtain records from institutions accused of concealing abuse.

The Ohio Senate had previously approved the measure with the lawsuit window intact. But after extensive lobbying by Catholic Church officials, the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee removed the provision. An effort to restore it on the House floor failed, with Latta voting against it.

The final legislation expanded reporting requirements for clergy and extended filing deadlines for certain childhood sexual abuse cases. But it denied survivors with previously expired claims the opportunity to pursue damages under the proposed one-year window.

In place of that provision, lawmakers approved a civil registry intended to publicly identify abusers through a separate court process. Barbara Blaine, then-president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, condemned the alternative as “a shallow, empty promise.” The registry was subsequently found unconstitutional and has never become an effective substitute for the rejected lawsuit window, according to a 2026 WCPO investigation.

Twenty years later, Ohio lawmakers are trying again

Latta’s vote has renewed significance as Ohio lawmakers revisit the same issue two decades later.

In September 2026, Republican state Sen. Bill Blessing announced plans to pursue legislation eliminating time limits for childhood sexual abuse claims and creating a new window for survivors to revive lawsuits that have been barred for decades.

Blessing publicly committed to reforming Ohio’s statute of limitations, while acknowledging that the proposal would face resistance from institutions concerned about the financial consequences of lawsuits involving historical abuse.

The renewed effort brings Ohio back to a legislative battle that lawmakers, including Latta, settled against survivors in 2006. For those whose claims expired before they could seek damages, the opportunity rejected two decades ago remains at the center of the fight.

Latta has spent 35 years in elected office. His political career began in 1991 as a Wood County commissioner, followed by service in the Ohio Senate from 1997 to 2000 and the Ohio House from 2001 to 2007. He entered Congress in December 2007 and has held Ohio’s 5th Congressional District seat for nearly 19 years.

Now seeking another term, Latta faces Democratic challenger Brian Shaver of Fostoria, the president of Fostoria City Council, in the November 3 election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Its PAC contributed $10,000 directly to Husted, while $827,918.93 was routed to his campaign through AIPAC’s fundraising operation. Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is challenging Husted in Ohio’s November 3 special election, received no direct contributions from AIPAC PAC and no donations earmarked through the organization.

Husted’s October 15 Federal Election Commission filing identifies $284,118.93 in contributions handled by AIPAC as an intermediary during the third quarter, plus a separate $5,000 check from AIPAC PAC on September 30. The PAC previously gave Husted $5,000 for the special primary election in April.

AIPAC kept the money flowing

The latest filing lists 14 AIPAC intermediary entries from July 5 through September 30. The largest included $48,000 on August 13, $42,875 on August 27, and $37,200 each on September 3 and September 10. Those were transfers of contributions collected from donors for Husted, not additional contributions from the PAC’s own treasury.

Under federal reporting rules, campaigns identify both the original donors and the intermediary that handled their earmarked contributions. AIPAC’s fundraising role is therefore documented in Husted’s campaign reports, alongside the donations it delivered.

The full $837,918.93 total comes from five reporting periods: $538,800 in individual contributions earmarked through AIPAC before July, a separate $5,000 SUN PAC contribution routed through AIPAC in February, another $284,118.93 routed through the group during July–September, and $10,000 contributed directly by AIPAC PAC. The review includes a pre-primary report covering April 1–15, as well as Husted’s second-quarter and latest quarterly disclosures.

The $837,918.93 figure represents gross receipts, not contributions retained after refunds. It does not double-count individual donor entries and the corresponding AIPAC intermediary entries, or include spending by outside political groups.

Brown’s record: No AIPAC PAC money

Federal records for Brown’s 2026 campaign and his 2024 reelection campaign contain no direct AIPAC PAC contributions or donations earmarked through AIPAC. The contrast was already substantial in September, when TiffinOhio.net documented more than $543,000 in AIPAC-connected contributions for Husted through June. The latest federal filing adds another $289,118.93, while the expanded accounting identifies the earlier $5,000 SUN PAC contribution.

AIPAC announces an end to the fundraising method it used for Husted

On October 21, less than two weeks before Ohio’s election, AIPAC announced it would stop directly endorsing candidates, making PAC contributions and earmarking donations after the 2026 midterms. According to a letter to members reported by NPR, AIPAC plans to expand organized contributions made directly by individuals, while its affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, will continue operating.

AIPAC’s decision changes how it plans to support candidates in future elections. In Husted’s 2026 campaign, the group was still acting as a fundraising conduit on September 30, when it transferred another $23,267.27 to his campaign and its PAC supplied a separate $5,000 check.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

But DeWine stopped short of withdrawing his endorsement of Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee seeking to succeed him as governor.

Speaking to reporters at the Ohio Statehouse on October 22, DeWine condemned the campaign’s decision to feature Donna Arthur, Acton’s biological mother, who supported her husband after he was charged with raping Acton when she was 12 years old.

“It’s wrong to run this ad,” DeWine said, according to the Ohio Public Media Statehouse News Bureau. “I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to to take this down. It’s just wrong.”

DeWine said the advertisement became even more disturbing when considered alongside the documented history of Acton’s childhood sexual abuse and her mother’s decision to leave town with the accused man.

He also directly challenged the attack’s central message that Acton is dishonest.

“In regard to telling the truth, my experience with her and working closely with her every single day was that she certainly told the truth; that’s my experience,” DeWine told News 5 Cleveland reporter Morgan Trau.

Acton served as DeWine’s health director from February 2019 until June 2020, becoming one of the most recognizable figures in Ohio’s early response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

DeWine condemns ad but stands by Ramaswamy

DeWine’s intervention creates a direct disagreement between Ohio’s sitting Republican governor and the candidate he endorsed to replace him. Ramaswamy acknowledged Tuesday that his campaign produced the advertisement and is spending $4 million to distribute it statewide.

The governor described the attack as especially troubling given his own experience working with sexual assault survivors during his years as a prosecutor and Ohio attorney general.

DeWine recalled meeting women who had endured rape and subsequently testified in court, describing the lasting trauma they carried.

He also pointed to the criminal proceedings involving Acton’s stepfather and the mother’s decision to leave with him rather than remain with her children.

“When you know the rest of the story,” DeWine said, the circumstances make the advertisement “just more wrong.”

Yet when reporters pressed him on whether his condemnation would change his political support, DeWine refused.

“I’m not changing the endorsement. I endorse the whole ticket,” he said.

When asked how he reconciled that endorsement with his condemnation of Ramaswamy’s actions, DeWine emphasized his loyalty to the Republican ticket, saying it included experienced public servants with whom he had worked for years.

He also declined to say whether he had spoken privately with Ramaswamy or Acton about the advertisement.

DeWine previously contradicted another Ramaswamy attack on Acton

Thursday’s condemnation is not the first time DeWine has publicly challenged an attack against Acton from the Republican candidate he endorsed.

As TiffinOhio.net reported in April, DeWine disputed a Ramaswamy-McColley campaign advertisement accusing Acton of unilaterally shutting down Ohio’s March 2020 primary election.

The advertisement accused Acton of defying a judge and abusing her authority by closing polling places during the pandemic. DeWine said that characterization was inaccurate because he personally directed Acton to issue the health order.

“I told her to issue the health order. The decision was mine,” DeWine told NBC4 at the time.

DeWine has also repeatedly defended Acton’s actions during the pandemic, maintaining that the major decisions made by his administration were his responsibility as governor.

Now, six months later, he is once again publicly contradicting an attack from Ramaswamy’s political operation. This time, he is demanding that the campaign stop running it altogether.

Ramaswamy campaign refuses to back down

The advertisement features Arthur accusing her daughter of lying about her childhood, including claims that she experienced homelessness and lived in a tent.

What the commercial does not disclose is the history behind their nearly five-decade estrangement.

Police and court records obtained by the Associated Press confirm that Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested in 1978 and indicted on a charge of raping Acton when she was 12. He pleaded not guilty but subsequently failed to appear in court and remained a fugitive for years. The available records do not establish a conviction.

Donna Arthur supported her husband during the proceedings and remained married to him until his death in 2004. Acton and her younger brother were removed from their mother’s custody, and Acton has said she has not seen her mother since childhood.

TiffinOhio.net previously reported on the family’s history and her brother Philip Stearns’ condemnation of the attack.

Despite the criticism from DeWine, Ramaswamy’s campaign continued defending the commercial Thursday.

In a statement to CBS News, campaign spokeswoman Connie Luck argued that Arthur’s accusations concerned Acton’s honesty rather than the abuse she experienced.

“Acton’s mother is speaking out about her clear pattern of lying — not abuse,” Luck said.

The campaign has not announced plans to withdraw the advertisement.

Vance tells Republican critics to ‘stop whining’

DeWine’s position stands in sharp contrast to Vice President JD Vance, who defended Ramaswamy against Republican critics during a campaign appearance in Cincinnati on Wednesday.

Vance told reporters he was disgusted by Republicans complaining about the commercial and urged them to focus on winning the election.

“Stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days,” Vance said.

