The task force was initiated by Seneca County Common Pleas Court Magistrate Kenneth Clason, who works under Judge Steve Shuff, in the wake of a November 19, 2025, murder-suicide on Huss Street that left four people dead, including two young children.

According to a news release from the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office, Clason contacted Sheriff Fredrick Stevens to gauge his interest before convening the group.

“I called Sheriff Stevens first and asked, ‘Should we do this?’ and he said, ‘We should have already,’” Clason said. “Sheriff Stevens was all for it. He opened up his Rolodex and helped me figure out who we should invite. He played a large part in that.”

5 focus areas

The bylaws identify five focus areas for the task force:

• Promote collaboration among public and private agencies
• Identify gaps in services and recommend improvements
• Support education, prevention, and awareness initiatives
• Encourage data sharing and evidence-based practices
• Advocate for policies that enhance victim safety and offender accountability

“We want to get everyone in the room, open the door of communication…and develop best practices,” Clason said at the May 1 meeting.

The November 19 murder-suicide

The task force takes shape roughly five months after the Huss Street killings. According to the Tiffin Police Department, 42-year-old Ryan Eagon arrived at the 100 block of Huss Street the evening of November 19, 2025, while his estranged wife was moving out of the home with her boyfriend, 29-year-old Dustin Willey of Tiffin, and her two young children. Police said Eagon fatally shot Willey and the two children — Wrenn Willey, 7, and a 7-month-old — before turning the gun on himself outside the residence. The mother, whose identity is protected under Marsy’s Law, was uninjured.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Seneca County Coroner’s Office assisted in the investigation. A community candlelight vigil was held two days later at the Frost-Kalnow Amphitheater on Tiffin’s East Green.

Task force members

According to the Sheriff’s Office, the following entities and individuals are participating in the task force:

• Sheriff Fredrick Stevens, Seneca County Sheriff’s Office
• Chief David Pauly, Tiffin Police Department
• Chief Gabe Wedge, Fostoria Police Department
• Judge Damon Alt, Seneca County Common Pleas Court I
• Judge Steve Shuff, Seneca County Common Pleas Court II
• Judge Jay Meyer, Seneca County Juvenile and Probate Court
• Judge Rhonda Best, Tiffin-Fostoria Municipal Court
• Commissioner Brent Busdeker, Seneca County Commissioners’ Office
• Seneca County Probation Services
• Ohio Adult Parole Authority
• Mircea Handru, Mental Health and Recovery Services Board
• Patchworks House
• Zach Fowler, Tiffin City Law Director
• Seneca County Family & Children First Council
• Seneca County Department of Job & Family Services
• CASA
• Seneca County Prosecutor’s Office
• Defense Bar
• First Step
• Tiffin University
• Heidelberg University
• Mercy Health
• Seneca County General Health District
• Sisters in Shelter

The Sheriff’s Office said task force members will meet regularly to work on violence prevention, awareness, and education in Seneca County.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Coleman, a former WNIR-FM talk radio host and former Cleveland-market television meteorologist, took 47.3% of the vote in a five-way primary, defeating Leetonia Mayor Kevin Siembida, businesswoman Margaret Briem, businessman Neil Patel and medical school graduate Sanjin Drakovac. He will face two-term incumbent Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Akron) in the Nov. 3 general election.

A recording from Coleman’s campaign launch event, reviewed by TiffinOhio.net, captured him saying he wanted “to make damn sure if I have any ability in Congress to enact policy to tell these, for one, national teachers unions to go to hell.” In the same remarks, he accused the unions of having “hijacked our education.”

91.7% of Ohio teachers are union members

If Coleman’s pledge is meant as a policy goal, it would put him at odds with the overwhelming majority of Ohio’s public school workforce. The most recent state-level figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Teacher and Principal Survey show 91.7% of Ohio public school teachers were members of a union or similar employee association in 2017-18 — among the highest rates in the country and well above the national figure of 69.4%.

Ohio’s two largest teachers’ unions are the Ohio Education Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, and the Ohio Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers — the two “national teachers unions” Coleman singled out at his launch.

