The incident unfolded in the 200 block of South Washington Street on Nov. 12, when personnel from Tiffin-Fostoria Municipal Court entered the apartment to conduct the eviction. Police said the male resident fired one round from a pistol as court personnel entered. The workers did not see the man and could not determine whether he had shot himself.

Tiffin police and deputies from the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office responded to the apartment. Authorities were aware that the man had previously fired at law enforcement officers in 2021, according to a statement released Thursday by Tiffin Police Administrative Lt. J.A. DeMonte.

Street closed, nearby buildings evacuated

Officers temporarily closed South Washington Street and evacuated nearby residences and businesses while they worked to secure the scene. Police also requested that Tiffin City Schools implement a precautionary lockdown because students were approaching their lunchtime period.

Police emphasized that students were never directly threatened during the incident.

Officers eventually deployed a drone to search the apartment and discovered the man deceased from a single gunshot wound. The department did not establish in its initial statement whether the fatal wound was self-inflicted.

The man’s identity is being withheld pending further investigation and notification of his next of kin. Police have not released additional details about the circumstances of his death.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio Senate Bill 214 alters the definition of dangerous ordnance, which comes from the federal National Firearms Act. Under federal law it’s illegal to own dangerous ordnance like explosives and automatic rifles without registration.

But after the Trump administration eliminated the fee as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a Texas judge tossed the restrictions themselves. That ruling only applied to parties in the case, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives chose not to appeal. The agency later issued guidance stating it would no longer enforce the rules.

The problem, Ohio gun rights advocates contend, is that Ohio’s laws reflect the previous footing, under which owning a silencer or a short-barreled rifle constitutes a fifth-degree felony. And more to the point, Grant Balzer from Gun Owners of America told committee members, the path ahead for changing Ohio’s laws suddenly looks a bit less certain.

“Upcoming changes in our state government will likely make it far more difficult to secure the attention and votes needed to advance and finalize this legislation,” he said. “If this committee does not act before the session adjourns, these essential corrections could be delayed for months, if not years.”

The bill passed the state Senate 31-1 but it only addressed the issue of silencers. A last-minute committee amendment Tuesday added short-barreled rifles and shotguns to the bill.

The measure passed out of committee easily, but not without objections from Ohio state Rep. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland. Gun violence claims hundreds of lives a year, he said, holding up a sheet of paper with the pictures of nine different people.

“There’s just one bill that you guys are trying to push, but this same vigor is not given to the bills that will help save the lives of Ohioans,” he said. “I had a young man just literally get shot steps from my house — steps from my house. And we are here today talking about this bill. We need to save lives in Ohio.”

Before the proposal made its way to the floor, Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman said given the court rulings, “I don’t think (the penalties are) legal in the state of Ohio, or at least it’s not clear enough that they are.”

House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, echoed his frustration before the measure went to the House floor, saying pushing measures like this and not priorities like affordability could be “why Republicans lost so badly last week.”

“So, what did they do one week after the people of Ohio said, ‘please do something different’? They come back with a culture war gun bill,” he said. “You have to be so out of touch, your head has to be so deep in the sand, to think that is what the people of Ohio want right now.”

Floor debate

Ohio state Reps. Tex Fischer, R-Boardman, and Kellie Deeter, R-Norwalk, co-sponsored an S.B. 214 companion bill and urged their colleagues to support the Senate proposal.

“This is a win for gun owners. This is a win for public safety advocates. This is in no way, shape, or form anything that is going to make Ohio streets less safe,” Fischer insisted.

Deeter said her district has a rich tradition of hunting and shooting sports.

“For many of my constituents, these are not abstract legal classifications,” she said. “They have practical implications for how they exercise their Second Amendment rights.”

Deeter argued suppressors don’t actually silence firearms, but by reducing sound, they can help protect gunowners’ hearing. She also criticized the way current definitions classify firearms. With a few accessories, Deeter said, a pistol can become a short-barreled rifle under federal definitions.

“Same ammunition, same firing mechanism, different legal classification,” she said.

Brewer was the only lawmaker to debate against the measure. He questioned the lawmakers’ priorities, and recited a handful of stalled bipartisan proposals aimed at improving gun safety, through education or tax breaks on safety devices.

“I am tired of watching the General Assembly find urgency for political battles while Ohio families are waiting for solutions,” he said, “Our children cannot wait.”

The proposal passed the House 68-27. Because of the changes in committee, the proposal now returns to the Ohio Senate.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The results, they say, could mean a mandate for bringing costs down and more power for young Latinos, but also a danger for Democrats if Republicans rally back to the polls in 2028. 

“It looks like more Trump voters who didn’t vote Republican stayed home rather than switching (to Democrats),” said Lenny Bronner, founder of Broome Street Labs and a data scientist formerly with the Washington Post, based on his analysis of 13 states with detailed results. 

“Those voters are easier for the GOP to win back than those who chose a Democratic candidate,” Bronner said. 

Bronner estimated 75% of Democratic gains came from a turnout gap and about 20% from Republicans switching sides and voting for Democrats.

His analysis included turnout data for Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, West Virginia, Minnesota and Michigan. The share of Democrats’ gain that came from a turnout gap ranged from 40% for Texas to 133% for Michigan among the states he studied; some states had only partial detailed results.

Bronner wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that partial results in Texas showed that voters flipped their ballots more than expected; 45% of Democratic gains there came from voters switching away from Republicans. “So far, Texas is the only state where our model indicates that persuasion explains more of Democrats net gain than turnout does!” he wrote.

A University of Florida political science professor, Michael McDonald, also saw a turnout surge for young voters faced with high grocery bills, student loan debt and sluggish wages, based on detailed results from Georgia and Colorado. Trump’s older voter constituency was more likely to stay home, he wrote in a Substack post. 

In both Colorado and Georgia, 18- to 25-year-olds had the biggest jump in turnout compared with the 2022 midterms, he wrote, while it fell for voters older than 40. 

“This all makes sense when you realize that we just witnessed the most diverse electorate for a midterm election in U.S. history, with big increases over 2022 in Latino turnout,” McDonald wrote. “Latinos are markedly younger than whites, so if their turnout increases it means more younger voters are in the mix.”

Even in Florida, where Republicans continued to dominate elections, GOP turnout was lower than in 2022 despite a registration drive that increased Republican registration by 400,000, McDonald wrote in another Substack post. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ drive to purge voter rolls, affecting mostly Democratic and unaffiliated voters, may have played a role, he wrote. 

“DeSantis’ shrewd politics appears in part due to suppressing Democrat and unaffiliated votes through a massive voter registration purge that pushed Florida red, rather than rallying Florida Republicans to vote,” McDonald wrote.

On a statewide basis, midterm turnout increased almost 13 points in Mississippi since the last midterms, as the state appears close to electing its first Black senator since Reconstruction. Turnout fell to a historic low in South Dakota, where Republicans still dominate voting.

The University of Florida’s turnout calculations provide a window into overall turnout, which it measures as a share of voter-eligible population, excluding noncitizens and ineligible felons. McDonald did the calculations for the University of Florida’s Election Lab, and Stateline compared them to 2024 and 2022 turnouts for a state-by-state map.

The analysis shows the highest turnout for 2026 in Maine, Minnesota and Michigan, all at more than 63%, and lowest in West Virginia (33.3%), Oklahoma (37.1%)  and Hawaii, Indiana and Tennessee (all 38.2%).

South Dakota’s midterm vote remained heavily Republican, though Democrats gained legislative seats for the first time in 18 years. They took four new seats, for a total of 12 in the 105-seat legislature. 

South Dakota had higher turnout in 2022, possibly in part because of contentious statewide ballot measures for Medicaid expansion, which passed, and marijuana legalization, which failed. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@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.

The land sits on the east bank of the Sandusky River near Madison and Front streets, adjacent to City Lot 6. The city is considering residential, commercial, hospitality, recreational and mixed-use developments, with proposals accepted on a rolling basis.

Under the city’s October 21 request for proposals, no specific building design, number of housing units, tenant mix or asking price has been established. Interested developers must submit their own concepts, financial plans and proposed business terms.

The city prefers to sell the property but will consider leases, development agreements and other legally permissible arrangements. Tiffin City Council would have to approve any final transaction.

Tax exemption offered for new construction

The parcel falls within Tiffin Community Reinvestment Area No. 1, where qualifying new construction is eligible for a 100% real property tax exemption on the assessed value of the new improvements for 15 years.

The exemption would apply to eligible new construction rather than the underlying land. Developers must satisfy program requirements and obtain the necessary approvals. Selection through the development solicitation would not automatically qualify a project for the incentive.

The tax benefit is among the financial considerations developers can incorporate into their proposals. The city has not specified how much private investment it expects to attract or the value of tax revenue that a future project could receive through the exemption.

Public parking and riverfront conditions

One firm requirement is that the existing public parking in City Lot 6 be preserved. Developers must also explain how their projects would accommodate parking, deliveries, accessibility and construction activity without unnecessarily disrupting downtown operations.

The waterfront location introduces additional development considerations. The city’s solicitation requires applicants to evaluate floodplain restrictions, the condition and stability of the riverwall, drainage, utilities and other engineering requirements. Final property boundaries must be confirmed through surveying and title review.

An illustrative concept included with the request shows a possible mixed-use development with ground-floor commercial spaces, upper-floor residences, balconies and patios. The city is accepting alternative designs and has not approved that concept for construction.

Mayor Lee Wilkinson said in the city’s October 28 announcement that officials want new development to attract activity and investment while protecting the public parking used by downtown businesses and visitors.

No fixed deadline for proposals

The solicitation was authorized through Ordinance 2026-51, adopted by City Council on September 8. Proposals will be reviewed as they arrive, and the city may begin negotiations before closing the solicitation. No submission deadline has been set.

Applicants must document their development experience, proposed use of the property, financing capacity, investment plans, implementation schedule and requested terms. The city’s solicitation also requires disclosure of relevant conflicts of interest and explains that submitted proposals are subject to Ohio’s public records law.

Proposals must be submitted as a searchable PDF, including the required signed certification, to City Administrator Nick Dutro at ndutro@tiffinohio.gov, with the subject line “Downtown Riverfront Development Proposal.”

Additional property information, the full solicitation and supporting materials are available at OneSeneca’s riverfront development page. Interested parties are instructed to confirm the solicitation’s current status and obtain any written updates before submitting proposals.

The project was also discussed during City Council’s November 2 meeting, when officials outlined other major infrastructure and development initiatives. TiffinOhio.net reported on those plans earlier this month.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

City officials announced that bidding has opened for Tiffin East Park, previously known as Louisa K. Fast Park, just east of the city limits. The U.S. General Services Administration is handling the auction, while Tiffin will provide the deed to the successful bidder.

The property was used by the federal government to store grain during World War II before being transferred to Tiffin through the Federal Lands to Parks Program, which makes surplus federal property available for public recreational use.

Tiffin City Council authorized the sale in 2025, clearing the way for the federal auction process. City Administrator Nick Dutro discussed the pending sale during council’s November 2 meeting, describing the property as underutilized. TiffinOhio.net previously reported that the city had worked with federal officials to make the land available for another permitted use.

Park’s historic name transferred to another property

The sale was accompanied by changes to the city’s park names intended to preserve recognition of Louisa K. Fast, whose former home stands beside another Tiffin park.

In 2025, City Council renamed Apple-Jack Park as Louisa K. Fast Park, moving the commemorative name to the property adjacent to Fast’s former residence. The original Louisa K. Fast Park was subsequently renamed Tiffin East Park in anticipation of its sale.

The federal auction listing continues to identify the State Route 101 property under its former Louisa K. Fast Park name. It classifies the site as 2.48 acres of recreational land and provides an invitation for bids.

Although Tiffin says bids are being accepted, the federal listing’s property description still displays “COMING SOON!” Prospective buyers must register and should confirm the current bidding schedule and requirements with GSA before submitting an offer.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The state has been a hotbed of election fraud conspiracy theories. After President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, state lawmakers even pursued an audit in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, that found no evidence of fraud.

“To my fellow Republicans who have been trafficking in these lies for the last six years, you need to stop,” Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin said at a county Board of Supervisors meeting.

As Republicans grasp for answers following their stunning losses, election officials, voting rights advocates and researchers are watching to see whether Trump will lead the party toward false narratives around election fraud or to accept normal explanations, such as voter dissatisfaction and poor campaign messages.

The path they choose could help determine whether the country moves past an era defined by Trump’s election denial after his 2020 loss. 

But Trump has sent mixed signals.

As the scale of GOP losses became clear last week, Trump initially pledged to accept the results. 

That changed over the weekend. On Truth Social, Trump shared posts from others suspicious of the results. By Monday, he had grown more explicit.

“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???” Trump wrote in a social media post.

‘180 in an hour’

Polls leading up to the midterms largely favored Democrats, though some understated the level of support for Democratic candidates. 

Trump has long promoted falsehoods about stolen elections and voter fraud. After the 2016 election, Trump claimed millions of people had illegally voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

In 2020, Trump tried to overturn his losses in key battleground states with lawsuits that raised unfounded claims of fraud. His rhetoric eventually led his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

He also pressured election officials, including a demand that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the state.

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican and former longtime official in the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, publicly denounced Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 election. 

Now a senior fellow at the Secure Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit focused on strengthening elections, Sterling voiced concern this week that election denialism will become a tactic of politicians moving forward.

“I was sort of surprised and pleased about the president’s initial responses,” Sterling said in an interview. “But I also took it with a grain of salt, knowing that he can go 180 in an hour, depending on who he’s talking to.”

Fewer online rumors

Election rumors haven’t gained nearly the same level of traction this year as they did in 2020, researchers of online disinformation say. 

Immediately after Trump’s initial acknowledgment of Republican defeat, only a few committed election denialists were questioning not simply the results but the security of the elections, according to The Election Rumor Rundown, a website by the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington.

Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who studies online disinformation, wrote in a viral social media post last week that the atmosphere in her lab was “giddy” as her team absorbed the possibility that claims of rigged elections may be in the past, “at least for the time being.”

As Trump has moved back toward denialism, however, online conversation around denialism and conspiracy theories has grown. Starbird shared a graph on Monday showing a spike in discussions on X focused on rigged, dishonest or fraudulent elections after Trump posted on his site, Truth Social.

In a Monday interview, Starbird said “hardcore” election deniers have been advancing conspiracy theories for the past week. They have been excited by Trump’s return to the denialism conversation, which she said also drew in additional online influencers.

Still, Starbird said election deniers lack the kind of popular support and infrastructure they’ve enjoyed in the past. Within days of Election Day 2020, protests were already emerging around the results, but that kind of on-the-ground movement is absent this year.

“I’m still pretty confident that the ingredients for a full-fledged election denialism movement are not in place,” Starbird said.

Lawsuits show ‘red line’

Since Election Day, conspiracy theories have not received nearly as much attention from major media platforms as they did following the 2020 election. That year, Trump supporters made wild, false claims about voting machines during TV appearances.

Some of those statements led to massive legal payouts. Dominion Voting Systems, a large manufacturer of election equipment, sued Fox News, alleging defamation by hosts and guests. Fox settled the lawsuit in 2023 for $787.5 million. In 2024, Newsmax settled a lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, which builds electronic voting systems, for $40 million.

Two former Georgia election workers sued former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump political adviser, for defamation surrounding the 2020 election, and secured a $148 million judgment against him. In early 2025, the women reached a settlement that included undisclosed compensation.

“I think those suits did chastise people and remind potential dangerous elements where the red line is where you can really get yourself in trouble,” Kevin Johnson, executive director of Election Reformers Network, a nonpartisan group that seeks to protect elections from polarization, said in an interview.

Election deniers join administration

At the same time, Johnson added, some election deniers ended up working in the second Trump administration. 

Former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Trump had won Pennsylvania in 2020, though Biden won. FBI Director Kash Patel has refused to say whether Biden won the 2020 election — a stance echoed by numerous Trump nominees who evade offering a direct answer when questioned during congressional hearings.

Since Election Day, some Trump supporters have joined the president in embracing denialism about the midterms. Kari Lake, a prominent Arizona Republican and Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Jamaica, wrote on social media without evidence that the “math isn’t mathing here.” Mike Lindell, the former MyPillow CEO, has called for a “full recount” of the midterm elections.

However, nearly all high-ranking elected Republicans have acknowledged the losses, with some putting forward political and policy explanations. 

For instance, Vice President JD Vance, widely expected to run for president in 2028, faulted the war with Iran and hasn’t repeated Trump’s denialism comments.