Other prominent Ohio Republicans have also distanced themselves from the attack. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, whom DeWine appointed to the Senate in 2025, told the Associated Press he would not have run it. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose expressed the same position.

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley condemned Ramaswamy personally, while former Republican congressman Jim Renacci warned that Republicans who refused to distance themselves from the advertisement could suffer politically.

The public disagreement has divided Republican leaders in the final days of an increasingly competitive governor’s race. Ramaswamy’s campaign is committing millions to the advertisement despite opposition from DeWine, Husted and other members of the party’s establishment.

DeWine’s position leaves that division unresolved. He says the advertisement is wrong, confirms that Acton was truthful in his experience working with her and wants Ramaswamy to stop running it. But with early voting already underway ahead of the November 3 election, the governor is continuing to support the candidate responsible for producing it.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chairman and CEO, gave Merrin $3,500 on Sept. 30. His wife, Christine Schwarzman, contributed another $3,500 the same day. Blackstone owns QTS Data Centers, which announced plans in May for a data center campus in Van Wert, Ohio, expected to involve approximately $10 billion in investment.

The same FEC filing attributes another $3,500 to Antonio Gracias, founder and CEO of Valor Equity Partners, on July 10. That money was allocated to Merrin through the Grow the Majority joint fundraising committee, rather than contributed directly to his campaign. Valor has financed data center construction and computing infrastructure for major artificial intelligence companies.

The contributions were reported as Merrin, the Republican challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, fought criticism of his record on data center subsidies. In an Oct. 7 interview with 13 Action News, Merrin accused Kaptur of telling “whoppers of a lies” about data centers and him. He voted in 2017 for legislation that expanded an existing Ohio tax exemption for data center operators.

The $7,000 from Blackstone’s chief executive and his wife

The Schwarzmans’ contributions arrived four months after QTS and the city of Van Wert announced their proposed campus. The company identified itself as a Blackstone portfolio company in the announcement, projected approximately $10 billion in investment and said the project would create about 200 permanent QTS positions, in addition to construction work.

Blackstone has a second major stake in Ohio’s data center expansion: the electricity infrastructure built to serve it. In July, energy company Williams announced a $5.34 billion investment agreement led by Blackstone, alongside Apollo and KKR, for five power generation projects serving rising demand, including from data centers. Four of the five projects are in Ohio. The three investment firms agreed to provide the capital in exchange for a 49% noncontrolling interest in the projects.

Schwarzman leads the firm that owns the developer of one of northwest Ohio’s largest proposed data center projects and is helping finance the power generation needed for the broader buildout. He and his wife each gave Merrin the $3,500 maximum permitted from an individual donor for one federal election.

Another $3,500 linked to AI infrastructure investments

Gracias’ contribution ties Merrin to another firm pursuing the rapidly expanding market for AI computing capacity. Valor identifies Gracias as its founder, chief executive and chief investment officer.

In January, Valor-managed funds arranged a $5.4 billion acquisition and lease of data center computing equipment, including Nvidia processors, to a subsidiary of Elon Musk’s xAI. Valor is also an investor in Crusoe, which builds large AI data centers. Crusoe said in September that Valor co-led a $3.9 billion financing round for the company.

The FEC lists Gracias’ $3,500 as an itemized allocation connected to a transfer from the Grow the Majority joint fundraising committee. It is one of three $3,500 entries that account for the $10,500 tied to the investors and the Blackstone executive’s family in Merrin’s newly filed report.

Merrin’s data center vote is on the record

Merrin’s legislative record on data center incentives predates these donations. On June 28, 2017, while serving in the Ohio House, he voted for House Bill 49, the state budget legislation that extended the time for operators of qualifying 2013 data center projects to meet capital investment requirements under Ohio’s existing sales and use tax exemption. The House passed the bill 59-40, and the state’s own legislative accounting describes the extension from five years to six.

The 2017 vote did not create Ohio’s data center tax break; it broadened the terms of an exemption already on the books. Merrin voted for that change. He now has campaign receipts from executives financing the industry benefiting from Ohio’s broader data center expansion.

Ohio has since confronted the staggering cost of its tax incentives for data centers. In May, Gov. Mike DeWine paused consideration of new exemptions after state figures showed nearly $1.6 billion in foregone sales tax revenue during 2025, far beyond earlier projections. The industry has become a central issue in northwest Ohio communities debating electricity demand, land use and the public cost of new infrastructure.

On Oct. 7, Merrin accused Kaptur of misrepresenting his data center record. Eight days later, his campaign filed the report listing $10,500 associated with the Blackstone chief executive’s family and the head of Valor Equity Partners. Voters will decide the race Nov. 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ramaswamy founded the biotechnology company Roivant Sciences in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2021. The company develops medicines through specialized subsidiaries.

One of those subsidiaries is the Shanghai-based Sinovant, launched in 2017. The company was partially financed by CITIC Private Equity (CITICPE), an investment firm that is part of a web of state-owned enterprises in China that are under the sway of the Chinese Communist Party.

A state-owned entity in China can be wholly or partially owned by the government. The Chinese Communist Party wields influence over these entities by setting national economic priorities, making leadership appointments, and setting strategic directions.

When Sinovant launched, CITICPE was the investment arm of CITIC Securities, which was an offshoot of the state-owned CITIC Group.

CITICPE spun off from CITIC Securities in 2018 and became CPE, but the firms remained tied through jointly managed investment funds, according to the Prague Security Studies Institute. CITICPE also retained its longtime CEO, Lieu Lefei, who is a prominent “princeling,” a term ascribed to the children of high-ranking communist officials.

Lefei’s father, Liu Yunshan, was reportedly involved in censoring online information about the Uyghur ethnic cleansing campaign.

Ramaswamy partnered with CITICPE again in 2018 to launch Cytovant Biotechnology, a Sinovant subsidiary that is also domiciled in China.

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report from 2021 identified national security concerns involving Pacific Networks and ComNet, two subsidiaries of CITIC Group. This followed previous reporting in 2017 that CITIC Group had provided Iran with a $10 billion line of credit. The U.S. government designates Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Roivant divested from Cytovant in July 2022. As of 2023, Ramaswamy was still the sixth-largest shareholder in Roivant.

Earlier this month, Ramaswamy said his 2026 race is “probably the most important election for governor” Ohio has ever seen and that his victory would signal “success over communism, success over socialism.”

Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponent is former Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton. Recent polls show a neck-and-neck race.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The fraud was documented by Rhode Island election officials and acknowledged by Ramaswamy’s own campaign. After officials discovered the names of deceased voters on his presidential petitions, the campaign said an investigation by its signature-gathering contractor found that an employee had intentionally written those names on the forms. The worker was fired.

Now, as the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, Ramaswamy is urging voters to approve State Issue 3, a constitutional amendment he championed as a safeguard against election fraud. The amendment would not have prevented the kind of petition forgery found in his presidential campaign.

Dead voters on presidential petitions

On Jan. 10, 2024, Rhode Island Deputy Elections Director Miguel Nunez warned election officials across the state that Coventry canvassers had rejected an unusually high number of signatures on Ramaswamy’s presidential petitions. His alert identified two collectors, Heidy Moore and Michael Michols, and instructed election boards to watch for possible patterns of forgery.

In the same warning, Nunez reported that Warwick officials had found deceased voters’ names on Ramaswamy’s petitions. Election officials subsequently identified five dead Warwick residents on forms collected by Moore. The residents had died between 2017 and 2023. Providence officials separately reported at least six deceased people’s names on petitions submitted for Ramaswamy, according to Rhode Island Current.

Warwick canvassers certified only 144 of the 334 signatures submitted for Ramaswamy, rejecting 190 — nearly 57% of the total. The petitions were part of Ramaswamy’s effort to qualify for the state’s Republican presidential primary.

An Ohio signature collector convicted on 17 forgery counts

The collector named in the state’s warning was Heidi D. Moore of Orrville, Ohio. A Boston Globe examination of Ohio court records found that Moore had been convicted of 17 forgery counts in Medina and Wayne counties in 2007 and served prison time. The cases involved forged checks.

On the Rhode Island petitions, Moore signed an affidavit under oath declaring that the people listed had signed in her presence. Five of the purported signers identified on her Warwick forms were already dead. Moore told the Globe she had gathered signatures outside a Walmart in Warwick and denied knowing how the deceased voters’ names appeared on the petitions. She confirmed she had been fired by the signature-gathering firm.

Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign hired Missouri-based GroundGame Political Solutions to collect signatures. Then-campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed to Rhode Island Current that the contractor’s inquiry uncovered intentional forgery by a worker and said the firm had notified Warwick police. The campaign denied participating in or knowing about the falsification.

Rhode Island law makes knowingly falsifying or filing false nomination papers a felony. These were signatures on ballot-access petitions, not ballots cast in an election — a distinction central to the election-integrity plan Ramaswamy is now promoting in Ohio.

The election fraud his Ohio amendment would not stop

In a May 18, 2026, opinion column, Ramaswamy called on Ohio lawmakers to place the state’s photo-ID requirement in the Constitution, arguing that the existing law could otherwise be changed or overturned. He also promoted federal voter-identification legislation as a way to prevent fraud and strengthen public confidence in elections.