‘Fundamental changes’ and ‘shaming’ claims

In other recorded remarks during the campaign, Coleman claimed that public schools were “shaming” students who supported President Donald Trump, saying “kids are shamed or even hurt because of their political beliefs, and it’s always conservative beliefs that are being attacked.” He has also called for “fundamental changes” to schools without specifying which programs, staffing models, or funding structures he would target.

Coleman’s campaign website lists ensuring “parents have a strong voice in their children’s education” among his priorities but does not detail a specific education policy platform.

Backed by school-choice advocates

Coleman entered the general election with the unanimous backing of the Summit County Republican Party, which endorsed him on March 22. The county party and the broader Ohio GOP have aligned around an aggressive expansion of taxpayer-funded vouchers and charter schools — a position championed by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is now running for state auditor.

In a September 26, 2023 guest column titled “Radical teachers’ unions wrong. Kids should not be forced to attend failing schools,” LaRose wrote that “the movement toward school choice, charter schools, vouchers, and greater parental involvement must continue.”

A redrawn district

OH-13 was redrawn under Ohio’s 2025 congressional map to include all of Summit County, the northwestern portion of Stark County and the Kent area in Portage County. The redrawn district favors Democrats by an estimated 3 to 4 percentage points — a shift that prompted 2024 Republican nominee Kevin Coughlin to bow out of a rematch with Sykes.

Sykes, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, has used her two terms in Congress to focus on lowering household costs, expanding health care access and securing federal funding for the district. Her campaign manager, Cory Medina, said after the primary that she intends to continue that work in the general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

A panel of economists surveyed on the issue last week said the subsidies are a bad idea. But they also said one of the strongest responses — banning construction of large new centers — is a bad idea, too.

The outsized power of utilities has been a sore spot in Ohio at least since 2020, when federal prosecutors revealed that Akron-based FirstEnergy had paid $61 million in bribes to get a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout. Far from stopping the scheme, Gov. Mike DeWine’s top regulator played a prominent role in drafting the corrupt bailout legislation.

Now grocery prices remain stubbornly high, gasoline prices are approaching $5, Ohioans are losing their healthcare, and the average cost to cool a home is projected to be $778 between June and September. 

Part of the increase in electricity prices can be attributed to spiking demand from data centers powering the mushrooming artificial intelligence industry.

Utilities are allowed to extract a profit from ratepayers on building projects intended to meet the spiking demand. That’s been good for stockholders — and highly profitable for the executives who run the companies.

For example, Bill Fehrman, CEO of Columbus-based AEP, was paid $37 million — or nearly $12,000 an hour — last year.

At the same time, the people who control the companies building many of the data centers — Amazon, Google and Microsoft — are among the richest in the world and are said to be in a race to control the AI market.

It might seem odd, but Ohioans are being forced to subsidize the centers even as the projects cause their electric bills to spike and the centers’ biggest product — artificial intelligence — is projected to put thousands of Ohioans out of work over the coming decades.

In January, Policy Matters Ohio estimated that some tax breaks for Google and Meta are so big they amount to taxpayers giving up $1 million for each job created. That money is being gifted to companies the top executives of which have a net worth of $1.8 billion and $215 billion, respectively.

Ohio economists are skeptical of the wisdom of those subsidies.

Fourteen were asked whether they agreed that “tax incentives for data centers are an efficient use of public funds to stimulate job growth in Ohio.” Ten disagreed, three were uncertain and just one agreed. 

In the comment section of the survey, Albert Sumell of Youngstown State University made the same point as several other economists — that after construction is complete, data centers create few jobs but lots of environmental impacts.

“I can’t think of a worse use of public funds than to incentivize data centers. They are associated with very few permanent jobs and high external costs,” he wrote.

Ejindu Ume of Miami University was the only economist who agreed that subsidies for data centers were a good idea. He did not explain his reasoning in the comment section of the survey.

As more than 200 data centers have exploded onto the landscape, some Ohioans are calling for a halt. A group is trying to gather 413,000 signatures to put a constitutional ban of large new centers on the November ballot.

Most of the economists surveyed by Scioto Analysis said the economic costs of such a ban would outweigh the benefits. Seven said they would, two said they would not, and five were uncertain.