Sen. Ted Cruz, who will soon be the only Texas Republican in a statewide office, described the election results as a “Watergate-level repudiation.” 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said the “people have spoken.”

Confidence in elections

Election denialism’s more limited reach so far this year among leading Republicans — other than Trump — comes after election administrators spent the past six years attempting to bolster public confidence in elections, current and former election officials said.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said in an interview that election officials had prepared to respond to false claims surrounding the election, not only by rebutting falsehoods but also providing accurate information about elections and the results. In his state, that included going to court if the Trump administration attempted to interfere, he said.

But so far, Simon said, the volume of rigged and stolen election claims in Minnesota doesn’t match what he’s seen before.

“Compared to past election cycles, I have seen fewer examples after this election of people making election denialism claims,” Simon said.

Americans broadly trust elections, according to a survey conducted in September and October by the Pew Research Center. 

Nearly identical percentages of registered voters supporting Republican and Democratic candidates — 90% and 91%, respectively — expressed some level of confidence that elections in their community would be well run. By contrast, 97% of Democratic-supporting voters voiced confidence in 2024, compared to 88% of Republican-supporting voters.

Building trust in elections requires a lot of work in between elections, said Ari Mittleman, executive director of Keep Our Republic, a pro-democracy nonprofit. Over time, the role of election officials has evolved to encompass public outreach.

“Even if their job description largely centers around being an administrator, they now need to be an ambassador for the entire profession,” Mittleman said in an interview.

Ahead of Election Day, Trump and other federal officials declined to flatly rule out forms of federal election interference, raising fears among Democrats and voting rights advocates that the administration would try to disrupt voting or discredit the results.

The Trump administration heavily promoted efforts to root out noncitizen voting. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security arrested dozens of noncitizens over alleged election crimes in the weeks before the election and the U.S. Department of Justice sued dozens of states in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain sensitive voter data to aid its efforts to find noncitizen voters.

The Justice Department also sued California to try to force the state to set aside the ballots of 20,000 individuals the Trump administration said were suspected noncitizens. The DOJ dropped the lawsuit after the Supreme Court rejected the request on the eve of Election Day.

Will ‘fever’ break?

Speaking on the Friday after Election Day, Simon said he remained ready for legal action if necessary. He said he was pleasantly surprised by Trump’s tentative acceptance of the results, but warned that “as we’ve come to know and learn, that could change” — seeming to anticipate the president’s turn toward denialism days later.

Simon said he was not yet convinced the 2026 election would “break the fever” of election denialism, given the looming presidential race in 2028. Election deniers are still incentivized to push false claims for online attention or money, he said.

“My hope is that we can get back to understanding that elections are fundamentally fair and honest and secure,” Simon said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The bill was not on Tuesday’s Senate agenda, even though the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed Ohio Senate Bill 341 in June just before the lawmakers went on break.

“I have no idea why it wasn’t on,” said State Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus. “Starting next week — everything that comes to the floor — I’m going to have an amendment for, and this bill is going to be the amendment. And if they table it, then obviously we know where they stand on it.”

Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, said he is in favor of the bill.

“I would vote yes, but I also have to make sure that we have the support and we are going to talk about it in caucus and see where it lands,” he said. 

Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, is confident the bill would pass. 

“I believe if we brought it forward, it would,” she said. 

Under current law in Ohio, 17-year-olds are able to marry someone up to four years older than them, as long as a juvenile court signs off on it. The new legislation would require Ohioans to be 18 to get married. 

“Eighteen should be the minimum age for marriage, and no person’s future should be decided before they’ve actually had a chance to live it,” said state Rep. Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington.

DeMora and fellow state Sen. Bill Blessing, R-Colerain Twp., introduced the bipartisan bill earlier this year. There has been no public opposition to the bill. 

Blessing said he doesn’t know who could be blocking it. 

“My argument would simply be to just call this before a vote and let people vote your conscience on this,” he said. “It’s a simple bill. We’ve spent way too much time on this, and it should be done in lame duck.”

During a press conference about the bill on Tuesday, women shared their stories of marrying young, and struggling to get out of the situations that followed.

Stephanie Lowry was 14 when her dad died of brain cancer, 15 when she became pregnant by a 19-year-old man, and 16 when she got married.

“My mother thought it was the best option at the time, but since then she has publicly spoken about her deep regret and wish to change the past,” she said. 

While marriage “technically emancipated” Lowry, she said it didn’t give her the rights she would have as a legal adult.

“It simply meant my mother was legally free from providing housing or support, leaving me completely dependent on my adult husband for survival,” Lowry said.

Her marriage became abusive when she was 17. She said she then found herself homeless while caring for a nine-month old child. She couldn’t obtain housing, or a divorce for that matter, until she was 18.

“Allowing a child to take on adult liabilities without adult rights isn’t freedom. It’s a trap,” Lowry said. 

Stephanie Lane was 16 when she married a 31-year-old.

“I couldn’t vote,” she said. “I could not legally make any adult decisions. He became my legal guardian. …. What followed was more than two decades of force of control and abuse — emotional, financial, sexual, spiritual.” 

She has now been out of that marriage for seven years. She graduated from high school 24 years after she was supposed to, didn’t have a drivers license until she was 26, and didn’t have a job outside of the home until 2019.

Eighteen states have a law banning child marriage — most recently California and Oklahoma, according to Unchained At Last, an organization dedicated to ending underage marriage.

More than 5,000 Ohio children have been married as minors since 2000 and nearly 300,000 minors nationally were married between 2000 and 2018, according to Unchained At Last.

Sixty minors were married in Ohio between 2020 and 2025 — most of them girls being married to adult men, according to Fraidy Reiss, the organization’s founder and executive director.

“All marriages before age 18, regardless of the maturity of the minor involved, is recognized as forced marriage, which is a form of modern slavery, and it’s legal here in Ohio,” she said. “That is unacceptable.”

DeMora said the fact that passage hasn’t happened “is just another black mark on the state of Ohio that people use against us when they want to come here for businesses or to live and raise a family.

“When a bill like this can pass in states that are so different both politically, geographically, and culture-wise, then we think that Ohio needs to pass this bill,” DeMora said. 

Russo said early marriage can expose young people to lifelong consequences, interrupting their education, limiting their opportunities to seek education, achieve financial independence, and build a future.

“When a 17-year-old is expected to take the responsibility of a spouse or parent, their opportunity to focus on their own development is taken away,” Russo said. “Young people who marry before adulthood often face the risk of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and exploitation.” 

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said his caucus has not yet talked about the bill. 

“I guess I can’t speculate,” he told reporters Tuesday. 

Any bill that does not pass before the end of the year must be reintroduced in the new General Assembly to be considered. 

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

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The company said the resulting two companies — CVS Health and CVS Pharmacy — would be more focused and would provide better experiences for its customers as it also provides “more affordability, greater access, and a simpler experience,” President and CEO David Joyner said in a written statement. The split is expected to be complete in 2028.

However, the details of the deal show that the breakup doesn’t address what critics see as a core conflict that could be making medicine more expensive. 

Instead, it might be more accurately seen as separating the more valuable parts of CVS’s sprawling enterprise from those that are worth less, said Antonio Ciaccia, a Columbus-based drug pricing expert. But, he said, it’s still progress.

“CVS just scraped the cream off the top of their business and then cut the dead weight,” he said in a post on X. “That doesn’t mean that the move isn’t important or healthy progress. It is. But… This isn’t ‘breaking up big medicine.’ It’s clinging to big medicine and unloading the leftovers.”

The seventh largest corporation by revenue, CVS Health is a huge player in multiple sectors of healthcare. 

It owns the nation’s largest brick-and-mortar retail chain, and it owns a pharmacy middleman which handles nearly a third of drug transactions. That includes negotiating with drugmakers, contracting with its own and competitors’ pharmacies and billing its own and competing insurance companies. 

It also owns Aetna, the nation’s third-largest insurer, Oak Street Health, which owns 900 primary-care providers, and other operations.

If it’s approved, the breakup announced last week will place all the retail and mail-order pharmacies, as well as CVS Minute Clinics, into one corporation called CVS Pharmacy.

The drug middleman, known as CVS Caremark, Aetna, and Oak Street Health will go into a separate, publicly traded company that, at least initially, will be called CVS Health.

“Both companies will continue to advance innovative technology solutions to improve the healthcare experience as we deliver on our purpose to simplify healthcare, one person, one family and one community at a time,” Joyner, the CEO, said. 

But the way the resulting companies are grouped gives away the game, Ciaccia said. 

Like most others, CVS’s retail operation has been lagging, with the company closing 900 locations between 2021 and 2024. Walgreens has been bought out by a private equity group and is closing some of its stores, and Rite Aid declared bankruptcy twice before closing all of its stores last year.

But not all of CVS’s drug-selling operations will go with CVS Pharmacy. CVS Specialty will remain with the lucrative middleman and insurance operations. 

Specialty drugs are usually the most expensive. They treat complex diseases like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. 

They’re also highly profitable. Analysis by Nephron Research found that in 2023 the sale of specialty drugs accounted for 39% of the profitability of huge drug middlemen — or pharmacy benefit managers — such as CVS Caremark.

“Specialty is now the largest PBM profit pool,” Nephron reported. 

Ciaccia pointed out that there are no fixed definitions of what is or is not a specialty drug.

The big middlemen decide that and then they appear to price the products accordingly. In 2022, for example, middlemen charged employers $16,000 for 180 units of the generic multiple sclerosis drug Tecfidera. Meanwhile Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs charged $162 for the same prescription in a transaction that cut out insurance and PBMs.

Not only do some critics see CVS as cherrypicking its most profitable operations for one of the successor companies. They also say that the split maintains the same conflict-ridden relationships that exist now.

In early 2025, the American Economic Liberties Project announced its initiative to break up big medicine. 

It argues that there is an inherent conflict when the same company owns a health insurer and a health provider such as a doctors office or a pharmacy. Such arrangements give conglomerates incentives to favor their own business over their competitors, and that drivers up health costs, the argument goes. 

Even so, the CVS split would keep payers such as Aetna and CVS Caremark under the same umbrella as providers such as CVS Specialty and Oak Street Health.

The American Economic Liberties Project last week said the CVS breakup appeared to be an attempt to stave off a forced split that would be more meaningful to consumers.

“CVS is breaking itself up, but, as @freer_emma warns in Modern Healthcare, this is the company’s attempt to deter actual reforms,” it said in a post on X.

However, Ciaccia said, the breakup does eliminate some conflicts.

Starting around 2016, Ohio’s independent pharmacists started to see big drops in reimbursements from the big three pharmacy middlemen — including CVS Caremark.

CVS denied that it was favoring its own pharmacies over its competitors, but the independents in late 2017 started getting letters from the company. They made it seem that the CVS acquisition operation knew that the middleman operation was underpaying independent pharmacists.

“Ever wonder what your pharmacy business is worth? If so, we should talk,” the letter from Shane Stockton, CVS’s regional director of acquisitions, began.

“I’m a pharmacist myself. I know what independents are experiencing right now: declining reimbursements, increasing costs, a more complex regulatory environment,” Stockton continued. “Mounting challenges like these make selling your store to CVS Pharmacy an attractive and practical option.”

Many did sell to CVS, which usually closed the pharmacies and moved their prescription files to existing CVS stores. Then CVS closed many of those stores as well.

That and other forces have taken a toll on pharmacy access in Ohio. The number of pharmacies has dropped by 455 — or 21% — from a peak of 2,211 in 2015, according to a database maintained by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy.

Ciaccia, who represented the Ohio Pharmacists Association in 2017, said many of those losses are likely attributable to the fact that CVS was deciding how much to pay its own pharmacies and those of its competitors. That arrangement apparently will be a thing of the past.

“If you would have asked me back then, could this lead to the divestiture of 9,000 pharmacies or 9,000 conflicts of interest… It is a massive step in the direction of breaking up big medicine,” he said.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The analysis, which was released in late October by the criminal justice advocacy organization FWD.us, found that arrests for vagrancy, an offense often associated with homelessness, rose 44% between 2024 and 2025, while arrests for marijuana possession increased 6% and possession of other drugs rose 3%.

Arrests for immigration violations nearly tripled, rising 188% between 2024 and 2025, amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The increase continued into 2026, with an average of 36,093 arrests per month through July — nearly four times the monthly average in 2024, according to the report.

The findings point to a shift toward more aggressive enforcement of lower-level offenses, particularly in states that have rolled back major changes to their criminal legal systems in recent years, according to the analysis. 

Voters in nearly a dozen states also backed tougher approaches to crime in this year’s midterm elections, approving statewide ballot measures that impose stricter penalties for certain offenses or tighten bail restrictions.

“There is at this point plenty of time to choose a different path from this one and to kind of redirect ourselves,” said Zoë Towns, the executive director of FWD.us.

The increases in arrests for low-level offenses also come as arrests for more serious offenses, including homicide, robbery and burglary, continue to decline, mirroring broader national crime trends.

Some of the sharpest increases in arrests for low-level offenses were concentrated in a handful of states.

Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada accounted for more than half of the nationwide increase in vagrancy arrests. FWD.us linked the trend in part to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which gave local governments greater latitude to enforce restrictions on sleeping outdoors.

Meanwhile, California and Oregon, which rolled back portions of earlier progressive drug policy changes in 2024, experienced increases in arrests for drug possession offenses other than marijuana. Those arrests rose 24% in California and 39% in Oregon.

In 2025, Black people were arrested for marijuana possession at more than four times the rate of white people. From 2024 to 2025, arrests of Black people rose nearly 10%, accounting for 83% of the national increase and 45% of all marijuana arrests in 2025.

But the analysis does not establish that the policy changes caused every increase in arrests or determine whether greater enforcement improved public safety.

The organization warned that continued growth in low-level arrests could reverse years of progress in reducing incarceration and racial disparities, particularly as states reconsider criminal justice policies amid ongoing debates over crime and public safety.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@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.

The health district’s sampling contractors had already entered the landfill and begun preparing to collect soil samples when officials received the warning and withdrew the team pending legal advice, Ajith Singh, the Seneca County General Health District’s director of environmental science and landfill compliance, confirmed Tuesday.

WIN Waste acknowledges that the sampling team entered the property and departed without collecting samples. The company denies obstructing the operation, maintaining that its attorney’s warning concerned testing it considered unlawful. The health district says the warning intimidated officials into suspending an inspection authorized by state law.

The confrontation interrupted a sampling program with a budget of up to $200,000, approved by the county Board of Health to determine whether hazardous chemicals remain in soil beneath an older, unlined section of the landfill being excavated for expansion. No samples have been collected, and the district plans to return November 18.

Legal warning preceded halted testing

In a November 4 letter sent to the health district’s attorney, Jack Van Kley, Dale Papajcik of the Cleveland-based law firm Squire Patton Boggs challenged the district’s authority to conduct additional soil testing at the landfill, formerly known as Sunny Farms.

Papajcik argued that the health district had failed to identify the specific regulatory purpose and necessity of its inspection. He also cited Ohio EPA’s determination that laboratory analysis was unnecessary under the approved waste-relocation plan.

The letter said WIN Waste would permit lawful inspections but warned that the company would pursue remedies if the district proceeded with testing that its attorneys considered unauthorized.

“Should SCGHD proceed to take samples and not follow Ohio Revised Code 3734.07(C), WIN Waste will be compelled to remedy the trespass and other offenses committed during and after such sampling event.”

The correspondence was sent by email and overnight mail, with copies to senior Ohio EPA officials. According to the health district, the warning reached officials the following morning, after its sampling personnel had arrived at the landfill.

Singh said the district withdrew its contractors until legal advice could be obtained. The district subsequently accused WIN Waste of interfering with its inspection authority through intimidation, announcing the confrontation in a November 6 press release.

WIN Waste’s account confirms that the contractors were on-site and preparing to collect samples. Ben Nutter, the company’s community engagement and government affairs representative, said WIN Waste had arranged for its own laboratory team to collect split samples for independent analysis. The health district confirmed that the company’s sampling team was present.

Nutter said approximately 20 people from multiple organizations attended a safety and preparation meeting before the district halted sampling. WIN Waste provided TiffinOhio.net with a photograph of personnel gathered at the excavation site, which the company said was taken shortly before the contractors departed.

In a November 9 letter to Health Commissioner Julie Richards, WIN Waste Vice President Brian Ezyk asserted that health district personnel stopped the sampling after receiving instructions from their attorney. Ezyk rejected the district’s characterization of the company’s warning as a threat to sue and demanded a retraction of its allegations.