“Voter ID laws can restore this trust,” Ramaswamy wrote.

Ohio already requires approved, unexpired photo identification for in-person voting. The amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot would make that requirement constitutional and establish identity-verification rules for other voting methods. It would impose no new requirement that political campaigns vet paid petition circulators or authenticate the signatures they collect to qualify candidates for the ballot.

Rhode Island officials exposed the forgery on Ramaswamy’s presidential petitions by reviewing signatures submitted for ballot access. Ohio’s proposed constitutional amendment addresses the identification of people casting votes. It does nothing to stop campaign contractors from submitting forged nominating signatures under the names of dead voters — the very fraud acknowledged by Ramaswamy’s own presidential campaign.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The cost of individual health insurance plans rose to $9,804 on average, while family coverage reached $28,303. Both represented a 5% increase over the last year.

Employees paid about $1,672 for individual coverage, while employers contributed $8,132. People with health insurance for a family of four paid $7,471, with employers providing $20,833.

The amount of money an employee pays toward an individual health insurance plan rose by $232, or 16%, from 2025 to 2026. The price an employee pays for a family health insurance policy increased by $621, or 9%, according to the survey. 

“We have been hearing a lot about Affordable Care Act and Medicaid cuts,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said in a statement. “Now add a 9% increase in what workers with employer coverage paid toward family premiums in 2026 to the reasons voters are so concerned about their health care costs.”

The national survey looked at the health insurance costs of more than 1,900 employers throughout the country who have at least 10 workers.

The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance plans has steadily gone up for the last 15 years, according to KFF’s data. In 2011, the cost of an individual plan totaled just under $5,500 and family plans cost $15,220 annually. 

The average deductible reached $1,995 for single coverage this year, meaning even with health insurance, most employees had to pay a couple thousand dollars out of pocket before their policies kicked in. That’s more than doubled since 2011 when the average annual deductible was $955.

The KFF survey found that 88% of workers with individual coverage had a deductible in 2026. 

What types of healthcare coverage people get with the various employer-sponsored health insurance plans varied considerably, sometimes based on the size of their company. 

Twenty-seven percent of employers with more than 200 employees, called large firms in the KFF survey, covered the costs of in vitro fertilization, or IVF. 

But that fluctuated, with 24% of companies between 200 and 999 workers covering IVF, 38% of companies between 1,000 and 4,999 employees providing coverage and 47% of companies with more than 5,000 workers offering a health insurance plan that covers IVF. 

Access to GLP-1 drugs, which can help people manage Type 2 diabetes and lower their weight, also varied based on the size of someone’s employer. Eighteen percent of large firms covered those drugs during 2026, though that was slightly lower than the 19% that covered it during 2025. 

The KFF survey showed that 40% of companies require people on GLP-1 drugs for weight loss to “meet with a dietitian, case manager, or therapist, or participate in a lifestyle program in order for the drug to be covered.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Trump began his October campaign road trip in GOP-friendly states, but has begun venturing into territory that’s deemed to have become perilous for Republicans.

The GOP is itching to maintain its narrow majority in the U.S. House and Senate, though elections forecasters are offering a far less optimistic outlook for Republicans, as Democrats remain favored to take back the House and more Senate races shift in the party’s favor. 

Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics on Tuesday moved nearly 30 House races toward Democrats.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted Senate races in Mississippi and South Carolina toward Democrats on Tuesday. But the elections forecaster also moved a Senate race in Minnesota toward Republicans. 

In the Palmetto State, where South Carolina GOP Sen. Darline Graham faces Democrat Annie Andrews, the Cook Political Report changed its race rating from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” 

Trump was scheduled to rally in Clemson, South Carolina, on Wednesday for Graham, who was appointed in July to serve out the remainder of her late brother Lindsey Graham’s term. 

Rush to early voting

More than 16 million Americans have already voted early in the midterm elections as of Wednesday afternoon, according to a tracker from the University of Florida Election Lab. 

Meanwhile, Trump continues to see dismal approval ratings amid the costly war in Iran and its impact at the gas pump. According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas stood at $4.26, as of Oct. 21. One year ago, that price stood at about $3.05. 

New polling from The New York Times and CNN offers a snapshot of just how bleak Trump’s approval ratings are with less than two weeks to go until the midterms — hitting record lows in the pair of polls.

In a Times/Siena University national poll, only 36% of likely voters approved of Trump’s performance. Similarly, a CNN/SSRS poll found a 32% approval rating for the president.  

Trump road show

Here’s a closer look at Trump’s travel in the coming days, after recent stops in Georgia, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina: 

• The president will head to Sioux City, Iowa, for a rally on Thursday. The Hawkeye State features an open Senate race between Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek that the Cook Political Report has listed as a toss-up.

• Trump will then rally in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday, where the Sunshine State’s Senate race is described as “solid Republican” by the Cook Political Report. Florida GOP Sen. Ashley Moody faces Democrat Angie Nixon. 

• Trump travels to Perry, Georgia, on Saturday for a rally. The Senate race in Georgia is listed as “likely Democrat” by the Cook Political Report. Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is vying for another term against Georgia GOP Rep. Mike Collins. 

• The president will then head north to rally Sunday in Port Huron, Michigan. Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed are battling it out in an open Senate race the Cook Political Report has dubbed a toss-up. 

• On Monday, Trump will rally in Corinth, Mississippi. In the ruby red state, Mississippi GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is competing for another term against Democrat Scott Colom in a race that the Cook Political Report moved from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican.”

• On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Trump is set to hold rallies in both Waco and Lubbock, Texas. The Lone Star State features a pivotal Senate race between Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico that the Cook Political Report declares a toss-up. 

• Trump will then travel to Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, for a rally. The Buckeye State is also home to another toss-up Senate race listed by the Cook Political Report between Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted and Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown.  

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Seneca County Common Pleas Judge Steve Shuff sentenced Tyler J. Hossler on Tuesday, bringing an end to the criminal proceedings that began with his indictment in September 2025.

A Seneca County jury found Hossler guilty of rape, a first-degree felony; sexual battery, a third-degree felony; and attempted rape, a second-degree felony, on September 17. Before his sentencing, Hossler also pleaded guilty to a second attempted-rape charge that had been separated from the original trial.

The court imposed a mandatory seven-year prison term for rape and a three-year term for one attempted-rape conviction, to be served concurrently. An additional three-year term for the second attempted-rape conviction will run consecutively, bringing his total prison sentence to 10 years.

Fourth charge resolved through guilty plea

Hossler’s guilty plea resolved a charge that remained outstanding when TiffinOhio.net reported his jury convictions in September.

In March, the court granted a defense request to separate the fourth count, another attempted-rape charge, from the other three charges. A separate jury trial had been scheduled for September 21 and 22 but was postponed after the defense requested a continuance.

The September 17 verdict therefore resolved only three of the four charges in the indictment. Hossler’s subsequent guilty plea eliminated the need for another trial on the remaining attempted-rape count.

Following the jury’s verdict, the court revoked Hossler’s bond and ordered him into custody pending sentencing. He had previously been released after posting a $500,000 bond in October 2025.

Lifetime sex offender registration required

In addition to his prison sentence, Hossler must register as a Tier III sex offender for the remainder of his life.

Tier III is Ohio’s highest sex offender classification. Under state law, individuals in that classification must personally verify their registered addresses with the appropriate county sheriff every 90 days. The registration requirement continues for life.

The case originated with two separate investigations conducted by the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office after allegations that Hossler sexually assaulted two women. Those investigations resulted in a September 2025 indictment charging him with rape, sexual battery and two counts of attempted rape.

Hossler’s October 20 sentencing resolves all four felony charges brought against him in the original indictment.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Scott Hartman faces a number of different charges related to allegations of sexual conduct with a minor, and one of the charges, misdemeanor grooming, didn’t exist before April 2025. Hartman has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Hartman, 49, was arrested by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Oct. 1, for “online sexual abuse of a minor,” according to a release from the office earlier this month.

According to the sheriff’s office, an investigation began in April of this year after a “teenage victim reported to school counselors that she had engaged in an online relationship with Hartman that included text messages and video calls involving video sex acts and the exchange of nude images and videos.”

The activities went on for six months before they were discovered, the sheriff’s office said, alleging Hartman attempted to meet the teenager for sex and “convinced the victim to delete any evidence and attempted to hide the fact that she was a minor.”

“Due to the nature of their conversations, one or more of his alleged social media accounts were shut down and reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Hartman was listed as a senior vice president and chief development officer for The Catholic Foundation.

The foundation’s president and CEO, Loren Brown, said Hartman had been fired and the foundation was cooperating with law enforcement.

“What Scott Hartman did is a violation of trust and stands in direct opposition to our mission and our Catholic faith,” Brown said in a statement.

Hartman was indicted on Oct. 13, charged with pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor and other related felony offenses, along with tampering with evidence, and a misdemeanor grooming charge.