Michael Jones of the University of Cincinnati said that from an economic standpoint, a ban is too heavy-handed. But he added that the companies should pay for their own “externalities” — the environmental and other costs they create.

“It should be up to the market to pick winners and losers; and Ohio should not be targeting a particular industry,” he wrote. “If there are concerns about energy use or land use, then data centers should internalize and pay the real costs of their deployment.”

David Brasington, also of the University of Cincinnati, said it comes down to the nation’s safety.

“AI is a national security issue,” he wrote. “We need to out-compete rival nations in AI, and allowing data centers is critical for that goal. How would it be to wake up one day and find a foreign nation had broken through our cybersecurity firewalls?”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Last month, Ax Ohio Tax President Brian Massie announced they’ve collected 305,000 signatures so far. That puts them on track to clear the statutory minimum for the ballot, but doesn’t account for rejections. To feel confident, the campaign really wants at least 620,000 signatures for their submission.

They’re not on track for that.

Organizers can keep gathering signatures for as long as they want. Once they submit them, though, that’s pretty much it. If the campaign falls short there’s a brief, 10-day window to make up the difference. If they can’t, any subsequent effort to make the ballot would have to start over from square one.

“I want the citizens of Ohio to hear this,” Massie said. “They can rest assured that we will not stop until we get this amendment on the ballot.”

He said the campaign will announce its plans sometime in the middle of June.

Good news, bad news

Common Cause Ohio Executive Director Catherine Turcer sees citizen-initiated ballot measures as a central part of our democracy, and she’s been personally involved in several initiative campaigns. While Turcer acknowledged it can be “challenging” to wish the anti-tax campaign well, she said the point of direct democracy is that’s it’s open to everybody.

And there are some factors working in the campaign’s favor.

“We are going into really good signature gathering weather,” Turcer said.

“We’re going into farmers markets and parades, Memorial Day weekend,” she rattled off. “I mean, you can start to think about the different festivals and different ways that people are out and about outside, which makes signature collection easier than, say, January.”

Their signature total puts them in “decent shape,” Turcer said. It also doesn’t hurt that the pitch is straightforward: do you want to keep your property taxes or get rid of them?

But the campaign faces significant challenges, too.

Every ballot measure sees a vast number of signatures rejected over clerical errors, Turcer said. Information could be illegible or incorrect. Petition circulators could mix up signatures from multiple counties, potentially spoiling otherwise valid signatures. And the process of physically scanning all those documents for submission takes a really long time.

“In many ways, this is about, can I submit the appropriate paperwork in a really specific way, in a way I have never done before?” she said. “And it’s easy to get caught up in the hurdles.”

What’s more, the petitions themselves have a kind of shelf life. When elections officials go to validate signatures they’re comparing the petition to current information — not whatever was current at the moment the signature was made.

“It’s a good kind of rule of thumb,” Turcer said, “(to) say 20%, 25% of the signatures that we collected a year ago could no longer reflect where the voter now lives, and so they will not count in the total.”

And that means there are risks in submitting this year, and risks in waiting until next year, too. Turcer said only the campaign knows the quality of the signatures they’ve collected so far, and she’d be shooting for a similar threshold to the one the Ax Ohio Tax campaign has in mind.

Turcer could imagine going forward with less of a cushion — but not much less.

“At least over 600 (thousand),” Turcer said, as the absolute minimum she’d be willing to submit.

Campaign check-in

About a week after Massie’s announcement, Les Carrier joined a handful of other organizers to gather signatures at a community event in Hilliard. The former city councilman called out passersby by name and had a minute to chat with every one of them.

Carrier seemed energized by Massie’s update. Three hundred thousand signatures isn’t halfway from their goal, it’s halfway there. He used terms like “skyrocketing” or “snowballing” to describe interest in the campaign.

To him, the math is pretty simple.

“A $160,000 home in Old Hilliard now is worth $300 (thousand),” Carrier said. “Their taxes have doubled. Their income hasn’t. So, I mean, something’s got to give.”