The dispute centers on the effect of that warning. Both parties acknowledge that the health district entered the facility and suspended sampling before collecting its first sample. The district says its withdrawal resulted from WIN Waste’s legal threat; the company maintains that it cooperated and did nothing to prevent the inspection.

WIN Waste challenges health district’s inspection authority

Ohio Revised Code 3734.07(C) authorizes boards of health and their representatives to enter public or private property at reasonable times to inspect, investigate and obtain samples for determining compliance with Ohio’s solid-waste laws. Inspectors must properly identify themselves and state the purpose and necessity of the inspection.

The statute permits licensing action when authorized inspections are refused or obstructed. Subsection (D) specifically addresses inspections hindered or thwarted through intimidation and provides for recovery of certain costs when authorities obtain and execute a search warrant.

WIN Waste argues that the health district’s proposed sampling exceeds its authority because Ohio EPA has already approved a verification process that does not require additional laboratory analysis. The health district maintains that its October 29 notification satisfied the statutory inspection requirements and that it has authority to obtain samples to investigate potential environmental violations.

Papajcik’s November 4 letter also asserted that the proposed testing would violate Ohio Administrative Code 3745-37-08(C)(11). That provision concerns health districts obtaining legal assistance from appropriate state and local agencies to carry out their responsibilities. It contains no prohibition against soil sampling.

The health district maintains that WIN Waste’s conduct violated the inspection statute and has warned the company that interference could provide grounds for legal action or license-related enforcement. WIN Waste disputes that its warning constituted obstruction and has expressly agreed to permit inspections authorized under the statute.

Ohio EPA defends inspections without laboratory soil testing

The disputed sampling concerns an approximately 25-acre unlined disposal area where WIN Waste is relocating roughly 2 million cubic yards of historically buried waste into a newly constructed, lined landfill cell. Ohio EPA approved the waste-relocation plan through a September 11, 2024 permit-to-install.

Under the approved plan, waste and visibly affected soil are excavated before five-foot-deep test pits are dug at 100-foot intervals to confirm that the bottom of the buried waste has been reached. Inspectors examine the exposed soil for staining, discoloration and other visible indications of contamination.

The health district contends that visual inspections cannot establish whether chemical residues remain beneath the excavated waste. In an October 29 announcement, Richards cited historical Ohio EPA records documenting the disposal of benzene and cyanide at the landfill during the 1980s.

“Right now, the EPA is relying solely on a visual inspection of the excavation bottom, and that’s just not an adequate testing method to ensure our residents are safe,” Richards said.

In an October 14 letter, the health district asked Ohio EPA to require laboratory testing before excavation areas were backfilled. The district argued that contamination could remain undetected beneath the new protective infrastructure, particularly given the site’s unlined disposal history and underlying geology.

Ohio EPA declined that request and defended its position in a statement Tuesday to TiffinOhio.net.

Agency press secretary Bryant Somerville said regulators considered the site’s geology, natural clay deposits, existing environmental safeguards and groundwater-monitoring requirements when approving the relocation plan. Ohio EPA personnel have also been present during excavation work.

Somerville said the landfill undergoes groundwater monitoring twice annually under federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requirements and that benzene and cyanide have never been detected during that monitoring.

Ohio EPA maintains that the available environmental data, protective clay deposits and continued monitoring provide adequate protection of human health and the environment. The agency says it will continue overseeing the relocation project and evaluating new information.

Those groundwater results do not establish the chemical composition of soil left beneath the excavation. The health district’s proposed laboratory testing would examine that soil directly before it is covered by backfill and new landfill infrastructure.

WIN Waste maintains that moving the historic waste into a modern, engineered disposal cell provides substantial environmental protection and that additional testing would not alter the remediation already underway. Nutter said health district representatives participated in visual inspections of more than 40 test pits on November 5 that found no remaining waste or visible staining.

Health district plans to resume sampling November 18

The Seneca County Board of Health unanimously approved the independent testing program at an October 29 special meeting, authorizing expenditures not to exceed $200,000 from construction and demolition debris funds.

The district retained engineering firm Burgess & Niple to conduct sampling, with ALS Global designated to perform laboratory analysis. The plan calls for samples from approximately 95 remaining test pits, along with 15 duplicate samples for quality assurance.

Testing will examine soil for organic chemicals, heavy metals, cyanide, petroleum-related substances and selected PFAS compounds. Samples are to be collected from the bottoms of test pits, approximately five feet beneath the excavated landfill floor or side slopes, to assess soil conditions directly below the removed waste.

WIN Waste has criticized the proposed expense, arguing that the money could provide greater public-health benefits elsewhere. Health officials maintain that laboratory testing is necessary while the underlying soil remains accessible, before excavation and backfilling work progresses.

Singh confirmed Tuesday that no samples have been collected. The health district is planning another sampling operation for November 18, subject to contractor availability.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

It was a 106-73 vote, according to a House Republican staff member.

“Over the next two years, House Republicans will fight for American families,” Jordan told reporters after the GOP leadership elections. “When Democrats offer more government, we’ll offer more freedom. ”

Jordan did not take questions.

Jordan will succeed House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who declined to run again. 

The incoming Republican minority leader will be charged with growing the party’s seats after the House GOP lost more than 40 after last week’s elections. 

Jordan will also be tasked with fundraising for his party, and negotiating with Democrats on must-pass legislation, such as appropriations bills. But with the smallest Republican House minority since the 1990s, the GOP will have little sway in a chamber dominated by the majority party. 

A handful of House races are still too close to call, but The Associated Press has called 166 seats for Republicans and 255 for Democrats for the incoming 120th Congress.

Jordan, who has served in the House for two decades, chairs the House Judiciary Committee but has not held a senior GOP leadership position.

Jordan is a staunch defender of President Donald Trump. He was a founder of the House Freedom Caucus of far-right GOP members. 

Jordan was up against Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, the current Republican majority leader. 

Cheers could be heard outside the closed door meeting following the vote. 

Jordan and Scalise ran for speaker in 2023 after Republicans voted to strip then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy of his role. Scalise bowed out of that race before a House vote and Jordan failed to garner enough votes for the speaker’s gavel. 

Emmer, McClain reelected

Republicans also reelected Minnesota’s Rep. Tom Emmer as GOP whip and Michigan’s Rep. Lisa McClain as conference chair, according to the House Republican Conference. 

McClain said the priority for Republicans in the next Congress would be to “earn back the trust of the American people and take back this House.”

Republicans tapped Georgia’s Rep. Brian Jack for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the conference’s campaign arm, according to the conference.

Senate Republicans also voted behind closed doors Tuesday to keep South Dakota Sen. John Thune as GOP leader. 

Senate Republicans will also be in the minority in January. 

Senate Democrats will hold at least 54, and as many as 56, seats. Democratic candidates Mary Peltola in Alaska and Scott Colom in Mississippi are leading in races that AP still has not called.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

As the state’s lawyer and its top law enforcement officer, the Ohio attorney general has sweeping powers. The office has 1,400 employees working in 30 distinct sections, from antitrust to workers compensation.

Kulewicz, a 72-year-old graduate of Yale Law School, comes to the office after winning by less than a percentage point over Republican Keith Faber. But he said he was elected by voters seeking a change.

It’s no secret that under solidly Republican rule, Ohio state government has been plagued by several high-profile corruption scandals over the past 15 years. And anger over corruption was a big factor in Democrats’ resounding success on Tuesday night.

“There was a general sense among the people that we need to correct things through these elections and that it involved bringing in new people,” Kulewicz said in a phone interview.

He added that he visited all 88 counties and tried to explain to voters that the attorney general could help them by making things fairer. 

“I focused on the economic responsibilities of the attorney general and what that could mean to people in Ohio,” he said.

Across the country, voters appeared to see a nexus between their own economic struggles and public corruption that enriched connected special interests. Between 2018 and 2020 Ohio was a case study.

Akron-based FirstEnergy paid $61 million in bribes to elect a Republican majority that made Larry Householder of Glenford speaker. From that perch he shepherded a $1.3 billion ratepayer-funded bailout for the utility.

After the FBI broke open the conspiracy, Householder got a 20-year prison sentence on two others who were implicated died by suicide.

As attorney general, Kulewicz would have to oversee a second state trial of FirstEnergy’s top executives after the first ended in a hung jury. So he’s limited in what he can say about the case before taking office.

But he said as a general matter, corruption is the consumer issue that voters take it to be.

“No. 1, it’s bad for the economy,” Kulewicz said. “We all pay a price for it, and I think that finally people got fed up enough with it and believed that it’s time for somebody who’s going to clean up the state government.” 

He added that he also wanted to fight for consumers on other fronts, such as “consumer fraud, wage theft, monopoly pricing, utility rate discrimination; the things that hurt our paychecks or our pocketbooks.”

Ohio has a strong, state-level antitrust law, and the attorney general has a division tasked with enforcing it. 

In 2023, former AG Dave Yost used the law to sue a giant health conglomerate, accusing it of unlawfully driving up the cost of prescription drugs purchased by the state. It remains pending.

Kulewicz said he also will use the Antitrust Division on behalf of Ohio consumers.

“The attorney general has broad investigative and subpoena power when it comes to the enforcement of the antitrust laws, and I intend to use that to the fullest extent,” he said. “I want to focus on sectors of the economy that deal with the necessities of our lives. Our food. Our fuel. Those kinds of things.”

After President Donald Trump signed a Republican bill slashing Medicaid spending in July 2025, his administration and Republican state-level officials started hyping allegations of Medicaid fraud, often in blue states. Critics called it an attempt to refocus voters’ anger over Trump’s healthcare cuts and rising healthcare costs.

When U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche came to Ohio in July to tout the Trump anti-fraud effort, no mention was made of health conglomerates that Yost has accused of overbilling Ohio by tens of millions of dollars.

Kulewicz said he wants to determine what is fact and what is fiction in the Trump administration claims.

“The compelling thing to me is that there are allegations of billions of dollars of Medicaid provider fraud, but the prosecutions only amount to millions of dollars,” he said. “So there’s a big discrepancy. I want to find out why.”

As part of the FirstEnergy scandal, Gov.-elect Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Jon Husted met with the company’s top executives on Dec. 18, 2018 to discuss whether Sam Randazzo would be acceptable to be chairman of the industry regulator, the Public Utility Commission of Ohio. The executives drove straight from that meeting to Randazzo’s German Village condo and negotiated a $4.3 million bribe, the company later conceded.

From his perch as chairman, Randazzo helped write the corrupt bailout legislation. After he was charged, he died by suicide.

But even before that episode, the PUCO had a long history of granting utilities billions of dollars worth of upcharges that the Ohio Supreme Court later deemed illegal. Even so, the regulator didn’t force the utilities to give the money back to ratepayers.

Kulewicz said he would use the powers of the AGs office to ensure that the PUCO protects Ohio ratepayers.

“There are two things the attorney general can do,” he said. “No. 1, make sure that we appoint a Consumers’ Counsel board that’s going to name an effective Ohio Consumers’ Counsel to protect the interests of residential ratepayers.

“Secondly, the attorney general represents the state of Ohio, which is a consumer of utilities and has standing to challenge the fairness of the rates.”

As a candidate, Kulewicz filed a complaint with the Ohio Inspector General about possible conflicts of interest at JobsOhio, the state’s quasi-private economic development authority. The chairman of the JobsOhio board is a lobbyist with clients that have received millions from JobsOhio and even more from the state.

But prior to taking office, Kulewicz was circumspect about how he might deal with the controversial agency.

“The complaint that I filed with the inspector general speaks for itself,” he said. “But to the extent that there are other alleged conflicts in the state government, I want to explore those and point them out where necessary and do something about them.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The trip was part of Ukraine Focus’s 19th mission to Ukraine. The Virginia-based nonprofit sources and delivers ambulances, among other programs to support the war-torn country. The United Ukrainian Organizations of Ohio helped organize participants from Ohio.

“We delivered around 50 ambulances, as I recall,” Brennan explained. “Along with other vehicles, along with humanitarian and medical supplies for the Ukrainian military to use in the in their war efforts to maintain their sovereignty, which they’re entitled to and deserve.

Brennan’s Parma-area district has the largest Ukrainian-American population in the state, and many Ukrainians sheltering in the U.S. while the war continues have settled in the area. Those families face an uncertain future.

Roughly 100,000 Ukrainians are living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status — the same protections recently terminated for nearly 350,000 Haitians living in the U.S.

Ukrainians’ TPS status lapsed on Oct. 19. But rather than formally extending or ending protections, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did nothing. In a terse statement, the agency said an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time,” and until then, TPS holders can maintain their work authorization.

“They’ve put the people in limbo,” United Ukrainian Organizations of Ohio President George Jaskiw said.

“Is this just a reprieve before the election and then after election the hammer will come down? That’s what somebody asked me,” he said. “I have no answer. I don’t know what’s in the mind of (Department of Homeland Security) administration.”

The trip

Brennan’s European sojourn started in Prague. He and several other volunteers (including Jaskiw) picked up ambulances and drove through Krakow in Poland, and then on to Lviv in Western Ukraine. Brennan was struck by the extent to which Ukrainians were carrying on with their lives despite four years of armed conflict.

“Now that being said, there were signs of war,” Brennan said, “There were a couple of mornings where the air raid sirens went off, and we had to go down into the bunker of our hotel for our safety.”

Security was tight at the border, he said, and they passed check points for several miles on their way to Lviv. After they arrived, the volunteers handed over the vehicles to members of the Ukrainian armed forces and toured a handful of the civilian efforts to support the war.

“We got to sit down with them and tie some of the ties onto the nets that are used on the front to camouflage vehicles and other equipment from the drones,” Brennan described. “We also visited a place where they dry food. They dry fruits, vegetables, and meat to create (meals ready to eat) for soldiers on the front. That was pretty amazing.”

But most surprising, he said, was a dilapidated Soviet-era building.

“They took us into the building onto one of the floors,” Brennan described. “They opened up the door, and there were about I would say 100 3-D printers making items for drones.”

“It was something out of a spy novel.”

While the volunteers were delivering ambulances, news broke that President Donald Trump was going to rescind sanctions on Russian diesel and purchase millions of barrels from the country. The administration’s stated justification for the deal was to lower fuel costs.

“Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority,” President Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Experts doubt those purchases will materially affect the cost of fuel in the U.S., but they do offer a financial lifeline to the Russian government.

“People were dumbfounded,” Brennan said. “As was I, and I think I’m speaking on behalf of everybody that was on our trip.”

“Russia Supports Iran,” he added. “So, you know any American dollars that go to Russia for diesel, is going to be shot right back at us, and I don’t think anybody wants that.”

The TPS legal process

In Ohio, Ukrainian families are waiting anxiously to see what happens with their immigration status. USCIS’s non-decision grants them a reprieve, but not much of one.

Aleksandar Cuic is a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who works with the school’s immigration law clinic.

“I’ve never seen them not do anything,” he said. “Historically they’ve either terminated it, took away the designation, or they’ve extended it. That’s always historically what’s been done.”

Federal law requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to consult with “appropriate agencies” about the conditions in a country before terminating its TPS designation.

“TPS for Ukraine is due to a war,” Cuic said. “Unless they’re going to determine that the war is over or it’s safe to go back. That’s something that they have to do. They have to kind of show that hey, the conditions, why we created TPS, are now gone.”

At least on paper, it’s a thoughtful process, but in practice, it doesn’t always work out that way. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Department of Homeland Security to end protections for more than 400,000 Haitians and Syrians living in the United States.

In Haiti, gangs control 90% of the country and five million people can’t get enough to eat. Attorneys challenging the revocation of TPS noted the U.S. State Department warns travelers that “no part of Syria is safe from violence.”

Then just days before the court issued its ruling, attorneys representing TPS holders uncovered documents indicating then-Secretary Kristi Noem never actually consulted the U.S. State Department about conditions in Haiti. The attorneys petitioned the court to set the case aside. Instead a 6-3 conservative majority sided with the Trump administration.

“I think it’s fair to say it’s kind of a political maneuver right now,” Cuic said. “You know, you’re looking at the countries that they’re pulling TPS from, (they) are countries that the Trump administration has, for lack of a better term, targeted.”

If federal officials decide to terminate Ukraine’s TPS designation, recipients will have 60 days to leave the country.

TPS holders’ uncertainty

Ivan Prodanyk left Ukraine with his wife and two daughters the day the war began. His family has Temporary Protected Status and they’ve settled in Cleveland. The government’s lack of a decision has rattled him.