The grooming charge was part of a bill enacted in April 2025 to update sex offense statutes in the state of Ohio. Other provisions were updates to civil actions related to misconduct alleged to have happened years, even decades ago.

Former Ohio state Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican from Cincinnati, co-sponsored Ohio House Bill 322, which came about partly because of Ohioans who wanted more consequences for those who fail to report alleged sexual abuse, and those who have groomed victims before committing any sexual acts. But it was a balancing act to make sure those attempting to help children didn’t see unintended consequences.

“The trick, obviously, is to differentiate between the casual, sympathetic arm around the shoulder for somebody who’s facing an adverse childhood experience — which is perfectly legal — and something that shows elements of a pattern going well beyond that,” Seitz told the Capital Journal.

It was that pattern and proving intent in the pattern that gave the bill appeal, he said.

The grooming statute under which Hartman is charged states that no person older than 18 years old can “engage in a pattern of conduct” with anyone younger than 16 years old and four years younger than the adult when “the pattern of conduct would cause a reasonable adult person to believe that the person is communicating with a minor” for the purposes of sexual activity or preparing a minor to engage in sexual activity, according to the law.

The charge is a misdemeanor, a low-level offense which typically does not carry a significant prison sentence, unless charged alongside felonies.

While Seitz didn’t comment on Hartman’s case specifically, he said having the law in place will help not only be able to charge offenders in current cases, but allow more civil action and deter more serious crimes.

“I do not think there will be a huge influx of cases, just because it will be somewhat difficult to prove, but (supporters of the bill) wanted something on the books that would enable this kind of conduct to be nipped in the bud before it became far more serious,” Seitz said.

Also included in the legislation was a longer statute of limitations for charging those required to report any information about potential sex abuse crimes who fail to do so.

H.B. 322 moved the statute of limitations from two year to four, something mothers who talked with Seitz about bringing up the bill wanted to see. The group was advocating for more punishment particularly for priests accused of abuse.

“That was a concern that these mothers had, too, that by the time they found out that some of the priests were acting badly, the time for any possible prosecution of others who might have known of the priests’ malevolent activity were off the hook because the statute of limitations had expired,” Seitz said.

A third component of the law that was important to Seitz was updating a law from the mid-2000s, giving individuals the right to use civil action in cases where statutes of limitation had expired.

In the law, if a court finds in a civil proceeding that there is enough evidence to prove an individual is a child sex offender, Seitz said the individual would be placed on a sex offender list.

While he doesn’t think the law passed last year will lead to an overabundance of legal cases, he believes times have changed enough to make the laws enough to target abuses that he hopes are becoming “a thing of the past.”

“I think people were very, very relaxed in their attitudes back in the 50s and 60s, and even into the 70s,” Seitz said. “But now, all of these organizations have adopted pretty stringent requirements for training and for making sure that they’re not letting the wrong kind of people around the kids.”

In Hartman’s case, a bond was set at $750,000, and he remains incarcerated as the court case continues.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The number of jobs in some sectors appears to be falling in the face of rising prices and interest rates. Meanwhile, people are leaving the labor force as the state ages, working-age immigrants are deported and wages fall relative to inflation.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services last week reported that the state’s employers shed 5,000 jobs last month, according to Policy Matters Ohio. Unemployment rose from 3.3% in August to 3.4%, and inflation rose from 3.4% to 3.7%.

Meanwhile, participation in the labor force continued a decline that started in June of 2025. By September, Ohio’s participation rate stood at 61.2% compared to 61.8% nationally, according to the Buckeye Institute.

The reasons for falling workforce participation can be complex.

The measure doesn’t consider people who have aged out of the workforce, only those who are of working age and able-bodied, but not looking for a job. Those people are not counted in the unemployment rate.

Policy Matters reported that Ohio’s working-age population grew by 4,000 in September, yet labor force participation fell.

Before employers began pulling back in recent weeks, more jobs seemed to be available. President Donald Trump’s mass deportations appeared to remove many of the 2 million foreign-born men who left the country over the past two years, and 80% of whom were employed.

However, many of their jobs were in sectors such as construction and agriculture that native-born workers can be reluctant to fill.

In any case, the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research in April found that large deportations hurt the labor force. Perhaps ironically, the study showed that they lead to drops in employment among native-born male workers.

Income inequality may also play a role.

Americans were already trapped in a post-pandemic affordability crisis when Trump began his second administration. Then he slapped high tariffs on most of the world and started a war with Iran, making it worse.

In a written statement Buckeye Institute Vice President of Policy Rea S. Hederman Jr. said inflation is making man Ohio workers poorer.

“While private-sector hiring was revised up from the August jobs report, September’s job losses kept private-sector employment flat over the past two months,” he said. “Ohio’s workers are struggling as inflation-adjusted wages have fallen over the last year.”

Ironically, people can become so financially stressed that they can’t afford to work. Things such as child care, transportation and even clothing can make it not financially worthwhile to take a poorly paid job.

Molly Bryden, a researcher at Policy Matters Ohio, said lawmakers need to take such workers into account as they try to address an economy that has so many struggling.

“Combined with inflation and lackluster growth, this should be an early-warning signal to lawmakers,” Bryden said in a written statement. “Federal and state lawmakers must re-prioritize and focus on worker supports to draw people back to the labor force, expand pathways to quality jobs with family-sustaining wages, and restore affordability through shared prosperity — rather than pushing ‘pro-business’ policies that leave working families behind.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Local property taxes are already the largest source of funding for most public schools across Ohio. Residential property owners are tapped out and plenty tired of schools coming to them hat in hand. But when district levies fail cash-strapped schools do without. Without staff. Without services. Without programs to enrich learning.

Multiple public school districts have been forced to lay off teachers, cut courses and extracurriculars. Classroom size has swelled to capacity. Teachers are overburdened.

Students get less than the optimum instruction they deserve. Educating the next generation of Ohioans should be the top priority of state leaders.

Yet Ohio has repeatedly scaled back its investment in the public school system that educates nearly 90% of the state’s K-12 students.

For almost 30 years the Republican-run legislature has shirked its constitutional duty to fund a “thorough and efficient system” of public schools and shifted the load of paying for local districts on to homeowners.

The state share of public school funding has fallen from a high of 47% in 1999 down to an estimated 35% in 2026 and 32.2% for 2027.

Ohio ranks near the bottom nationally (around 45th) in state K-12 revenue. Statehouse Republicans appear determined to put public schools out of business.

In the current state budget, legislators scrapped the final phase of a six-year, bipartisan school financing formula that was designed to more accurately reflect the genuine cost of educating students and the financial capacity of each community to support its schools.

The Fair School Funding Plan (FSFP) marked a significant step toward correcting the decades-old disparity in school funding that was heavily dependent on local taxes.

But for the 2021 funding plan to be successful in fixing the long-broken, unconstitutional funding model for Ohio’s public schools it had to be sustained by future budget-writing lawmakers. It was not.

The biennial budget for 2026-2027, passed by Republican majorities in the General Assembly and signed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, effectively abandoned and underfunded the FSFP by about $2.75 billion (compared to what the plan mandated) and provided just 5.7% of the state-level funding increase schools required based on the actual cost-based formula. 

Republican Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, who has done more to privatize public education in Ohio than anyone, called the proposal to fully fund the last two years of the Fair School Funding Plan a “fantasy” and claimed the state couldn’t afford it.

Too expensive, scoffed Huffman while simultaneously funneling massive amounts of public money — over $1 billion annually — into private, primarily Christian schools.

The state-paid tuition checks (with no strings attached) are called vouchers.

Unlike state funding for public schools, that comes with oversight and accountability of tax dollars spent, there is zero accounting for Huffman’s private school boondoggle that finances religious institutions at the cost of local schools most Ohio kids attend.

In the 2026 fiscal year alone, the total amount of public funds spent on Ohio’s five private school voucher programs was $1.173 billion.

Almost half of that money, $532.8 million, went to the Education Choice Expansion vouchers that Huffman made universally available to every affluent family in the state (regardless of income) whose children attend private schools.

Last week an Ohio appellate court concluded the EdChoice voucher program violated the clear language of the state constitution by effectively setting up a “competing system of uncommon schools that is not subject to the same obligations imposed on Ohio’s system of common schools.”

The Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals ruling, which affirmed a lower court’s decision in 2025, noted that participating non-public schools on the public dole receive taxpayer funding in a manner that operates at the “detriment of Ohio’s public schools, and, consequently, the children who depend on those public schools for instruction, support, and opportunities that shape their future.”

State Republicans shrugged off the expected ruling confident it will be overturned by the Republican-majority on the Ohio Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Huffman & Co happily handed Ohio property owners an even heavier public school funding burden this election cycle — with a slew of school levy issues on the ballot to counteract the legislature’s latest round of reduced state-level contributions to K-12 education — while adding more than a billion in taxpayer subsidies to the tab to bankroll diocesan schools.

Ohio’s 600-plus public school districts in the state can twist in a perpetual panic over funding shortfalls, negative cash balances, or severe deficits.