Counterintuitively, he said enthusiasm began growing after Gov. DeWine’s administration warned eliminating the roughly $24 billion property taxes generates each year would lead to dramatic increases in sales or income taxes.

Carrier downplayed the loss in revenue — “Chicken Little is what I called it” — and said making up the difference would be simpler and fairer with consumption taxes.

“Everybody consumes at a certain level, everybody pays, and it broadens the tax base from which everything’s drawn,” Carrier said. In contrast, with property taxes, “what you’ve done is you’ve narrowed it down to those that have worked to build up equity and build up home valuation, and now they’re being punished for it.”

Consumption taxes, like sales or value-added taxes, are regressive, meaning they fall more heavily on those with lower incomes because those households spend a greater share of their income to get by.

And although Carrier thinks the solution is simple, that doesn’t mean everyone is on board. Massie, for instance, was blunt about his plans for replacing revenue. “We’re not going to,” he said, insisting instead that lawmakers need to cut spending, and “start a DOGE” in Ohio, referring to Elon Musk’s failed federal cost-cutting effort.

Carrier remains optimistic about the campaign’s chances of making the ballot this year, but he has no problem with waiting.

“I think we could make it for this year,” Carrier said. “But my personal opinion, I haven’t talked to Brian (Massie) about it yet, is if we don’t make 600 (thousand), we just keep on charging into next year.”

Andrea Beeson and Suzi Remick signed the petition after speaking to Carrier, and both expressed concerns about property taxes pushing people out of their homes.

“I feel bad for the aging people,” Remick said. “If they have to lose their homes, that would be horrible.”

Ohio farms get a significant property tax break because their valuation is based on agricultural use, but Beeson still worries about farmers near her home in Madison County getting priced out.

“Who do they sell to? Developers that can pay more than another farmer,” she said. “And now we’re getting houses and houses and houses and our schools can’t hold them all.”

Beeson and Remick said they’re still weighing whether it’s a good idea to abolish property taxes. They signed the petition because they want to give the campaign a chance to convince them and then have the chance to decide if and when the measure appears on the ballot.

“Right now, they don’t know how it would work, where the money would come from for schools and everything else,” Beeson said. “I want that option, and I want to see how they would do it.”

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.

Sheltered homelessness decreased by 8% with 165 fewer people in emergency shelters and transitional housing, but unsheltered homelessness increased 43% — from 455 in 2025 to 651 in 2026, according to the point-in-time count. 

“We’re seeing more people forced to live outside in encampments and cars and places that are never meant for human habitation,” said Columbus City Councilmember Tiara Ross. 

Point-in-Time counts are one-night estimates of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness that are conducted nationwide in partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Franklin County’s count took place in January. 

“If people are outside on our cold days, then what we suspect is that that is an under count,” said Community Shelter Board President and CEO Shannon TL Isom. 

“There’s even more people that are outside on our cold days.” 

Last year’s point-in-time count took place during a storm, which Isom said is part of the reason why there was an increase in unsheltered homelessness this year. 

“When we were counting, it was during a winter storm last year … and we were able, because of hotels and motels, to have people gathered, so we ended up counting them as sheltered when, otherwise, like this year, they would have been outside,” Isom said.

Franklin County is projected to see a 68% increase in unsheltered homelessness by 2028. 

“We know from both local data and predictive modeling that without additional investment, you will see this trend continue … and that’s a hard truth that we have to sit and grapple with,” Ross said. 

Chronic homelessness increased 16.4% and people with severe mental illness experiencing homelessness increased 42%, according to the report. 

People experiencing homelessness with HIV/AIDS increased 75%, people with chronic substance use experiencing homelessness increased 53%, and survivors of domestic violence experiencing homelessness increased 32%, according to the report. 

Family homelessness went down 3.8%, parenting youth homelessness decreased by 40% and no parenting youth were identified as unsheltered, according to the report. 

“You will not see children in Franklin County ever unsheltered, we immediately have flex space for that,” Isom said. 

There were 96 veterans experiencing homelessness, one less than last year, according to the report. 

A little more than half of people experiencing homelessness were men (58%), 41% were women, and 1% is non-binary. 54% of people experiencing homelessness were Black, 33% were white, 9% were multi-racial, and 1% were Hispanic, according to the report.  