“At first, it’s uncertainty,” he said. “You do not know what to do because you already started to do something here. You need to (be) working. You need to pay bills.”

In some ways, Prodanyk said, the situation in Ukraine today is even worse than it was when he left, and he isn’t eager to uproot his family once again.

“You need to leave and start the life one more time?” he asked, “Where? In another country? Or come back to Ukraine and be under the missiles and bombs?”

Prodanyk said he and his wife both work and pay taxes. He was a lawyer in Ukraine and has been able to make his way through law school again here in the U.S. He’s frustrated at the “unfairness” of the government potentially forcing out people who are contributing to their communities.

“I don’t know why government not appreciate Ukrainians,” he said, “and they don’t want Ukrainians to stay here, even right now when the situation in Ukraine is terrible.”

If push comes to shove, and federal officials do terminate their status, Prodanyk and his family will leave. But he said he won’t put his children in danger, and won’t separate himself from his family, so they’ll be forced to find some other country that would welcome them.

While Prodanyk’s family braces for USCIS’s eventual decision, the agency’s delay is already having real world, negative impacts on other Ukrainian immigrants.

Alex is a mechanical engineer from Ukraine, living in Ohio under TPS. Ohio Capital Journal isn’t using his last name over fears of retribution.

“Due to all this issue, I lost my work,” Alex explained. “My company, who I worked for, they decided to terminate contract with me because there is no dates on my documents.”

“They didn’t want me to work illegal,” he added, “and just they decided I had to quit because I have no information about when my documents will be expired, if they will be extended, or no.”

Right before our interview, Alex visited the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to renew his driver’s license. He was turned away. Alex worries that for him, and other TPS holders, USCIS simply allowing work authorization to continue might not be enough for Ukrainian job seekers to land a gig.

“So, if their HR or whoever is gonna check the ability to work (they) will verify through the eVerify,” Alex said. “Most likely it will say that that person is liable for work, but that person cannot get to work without driving a car, which is the problem.”

Alex’s family comes from Bucha, the site of massacre in 2022 which still sees regular bombardment from drones or airstrikes. Alex has two children; a son who was born in the U.S. and a daughter in grade school. He explained she had a difficult time with classes at first because she couldn’t speak English, but now she’s doing much better.

“She’s comfortable. She likes to be here. She likes to live here. She has some American friends,” Alex said. “They are all happy together, and all that I want (is to) just stay here, build my future life.”

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.

In at least four states — Georgia, Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin — the midterm election results have tilted the political calculus toward expansion, though lawmakers have yet to lay out details. Medicaid is the joint federal-state insurance program for people with low incomes.

Georgia and Wisconsin have limited expansion programs, but neither has approved the broader expansion allowed under the Affordable Care Act.

“Before Tuesday, I wouldn’t have expected much activity in the 10 remaining states that have not expanded Medicaid” to more adults under the Affordable Care Act, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the health research and policy nonprofit KFF, on a media call after the election.

“But I think that dynamic has changed.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, states can expand Medicaid to cover adults earning up to 138% of the federal poverty line — about $22,000 a year for a single person — and the federal government will pick up 90% of the costs for those newly eligible enrollees.

Forty states took the deal, adding nearly 20 million people with low incomes to the rolls. In the remaining 10 states, which have been mostly controlled by Republicans, expansion has been blocked by GOP opponents who think it is too expensive or who are ideologically opposed to growing government programs.

Georgia Democratic Gov.-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms made full Medicaid expansion central to her campaign and has called it “a day one priority.”

“This is thrilling for me because this is the reason I ran for office in the first place,” said Dr. Michelle Au, a Democratic Georgia state representative and physician.

In Georgia, Democrats won every statewide office that was on the ballot and appear poised to take control of the state House, though Republicans will still control the state Senate. Democrats would need bipartisan support to get expansion passed.

“We are going to see a bill and it’s going to be an interesting process in the newly divided government,” said Au.

She said a 2024 Medicaid expansion bill had bipartisan support among state legislators, including from Republicans representing rural districts facing hospital closures and higher rates of uninsured residents. The bill eventually died in committee, she said, in large part because it didn’t have the backing of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

“What became apparent in that process was that there was nothing more important to the passage of this issue than having a strong governor who supports it,” Au said.

“If anything, this issue has only gotten more urgent and popular” among voters, she said.

Wisconsin’s new Democratic trifecta — the party will control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office — could make full Medicaid expansion much easier to pass. Wisconsin Democratic Gov.-elect David Crowley has deferred to legislators when asked about expansion.

Democratic state Rep. Greta Neubauer, who is set to become House Speaker, stopped short of promising expansion in a call with reporters after the election. She said lawmakers will look at several options to address healthcare, reported the Wisconsin Examiner.

Neubauer said Medicaid expansion was complicated by the Trump administration’s new work requirements and other changes to the program.

“It’s a shame that Wisconsin has not done that up to this point,” she said. “We are going to be working very closely with the administration to figure out the best way to expand access to affordable healthcare for Wisconsinites, even given the Trump administration’s efforts to cut access and raise costs.”

In July 2025, Trump signed a broad tax and spending measure that is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by an estimated $886.8 billion over the next decade, largely because new work requirements will push people off the rolls, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. The new rules, which will take effect in January, will apply to people who became eligible for Medicaid as a result of expansion.

But the new Democratic-controlled Congress is expected to look at delaying or reversing the changes, which “may make it even more attractive for places like Texas and Georgia to try to expand,” Levitt said.

Texas voters also voted Democrats into every statewide office that was on the ballot, including electing Democrat Gina Hinojosa as governor and flipping control of the state House. Republicans still control the state Senate.

Hinojosa told a Houston television station that she would push the state legislature to expand Medicaid.

Before the election, Kansas’ outgoing Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly called the Kansas’ Legislature’s refusal to expand Medicaid “the dumbest thing Kansas has ever done.”

She said the main roadblock was opposition by Kansas’ Republican House Speaker. But this week, Kansas Democrats flipped as many as 20 seats in the Kansas House, quashing the Republican supermajority.

Votes are still being tallied, but it appears that while Republicans will retain a majority in the state House and a supermajority in the state Senate, Democrat Cindy Holscher holds a narrow lead in the governor’s race.

Holscher campaigned on promises of expanding Medicaid, saying Medicaid expansion would help prevent hospital closures and improve access to mental health services. She noted that expansion is popular across the state.

“This is approved by, I believe, over 75% of the population,” she said. “This cuts across the political spectrum. Rural as well as urban areas say this is what we need to do.”

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@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.

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Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In a Facebook post Monday, the West Alexandria Republican accused Ramaswamy of abandoning him over what he called “fake Tiffin News articles,” sharing a screenshot of TiffinOhio.net’s April 13 report documenting the removal of Creech and state Rep. Gary Click from the campaign’s list of supporters.

“Remember when Vivek Ramaswamy removed my endorsement from his campaign because he was worried about the fake Tiffin News articles affecting his race?” Creech wrote. “Well, he lost. We won!”

He accused the defeated gubernatorial nominee of throwing a sitting Republican lawmaker “under the bus” and said he had spoken to Ramaswamy and his team about the decision. “Unfortunately, we have too many Republicans who are afraid of their own shadows,” Creech wrote, calling for new party leadership.

The investigation behind the reporting

The reporting Creech denounced concerned an actual Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation case. According to BCI records obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau, his minor daughter accused him of getting into bed and under the covers with her while he had an erection and was wearing only his underwear. Creech acknowledged to investigators that he had gotten into bed with her in his underwear but denied sexual misconduct.

Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, acting as special prosecutor, described Creech’s behavior as “concerning and suspicious” but concluded that the evidence did not meet the threshold for prosecution. No criminal charges were filed. Creech has called the allegations “demonstrably false” and previously dismissed his daughter’s account on Facebook as “textbook parental alienation.”

The investigation had significant political consequences well before Creech’s dispute with Ramaswamy. House Speaker Matt Huffman removed Creech from four committee assignments and asked him to consider resigning in May 2025. Creech refused. In February 2026, Huffman restored his committee assignments and backed his bid for the Ohio Republican Party’s endorsement, which Creech received.

Creech did not identify a specific factual error in TiffinOhio.net’s reporting in Monday’s post. His criticism instead focused on Ramaswamy’s decision to distance his campaign from an endorsement that it had publicly promoted since April 2025.

Archived campaign pages document the removal

Ramaswamy’s campaign listed both Creech and Click on its endorsements page in a February 20 archived version. Both names were absent from the April 11 snapshot, two days after TiffinOhio.net reported that Ramaswamy’s website was still promoting Creech’s support despite the BCI investigation. The campaign made no public announcement explaining the change.

Click, the Republican who represents Seneca and Sandusky counties, reappeared on the page within about two hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting the removal April 13. Creech did not. Click subsequently characterized reports of his own removal as “greatly exaggerated,” despite the archived pages showing that both names had disappeared. Click has previously called Creech his “good friend,” and the two have continued to cosponsor legislation.

The election results gave Creech the contrast he seized on Monday. Ramaswamy lost the governor’s race to Democrat Amy Acton, who led him by 364,448 votes, 52.3% to 44.4%, in unofficial statewide returns. Creech won re-election to House District 40 with 65.4% of the vote against Democrat Timothy Hornbacker and Libertarian Joshua Umbaugh. Creech offered no evidence for his implication that removing his name from an endorsements page contributed to Ramaswamy’s defeat.

“It’s time to regroup, put the petty politics behind us, and find strong, principled Republican leaders who are willing to stand up for our state and the people they represent,” Creech wrote. He ended with a message to the candidate he had endorsed: “And Vivek…enjoy doing whatever it is you do, I have a lot work to do for our great state!”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click did not name TiffinOhio.net in Sunday’s Facebook post, but he has repeatedly attacked the outlet by name and invoked its parent company’s Chicago connection. Days earlier, as TiffinOhio.net reported, he called Seneca County Democrats “disgraceful and disgusting” and the publication a “fake news blog.” In a separate post, he alleged that “dark money from Chicago” had been used against him. His latest accusation identified no specific deceptive article and offered no evidence of the funding he alleged.

The Sunday post, accompanied by an AI-generated portrait of Click smiling in front of the Ohio Statehouse, accused some Democrats of spreading “nasty and false personal smears.” Click complained that 15% of his legislation received disproportionate attention.

“Some people are asking, What now?” Click wrote. “Personally, I will continue doing what I have done.” The statement continued the attacks he began immediately after the Nov. 3 election, when he publicly set aside his self-described “usual practice of being gracious” in victory to assail Democrats and news coverage of his campaign.

A narrow primary and a weaker November showing

In Sunday’s post, Click described his victory over Democrat Aaron Jones as a “healthy 17 point margin.” The unofficial election returns show he defeated Jones 23,930 to 16,927, or 58.57% to 41.43%. His vote share fell eight percentage points from 2024 and was the lowest of his four general-election performances. The Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee provided $92,765.80 in advertising and printing support to his campaign before the general election, according to pre-election campaign-finance filings.

That followed a Republican primary victory by just 599 votes over first-time candidate and conspiracy theorist Eric Watson, who won Seneca County and took 47.72% of the two-county GOP vote. In February, The Toledo Blade reported on a recording in which Watson asserted that data centers could harvest people’s conscious thoughts while awake and unconscious thoughts while asleep.

A campaign record of false claims

Click’s latest allegations come after a series of his own public claims were contradicted by records or disputed directly by the people and organizations involved. In August, he falsely accused Jones, Seneca County Democratic Party Chair Gina Grandillo and Fremont City Councilwoman Angie Ruiz of donating to Watson’s Republican primary campaign. Watson’s campaign-finance filings showed that none of the three had contributed. Click deleted the accusation and acknowledged that his post had been “made in error,” but his correction omitted their names.

Earlier, Click’s campaign claimed the support of Tiffin City Councilman Kevin Roessner, who said he had made no endorsement. Click also accused the League of Women Voters of the Tiffin Area of excluding him from a March candidates forum; the organization released an invitation timeline showing repeated attempts to secure his participation. Click, a former community theater actor, had quietly stepped down as pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple in March 2025 after 19 years. When TiffinOhio.net reported the departure the following February, he disputed the description of his exit as quiet. We found no public announcement, and his official House biography confirms that he became pastor emeritus.

Final House term and a possible Senate campaign

Click’s coming term, beginning in January, will be his last consecutive term in the House under Ohio’s constitutional term limits. He was first elected in 2020, and the state permits no more than four successive two-year House terms.

A source familiar with Click’s political thinking told TiffinOhio.net, speaking on condition of anonymity, that Click plans to run for the 26th District seat in the Ohio Senate in 2028. Click has not publicly announced a Senate campaign.

The seat is currently held by Republican Bill Reineke, who is serving his second and final consecutive four-year Senate term. District 26 includes Sandusky and Seneca counties, along with Crawford, Marion, Morrow, Union and Wyandot counties. A Senate campaign would put Click’s record before voters in five counties outside the House district where he just survived two unusually difficult elections.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Northern Storm Sewer Project would affect Clay Street, Miami Street, portions of Adams Street, North Monroe Street, Jackson Street and Wentz Street. Plans include three new stormwater outfalls into the Sandusky River, along with new curbs and full-width resurfacing of affected roadways.

City Engineer Matt Watson presented the plans to council’s Streets, Sidewalks and Sewers Committee on October 26. At its November 2 meeting, council gave first readings to legislation preparing the project for construction and authorizing the city to seek financing through Ohio’s Water Pollution Control Loan Fund.

The city expects to use a 30-year loan, with revenue from its sewer fund designated for repayment. Construction bids are anticipated by March 2027. The financing and construction measures, Resolution 2026-51 and Ordinance 2026-72, remain before council for further consideration.

Sewer improvements are part of a nearly $160 million plan

The project is part of Tiffin’s effort to reduce combined sewer overflows under an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency-mandated Long Term Control Plan.

Combined sewer systems carry wastewater and stormwater through the same pipes. During heavy rainfall, the volume can exceed the system’s capacity, causing untreated or partially treated wastewater to discharge into nearby waterways. Tiffin’s plan requires the city to reduce combined sewer overflows to four events during a typical year and eliminate bypass events at its wastewater treatment facility.

The work represents a substantial long-term financial commitment. When Tiffin calculated the cost of its sewer-control improvements in 2015, the estimate was approximately $82.4 million. A 2022 update incorporating inflation, revised construction schedules and additional maintenance increased the projected cost to nearly $160 million.

The Northern Storm Sewer Project addresses combined sewer overflow basins 9 through 13 and 15. The city’s published implementation plan divides improvements in those basins into multiple phases, with a broader construction schedule beginning in 2026 and a required completion date of July 1, 2029. The $18.6 million contract discussed November 2 is scheduled for bidding in 2027.

Watson said the northern project would improve the stormwater system while rebuilding affected streets. Replacing underground infrastructure and restoring the roadway during the same construction project is part of the city’s approach to limiting repeated excavation and pavement restoration.

Council is also beginning work on another sewer project covering combined sewer overflow basins 14, 25, 26, 27 and 28. Watson presented a preliminary $5 million budget figure for that phase, with planning expected between 2027 and 2029. Detailed design is tentatively scheduled for 2034 through 2037, followed by construction between 2035 and 2038.

Resolution 2026-52 would authorize the city to seek financing for planning expenses, while Ordinance 2026-73 would permit the selection of an engineering consultant. Both received first readings November 2.

City prepares $1.46 million paving program and West Market improvements

Alongside the sewer work, Tiffin is preparing a $1.46 million street paving program for 2027, funded entirely through the city’s Road and Bridge Levy.

Watson told the Streets, Sidewalks and Sewers Committee that the city expects to advertise for bids in January, with construction scheduled between April and September 2027. Street selections will depend on pavement conditions, anticipated utility work and available funding.

City Administrator Nick Dutro credited the levy with expanding Tiffin’s ability to complete street improvements. He also reminded council that utility companies generally cannot reopen completed roadway projects for five years, except in emergencies.

Ordinance 2026-69, authorizing preparations for the paving program, received its first reading.

Council also advanced plans to resurface West Market Street between U.S. 224 and Teakwood Drive. The project includes curbed traffic islands near Shaffer Park Drive intended to restrict left turns across multiple lanes of traffic.

The city has secured an Ohio Department of Transportation Urban Paving Program grant covering 80% of eligible resurfacing expenses, up to $1 million. The Road and Bridge Levy will finance the local contribution.

City documents contain different cost estimates for the West Market project. An October 6 announcement placed the estimate at $1.56 million, while proposed Ordinance 2026-70 lists an overall cost of $1.872 million, including $1.36 million for resurfacing. The documents do not reconcile the difference.