Private school lobbyists got their voucher hooks in the general revenue fund and, with powerful GOP backing, they’re not letting go. But Ohio voters may want a say in the matter especially as they’re filling out ballots over the next two weeks that promise bigger tax bills to keep their public schools afloat.

They may draw the line at subsidizing a “competing system” of parish schools when they’re already paying the lion’s share of one district’s operating budget.

Why not find out definitively what Ohioans think about funding Huffman’s exploding universal private school vouchers program — twice ruled unconstitutional — with an up or down statewide vote? Seems fair.

Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska did in 2024, and voters rejected the creation or expansion of private school vouchers in all three states.

Ohioans are paying billions to prop up private schools while their public schools go wanting. The issue belongs on a ballot for Ohio voters to decide themselves.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

If approved, PowerConneX 3 will become the seventh gas plant to power a data center in the New Albany business park. Together these seven gas plants total 1936 MW – roughly equivalent to the electricity demand of over 1.3 million homes.

These seven gas plants have the potential to emit 11.9 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution, 766 tons of fine particulate matter, and hundreds of tons each of other harmful pollutants such as nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and hazardous air pollutants each year – all next to populated areas of New Albany and Licking County. 

Serious health effects

Particularly harmful to human health is the fine particulate matter – less than 2.5 micrometers or 1/30th the width of a human hair.

This pollutant is breathed deep into the lungs, enters the bloodstream, and causes inflammation throughout the body.

Extensive scientific evidence shows that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter is associated with heart disease, stroke, respiratory illness, asthma, and premature death. 

A 2026 study of a 135 MW gas plant powering a data center in Virginia found that it could result in $53 million to $99 million in annual health-related damages due to missed work, missed school, hospitalizations, and 3.4 to 6.5 additional deaths per year in the impacted region.

The study was conducted by a Harvard-affiliated health scientist. 

The seven gas plants approved and proposed in New Albany have a combined power output 14 times larger than the gas plant studied in Virginia.

Most vulnerable are children whose lungs are still developing. Almost 13,300 children live within a five-mile radius of the business park where these seven gas plants will be operated.

Inefficient technology

One reason these gas plants powering data centers are so polluting is they are not using the best available technology. Most utility grade gas plants use combined cycle turbines, which generate electricity from the combusted gas in two different turbines. 

The gas plants in New Albany are using less efficient technology. This includes simple cycle turbines, which generate electricity in only a single stage, with the polluting exhaust and waste heat expelled out of a short stack at 800 degrees.

Even worse, the PowerConneX 3 gas plant will use 30 reciprocating internal combustion engines – like a gas car engine, only longer than a full-sized school bus and about as tall as a two-story house. Because this equipment is less efficient, it uses more gas to generate the same amount of electricity, resulting in more pollution.

Data centers are installing this more polluting equipment because it’s faster to procure and construct. But more pollution means accelerated climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions and worsened air quality due to pollutants like particulate matter.

That is not acceptable. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2026 was the warmest month on record for the contiguous United States. This past July, the Columbus area set a record for the worst-ever air quality index since the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission began keeping records in 1999.

Accelerated process

Another issue is the Ohio Power Siting Board’s process for approving the gas plants powering data centers. Five plants in the New Albany business park have already been approved – three through the accelerated application process that included no public notice, no public hearing, and automatic approval – not even a formal vote by board members. 

For the two gas plants approved through the standard application process, the siting board held public hearings as required. But these two hearings, held in August and October of last year, each had only two to three individuals offer testimony. All such individuals were either oil and gas industry representatives or representatives from unions whose members would financially benefit from these projects.

While the first few gas plants in New Albany were approved quietly, word is now getting out, and area residents have had enough. More than 50 people packed a New Albany meeting room on October 6 for the most recent public hearing on the 500 MW NEO Power Generation Facility, the fourth gas plant planned to power Meta’s Prometheus data center, and the sixth gas plant proposed for the New Albany business park.

Five representatives from the oil and gas industry and unions spoke in favor of NEO, while 20 people passionately voiced their opposition to the project. The opposition included a few environmental advocates from other parts of the state, but the vast majority were residents of New Albany and surrounding communities. 

While data centers say they are creating jobs and contributing to our communities, no amount of economic benefits can outweigh the cost to the environment and the public’s health that will result from a massive build-out of inefficient, subpar natural gas technology. 

One need not be against data centers, AI, or natural gas power to oppose these gas plants. Rather, this is simply too much, too fast, and too polluting.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a swing of his own home town Cincinnati Wednesday, Vance touted dozens of indictments for food assistance fraud and pumped up Ohio’s GOP supporters at a campaign rally. But the comments on the ad garnered the most attention. The ad has drawn sharp criticism across the political spectrum.

“I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” Vance told the campaign rally crowd.

“Politics is a tough business,” he added, “and my message to my fellow elected Republicans is: if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”

The attack ad controversy

In the ad, Acton’s mother Donna Arthur repeatedly calls Acton a liar. Acton was removed from Arthur’s custody in the late 1970s, after her husband Cledith Arthur was charged with raping Acton, who was 12 years old at the time. After being released on bond, the Arthurs fled the state.

Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign initially issued a statement insisting “Vivek wants the election to focus on how to solve (rising costs),” and called Acton a “serial fabulist” but didn’t take credit for the ad’s production. Later that day, Ramaswamy again said he would “love for this race and this election to be about the substantive issues” but acknowledged his campaign produced the ad.

Ramaswamy’s campaign told Axios it plans to spend $4 million running it statewide.

Vivek Ramaswamy is not fit to lead. Watch our new ad. pic.twitter.com/EhWNMdFjjH

— Dr. Amy Acton (@amyactonoh) October 20, 2026

Acton’s campaign quickly released an ad featuring her younger brother Phil Stearns criticizing Ramaswamy for trying to score political points off the abuse they both suffered as children.

“Shame on Vivek,” he says, “It’s the contempt he has for Amy it’s the contempt he has for Ohio. He’s not fit to lead.”

In the Ramaswamy campaign’s initial statement and later speaking to reporters, he’s justified the ad by blaming Acton for refusing to debate him. Vance went a step further.

“People have called Vivek Ramaswamy a murderer in some of the advertisements ran against him,” Vance claimed at the food assistance fraud event.

It’s not clear to which advertisement Vance was referring, and an email to his press contact seeking clarification got no answer.

Ramaswamy’s campaign didn’t respond to similar requests either. But on social media, Ramaswamy shared two clips of Vance making the claim describing it as “hard facts” and “a strong message to Republicans & a strong reminder to everyone.”

Advertisements produced by Acton’s campaign, and by the Democratic Governors Association Super PAC backing her, criticize Ramaswamy’s tenure as a pharmaceutical executive for publicly lauding an Alzheimer’s drug that eventually proved ineffective. But Ohio Capital Journal was unable to identify any ads which suggest Ramaswamy is a murderer.

SNAP fraud

Wednesday morning, Vance joined several Department of Justice officials in Cincinnati to announce indictments against 40 people who have allegedly defrauded SNAP, the program formerly known as food stamps. Those defendants allegedly stole $42 million from the program.

The biggest share of that total came from charges against Jorag Yaseen and Rami Kanaan who allegedly stole $29.7 million from the program. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, they used stolen account information from Ohio and other states to run false transactions at their Illinois stores.

Vance, however focused on a case out of Atlanta against Merecedes Reshard New, who goes by Shawty Dred on social media. They brought out a tv to show a clip of Reshard with a private jet.

“You broke, mother——,” New says in the clip, “Get you a jet. Get you a jet.”

“The simple fact is,” Vance said, “this is a man that we have connected to $4.4 million dollars in fraud against the SNAP program. A guy who is quite literally taking food from the mouths of children, so that he can enrich himself.”

According to a DOJ press release, New was able to operate for six years and allegedly controlled more than 350 fraudulent SNAP accounts. He was arrested last week.

“SNAP exists to help hungry children eat,” Vance said. “It does not exist to provide private jets to a guy like Shawty Dred.”

But while the administration is tackling fraud in the program it has also made significant changes that will lead to reduced payments, primarily in Ohio’s urban counties.

As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states have to shoulder a greater share of the burden based on error rates.

In a July 2025 statement, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins praised the changes for “tackl(ing) the fraud and waste that has run rampant” in the program.

Ohio lawmakers agreed to cover some of the shortfall, but the way they chose to divvy up the dollars leaves multi-million dollar shortfalls in Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Hamilton counties.

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Absentee and early in-person voting started last week in the Nov. 3 election last week. As they have, a consortium of pro-democracy groups has positioned monitors at polling places, set up an election hotline and has lawyers and others waiting to be dispatched if problems arise.

At the same time, the NAACP announced plans to open a legal war room of its own on Oct. 24.

Many of the measures are routine, but fears are elevated this year.

President Donald Trump already tried to overturn an election he lost in 2020.

Behind in the polls, he’s again making false claims about election security. In May he would not rule out the possibility of sending federal agents to polling places — which many legal experts say is illegal.

In the face of that, volunteers are working to ensure normalcy in this year’s election.

“There’s a very robust election-protection effort,” said Mia Lewis of Common Cause Ohio.