Franklin County is Ohio’s most populous county with 1,356,303 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

“There is no debate that our city is on an upward trajectory, but that does not mean that everybody is able to participate in that upward trajectory,” said Michael Wilkos, chair of the Columbus and Franklin County Continuum of Care. 

People living in Franklin County need to be making at least $27.79 an hour working a full-time job to be able to afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment — more than $5 higher than the state average, according to a report last year by Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The Community Shelter Board and the Columbus and Franklin County Continuum of Care recommend expanding housing-focused system-funded street outreach. Franklin County currently has four outreach workers. 

They want to scale up hotel options as a bridge toward permanent housing. 44 people living outside moved into permanent housing from Dec. 1, 2025 to March 31 with Winter Warming Center funding. 

Hotel use year-round would permanently house 200-300 unsheltered people experiencing homelessness. 

“It is imperative that we have housing as the solution, not just sheltering,” Isom said. “People in this community should be able to skip over a shelter bed to get into housing.”

The Community Shelter Board and the Continuum of Care wants to get three hotel-based non-congregate shelter sites, which could reduce family homelessness by 48% by 2028. 

“We know that diversion programs that prevent people from entering shelter in the first place works,” Ross said. “We know that rapid re-housing moves individuals and families quickly back into stable housing works. We know that permanent, supportive housing that pairs housing with services for those with highest needs work.” 

There were 11,759 people experiencing homelessness in Ohio in 2024, according to the latest U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Homelessness Assessment Report.

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.

In a May 7 statement, party Chairwoman Gina Grandillo said Democratic ballot requests in Seneca County climbed 43% over the 2022 midterm primary, compared with a 3% increase among Republicans. The party reported that overall Democratic turnout in the county reached 148% of registered Democrats — a figure that reflects voters who chose a Democratic ballot regardless of prior party affiliation — while Republican turnout declined by roughly 300 voters. The party said it gained approximately 700 Democratic voters on net in Seneca County.

The party reported similar trends in neighboring Sandusky County, where it said Democratic turnout reached 146% with more than 1,100 additional Democratic voters participating in the primary.

The Seneca County figures land alongside one of the closest Republican incumbent primaries in northwest Ohio. State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery) survived his Republican primary by 599 votes, finishing with 6,859 votes (52.28%) to challenger Eric Watson’s 6,260 (47.72%), according to unofficial returns from the Sandusky and Seneca county boards of elections. Click held the seat only on the strength of his home county of Sandusky, which he carried by 15.4 percentage points. In Seneca County, Watson — a first-time candidate and Tiffin small-business owner — defeated Click by 8.5 points.

OH-88 race set for November

Click will face Democratic nominee Aaron Jones in the general election. Jones, a Tiffin City Councilman, U.S. Army veteran and production supervisor at Toledo Molding & Die in Tiffin, ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. He was elected to Tiffin City Council’s 1st Ward in 2024 and is a 1991 graduate of Clyde High School. Libertarian Ben Machoukas is also competing in the race.

Jones lives in Seneca County — the same county Click lost on Tuesday.

Shaver wins OH-5 Democratic primary

The primary also produced a Seneca County native at the top of a congressional ticket. Brian A. Shaver, president of Fostoria City Council, won a four-way Democratic primary in Ohio’s 5th Congressional District with 28.68% of the vote, defeating Martin M. Heberling III (25.80%), Daniel John Burket (24.42%) and Scott E. Tabor (21.10%), according to unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State.

Shaver, an educator and longtime local elected official, will face 10-term Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Latta in the November general election. The Cook Political Report rates the district R+14, meaning its 2020 and 2024 presidential results trended 14 points more Republican than the national average. Latta defeated Democrat Keith Mundy by roughly 35 points in 2024. Independent candidate Dalton Franklin will also appear on the November ballot.

The Seneca County Democratic Party said Shaver is the first Seneca County native in recent memory to appear on a congressional general-election ballot in the district.