Engineering work is scheduled to begin in 2027. The city’s October announcement projected construction in 2029, with state funding programmed for ODOT’s 2030 fiscal year. Ordinance 2026-70, authorizing agreements with ODOT and a design consultant, received its first reading November 2.

East Perry Street reconstruction moves ahead with state funding

Another major roadway project would reconstruct East Perry Street between Jefferson Street and the Sandusky River, continuing improvements completed between Greenfield Street and Jefferson Street in 2023.

The project would remove the existing pavement and underlying brick base, replacing them with a new stone foundation and asphalt surface. The proposed ordinance places the overall project estimate at approximately $1.37 million, including nearly $1.05 million for construction.

Tiffin has already secured an ODOT grant of up to $968,620 through the Small Cities Program. The grant covers 80% of eligible construction and inspection expenses, with local costs financed through the Road and Bridge Levy.

Design is expected to begin in 2027, with construction planned for 2030. Ordinance 2026-71, authorizing the necessary ODOT and engineering agreements, received its first reading.

Council also voted 6-0 to authorize an application for additional pedestrian and streetscape improvements along the same section of East Perry Street. The separate project, estimated at approximately $1.4 million, includes sidewalks, curbs, decorative concrete, driveway and alley approaches, and decorative street lighting.

Officials intend to coordinate the streetscape work with roadway reconstruction if the grant is awarded. Because ODOT’s Transportation Alternatives Program application deadline is November 16, council unanimously suspended its usual three-reading requirement and passed Ordinance 2026-74 as an emergency measure.

City seeks riverfront development proposals and prepares park sale

Dutro also updated council on efforts to find a developer for approximately 0.67 acres of city-owned land along the Sandusky River near Madison and Front streets.

The property, located on the river’s east bank next to City Lot 6, became available for development proposals on October 28. The city is working with the Seneca County Collaborative to identify a financially viable use for the site.

Tiffin has established neither an asking price nor a preferred development concept. Officials will consider proposals involving housing, commercial uses, hospitality, recreation or mixed-use development. A property sale is preferred, although other arrangements may be considered.

Proposals must preserve existing public parking within City Lot 6. The city is accepting submissions on a rolling basis without a fixed deadline, and any transaction will require council approval.

The parcel is within Tiffin Community Reinvestment Area No. 1, where eligible new construction can qualify for a 15-year, 100% real property tax exemption on the assessed value of the new improvements. The incentive is subject to program requirements and required approvals.

Dutro also discussed plans to sell Tiffin East Park, formerly known as Louisa K. Fast Park, along North State Route 101.

The property was once used by the federal government for grain storage before being transferred to Tiffin for recreational use. Dutro described the park as underutilized and said the city had been working with the federal government to make the site available for another use.

At the November 2 meeting, he said competitive bidding through the U.S. General Services Administration was expected to begin that week. The federal government lists the property as the Former Tiffin Grain Bin Site, although the anticipated auction opening was not independently confirmed.

Under the planned sale arrangement, federal deed restrictions associated with the property’s former public use would be removed, allowing a new owner to pursue other permitted uses.

Council approves property acquisition, budget amendments and energy agreement

Council unanimously approved Ordinance 2026-64, authorizing the city to acquire property at 419 S. Sandusky St. The measure passed 6-0 after its third reading.

Members also approved $71,530.32 in amendments to the city’s 2026 budget through Ordinance 2026-75, which passed 6-0 after suspension of the three-reading requirement.

The appropriations include $17,866.75 for cybersecurity insurance across the finance, street maintenance, parks and recreation, wastewater treatment and sewer maintenance departments. Another $8,663.57 was appropriated to the police department from a vehicle-fuel refund received through the Seneca County Auditor’s Office.

The remaining $45,000 came from the North Central Behavioral Health Board for the Municipal Court PIVOT Program.

In a separate unanimous vote, council approved Ordinance 2026-77, authorizing Tiffin to participate in an aggregated electricity and natural gas purchasing program administered by the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council, or NOPEC.

The agreement concerns the city’s own municipal utility accounts. Specific energy rates will be established through the procurement process, which combines Tiffin’s purchasing needs with those of other participating municipalities.

Council also introduced Ordinance 2026-76, establishing compensation for the city’s law director beginning January 1, 2028. The proposal sets an annual salary of $80,000 and a separate $10,000 annual reimbursement for administrative assistance, along with health and life insurance benefits. The measure received its first reading.

Separately, council revisited legislation allowing property owners to receive reimbursement for installing sewer-backup prevention devices. Members voted 5-1 to extend the proposed program to qualifying installations completed earlier in 2026, but delayed final approval pending revised ordinance language. TiffinOhio.net previously reported the amendment and the debate over the proposed grants of up to $2,000.

Behavioral health director promotes mobile crisis services

North Central Behavioral Health Board Executive Director Mircea Handru addressed council about the agency’s regional expansion and the availability of mobile mental health crisis services.

The board consolidated with Huron County on July 1, forming a five-county district serving Seneca, Huron, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wyandot counties. Handru explained that property tax revenue collected within each county remains dedicated to services for its residents, while the consolidated organization shares administrative expenses and can pursue larger grants.

Handru also encouraged residents to use the Mobile Crisis Response Team, which sends trained responders to people experiencing mental health or addiction crises in homes and other community settings.

Seneca County has two-person teams assigned during the first and second shifts, with overnight coverage shared regionally. The teams can respond alongside law enforcement when needed and also handle calls without police involvement.

Residents experiencing a mental health crisis can call or text 988 and request mobile crisis assistance. Online chat is also available through the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Handru’s appearance came one day before Seneca County voters decided whether to renew the agency’s existing 0.7-mill property tax levy for another 10 years. The measure passed November 3 with 12,285 votes in favor, or 65.7%, and 6,426 against, or 34.3%, according to unofficial county results.

Mayor reports infrastructure updates as budget hearings begin

Mayor Lee Wilkinson reported November 2 that crews were installing upgraded traffic signal poles along North Sandusky Street while the city awaited delivery of pedestrian crossing signals.

Construction also continued on the interceptor sewer improvement project near Frost Parkway and Adams Street. Crews were boring beneath the Sandusky River near Water Street and Riverside Drive, with the northern end of Jefferson Street closed during the work. Aqua Ohio was continuing utility work in the Clinton Avenue area.

Wilkinson highlighted the opening of the Hedges Hills Pump Track at Hedges-Boyer Park, a recreational facility designed for bicycles, skateboards and other wheeled activities. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was scheduled for November 5.

The mayor also announced that Ohio Magazine selected Tiffin as one of its five Best Hometowns for 2026–2027. State Sen. Bill Reineke issued a legislative tribute recognizing the city.

Tiffin’s fall leaf collection program continues through November 20, with residents required to use approved clear leaf bags.

Six of the seven council members attended the November 2 meeting, with Councilmember Kyle Daugherty absent. Council scheduled Committee of the Whole budget discussions for November 9 at 5:15 p.m., November 16 at 6 p.m. and November 23 at 5:15 p.m. An additional meeting may be held November 30.

The next immediate infrastructure deadline is November 16, when the city’s East Perry Street streetscape grant application is due to ODOT. Council must also complete its consideration of the Northern Storm Sewer Project’s financing and bidding legislation before the anticipated March 2027 bid opening.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio voters graded the two differently. Acton, the Democrat, beat Ramaswamy 52.3% to 44.4% on November 3, according to unofficial election returns. That is a loss of nearly eight points in a state Donald Trump carried by more than 11 two years ago.

So what happened to the people who were supposed to be vetting this candidate for conservative voters? Ohio has a small class of activists who have built reputations on the claim that they keep Republican politicians honest. Four of them are worth a look after this election: Stock, former secretary of state candidate Marcell Strbich, Tea Party organizer Tom Zawistowski and radio host Jack Windsor.

Keep in mind who they were vouching for. Ramaswamy was a Trump-endorsed billionaire. The Ohio Republican Party’s State Central Committee endorsed him 60-3 in May 2025, nearly a year before primary voters had a say. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Treasurer Robert Sprague and Ohio Senate President Rob McColley all lined up behind him. If there was an establishment candidate in Ohio this year, he was it.

The A and the F

Stock is president of Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, and opposition to pandemic mandates is the whole of her political brand. Her group’s November 2026 voter guide is where the A and the F come from.

The Acton entry is a long list of charges. It says she inflated COVID-19 numbers. It blames her for restrictions on medical treatments and says decisions made during her tenure contributed to patient deaths. It calls the cancellation of Ohio’s March 2020 primary unconstitutional and pins it on her.

The Ramaswamy entry features his campaign statement promising that Ohioans can accept or decline medical treatment. There is nothing about 2020.

And 2020 is the problem. Ramaswamy advised then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted during Ohio’s pandemic response. A recording obtained by NBC4 has him advocating mandatory antibody testing, with stay-at-home orders continuing for Americans who could not demonstrate immunity. In an interview that April, he entertained a national system that would sort Americans by biological markers of immunity. TiffinOhio.net reported that sources familiar with the DeWine administration’s deliberations considered his proposals more intrusive than the measures Ohio officials were prepared to adopt.

Put that in front of a medical-freedom voter. The man with the A wanted to go further than the DeWine administration did. The woman with the F was that administration’s health director.

The guide also gets the primary wrong. Acton did sign the order closing polling places, after a judge declined to postpone the election. But Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has repeatedly said the decision was his and that his health director acted at his direction. The guide leaves him out.

Stock didn’t stop at the grade. On August 4 she hosted Ramaswamy on a program about medical freedom with Republican state Rep. Jennifer Gross. By then she had lost her own Republican primary in Ohio House District 31, where she took 34.8% of the vote against Mike Kahoe.

If Acton had proposed mandatory antibody testing, Stock’s group would have put it at the top of the page. The people who relied on that guide were never told that the A-rated candidate had.

Strbich finds his insider

Marcell Strbich ran for secretary of state this year as the outsider, and the party made clear it did not want him. In February the State Central Committee voted 52-11 to endorse Treasurer Robert Sprague. In May, Sprague beat him 70.2% to 29.8%.

Two days before the general election, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel published a glowing endorsement of Ramaswamy in The Cincinnati Exchange. His case was that Ramaswamy listened. The candidate had consulted him and other activists on property taxes, data centers and election integrity, Strbich wrote, and those talks shaped a data center pledge and the campaign’s support for a voter ID constitutional amendment. Ramaswamy’s words and actions aligned, he declared.

Maybe the conversations were everything Strbich says they were. It is still strange to watch a man who was flattened by the party’s endorsement in May spend the first days of November telling the grassroots that the candidate the same committee endorsed 60-3 was the champion they had been waiting for.

Zawistowski and “NO BEARING”

Tom Zawistowski has been denouncing the Ohio Republican establishment for years through his Tea Party activism and the We the People Convention. This year the group endorsed Ramaswamy for governor, Strbich for secretary of state and Jon Husted for U.S. Senate.

The Husted pick needed some explaining, and the endorsement announcement tried. It acknowledged that grassroots conservatives have long-standing objections to Husted, particularly over his conduct during COVID-19. Then it said those objections should have “NO BEARING” on how they vote in 2026.

That is quite an instruction from a movement that spent years attacking Ohio Republicans over pandemic policy.

Zawistowski liked Ramaswamy from the start. He celebrated the 60-3 party endorsement in May 2025 as a grassroots victory over the establishment. Then Ramaswamy lost, and by the time of a November 4 post-election interview the establishment was the villain again. Zawistowski suggested Republican insiders had sabotaged the campaign, including by influencing the advertisement featuring Acton’s estranged mother. In the same interview he called that ad a self-inflicted wound that badly damaged the campaign.

He also complained that grassroots conservatives keep backing Republican politicians and getting nothing for it. He might start with who keeps telling them to.

Windsor and the phone call

Jack Windsor’s complaint is about a phone call. On November 5 the conservative radio host attacked Governor-elect Amy Acton because Ramaswamy’s election-night concession call went to voicemail. He accused her of dishonesty. She had promised to work across political divisions, his argument went, and here she was refusing to speak with her defeated opponent.

Some context on why she might not pick up. Ramaswamy’s campaign made an advertisement starring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, who accused her daughter of lying about her childhood. Acton was removed from her mother’s custody as a child after her stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. She and her brother have described years of severe abuse and neglect. Her brother has said their mother stayed married to the accused man until he died.

Court documents and contemporaneous reporting back up central elements of Acton’s account. DeWine condemned the ad and urged Ramaswamy to pull it. The campaign resisted, then stopped airing it in late October after more than a week of bipartisan criticism.

In a November 6 CBS Mornings interview, Acton made clear she had no intention of speaking with Ramaswamy after what his campaign did, and said political leaders should be held accountable for their words. Most people would understand that. Windsor read it as a character flaw.

Windsor is an odd person to be delivering this particular lecture. In August, TiffinOhio.net reported that his former wife petitioned a Delaware County court for protection in 2018, accusing him of threats, confinement, controlling behavior and physical violence. Windsor agreed to a domestic violence civil protection order, entered June 29, 2018, with restrictions in effect until March 2020. The order was entered by consent, and the court made no individual findings on the allegations. Windsor has since claimed that many of the accusations were disproven or retracted. TiffinOhio.net’s review of the court records found no ruling establishing either claim.

Weeks after that report ran, he personally interviewed Ramaswamy onstage at an October 2 event in Westerville.

So a man who consented to a protection order sought by his former wife is now telling a woman who was abused as a child how gracious she ought to be toward the candidate who put her mother, whom she had not seen since childhood, in a campaign ad. Acton let the call go to voicemail. Good.

What they knew

None of this was hidden. The NBC4 recording was public. So were the party endorsement, the fortune and the ad. Stock, Strbich, Zawistowski and Windsor all made their calls before Election Day, when they thought Ramaswamy was going to win, and their followers can now see how those calls held up.

They will be back soon enough, demanding accountability from some other politician. Ohio conservatives should ask them about this one first.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Nov. 3 disciplinary record identifies Summers’ conduct as a policy violation and states:

A private political event was shared on Facebook. A county department Facebook page should only have official county business.

The county issued Summers a verbal warning and instructed him to review its social media and communications policies. Summers signed the document acknowledging receipt on Nov. 3, the same day Frankart appeared on the general election ballot against independent candidate David Ziegler.

The disciplinary action followed TiffinOhio.net’s reporting on the department’s decision to share Frankart’s Oct. 27 “Rise and Rally,” which featured prominent Republican officials, including U.S. Sens. Jon Husted and John Thune.

At 10:39 a.m. Oct. 28, the department shared Frankart’s Facebook post with an enthusiastic caption:

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

The message made no mention of emergency operations. After TiffinOhio.net began questioning the use of the government account, the department edited its caption at 11:42 a.m. to add an explanation about its emergency-response capabilities.

Summers acknowledged personally sharing the post but denied that Frankart or his campaign requested the publicity. He defended the department’s presence at the gathering as an emergency-readiness assignment involving prominent political figures.

The county subsequently disciplined him for the Facebook post.

County treats violation as minor offense

The disciplinary record classifies Summers’ conduct as a Group I offense, the lowest category in the county’s personnel manual. Under that classification, a verbal warning is the recommended penalty for a first offense.

Yet the county’s personnel manual lists unauthorized political activity and violations of its social media policy under Group III, a more serious classification for which first-offense discipline can extend to termination.

The manual describes those classifications as guidelines for classified employees. County officials have not explained why Summers’ conduct was designated a Group I offense or which disciplinary standards governed his position.

Summers had been appointed chief less than two weeks earlier. On Oct. 20, Commissioner Brent Busdeker introduced the resolution appointing him, Commissioner Anthony Paradiso seconded it, and all three commissioners, including Frankart, voted in favor. His appointment took effect Oct. 21.

Handwritten note says county policy was missing from handbook

A handwritten notation at the bottom of Summers’ disciplinary record, accompanied by initials resembling “N.S.,” states:

Unaware of County Resolution. Not current in handbook.

The county supplied two documents governing employee communications: its 2017 personnel manual and a separate communications policy unanimously adopted by commissioners on Feb. 6, 2025.

That newer policy followed the 2024 controversy involving former county media relations contractor Sheri Trusty, who used the county’s website to defend Frankart during a personal custody dispute and attack a journalist reporting on the case.

Resolution 25-33 shows that Frankart himself moved to adopt the communications policy. Busdeker seconded the motion, and all three commissioners voted yes.