She said her group, the Ohio Voter Rights Coalition, the League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are training and have deployed poll monitors. 

The political parties have observers inside polling places where they observe what’s happening, but aren’t allowed to talk to voters. Nonpartisan monitors are outside polling places, where they answer nonpolitical questions and watch for problems.

“We answer people’s questions and make sure everything is going smoothly,” Lewis said. “Poll monitors are the eyes and ears on the ground of the Ohio election-protection system.”

The groups also have lawyers available if legal issues arise, and “peacekeepers” such as ministers and social workers to dispatch if things get tense, Lewis said.

And there’s a national election protection hotline — 866-OUR-VOTE (687-8683) operated by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. Anyone with questions or who sees potential problems can call.

“We have access to that on the back end, so if problems are reported we can try to solve them in real time,” Lewis said. “We try to spread the word about the hotline as much as we can before the election because the more people know about it, the more voters we can help, the more problems we can solve.”

The group operating the protection hotline can accommodate languages other than English.

So far, most of the problems the Ohio groups are hearing have to do with confusion about deadlines and absentee voting, Lewis said. She added that recent changes in the state haven’t helped.

The rights groups want all Ohio citizens to know that hundreds of volunteers have fanned out across the state and they should feel safe voting. Lewis said that’s especially true for citizens who were born outside the country or have foreign-sounding names.

“We definitely hope they aren’t discouraged from voting because they feel things are strange this year,” she said. “We really, really hope that doesn’t happen. We want folks to go out and vote and exercise their rights.”

Meanwhile, Ohio is among the 16 states the NAACP is including in its midterm war room, which will provide “a dedicated phone line, email addresses, and digital forms for voters to submit any cases of alleged voter intimidation, suppression, or issues while voting,” the group said in a written statement.

“The NAACP will respond to credible cases as they emerge to help ensure eligible voters can cast their ballots and have those ballots counted.”

The state-level hubs will launch by Oct. 24. They come after conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court have dramatically weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was intended to ensure all citizens have equal access to the ballot — and to representation in government.

“We cannot buy into the fear,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a written statement.

“Donald Trump wants us to be afraid, because he is a deeply unpopular president. He’s afraid of losing his grip on Congress, so he wants us to stay home and make it harder to vote. Real power belongs to the people, and the NAACP is ready to protect all voters when they go and cast their ballots.”

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Husted’s support extended from defending a $43.5 million tax break for Google in 2019 to promoting major data center projects as lieutenant governor under Gov. Mike DeWine. As recently as July 2025, he was still defending the tax incentives, arguing against eliminating them for new developments.

By the following year, Ohio’s Department of Taxation had revealed that its data center sales-tax exemption cost the state approximately $1.57 billion in 2025, more than 11 times the $135.8 million officials had projected. Husted subsequently reversed his position on awarding new exemptions, as the industry’s enormous electricity demands and government subsidies became major issues in his U.S. Senate race against Democrat Sherrod Brown.

Husted celebrated data centers as a ‘pipeline of jobs’

In an Aug. 23, 2021, interview on Columbus Morning News, Husted enthusiastically promoted Google’s expanding data center investments in central Ohio.

“It’s great to see that some of these data center investments are going to go south of Columbus,” Husted said, referring to developments extending toward Lancaster. “It just shows it’s a pipeline of jobs and economic growth that’s going to continue to happen in central Ohio.”

In another recording from the same interview, Husted argued that Ohio’s geographic position helped attract the industry.

“Let’s face it. What’s part of the reason that they’re here? Well, Ohio’s in the middle of the country. We’re between, you know, Chicago and New York, and we’re a great place for logistics.”

Husted had already demonstrated his willingness to defend the industry’s tax breaks. At Google’s November 2019 groundbreaking in New Albany, he defended a 15-year state sales-tax exemption estimated at $43.5 million for the company’s $600 million facility, which was expected to create approximately 50 jobs.

Husted argued that the economic benefits would outweigh the tax breaks and said requiring Google to pay sales taxes would have driven the company elsewhere.

“This will fuel the economy for many years in Ohio,” Husted said, predicting that Columbus would become the technology hub of the Midwest.

His advocacy continued as the DeWine-Husted administration promoted increasingly large technology investments, including Amazon Web Services’ $7.8 billion expansion announced in 2023.

In Erie County, a $10.2 million tax break for 18 promised jobs

The DeWine-Husted administration brought the same incentive strategy to Northwest Ohio.

On Sept. 25, 2023, DeWine and Husted announced state assistance for an Aligned Data Centers project in Perkins Township, Erie County. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 75% sales- and use-tax exemption lasting 15 years.

The estimated value of the tax exemption was $10.2 million. In exchange, the company committed to creating just 18 permanent jobs with approximately $1.6 million in annual payroll.

The agreement covered a proposed $202 million investment near Sandusky. The 18 positions were the company’s initial employment commitment, while the tax exemption was authorized to continue through 2038.

The Erie County deal provides a concrete example of the incentives promoted during Husted’s tenure: a tax exemption initially valued at more than $10 million for a development promising fewer than two dozen permanent jobs.

Tax breaks ballooned. Husted kept defending them.

An industry-backed economic study estimated that Ohio data centers received $2.5 billion in state and local tax incentives between 2017 and 2024. The report also estimated that the industry generated $5.21 billion in state and local tax revenue over that period, including modeled indirect economic effects.

But the cost of Ohio’s state sales-tax exemption continued climbing. According to figures released by the Ohio Department of Taxation, the exemption cost $554.9 million in 2024 and $1.57 billion in 2025. The 2025 figure exceeded the state’s forecast by more than $1.4 billion.

Husted continued backing the incentives even as lawmakers moved to restrict them. In July 2025, after DeWine vetoed a legislative attempt to curtail the exemptions, Husted defended preserving the tax break, arguing that ending it for future projects while existing developments continued benefiting would not create a “fair playing field.”

“If Ohio wants to be a leader, a leading edge tech state in the Midwest, having those kinds of investments in the state is important,” Husted said.

In May 2026, DeWine paused consideration of new data center tax-exemption applications. By late July, Husted had reversed his position on new statewide exemptions, after years of defending the incentives and promoting the projects they helped attract.

Husted has also begun promoting federal legislation intended to prevent electricity customers from shouldering data center infrastructure costs. But as TiffinOhio.net previously reported, his Ratepayer Protection Act would only require state regulators to consider protections similar to those technology giants fought in Ohio. It would not require states to impose them.

And Husted’s reversal does nothing to undo the tax agreements secured during the years he championed the industry. Ohio has stopped accepting new exemption applications for now, but previously approved agreements remain in place.

According to state development contracts obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau, Amazon, Meta and Google hold statewide data center tax agreements extending through at least 2055, 2056 and 2058, respectively.

Those companies can continue receiving tax benefits under the agreements for decades after the 2026 election, long after Husted’s years of defending the subsidies helped make Ohio a major destination for their investments.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The campaign acknowledged producing the video after it circulated online without identifying its sponsor. According to Axios, sources close to Ramaswamy said the commercial performed well in internal testing among persuadable voters, prompting a statewide advertising campaign that began Tuesday night. Ohio’s Statehouse News Bureau separately confirmed the $4 million digital buy.

Ramaswamy campaign manager Jonathan Ewing defended the decision, telling Axios: “This is a campaign-ending moment for Amy Acton. The people who know her best keep warning Ohioans about her.”

The campaign also confirmed that Acton’s mother was not paid to appear in the advertisement.

Attack features mother who defended Acton’s accused abuser

The minute-long commercial features Donna Arthur, Acton’s estranged biological mother, accusing her daughter of fabricating details about her childhood, including having lived in a tent. Arthur repeatedly calls Acton a liar, suggests she needs help and urges Ohioans not to elect her governor.

Absent from the video is the history behind their nearly five-decade estrangement. Acton has publicly described being sexually abused as a child by Arthur’s husband, Cledith Arthur, while her mother failed to protect her. Arthur supported her husband during the resulting criminal proceedings and remained married to him until his death in 2004.

Records obtained by the Associated Press confirm that Cledith Arthur was arrested in July 1978 and charged with raping Acton, then 12. A grand jury indicted him that September. He pleaded not guilty but subsequently failed to appear in court and remained a fugitive until at least 1981. The available records do not establish a conviction or the case’s final disposition.

Conservative publication National Review separately obtained documents corroborating the criminal proceedings, including a sworn statement from Acton’s biological father.

Acton’s account also predates her political career. In a detailed 2019 interview with The Youngstown Vindicator, she described childhood poverty, repeated moves, sexual abuse and spending a winter living in a tent outside Youngstown. Her younger brother has separately corroborated the family’s homelessness. The criminal records independently establish the proceedings involving her stepfather, rather than the family’s precise living arrangements.

Republicans denounce ad as Ramaswamy doubles down

The campaign’s decision to spend millions promoting the attack has drawn criticism from within Republican and conservative circles.

Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik, a former Republican mayor of Findlay serving in Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration, publicly condemned the advertisement Tuesday. “There are lines we shouldn’t cross, and this is one of them,” she wrote, adding that political disagreements should not come at the expense of basic decency.