Statewide context

The party also pointed to statewide Democratic primary outcomes. Former Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton, running with former Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper, was unopposed for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, the 2024 presidential candidate and Trump ally, won the GOP nomination with roughly 82% of the vote against Casey Putsch, according to unofficial returns. A third Republican ticket, Heather Hill and Stuart Moats, was disqualified by the Ohio Secretary of State after Moats withdrew. The Seneca County Democratic Party said Acton and Pepper collectively received nearly 90,000 more primary votes than Ramaswamy — a comparison the party made between Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primary turnout. TiffinOhio.net was unable to independently verify that figure.

In the Democratic primary for Ohio attorney general, Upper Arlington attorney and city council member John Kulewicz defeated former state Rep. Elliot Forhan and will face Republican Auditor Keith Faber in November. State Rep. Allison Russo defeated Cincinnati oncologist Bryan Hambley roughly 67% to 33% in the Democratic primary for Ohio secretary of state and will face Republican Treasurer Robert Sprague in the fall.

Grandillo wins State Central Committee seat

Grandillo, who chairs the Seneca County Democratic Party and serves as solicitor for the Village of Republic, won a seat on the Ohio Democratic State Central Committee. The party said she carried Sandusky, Seneca, Union and Wyandot counties and defeated Brandi R. Downs by 4 percentage points overall. TiffinOhio.net was unable to independently verify the district-wide margin from publicly available county returns.

Grandillo credited the turnout to local organizing.

“This level of participation is not accidental,” she said. “It reflects months of grassroots organizing, community engagement, and a growing sense among voters that their voices matter. Seneca County has always had a strong independent streak, and when people are given a real choice, this community shows up for democracy.”

Grandillo also said the party intends to keep building.

“There is real energy here, and it did not happen overnight,” she said. “We have been putting in the work, and we intend to build on it. Onward.”

She cautioned against complacency.

“These results are encouraging, but nobody is taking November for granted,” Grandillo said. “The stakes are too high, and there is still a tremendous amount of work ahead.”

The general election is November 3.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Among the major changes are new loan limits for graduate and professional students, a restructured repayment system where new borrowers will have only two plans to choose from and the elimination of a key loan program for graduate and professional students that allowed for unlimited borrowing.

The provisions — most of which will take effect July 1 — stem from congressional Republicans’ mega tax and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last year. 

The U.S. Department of Education finalized regulations, published May 1, that implement sweeping changes outlined in the GOP’s “big, beautiful” law. The department received more than 80,000 public comments before the rule was finalized. 

Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said that “at a high level,” the reforms center on “lowering the cost of college, simplifying student loan repayment and restoring accountability to the federal student lending system,” during an April 30 call with reporters regarding the new regulations. 

The average federal student loan debt balance stands at $39,547, according to the Education Data Initiative.

As July 1 approaches, here’s a closer look at some of the biggest changes coming to the federal student loan system: 

Elimination of Grad PLUS

The Grad PLUS program, which allowed for graduate and professional students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance, will soon be eliminated under the package and unavailable for new borrowers.

“If you are currently borrowing Grad PLUS loans, so you borrowed Grad PLUS loans before July 1, you will be allowed to continue using Grad PLUS until you finish your program, or until three years have expired, basically whichever is sooner,” said Preston Cooper, senior fellow in higher education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

“Current students are grandfathered in — it will only be new graduate students, as of this fall, after July 1, who will be subject to the new loan limits,” Cooper said. 

New borrowing caps

The package also sets forth new annual and aggregate loan limits for graduate and professional students, along with parents who take out federal student loans for dependent undergraduate students. 

Graduate student loans will be capped at $20,500 annually, with a $100,000 aggregate limit. 

Parent PLUS borrowers will have an annual cap of $20,000 and an aggregate cap of $65,000 per dependent. 

Professional student loans will have a $50,000 annual limit and an aggregate cap of $200,000. 

The programs that fall within the department’s “professional” category and are subject to that larger loan cap include: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology. 

The department clarified in a fact sheet on the finalized regulations that the “professional” student classifications “do not express a value judgment about the importance of any occupation or field” but instead serve a “loan-administration function.” 

The agency has received immense pushback from groups representing people in fields that do not fall under the department’s definition and will thus be subject to lower annual and lifetime borrowing caps. 