The policy specifically addresses communications from the commissioners’ office. Although commissioners adopted it in February 2025, the county has provided no documentation showing when Summers was informed of the resolution or how its provisions were implemented within Emergency Services.

EMS deployment records still pending

County Administrator Matt Clouse provided the disciplinary record in response to TiffinOhio.net’s public records request. His office also reported having no written communications from Oct. 1 through Oct. 30 concerning Frankart’s rally, the emergency-services deployment or the Facebook controversy. It reported having no financial records associated with the assignment.

A separate records request to Seneca County Emergency Services seeks documents identifying who requested and authorized the deployment, how many employees and vehicles participated, what the operation cost and whether similar coverage was provided at other political events.

The county has now documented Summers’ decision to promote Frankart’s Republican rally as a policy violation. Records establishing who authorized the deployment of county emergency personnel and equipment to the gathering, and what taxpayers paid for it, remain outstanding.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Former Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will move to the “Trump Political Operation,” the president announced in an afternoon post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump said Miller, a key figure behind the administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign, is “one of my most trusted advisors.” 

The president told reporters outside the White House that he wants Miller to “just run things well.”

“Stephen’s been with me from the beginning. He gets it, very good politically, and he’s a very good manager. He’ll do a great job,” he said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed the move, writing on X Friday that Miller “is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands.”

“His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today,” Jeffries, who is poised to become House speaker in January, wrote on X.

Blue wave

The move comes after voters rebuked Trump Tuesday, giving Democrats sizable majorities in both the House and Senate this coming Congress. In a backlash to Trump, Hispanics who voted for the president in 2024 shunned him in the midterms.

Every voter demographic sharply swung toward Democrats, but Latinos shifted sharply, by 21 points, according to an analysis by NPR, and a separate analysis by The Associated Press.

Miller has been a proponent of the Trump administration’s campaign against birthright citizenship, which it lost in a major case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an interview with Fox News host Will Cain in December 2025, Miller described birthright citizenship as “the greatest scam in history.”

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” he said. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

The claim that immigrants commit more crimes than other demographics in the United States is unfounded, according to several studies of national crime statistics compiled by the Migration Policy Institute. The institute found that immigrants in the U.S. commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population.

The New York Times, reporting those comments by Miller, said that studies have documented the upward mobility of immigrant children and that experts questioned his underlying arguments.

The liberal-leaning Brookings Institution has reported that “immigrants are a fiscal boon to the U.S.” and that “Empirical evidence indicates that immigrants have historically contributed more in tax revenue than they receive in public benefits, creating a substantial fiscal surplus for the U.S. government over time.”

During that same interview, Miller blamed immigrants in the United States for low test scores and healthcare costs, among other issues.

2026 deadly surge

Miller also advocated for the surge of immigration agents into mostly Democrat-led American cities throughout 2026, and did not back down after extreme instances of violence. 

In January after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minnesota, Miller reposted a video of the killing posted by the Democratic National Committee on X with the comments: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.”

Miller steered immigration policies during Trump’s first term.

He has been a fixture of Trump’s political apparatus for a decade, and played a role in Trump’s successful presidential campaign beginning in 2015.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In most, the results were resounding — like Harlem Globetrotters v. Washington Generals resounding. City leaders in Wilmington, the county seat of Clinton County, asked voters to rezone four parcels to allow data center development. Roughly 80% of voters rejected all four.

In the Lake County Village of Perry, more than 87% of voters backed an initiative requiring data centers that accept tax incentives to take out a bond, operating kind of like an insurance policy, to back up their promises of local tax revenue.

Voters in Piqua prohibited data centers within city limits by a 2-to-1 margin and didn’t stop there. They also recalled three city commissioners — including the mayor and vice-mayor — for approving a Meta data center in November last year.

From Conneaut in far Northeastern Ashtabula County to Trenton in Southwestern Butler County, nine communities passed initiatives modeled on the statewide data center moratorium Conserve Ohio organizers are trying to put on the ballot in 2027. That initiative would amend the state constitution to prohibit any data center drawing more than 25 megawatts a month.

In a press release, Conserve Ohio congratulated communities who voted against data center development, and warned elected officials that “You cannot look away now.”

“The above election results demonstrate that when communities have a say regarding the construction of a hyperscale data center in their local area, they overwhelmingly say no,” the group wrote. “Your oath is invoked. Stop the self-dealing, corporate fealty, and greed. Represent and serve the people who elected you.”

Conserve Ohio urged Ohio citizens to push state lawmakers to pass a 12-month moratorium on any data center development in Ohio during the lame duck session between now and the end of the year.

Upper Sandusky

Angela Huffman is a sixth-generation farmer in Northwest Ohio, and she heads up the national watchdog group Farm Action, which focuses on corporate consolidation in the food and agriculture sector. She explained data centers came onto their radar about a year ago, because of concerns about their impact on farmland.

“And then lo and behold,” Huffman said, “I read in the newspaper back in June of this year that a data center, a nearly $1 billion data center, was proposed here right outside Upper Sandusky, which is about 10 miles from my farm.”

Upper Sandusky is the county seat of Wyandot County, but it’s a small city with a population of less than 7,000 residents. In June, the company Smartland Energy proposed building a 150-megawatt natural gas plant on a 46-acre parcel. The idea was to build the powerplant first and then sell the power directly to a data center client on an adjacent 100-acre parcel.

Smartland emphasized it “would not build, own or run” the data center, and that the eventual end-user would still need city approval and hadn’t been pre-selected.

Huffman and other organizers began collecting signatures to oppose the project, and unlike many petition drives, she said their job was relatively easy.

“Really our challenge was just finding ways to get in front of people,” she said. “They already knew about the issue. They were already concerned about data centers. So fortunately, we didn’t have to first educate or raise awareness and educate about what the problem was. They already knew. We just had to get their names on these petitions in time.”

Huffman noted construction of a Louis Dreyfus Company soybean processing plant was already stretching local infrastructure, and a data center adding to the strain was a daunting prospect.

When Upper Sandusky voters went into the booth last Tuesday, nearly 77% of them approved a city charter amendment banning data centers within city limits.

Looking forward

In a Facebook post last Thursday, Smartland Energy seemingly acknowledged its project doesn’t have a future in Upper Sandusky. The company thanked the community and reiterated its belief in their proposal.

“At the same time,” it stated, “we value and respect the democratic process and the outcome of the charter amendment vote.”

“Our team will take some time to come together, reflect on this process, and discuss the outcome,” Smartland added. “If there is ever anything further to share, this will be the first place we communicate it.”

The drubbing data centers took in Ohio last Tuesday didn’t stop at the state line. Around the country, 47 initiatives were on the ballot to restrict data centers. Election officials are still counting votes for two of those contests, but according to the website Data Centers on the Ballot, 44 jurisdictions rejected data centers and just one welcomed them.

The day after the election, data center industry group Infrastructure for America released what it called a “good actor pledge”. It’s members, including Compass, Digital Realty, QTS and Vantage, committed to operate transparently, invest in their communities, and not be a drain on local power and water infrastructure.

Dan Diorio, who heads up state policy and government affairs for the Data Center Coalition said their industry can advance the issues Americans care about, like jobs and the economy.

“Data centers can play a crucial role in advancing affordability for Americans through job creation, local tax revenue, and bringing investment and opportunity to local communities,” Diorio said.

He added that the industry is committed to learning what communities need and earning their trust. Data center developers are also ready to comply with local standards and  deliver “clear benefits” to their neighbors.

“Communities that signal that they are closed for business and investment may miss out on those opportunities,” Diorio said, “relinquishing substantial long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring areas or other states.”

To Huffman, the election results underscore the importance of communities having a voice in major developments like data centers. She stressed that she doesn’t oppose AI or development generally, but the way the industry has been operating feels “predatory.”

Between tax abatements for developers, and the lack of local protections or input, “it’s really been tilted in favor of big tech,” she said, “at the expense of Ohio.”

“I think that’s where a lot of the pushback started,” Huffman added. “If this had been more of a level playing field from the start, I don’t think there would have been as much opposition.”

Correction: This story initially stated the Data Center Coalition did not respond, but their response was missed.

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.

Allison Russo, a member of the state House of Representatives, defeated Republican Robert Sprague by 3.5 percentage points to become secretary of state, the office that oversees Ohio’s elections and business registration.

Now she has a chance to continue a fight she began while she was in the legislature — to protect voting access for Ohioans.

“The thing that motivated me (to run) was understanding how important this office is for voting rights and for access to our elections,” Russo said in a phone interview. “I’ve known for a long time that this is an office I wanted to run for, and that we needed someone there to be an advocate for voters and voting.”

She was elected as part of a rout that broke total Republican control statewide offices in Ohio and left the GOP with only one statewide, non-judicial office — that of state auditor. 

As the GOP gained power in Ohio over the past 20 years, its leaders have entrenched that power through measures that critics said were antidemocratic. 

They severely gerrymandered the state legislature and Ohio’s congressional districts and then ignored seven orders of the Ohio Supreme Court saying that the gerrymanders were unconstitutional. 

And outgoing Secretary Frank LaRose repeatedly ratcheted down voting access on claims that the goal was to fight voter fraud. Yet his office’s own numbers demonstrated that it only might have happened 0.0005% of the time in the 2020 election. 

And more recent reporting for the Capital Journal shows there have been just nine convictions for illegal voting out of 35 million votes. That’s 0.0000003 convictions per vote cast.

Nevertheless, LaRose implemented rules and Republicans passed laws that shortened the early voting calendar, shortened deadlines around absentee voting and restricted the number of drop boxes and early-voting sites to one per county — regardless of whether the county is home to millions who tend to vote for Democrats or just 13,000 who tend to vote for Republicans.

Ohio Republicans also enacted one of the strictest voter ID laws in the United States.

All of those things culminated in the last night of early voting in Columbus, where voters had to stand in line for at least an hour after the polls had officially closed.

Russo said such waits are unacceptable, but as secretary of state, she has to deal with the law as it is.

“We have to work with existing state law whether I like that existing state law or not,” she said. “That said, we have a secretary of state (LaRose) who we’ve seen go beyond the plain language of the law and sometimes make existing, unfavorable law even worse. 

“So we are going to be looking very closely at the directives that have been previously issued. We’re going to work with our local elections officials to understand which ones are problematic to implement because they’re unclear, the legality may be problematic, or there are resource issues. That will be one of the first orders of business.”

As for drop boxes and early voting sites and hours, Russo said she’ll do what she can.

“There is some discretion for the secretary of state over the hours and how you use those days and the hours that are available to voters,” she said. “We’re going to be looking at what we can do there, because I share the concern that many Ohioans had when they saw those long lines. We do not want voters to be discouraged if they show up. And they should not have to wait that long.”

The secretary of state also has considerable power over the mechanics of citizen-initiated laws and constitutional amendments. She ensures they follow the single-subject rule and otherwise pass legal muster — including by verifying petition signatures.

And crucially, she proposes the language that will appear on the ballot to the Ohio Ballot Board.

In 2024, a group led by former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, proposed a constitutional amendment that sought to end gerrymandering by creating an independent, bipartisan panel to draw legislative and congressional districts. 

LaRose proposed three pages of ballot language with a title claiming that under the amendment, the panel was “required to gerrymander” the districts. Republicans on the ballot board adopted the language and the amendment failed in the same election that gained Donald Trump a second term as president.

There has been talk of trying to get a similar amendment on the ballot ahead of the 2030 census. Russo said it could be one of several in the next two years.

“I suspect there will be a number of ballot issues that will come forward over the next couple of years to address many of these concerns that voters have in this space,” she said. “Whether it be redistricting (or gerrymandering) reform, or voting rights — or it could be education funding — I suspect it will be a number of issues. As secretary of state, my involvement will be when those issues come forward.”

Would she commit to proposing straightforward, unbiased ballot language regardless of the content of the statute or amendment?

“Absolutely,” Russo said. “I talked a lot about that on the campaign trail — the need to have a more transparent process with ballot language. There has to be ample public notice about the ballot language to keep it simple and clear and easily understood. 

“Because listen, when you complicate ballot language, not only does it confuse voters, it also contributes to these long lines when voters have to stand there and read a lot of language and try to comprehend what it means.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Amanda Byrd, who opened SOUL Boutique at 181 S. Washington St. in 2021, launched Something for your SOUL in September. The business offers customized charcuterie selections for individual orders, group gatherings and special events.

According to a September 28 announcement from Downtown Tiffin, the food is prepared at the Tiffin Community Kitchen, with orders handled through direct contact and special requests.

The business focuses on curated food selections and presentation, incorporating locally sourced ingredients when available. Its offerings expand Byrd’s existing retail business into prepared foods and event catering.

“Everything I create is rooted in connection and made to share,” Byrd said in the announcement, describing her approach to the new venture.

Customers interested in placing orders or requesting additional information can contact Byrd at 419-618-9497 or byrdssolutionsllc@gmail.com.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The Farmen Footbridge was formally dedicated October 24 during the university’s Homecoming celebration. The project was funded by Heidelberg alumni Ray and Sharon Farmen, graduates of the classes of 1976 and 1975, respectively.

The bridge links the area around Frann’s Fieldhouse with Peaceful Valley, where Heidelberg’s baseball and softball facilities are located, and improves access to Hidden Valley, the university’s soccer field, and the Rock Creek Trail. Heidelberg says the crossing is available to students, alumni, area residents and other visitors.

The project is among the final additions associated with Frann’s Fieldhouse, the university’s 110,000-square-foot athletics, academics and recreation facility that was dedicated in October 2025.

Alumni gift made the project possible

The bridge originated from a commitment made during Heidelberg’s Alumni Weekend in 2025. After hearing university President Rob Huntington describe future campus improvements, the Farmens offered to fund the project.

At the dedication, Heidelberg student Leah Arnett, a member of the university’s softball team, described how the new crossing would improve everyday travel between campus facilities. Its usefulness extends to practices, games, athletic training and public access to the surrounding trails.

University leaders, alumni and local officials attended the October 24 ceremony. The Farmens participated in a ceremonial walk across the bridge accompanied by the Heidelberg Marching Band, according to the university’s account of the dedication.

The bridge also creates a more direct connection between the university’s recreational facilities and Tiffin’s public trail network, allowing residents to reach the Peaceful Valley area from the fieldhouse side of campus.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

An industry group for the middlemen said it might only make prescription drugs more expensive.

The Columbus-based expert, Antonio Ciaccia, has advocated for years to force more transparency on the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs.

As state legislatures and health agencies have passed laws aimed at shedding light on the practices of the big PBMs, which are part of huge health conglomerates, PBMs simply changed tactics, Ciaccia said.

“This ends the game of whack-a-mole,” he said during a panel discussion that was part of the announcement at the Labor Department in Washington, D.C.

“It says you can’t hide the ball anymore — that transparency is finally going to be a given for the employer. This is not another instance where the government is creating another program… This is a solution given to employers to finally control their own destinies.”

The PBM industry group, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, said adequate transparency rules already exist.

“Patients, employers, and unions will have no new meaningful transparency from this action, but prescription drug benefits will now be more expensive,” David Marin, president and CEO of the group said in a written statement.

The Labor Department is finalizing a new rule that requires those in charge of large employers’ self-insured health plans to seek detailed information about how PBMs make their money so the plans can be smart shoppers for their services. It also requires PBMs to turn over that information.

“Wherever there’s a dark corner, somebody’s making money,” Mehmet Oz, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said of the need for transparency.

PBMs sit in the middle of prescription-drug transactions. They work on behalf of insurers and contract with drugmakers and pharmacies.

PBMs often extract rebates from makers of patented drugs in exchange for covering them. They use a dizzying array of nontransparent price lists to decide how much to reimburse pharmacies that dispense drugs.

The big three PBMs — CVS Caremark, OptumRx and Express Scripts — collectively control 80% of insured drug transactions in the United States. Each also is part of a Fortune 15 health conglomerate that also owns a top 10 health insurer.

Critics say the companies’ dual roles as payer and payee in millions of drug transactions create clear conflicts that drive up prices and drive non-PBM-owned pharmacies out of business.

Critics also say that the rebate system creates a motive to inflate drug prices by giving PBMs a motive to prefer more expensive drugs — for which drugmakers are willing to give bigger rebates — over cheaper ones that serve the same medical purpose. 

Because part of those rebates flow back to companies with self-insured plans, they can seem like a good deal to executives who have little visibility into transactions PBMs are making on their behalf, said Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Aronowitz. 