Meghan McCain called the commercial a “dastardly ad” that never should have been produced. Conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham questioned how the campaign could expect the attack to succeed rather than backfire, while Republican strategist David Urban warned on CNN that voters could instead sympathize with Acton as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

At National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez condemned the video as despicable and amoral, arguing that it should become a political disaster.

Other conservatives defended the attack. Donald Trump Jr. promoted the video on social media and encouraged Ohioans to watch it, while former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell also supported the commercial.

Ramaswamy’s campaign has sided with those defending the attack. Spokeswoman Connie Luck described Acton as a “serial fabulist” and continued questioning her honesty, while Ewing characterized the video as potentially decisive against the Democratic nominee.

Acton responds with ad featuring her brother

Acton responded Tuesday by accusing Ramaswamy of exploiting her estranged mother for political gain. She said she and her younger brother were removed from their mother’s custody after enduring neglect and abuse, including sexual abuse by Arthur’s husband.

Her brother, Philip Stearns, condemned the attack in a statement released by Acton’s campaign, saying their mother remained married to the man who sexually abused his sister even after the children were removed from the household.

Acton’s campaign also released a response advertisement titled “Abuse,” featuring Stearns describing how his older sister tried to protect him during their childhood.

“I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” Stearns says. He directly condemns Ramaswamy for turning his sister’s childhood into campaign material.

The controversy comes two weeks before Ohio’s November 3 election. A Marist Poll released Tuesday found Acton leading Ramaswamy 50% to 43% among likely voters, with a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. The survey was conducted October 15-18, before the advertisement became public, and does not measure its effect.

Ramaswamy’s campaign says the video tested favorably with persuadable voters, but has not released the underlying results. Its $4 million investment will now put the attack before Ohio voters as the candidates enter the final days of the governor’s race, despite the documented abuse proceedings and the objections of prominent figures within his own party.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Every time I look at a screen, politicians and political operatives are showing a sickness of heart and mind that’s truly horrifying.

So-called “news influencers” fester like open wounds of viral rot on America’s body politic, poisoning the lifeblood of our Republic with sepsis, hallucinations, derangement of the senses.

Obscene amounts of money are being dumped into our elections by a Second Gilded Age Who’s Who of the most monstrously malfunctioning human egoists imaginable.

Races, deadlines, and the tools you need to cast your vote.

The most expensive elections in American history are bombarding Ohio families with the stupidest, most despicable campaign ads I’ve ever seen.

In Ohio, nobody can escape this stinking detritus vomited forth from the dark, depraved insides of political operatives and the “consultant” class.

They’ll spend three-quarters of a billion dollars torturing Ohioans with these ads this year, AdImpact projects.

It’s worse than that, though. The dark money special interests are getting a hell of a deal, you see.

To them, it’s only three-quarters of a billion, but on the back end, through regulatory capture, sweetheart lawmaking, government contracts, and a whole galaxy of other mechanisms, they’ll receive hundreds of billions in public goods and resources. It’s pennies on the dollar.

The public is reportedly very concerned about public corruption. They should be. I have not known an Ohio in my adult life without a staggering amount of public corruption.

Now that kind of public corruption is being normalized on the national level, with the most venomous, adolescent politics possible to go alongside it.

I’m aware that the world is full of pathological people. I just will never get used to the fact so many clearly broken, pathological people are put on political and public pedestals and worshipped, fawned over, and platformed, above the great mass of normal, good-hearted people.

I don’t really understand this morally and ethically barren hellscape era of American politics we are in, but I do know normal Ohioans pretty well.

Normal Ohioans are horrified and sick of the madness.

No decent, well-balanced person I know thinks things are going well — absolutely not in our political discourse, but also not in the general American or Ohio experience.

It seems glaringly obvious to normal Ohioans that the political class has abandoned representation of their constituents for the representation of themselves, their friends, and their preferred private and special interests.

Everywhere we turn, families get squeezed, at the grocery store, at the gas pump, for school supplies, for toiletries, for everything from a haircut to our healthcare.

I don’t think the 50-year relentless upward redistribution of wealth in America is doing the trick for Ohio families.

I think Ohio families feel that they’re getting ripped off. I think Ohio families are incredibly frustrated by it.

They turn one way, they get ripped off; they turn the other, they get ripped off again.

Here’s what frustrates me as a crusty old journalist of 20 years: This whole game is so old and so boring, and if only the people of this state and this country could realize the true power they have, they can still fix it. We can demand the best of our public servants and we do not have to settle for anything less.

We do it by standing up for ourselves. We do it by turning away from the screens and toward each other as human beings.

The screwheads and the depraved hucksters of political provocateurs, operatives, and influencers want us to dehumanize each other.

They want us to play in their game, but it’s a bloodsport — it costs human lives and robs humans of their humanity.

It robs the screwheads of their humanity too. Resentful over their lost heart, they try to drag the rest of us into losing ours.

They try to make Americans believe that other Americans are our enemies. They try to convince us that our neighbors want to destroy us, destroy our families, destroy our way of life, destroy the country.

This is all nonsense and demagoguery. Most people just want to live their lives decently and be left well enough alone.

They try to example us to be our worst selves, to narrow our minds, to live in paranoia and resentment, to shut out and reject and dominate and victimize other human beings.

This is a bunch of crap. Anybody who follows that mindset will find themselves and their lives, in time, as soulless and friendless and barren as the ancient texts and fables warned.

The solutions are simple and small but could cascade into something much larger, if humanity in 21st Century America is ever able to regain its grasp.

We stop providing a market for hate and start giving our attention to each other as full human beings, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in our states, and in our country.

We be honest with ourselves, with each other, and about each other.

We demand honesty of those who seek to represent us in our self-government.

We demand honesty from those who demand our attention.

We demand a fair system to represent our interests and give us equal opportunity to earn our own way.

We recognize that every human being and every human life is different, and we give each other decency and grace.

We cooperate with each other in good faith to build extraordinary and beautiful things that benefit not only ourselves and our communities now but future generations, so they too may continue to cooperate and build extraordinary and beautiful things together.

We’ve gotten into this pit collectively. We can get out of it that way too.

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

When confronted with records documenting the 1978 rape charge against Acton’s stepfather, Click acknowledged that the alleged abuse was bad but questioned its relevance, accusing the journalist who presented the evidence of a “bait and switch.”

The remarks came just two weeks after TiffinOhio.net published police records detailing a separate investigation into allegations that Click himself had physically and sexually abused a child connected to his former church. Those allegations were denied by both Click and the person identified as the alleged victim. Fremont police closed the case, and state investigators declined to pursue it further.

Click, a three-term Republican representing Seneca and Sandusky counties, made his comments as prominent conservatives, including a senior official in Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration, condemned a political attack video featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur.

Responding to journalist Darrel Rowland, who had shared the video and described its contents as “sad,” Click wrote Tuesday morning:

“Agreed. Why would Amy lie about her upbringing. I sure hope she gets the help she needs. Her mother seems to care deeply about her wellbeing.”

Arthur’s appearance in the video has drawn intense scrutiny because she has been estranged from Acton for nearly five decades. Police and court records confirm that Arthur’s husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and indicted in 1978 on a charge of raping Acton when she was 12. Donna Arthur supported her husband during the proceedings and remained married to him until his death in 2004.

That history was not disclosed in the video, which portrays Arthur as a concerned mother accusing her daughter of dishonesty and urging Ohioans not to elect her governor.

Click nevertheless accepted the mother’s central allegation that Acton had lied about her childhood and suggested that Acton needed help. His response also echoed Arthur’s own claim that her daughter needed help, a claim made without substantiating evidence in the attack video.

Click accused journalist of ‘bait and switch’ when confronted with rape case

Click’s defense of Arthur prompted a direct challenge from Rowland, who pointed the Republican lawmaker toward reporting documenting the criminal case against Acton’s stepfather.

“Records confirm her mom’s husband was charged with raping Acton when she was 12…and skipped town,” Rowland wrote.

Click responded by questioning what the rape case had to do with Acton’s account of living in a tent during childhood.

“What does that have to do with a tent .? Of course that is bad. That wasn’t part of the discussion. Nice bait and switch Darell. You should be her press secretary.”

In the follow-up post, Click acknowledged the seriousness of the abuse allegations but continued defending his position that Acton’s account of living in a tent was a separate issue.

Yet the rape proceedings were directly relevant to the credibility of the person Click had just praised. Donna Arthur’s relationship with her daughter ended following the allegations against her husband, whom she supported during the proceedings. The attack video relies on her status as Acton’s mother while omitting the circumstances of their estrangement.

Acton’s childhood homelessness and sexual abuse were also described together in a detailed 2019 interview with The Youngstown Vindicator, published years before she entered electoral politics. Acton described spending a winter living in a tent outside Youngstown amid poverty, neglect and abuse that ultimately led to her removal from her mother’s custody.

Her younger brother, Philip Stearns, has separately corroborated the family’s experience of living in a tent and described the neglect, hunger and abuse they endured.

The criminal records do not independently establish where Acton lived during every portion of her childhood. They do establish that one of the most serious events she described — criminal proceedings against her stepfather over allegations of sexual abuse — occurred.

Click offered no evidence that Acton fabricated the account of living in a tent. Instead, after being presented with the rape charge against the man his preferred messenger had defended, he accused Rowland of changing the subject.

Click himself was investigated over separate child sex abuse allegations

Click’s decision to defend Arthur carries additional significance in Sandusky County, where his own history involving allegations of child sexual abuse has recently returned to public attention.

As TiffinOhio.net reported October 6, the Fremont Police Department investigated Click in fall 2025 after receiving an abuse referral from the Oregon Department of Human Services.

The September 29, 2025, referral originated with an unidentified third-party report alleging that Click and the father of an 18-year-old had physically and sexually abused the person when they were a child. The report identified Click as the person’s former pastor at Fremont Baptist Temple, where he had served for 19 years.

According to police records obtained by TiffinOhio.net, the referral alleged that the person had been beaten, starved and sexually assaulted by their father and Click.

Fremont Det. Sgt. Matthew Ranazzi located and interviewed the person identified as the alleged victim. The person denied the allegations, said they had never reported abuse by either man to anyone in Oregon and told police they did not remember Click doing anything to them.

Detectives contacted Click on October 1. Click denied ever physically or sexually abusing anyone and told police he did not remember the person named in the referral, although they “might have been a member of his church.”

The Fremont investigation was closed after the person’s denial. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which reviewed the referral because Click was a sitting state lawmaker, declined further investigation on October 8.

The allegations against Click were not substantiated by investigators, and no criminal charges resulted from the inquiry.

When journalist D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster later confronted Click about the investigation, Click repeatedly rejected the allegations, describing himself as having a clean conscience, “squeaky clean” and “ivory clean.”

Click also disputed the characterization of the person’s connection to Fremont Baptist Temple.

“Attended is not a member,” Click told Byrnes. “There’s a lot of people that come and go. I do not know them.”

Click’s previous investigation and the criminal proceedings involving Acton’s stepfather are separate matters, with sharply different evidentiary records. The allegations involving Click were denied by the person identified as the alleged victim and were not substantiated. In Acton’s case, police and court records document an arrest, grand jury indictment and subsequent flight from prosecution.

The significance of Click’s own history is not that it proves wrongdoing. It is that he has personally experienced public scrutiny over allegations of child sexual abuse, forcefully rejected accusations against himself and objected to how journalists have characterized his relationship with the person named in the police report.

On Tuesday, however, he publicly accepted an estranged mother’s attack on another person’s childhood history without presenting evidence supporting her accusations.

Click quietly left Fremont Baptist Temple months before abuse referral

Click’s relationship with Fremont Baptist Temple has itself been the subject of extensive TiffinOhio.net reporting.

Click says he stepped down as lead pastor at the end of March 2025 after 19 years, assuming the honorary title of pastor emeritus. But the leadership change was not publicly announced through any channel TiffinOhio.net identified at the time, and the church’s website continued listing him as pastor for nearly another year.

It was not until February 2026 that TiffinOhio.net first reported Click’s departure from the pulpit.

Click disputed the characterization of his departure as quiet, declaring on social media, “Actually, it was very public. You just missed it.” He did not identify a contemporaneous announcement when challenged to do so.

An October 6 TiffinOhio.net investigation subsequently established the sequence: Click says he stopped leading the church in March 2025; Oregon child welfare officials forwarded allegations involving him to Fremont police six months later; the investigation became public in November; and the church continued presenting him as pastor until after TiffinOhio.net reported the departure in February 2026.

No evidence reviewed by TiffinOhio.net establishes that Click left Fremont Baptist Temple because of the allegations that surfaced six months later. Click has said the transition allowed him to expand his traveling ministry and political activities.

Click’s years as a pastor remain central to his public identity. He has frequently framed his legislative work in terms of Christian principles, parental rights, family values and protecting children.

His record involving other lawmakers accused of misconduct has also drawn scrutiny. TiffinOhio.net previously reported that Click continued cosponsoring legislation with Republican Rep. Rodney Creech, who had been investigated following allegations of sexual misconduct involving a minor family member. Creech denied sexual wrongdoing and was not charged. A special prosecutor nevertheless described aspects of his admitted conduct as concerning and suspicious.

Click and Creech continued their legislative collaboration, including on a measure promoted as protecting children. The prior reporting found no public statement from Click calling for Creech’s resignation or directly addressing the special prosecutor’s findings.

Those separate episodes provide relevant context for Click’s latest remarks: a former pastor and state lawmaker who has publicly emphasized child protection, confronted abuse allegations involving himself and maintained working relationships with an accused colleague is now defending an estranged mother’s accusations against a woman whose childhood rape allegations resulted in documented criminal proceedings.

Records confirm Acton’s stepfather was arrested, indicted and fled prosecution

The documentary record of Acton’s childhood abuse allegations became clearer Tuesday when National Review and the Associated Press reported obtaining historical police and court documents.

National Review reported that Cledith Arthur, Donna Arthur’s husband, was charged with sexually abusing Acton when she was 12. The evidence included a sworn statement from Acton’s biological father, and Acton herself was called as a witness.

The Associated Press independently obtained police and court records showing that Arthur was arrested in July 1978, pleaded not guilty and was indicted by a grand jury that September.

According to the Ohio Public Media Statehouse News Bureau, authorities issued a warrant for Cledith Arthur’s arrest on October 26, 1978, after he failed to appear in court. Attempts to locate him continued in subsequent years.

The available records do not establish a conviction or the final disposition of the case, but they confirm that Acton’s childhood allegations led to criminal charges, an indictment and an outstanding warrant.

The Statehouse News Bureau also reported that Donna Arthur married Cledith Arthur in 1975, after he had been indicted for incest in an earlier case, and remained married to him until his death in Pennsylvania in 2004.

Donna Arthur acknowledged supporting her husband during the proceedings in a 2020 interview with the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue. She denied that her husband abused Acton and disputed her daughter’s childhood account, but acknowledged leaving town with him while the children remained in their father’s care.

The history makes Click’s portrayal of Arthur as a concerned mother particularly consequential. Her relationship with Acton did not end over an ordinary family disagreement. It ended amid criminal proceedings accusing Arthur’s husband of raping her daughter, proceedings during which Arthur supported her husband rather than Acton.

Other Republicans condemn the video Click defended

Click’s response also placed him at odds with prominent members of his own party and conservative commentators who condemned the attack.

Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik, a former Findlay mayor serving in Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration, said the video crossed a line regardless of political affiliation.

“I don’t care what political party you belong to or which candidate you support. There are lines we shouldn’t cross, and this is one of them. We can disagree on plenty of things without losing our sense of decency.”

Mihalik shared criticism from Meghan McCain, the conservative commentator and daughter of the late Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain, who called the video a “dastardly ad” that should never have been produced.

Conservative columnist Tim Carney warned that the attack could damage Ramaswamy’s campaign, writing, “This ad could sink Vivek.” Republican strategist Liz Mair and commentator Mary Katharine Ham likewise questioned the political judgment behind using Acton’s estranged mother to discredit her.

National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez condemned the attack as despicable and amoral, arguing that it should become a political disaster.

Click, by contrast, praised the mother featured in the video, suggested Acton lied about her childhood and maintained his position after being confronted with the criminal case.

The video has circulated widely through conservative accounts supporting Ramaswamy, although its producer and funding source remain unidentified. Ramaswamy’s campaign has not established that it commissioned the recording. Its spokeswoman, Connie Luck, continued questioning Acton’s honesty Tuesday rather than disavowing the attack.

Acton’s brother defends her as Click faces reelection

Acton’s younger brother, Philip Stearns, responded Tuesday with a statement condemning the use of their estranged mother in the governor’s race.

“It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Stearns said.

“After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.”

Stearns described Ramaswamy as a “pathetic excuse for a man,” accusing him of exploiting his sister’s childhood trauma for political purposes.

The controversy now has a direct connection to northwest Ohio’s legislative election. Click, a three-term Republican from Vickery, faces Democratic challenger Aaron Jones in Ohio House District 88, which encompasses Seneca and Sandusky counties, on November 3.

Click’s Tuesday remarks were not an anonymous political attack or an allegation attributed to someone else. They were statements he published under his own name, followed by a second response after a journalist confronted him with the documented rape charge against Acton’s stepfather.

The records establish that Donna Arthur supported the husband charged with raping her daughter, that she remained married to him until his death, and that Acton’s account of the resulting family separation was publicly documented years before she entered politics.

They also establish that Click’s own abuse investigation was closed after the person identified as the alleged victim denied the accusations, and that Click himself denied wrongdoing.

Against that record, Click chose to describe Arthur as a mother who appeared to care deeply about Acton’s well-being. When presented with the rape case that preceded the family’s estrangement, he did not withdraw that characterization. He accused the journalist who raised it of a “bait and switch.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.