“The word ‘rebate’ makes everyone feel good — money coming back, savings,” he said. “But before anyone around the conference table celebrates, someone needs to ask, what did the plan and our workers pay to get it? A rebate tells you how much money came back. It does not tell you if the price was reasonable in the first place or what your workers paid at the pharmacy counter.”

Aronowitz added, “If a car dealer offered you a generous rebate, you would still want to know the price of the car.”

The new Labor Department rule requires PBMs to disclose all their sources of money prior to entering into or renewing contracts with large, self-insured plans covered under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. It also requires them to make semiannual disclosures and to allow those plans to audit PBMs’ books.

The rule doesn’t begin to apply to all insurance arrangements. But with 136 million Americans covered by the rule, the changes are likely to influence the rest of the marketplace. 

It also requires the plans’ “fiduciaries” — executives responsible for getting the best deal for their workers — to use the new tools to make sure they are. Not only does overpaying for drugs make the plans more expensive, it jacks up workers’ out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter.

“The cost is not a rounding error,” Aronowitz said. “A cholesterol drug for which the pharmacy receives $5.25 can be billed to the plan at $84 — 16 times the price. Multiply that across thousands of prescriptions a year. That is money that can support better health benefits, lower premiums or higher wages.”

Marin of the PBM industry group said he was concerned the new rule “will lead to higher patient costs and less competition, the opposite of the (Labor) Department’s stated intent.”

He also said that it created no additional transparency. Even so, he seemed to hint that the industry might sue.

“We are committed to protecting patients, employers, and unions from the consequences of unnecessary and expensive regulatory overreach, and we will evaluate available pathways to do so,” Marin said.

Ciaccia, the Columbus-based drug-pricing expert, said the rule will provide sorely lacking transparency.

“I’ve been doing this for over 10 years,” he said. “We helped Ohio uncover over $245 million in hidden spread pricing back in 2018. When we caught them, I would have told you this is going to change everything. They’re not going to be able to mark up these drugs anymore.”

But, Ciaccia said, what followed was a long game of cat-and-mouse.

“Now you’re going to be able to see (your PBM charged you) $22,000 for a drug that is being sold by an independent, cash-pay pharmacy for $300,” he said. “There are drugs where that’s literally happening. You cannot manage what you can’t measure. This gives you the ability to measure.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, is likely to be speaker of the House when the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. 

In a letter to reelected and newly elected Democratic colleagues in which he made a pitch to be elected speaker, Jeffries named affordability the top priority for 2027. “In the new Congress, we will aggressively fight for an affordable America,” he wrote. “Life is way too expensive, and millions of hardworking taxpayers are drowning in this failed economy.”

To lower the cost of living, Jeffries says, Democrats would “find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible,” with a focus on lower costs for housing, healthcare, groceries and goods, gas and utilities, and caregiving. 

“In addition to the forward progress that we must make in the next two years, there is a lot of damage done by the MAGA extremists that needs to be repaired,” the letter says. “During the first 100 days, House Democrats must act to reverse the Medicaid cuts, restore SNAP funding, extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, eradicate the Trump tariffs and stop the reckless war of choice in Iran. The era of MAGA extremism is coming to a crashing end.”

An NBC News exit poll found that 63% of voters believed higher-than-usual prices were more due to Trump’s policies than to factors outside of his control and 66% believed his policies have worsened economic conditions in the U.S. It also found 89% of voters said the cost of living was crucial or a major factor in determining their vote. 

Jeffries says House Democrats will prioritize accountability for “an out-of-control executive branch,” stop “corrupt price gouging,” and “ban Members of Congress from trading stocks.”

According to Politico, New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, told reporters on Nov. 4, “We’re not going to take our eye off the ball. Number one: reducing costs, ending corruption,” and that the Senate would “work hard to drive costs down with the president or without him. Period.”

Schumer said, “Whenever Trump defies the will of the American people or the law, we will launch investigations, take him to court and entangle him in legislative razor wire,”

This will be the first time Trump will have Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate; Democrats held a majority in the House in 2019 and 2020, but Republicans held a majority in the Senate and blocked hundreds of House bills without bringing them up for a vote. 

Trump told Fox News on Nov. 1 that if Democrats held majorities in Congress the next year, “I’ll guess I’ll become Mr. Veto — I’m not going to let them — and then at some point we’ll probably make deals. This wouldn’t be the first time. You’ll have a president, and you won’t have the House or the Senate. They’ll be sending stuff up, you veto it. And eventually, after a month or two of getting all vetoed, you know, they’re just wasting — they come over and you make a deal.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The DeWines had Governor-elect Acton and her husband Eric over at the Ohio Governor’s residence Wednesday night.

“It’s in everyone’s interest that the new administration be successful, that they get things done,” DeWine told reporters at a post-election results conference Thursday morning. 

“We’re going to do everything we can, and that would have been true whether it was Vivek Ramaswamy or Governor-elect Acton. … What I started to do with her is here’s what I know. Here’s what my experiences have been. Here are some difficult things. Here are things that, I think, as I look at the trajectory of Ohio, I think is going to be challenging.”

Ohio Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the Ohio House, limiting the lawmakers’ ability to override vetoes from Acton. Political analysts expect Ohio Republican lawmakers to try to push proposals that could limit the governor’s authority.  

“I don’t think any governor is going to approve anything, whether Democrat or Republican, that would dramatically change the powers of the governor,” DeWine said.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate. I have no idea if they are going to do that.” 

Acton previously served on DeWine’s cabinet as Ohio Department of Health director from February 2019 to June 2020.  

Acton will take office as Ohio governor on Jan. 11 and she named John Haseley as her  transition chair. Haseley has previously worked with members of the Ohio Democratic Party including Ted Strickland, John Glenn, and Dick Celeste. 

“We govern in this state from the center-right and the center-left, and I have every expectation that Governor-elect Acton will do the same, and she will be consistent with that long, long tradition of Democrats and Republicans in the state of Ohio who govern either from the center-left or the center-right,” DeWine said.

“Predictability, stability, is really one of the strengths that we have as a state.” 

DeWine hopes Acton will continue the science of reading with more reading coaches, the OhioSEE Program, the Governor’s Merit Scholarship, and the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. 

“We must continue to invest, frankly, in our greatest asset. And our greatest asset is our children,” DeWine said. 

“If you look at (Acton’s) speech she made on election night … She certainly talked about children. She talked about H2Ohio. Now I will say this: Vivek Ramaswamy, when I talked to him, he had expressed that he would try to continue those issues as well. She’s got to govern, and she’s got to face the challenges that she faces. All I can do is talk about what I think is in the best interest in the state of Ohio. Investing in children is absolutely the best money we can spend.”

DeWine declined to say if Ramaswamy’s controversial ad featuring Acton’s estranged mom impacted other Ohio Republicans in Tuesday’s election. 

“I’m not going to get into micromanagement and dissect campaigns,” he said. 

Following a national trend, Ohio Democrats won several races both at the state and federal level.

Democrat Sherrod Brown will going back to the U.S. Senate, Allison Russo was elected Ohio Secretary of State, John Kulewicz will be Ohio’s Attorney General, Seth Walsh was elected Ohio Treasurer, Justice Jennifer Brunner retained her seat on the Ohio Supreme Court and Marilyn Zayas was elected to the Ohio Supreme Court. 

DeWine called Tuesday’s election a “mighty wind that came across not just Ohio, but across, of course, the whole country.”

“Sometimes there is a mighty wind out there, and no matter what you do, there’s nothing you can do in that campaign to win. This is something that happens every once in a while. And this mighty wind really took it away from many candidates who, in a normal year, would have won.” 

DeWine said he expects Ohioans to hear from Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted again. Husted lost to Brown and was formerly DeWine’s lieutenant governor. 

When asked if Husted will run for governor in 2030, DeWine said “I’m not going to get into that.” 

DeWine, who has about 65 days left in office, said he has a list of things he hopes to see the legislature do during lame duck, but has not yet talked about those with Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman and Ohio Senate President Rob McColley. 

“There’ll be certain things we’ll be trying to get done,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll have things that they want to get done. I hope we can reach some consensus about things that we both can support.”

DeWine said he is focused on highway safety and passing the primary seatbelt law, which allows law enforcement to pull over and ticket a driver or passenger for not wearing a seat belt. Currently in Ohio, law enforcement officers can only cite drivers for not wearing a seat belt if they are stopped for a different traffic violation.

“We know that Ohio still lags behind in regards to seatbelt use, we know the primary seatbelt law will increase that use,” he said.

“Ninety percent put on a seatbelt. Yet 60% of the fatalities in the state come from people who do not have a seatbelt. So that tells you the magnitude of having that seatbelt on. We can protect our lives. We can keep families from mourning young ones, mourning their father, their mother.” 

He said there are other things too, but quickly followed up by saying “I won’t reveal my whole list today.” 

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 ban on abortions at six weeks, also called the “Heartbeat Ban,” was already blocked from enforcement, which the Ohio Attorney General’s Office chose not to fight on appeal. As Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins put it in his newest court decision, the ban on abortion when cardiac activity is detected “has gone the way of the dodo.”

But Jenkins’ newest court order added to the already struck-down abortion ban, saying all the measures of the Senate bill that were written alongside the ban are unconstitutional and can’t be used individually.

The six-week abortion ban has been a point of contention in the state for several years, partly because it’s been in court essentially since it was enacted in 2019. When the first lawsuit came about, Roe v. Wade’s legalization of abortion nationwide was still in effect. But once the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2022, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost quickly moved to get the law out of its legal limbo, which a federal court agreed to do.

A few months later, the law was back in court, first with the Ohio Supreme Court, and then in Franklin County Common Pleas.

Jenkins ruled against the state in Oct. 2022, and the state appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

But as the state’s highest court considered the appeal, a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights was passed by 57% of Ohio voters in 2023. The Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the appeal due to “a change in the law,” and sent the case back to state court.

This time, Jenkins permanently blocked most of the law, saying one part of the law was unconstitutional, and “most of the provisions … are unconstitutional in their own right,” adding that the provisions of the bill couldn’t be separated from each other.

When the state appealed that decision to the First District Court of Appeals, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office said they wouldn’t fight the striking down of the six-week abortion ban, but argued the other elements of the law should remain viable.

Included in the law were requirements that medical professionals report tests for cardiac activity to the Ohio Department of Health, along with any actions they believe are exceptions to the six-week ban.

The appellate court ruled that the Franklin County court had the authority to block multiple statutes in the same bill, against the state’s arguments. But it upheld the attorney general’s claim that the state court should not have considered the constitutionality of the other provisions of the six-week ban law before considering whether they could stand on their own as separate laws.

With the case returning to Franklin County, Jenkins now had to rule on whether the provisions that were alongside the six-week abortion ban could be used as their own measures.

In his Oct. 29 decision, Jenkins found that the other parts of the law are “the same species” as the six-week abortion ban, “and for that reason, they cannot survive.”

“These measures were passed alongside the six-week ban to make it difficult, or impossible, to obtain abortion care in Ohio by placing providers at risk of criminal prosecution as well as professional and financial ruin,” Jenkins wrote.

The judge went on to say the other provisions “were enacted to enforce, document, and define the six-week ban,” and without them, the other measures can’t be read as the legislature wrote them.

“They require every physician who performs an abortion to record whether the patient’s health was a reason for it, and they make a physician who fails to keep that record subject to discipline by the State Medical Board,” Jenkins wrote.

If the provisions were allowed to stay in place, Jenkins said physicians could still face prison time for conducting abortions “to which the patient now has a constitutional right.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click defeated Democrat Aaron Jones, a Tiffin city councilman, by 23,930 votes to 16,927, according to unofficial returns from the Seneca County and Sandusky County boards of elections. Click received 58.57% to Jones’s 41.43%, an eight-point decline from his 2024 vote share and more than nine points below his 2022 performance.

Campaign-finance records reviewed by TiffinOhio.net show that the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee, known as OHROC, reported $92,765.80 in in-kind contributions to Click’s campaign in its 2026 pre-general filings. Seven transactions included $91,124.33 in advertising and $1,641.47 in printing. Click’s own pre-general report separately listed more than $18,000 in cash expenditures by his campaign committee.

That substantial financial backing accompanied Click’s weakest general-election result since he first won the House seat in 2020. He received 62.90% that year, 67.80% in 2022 and 66.57% in 2024. His 2026 performance was also the weakest Republican showing in any contested District 88 midterm election since the district began encompassing Seneca and Sandusky counties in 2012. Republican Bill Reineke received 59.01% in 2014 and 65.87% in 2018.

Jones’s 41.43% was the strongest Democratic share in a District 88 midterm during that period. Click also ran behind other Republicans on Tuesday’s ballot. Across the same two counties, state auditor candidate Frank LaRose received 62.27% of the two-party vote, Attorney General Keith Faber received 62.02%, and state treasurer candidate Jay Edwards received 61.44%.

Click lashes out as Jones congratulates him

Following the election, Click used his campaign’s Facebook account to acknowledge that he ordinarily believes winners should be gracious before launching into attacks against his political opponents.

“It has been my custom to be gracious in victory. I think that is normally the right thing to do,” Click wrote.

He singled out Seneca County Democratic Party leader Gina Grandillo and the county’s Democrats, calling their conduct “disgraceful and disgusting.” He also attacked this outlet, TiffinOhio.net, which he described as a “fake news blog.”

On his personal Facebook account, Click separately accused opponents of spreading personal smears and alleged that “dark money from Chicago” had been used against him. His posts provided no documentation identifying the alleged funding or substantiating the accusations.

Jones took a different approach. In his public concession statement Tuesday night, he congratulated Click, thanked campaign volunteers and expressed hope that the incumbent would listen to residents concerned about property taxes, public schools and working families.

A source within the Jones campaign told TiffinOhio.net that Jones personally called Click at approximately 9:30 p.m. Tuesday to congratulate him and concede the race. Click did not answer, and Jones left a voicemail. According to the source, Click had not returned the call as of Wednesday.

Nearly $93,000 in GOP support after a primary scare

The substantial OHROC investment followed a Republican primary in which Click nearly lost his nomination to Eric Watson, a first-time candidate from Tiffin. Watson defeated Click in Seneca County and finished just 600 votes behind him districtwide, receiving 47.72% of the Republican primary vote.

Watson mounted that challenge despite substantially weaker fundraising and a series of extraordinary claims about data centers. In February, The Toledo Blade reported on a recording supplied by Click in which Watson claimed artificial intelligence data centers could harvest people’s conscious and unconscious thoughts, including while they slept.

Click’s campaign had already benefited from OHROC support during the primary. Campaign-finance filings reviewed by TiffinOhio.net showed Click’s committee transferred $45,000 to the Republican caucus organization, which subsequently reported providing $38,611.62 in campaign support. Click reported $69,461.37 in contributions through primary day, nearly four times Watson’s $17,488.05.

The incumbent ultimately survived both elections with the backing of Republican leaders and the party’s campaign apparatus. Jones, who said his campaign was outspent by a wide margin, nevertheless secured the strongest Democratic midterm performance in the district in more than a decade.

Click’s renewed attacks on Seneca County Democrats also followed his own documented false allegations against local political opponents. In August, campaign-finance records disproved his assertion that Jones, Grandillo and Fremont City Councilwoman Angie Ruiz had contributed to Watson’s Republican primary campaign. None had done so. Click deleted the accusation and acknowledged his mistake.

Three months later, Click celebrated his reelection by accusing opponents of dishonesty and alleging political funding from Chicago. His victory posts offered no evidence supporting those accusations, even as his own campaign-finance disclosures documented tens of thousands of dollars in advertising supplied by the Republican establishment.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio voters elected 42 Democrats and 52 Republicans to the Ohio House, according to unofficial election results. Five of the races were too close to call as of Wednesday afternoon. 

“It is pretty earth-shattering for the general operations of the assembly,” said University of Cincinnati Political Science Professor David Niven. 

“(Ohio Republicans are) quite used to getting their way, and even though Republicans will maintain a majority, they’ve lost their ‘we can do anything we want’ majority.”

A supermajority is 60 or more seats in the Ohio House and 20 or more seats in the Ohio Senate. Republicans have held a supermajority in the Ohio House since 2013.  

“When you have one party that is simply unaccountable to any other check or balance, it means that they can do whatever they want, and that’s particularly been the case for the Republican legislature,” said University of Akron political scientist David Cohen.

“This was just an enormous event for Democrats to be able to break that stranglehold that they have on the legislature.” 

Republicans will have to work with Democrats to pass legislation, the political analysts said. 

“It provides an opportunity for the legislature and the governor to work together, but it will take goodwill and hard work, and it won’t be easy,” said Common Cause Ohio Executive Director Catherine Turcer. 

Republicans at the Statehouse are not used to having to work with Democrats, Cohen said.

**“**It’s not something that they really want to do, but it’s something that they’re going to be forced to do if they want to have to be able to to get legislation passed and laws on the books,” he said. 

Niven anticipates Acton and the Republican lawmakers will disagree on school funding and vouchers.

“I don’t think there’s a middle ground on that one,” he said. “That’s a philosophical difference, and I don’t know that there’s any way that they’re going to come together.”

The rest of the General Assembly before Acton takes office in January is going “to be fairly unpleasant,” Turcer said. 

“Legislative leaders are likely going to push proposals that could limit the authority of the governor,” she said. 

“There are things like executive agencies under the purview of the governor who end up making a lot of administrative rules, and the legislature could claw back some of that agency rulemaking and put the control in their own hands.” 

Ohio House races 

Republicans currently hold a 65-34 majority in the Ohio House, but some Republican incumbents lost to their Democrat challengers in Tuesday’s election, according to unofficial results. 

• Democrat Megan Coy defeated incumbent state Rep. Mike Dovilla, R-Berea. 

• Democrat Rose Lounsbury defeated state Rep. Andrea White, R-Kettering. 

• Democrat Shelby Kimball defeated state Rep. Brian Lorenz, R-Powell. 

• Democrat Krista Allison defeated state Rep. Jim Thomas, R-Plain Township. 

Democrats picked up a handful of seats in open districts that are currently held by Republicans. 

• Democrat Noah Spinner won Ohio’s 31st district, which is currently held by state Rep. Bill Roemer, R-Richfield.  

• Democrat Samantha Salamon won Ohio’s 35th district, which is currently held by state Rep. Steve Demetriou, R-Bainbridge Twp. Demetriou lost his bid for election for the Ohio Senate. 

• Democrat Daquan Neal won Ohio’s 39th district, which is currently held by state Rep. Phil Plummer, R-Dayton. 

• Democrat Mike Baker won Ohio’s 52nd district, which is currently held by state Rep. Gayle Manning, R-Avon. Manning won her seat in the Ohio Senate. 

A few races with Republican incumbents were too close to call as of Wednesday afternoon. 

State Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, R-Perrysburg, has a slight lead in a tight race with Democrat Richard Rettig and state Rep. Cindy Abrams, R-Harrison, has a small lead against Democrat Jonathan Bradner, as of Wednesday afternoon. 

Democrat Tom Herner had a slight lead over state Rep. Tom Young, R-Washington Twp., as of Wednesday afternoon. 

Republican Edward Schimmel and Democrat David Fournier were nearly tied for Ohio’s 44th district, which is currently held by Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., as of Wednesday. 

“We didn’t just break the supermajority — we shattered it,” Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn, D-Cincinnati, said Tuesday night. 

“This means that we have the opportunity to actually govern in Ohio. It’s not enough that Dr. Acton is our next governor. We have flipped these seats so that Dr. Acton can govern when she’s in.”

Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said he’s seen similar political cycles in 2006 under President George W. Bush and in 2012 under President Barack Obama. 

“Despite that national trend, Republicans have maintained a strong majority in the Ohio House, positioning us to advance the priorities we believe will best serve the people of Ohio over the next two years,” Huffman said in a statement to the Ohio Capital Journal.

Ohio Senate races 

The supermajority remains in the Ohio Senate as 22 Republicans and 11 Democrats were elected Tuesday, according to unofficial election results. 

Ohio Democrats did pick up two seats as Democrat Stacie Baker beat incumbent state Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, and Democrat Mike Roberto beat Republican state Rep. Steve Demetriou for Ohio’s 27th district, which is currently held by Republican state Sen. Kristina Roegner. 

“The people of Ohio have spoken, and it’s clear that they are ready for change,” Ohio Senate Democratic Leader Nickie J. Antonio, D-Lakewood, said in a statement. 

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.

Ohio voters handed Ramaswamy a humiliating defeat Tuesday, rejecting the billionaire Republican by nearly eight percentage points in a state Donald Trump carried by eleven points just two years earlier. For a man who spent much of his campaign projecting an air of political inevitability, the result was devastating. His opponent, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, will become Ohio’s first elected woman governor and the first Democrat to win the office since 2006.

The unofficial election returns showed Acton winning approximately 52.3% of the vote to Ramaswamy’s 44.4%, a margin of roughly 360,000 votes. The result represents a nearly 19-point reversal in partisan margin from Ohio’s 2024 presidential election. Ramaswamy also performed worse than every other Republican candidate on the statewide ticket, according to election-night reporting by the Ohio Capital Journal.

Republicans had cleared a path for him. Trump endorsed him early, Vice President JD Vance campaigned alongside him, and wealthy donors poured extraordinary sums into political efforts supporting his candidacy. Ramaswamy personally loaned his campaign more than $41 million. His final pre-election filing reported $51.1 million in campaign spending over the reporting period, compared with $26.2 million by Acton’s campaign.

Ramaswamy had the political connections and financial resources to build one of the most formidable Republican campaigns Ohio had ever seen. What he built instead was an expensive monument to his own arrogance, poor judgment and apparent inability to recognize when he was destroying his chances of winning.

The attack that defined his campaign

Of all the self-inflicted wounds Ramaswamy suffered, none was more revealing than his decision to turn Amy Acton’s childhood sexual abuse into a campaign weapon.

In April, Ramaswamy posted a video describing Acton as a candidate with no vision for Ohio beyond her ability to “complain about what someone else did to her.” Acton had spoken publicly about surviving sexual abuse and severe neglect as a child. His remark drew condemnation, yet the attacks on her childhood continued throughout the campaign.

Then came October. Ramaswamy’s campaign produced a television advertisement featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter dishonest and warning Ohioans against electing her governor. The campaign initially announced a $4 million effort to promote the commercial.

The advertisement concealed a devastating history. Arthur lost custody of Acton and her younger brother in 1978 after her husband, Acton’s stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton when she was twelve years old. The couple fled Ohio before he could stand trial. Arthur remained married to him until his death. Acton had been estranged from her mother for nearly fifty years, and contemporaneous records supported the account of her childhood that Ramaswamy sought to discredit.

Ramaswamy’s campaign took a woman who had lost custody of her children amid horrific allegations of abuse and presented her as an authority on her daughter’s honesty. The candidate defended that decision as the facts became public. He continued defending it after Republican Gov. Mike DeWine urged him to remove the advertisement and condemned it as deeply troubling.

Even Ohio Republicans recoiled. DeWine, who had worked closely with Acton during the pandemic and publicly vouched for her honesty, eventually refused to campaign alongside Ramaswamy, although he retained his endorsement. Republican Sen. Jon Husted criticized the commercial as well. Trump and Vance, meanwhile, defended the attack.

Ramaswamy searched the darkest chapter of his opponent’s childhood for something he could use against her. He found her estranged mother, put her accusations on television and stood by the decision even as the circumstances of their estrangement became public. This was the political judgment of a man asking Ohioans to entrust him with the governor’s office.

The political damage became apparent before voters reached the polls. An internal Republican survey obtained by Axios found that Acton’s lead had grown from two points earlier in October to eight points after the advertisement began circulating. The final unofficial election margin was nearly identical.

Ramaswamy was already struggling before the commercial aired. He nevertheless chose to make a deeply personal attack the centerpiece of his closing argument, even as Republican officials warned that the decision could damage his campaign and the rest of their ticket.

A long record of self-inflicted wounds

The final weeks merely brought Ramaswamy’s political instincts into sharper focus. His campaign had been undermining its own credibility for months.

In August, Ramaswamy aired an advertisement featuring Republican activist Linda Caudill blaming Acton for her mother’s death during the COVID-19 pandemic. The commercial failed to disclose that Caudill’s mother lived and died in Kentucky, six weeks after Acton had resigned as Ohio’s health director. The advertisement also failed to identify the nursing home or establish that Ohio’s visitation restrictions governed it. Public records exposed the enormous factual gaps in the campaign’s accusation.

Ramaswamy repeatedly blamed Acton for Ohio’s pandemic shutdowns, even as DeWine, the Republican governor who ordered them, publicly insisted that those decisions were his responsibility. The candidate kept attacking the former health director while the governor who had supervised her disputed the premise of his attacks.

His hypocrisy extended to debates. Ramaswamy attacked Acton for declining to debate him and declared that candidates unwilling to debate could not lead Ohio. Earlier that year, he had refused to debate Republican primary challenger Casey Putsch, who received nearly eighteen percent of the primary vote despite operating with a fraction of Ramaswamy’s financial resources.

There was the gas tax spectacle, too. When Acton called for an emergency suspension of Ohio’s gas tax in September, Ramaswamy announced a substantially similar proposal approximately six and a half hours later. His campaign issued a triumphant announcement proclaiming “Vivek Leads.” The chronology was unmistakable, yet Ramaswamy was already congratulating himself for taking the initiative.

His education proposals reflected the same appetite for sweeping declarations. Ramaswamy had advocated placing cameras inside school classrooms and separately proposed year-round schooling with longer school days, offering no adequate explanation of how financially strained districts would fund the changes. For parents and school officials in communities such as Tiffin, the unanswered questions concerned real operating costs, student privacy and the state’s responsibility to public education.

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy’s campaign reported nearly $870,000 in private-jet expenses. Republican officials had reportedly urged him to stop using the aircraft because of the political damage. He continued flying privately while campaigning on affordability to Ohioans struggling with rising household expenses.

The spending was especially revealing because Ramaswamy’s own wealth had become a defining feature of his candidacy. His campaign could afford enormous advertising expenditures, private aircraft and a statewide political operation that most candidates could scarcely imagine. Yet the candidate repeatedly displayed an astonishing inability to understand how his conduct would look to the working families whose votes he needed.

Ohio delivered its verdict

Tuesday’s Republican losses extended far beyond Ramaswamy. Voters across the country punished the party over the economy and the direction of President Trump’s administration. Acton also ran a formidable campaign, emphasizing affordability and health care while drawing on her experiences growing up in a working-class Ohio family. Her personal story, which Ramaswamy repeatedly sought to discredit, became an important part of her connection with voters.

Ramaswamy’s performance nevertheless stands out. He entered the contest with Trump’s blessing, the support of much of Ohio’s Republican establishment and financial advantages that few statewide candidates have ever enjoyed. He finished election night as the worst-performing Republican on Ohio’s statewide ticket, defeated by a woman whose political career he had spent months trying to destroy.

There is an unmistakable arrogance in believing that an electorate will overlook almost anything if a candidate spends enough money and secures the right endorsements. Ramaswamy appeared to operate under that assumption throughout the campaign. Each controversy brought another justification, another argument that his critics had misunderstood him, another insistence that he knew better.

At his concession speech Tuesday night, Ramaswamy suddenly offered gracious words about Acton. The man whose campaign had featured her estranged mother calling her a liar told supporters he hoped and believed she would bring Ohio together. After months of attacks on her honesty and character, his newfound respect for his opponent arrived only after voters had rendered their judgment.

Ramaswamy will have plenty of opportunities to explain this defeat. He can blame the national political environment, Republican discontent or the difficulties of running against a candidate as personally compelling as Acton. He may even persuade himself that his campaign’s ugliest moments were misunderstood.

The record of his campaign will remain. He chose to defend the advertisement featuring Acton’s estranged mother. He approved a deeply misleading attack involving a Kentucky woman’s death. He demanded standards of his opponent that he had refused to meet himself. He spent extraordinary amounts of money projecting leadership while repeatedly demonstrating deficiencies in political judgment.

And after all of that, the voters of a state Trump carried by eleven points sent him home by nearly eight.

For a man who seemed so certain that Ohio’s governorship was his next step toward political greatness, the humiliation could hardly be more complete.

Again… Adios, Vivek. Don’t let the private jet door hit you on the way out.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Republicans have held a majority of state legislatures and governorships since 2010. But that reign appears over as Democrats swept a majority of governorships and state legislative chambers.

Tracking from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee on Wednesday showed the party had flipped 12 chambers so far, winning the most chambers since 2008 and putting Democrats in control of more than half the nation’s state legislative chambers.

“With this sweep, Democrats have achieved their best performance since the Watergate scandal,” the committee, which works to elect Democrats at the state level, said in a news release Wednesday.

Unofficial results show Democrats will control the Arizona legislature for the first time in 60 years. Building off a historic sweep of statewide races, Democrats are poised to take control of the Texas House for the first time in over 20 years. In North Carolina, Democrats flipped several House seats held by influential, veteran Republicans to give the party control of the lower chamber for the first time since 2010.

“We have the power to make this state better,” state Rep. Robert Reives, who was introduced as the next House speaker, said Tuesday night.

Many legislative races had yet to be called by midday Wednesday. But the National Conference of State Legislatures said current results showed Democrats would secure new trifectas – control of both chambers and the governor’s office – in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats also broke Republican trifectas in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

Additionally, Democratic wins crushed GOP supermajorities in several states. In Florida, the loss of the Republican supermajority takes away the party’s power to override rules regarding procedure and debate and override the governor’s veto.

Democratic gains also ended supermajorities in the Indiana state House, the Kansas House, both of Missouri’s legislative chambers, the Ohio House, and the South Carolina House.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Republican State Leadership Committee, which works to elect Republicans at the state level, cited an “historically difficult political environment” facing the party.

“Democrats made state legislative races a national priority, pouring unprecedented resources into these contests because they understand the power state legislatures hold in shaping policy and building the pipeline for the next generation of leaders,” President Edith Jorge-Tuñón said in the statement. “In many key battleground states, the national political environment and the impact of top-of-the-ticket races significantly affected our candidates’ ability to defy historical trends.”

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.

It was the AP Voter Poll survey of Ohio voters.

The AP Voter Poll is a survey of the American electorate conducted by SSRS for The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, FOX News Media, NBC News and Versant.

The survey looked at what Ohio voters prioritized on different issues.

The two that stick out by far above the rest are the cost of living and government corruption.

These are both well-worn topics here at the Ohio Capital Journal, where we have reported news stories and written commentary for seven years on rampant corruption and the struggle Ohio families are having to make ends meet.

After a historic election night in Ohio, alleviating these concerns of Ohio voters should be the primary goal and project of every elected official in the state.

Ohio voters proved this Election Day that politicians are far more obsessed with political labels and rank partisanship than normal everyday Ohioans. There’s a reason the vast majority of Ohioans are unaffiliated voters.

Like much of the country, everyday people in Ohio are pretty cynical and cautious about politicians of all types. For many years now, everyday people have suspected with good reason and ample evidence that our politicians have not been looking out for us, but for themselves, for their buddies, for the special interests.

What’s been left out of all the favors and back-scratching and handouts to big money interests are the interests of everyday Ohio families.

Folks aren’t asking for too much: They want safe neighborhoods, good schools, access to healthcare that doesn’t make them go broke, and access to opportunity to earn a good living to support their families and live a dignified life.

In Ohio, many families feel that was all once possible, but no more. The rug has slowly been pulled out from under us.

Nearly half of Ohioans don’t make enough to be economically secure, the Urban Institute reported this year.

Over one-third of Ohioans do not make enough to afford basic expenses.

And 1 in 5 Ohio children continue to experience food insecurity.

Sharp increases in the price of gas and electric and heating bills have played hell on middle-class Ohio family budgets.

As Ohio families have struggled, we’ve seen countless corruption scandals at the local and state level where politicians take pennies on the dollar to give out public resources like candy to their donor networks.

The results of the 2026 Election in Ohio should not be read through a lens of hyper-partisanship.

The results of the 2026 Election in Ohio should be heard as a scream from struggling Ohio families that enough is enough and that it’s time, at long last, to put Ohio families first.

Political gamesmanship can not accomplish that amid a split state government.

The toxic, intoxicating distraction of partisanship will only destroy the opportunity and frustrate Ohio families further.

The only thing that can accomplish that is if our politicians hear that scream — that plea from Ohio families — and realize that their job is not to be a mindless team player for one political party or the other; their job is to do the hard work of compromise and coalition-building and lawmaking and governance that makes life better in tangible ways for all of the everyday people of Ohio.

A lot of people who’ve had their brains and hearts eaten away by the rot of partisan politics will try every trick right now to keep that ugliness going.

To paraphrase the bard, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and accomplishing nothing.

To accomplish something, to put Ohio families first, the mental and emotional adults of both parties will now need to step up.

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, 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.