Incoming repayment options

In another major shift, the regulations replace prior repayment options with two new plans — the Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP, and the Tiered Standard plan — both of which will launch July 1.

RAP is an income-based repayment plan that “waives unpaid interest for borrowers who make on-time payments that do not fully cover accruing interest,” per the department’s fact sheet. 

Balances under the plan will also “decline with each on-time payment, as unpaid interest is fully waived and the Department then reduces principal by an amount equal to the borrower’s payment, up to $50,” per the agency. 

The Tiered Standard plan offers fixed monthly payments, ranging from a 10-year to 25-year period, depending on the outstanding principal balance of the borrower. 

‘A lot more expensive’

“The upshot is that loan repayment is going to get a lot more expensive for almost everyone, and for some people, it’s going to get significantly more expensive, and the transition is also going to be difficult for a lot of people to manage,” Michele Zampini, associate vice president for federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access & Success, told States Newsroom.

Zampini, whose organization aims to advance affordability, accountability and equity in higher education, said she thinks “there will be a lot of students who will have to turn to the private loan market, who otherwise would have been able to cover their costs through the (Grad PLUS) program.”

Victoria Jackson, assistant director of higher education policy at the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust, said that with the new loan limits and “drastic cuts to aid availability” in the regulations, “you would really hope that it would come with other, more affordable and better forms of financial aid.” 

“And what they’ve done is just created this vacuum that right now can really only be filled with private loans, which are costlier and riskier for students, or students are just not going to go,” Jackson said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its efforts to eliminate the Department of Education, including through a series of interagency agreements that transfer several of its responsibilities to other departments. 

Under the most recent agreement, the Treasury Department will take over Education’s responsibility for collecting on defaulted federal student loan debt — the first step in a multiphase process toward Treasury taking on Education’s entire, roughly $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio.

Transition to new system

Zampini noted that, when it comes to the incoming student loan regulations, she does not have confidence in the Education Department’s “ability at this moment to successfully manage the transition without a lot of issues, as far as servicing and as far as account tracking and plan enrollment and things like that.” 

Jackson, of EdTrust, said that “by weakening the federal financial aid system, I think there’s a weakening of our higher education system and making it more difficult for low-income students, students of color and other marginalized students to access graduate education.”

She added that “people who complete those degrees tend to have more financial security in the future — they earn more over their lifetimes and, on markers of financial success and opportunity, do better.” 

“I think this is one prong of a plan of undermining our overall higher education system.” 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Residents in Richland County, Ohio, voted narrowly Tuesday to keep a ban on utility-scale solar and wind across much of the community — a setback for those who hoped the referendum could serve as a blueprint for overcoming local restrictions on renewables nationwide.

The vote was 53% to 47% in favor of keeping the prohibitions adopted last July for 11 of the county’s 18 townships. Turnout was 30%, according to the election results.

The rural county’s referendum drew widespread attention because it was a rare example of community members trying to use a ballot measure to counter state and local limits on siting wind and solar energy, which have mushroomed in the U.S. in recent years. In Ohio, more than three dozen counties restrict one or both types of energy, an authority granted by a 2021 law. Fossil fuel and nuclear projects are exempt from such bans and from other hurdles the statute erected for renewable energy. If Richland County had voted to overturn its ban, it would have been a first for Ohio.

This election result was a loss for the local group Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development, which first got the issue on the ballot and then reached out to voters. The group argued that reversing the ban would attract jobs and businesses to the area while protecting property owners’ rights to lease land for the energy development of their choice.

“As a group of your Richland County neighbors, we made a commitment to stand up to our elected officials and forced a countywide conversation about property rights and government overreach,” said Morgan Carroll, a leader in the campaign against the ban. ​“We did it with integrity, with passion, and with a deep love for our community. That’s not nothing. That is everything.”

Campaigning in favor of the ban was Richland Farmland Preservation, a group that claimed the amount of land required for solar and was incompatible with preserving the area’s agricultural character. Darrell Banks, a committee member for that effort who is also a Richland County Commissioner, said of Tuesday’s results, ​“I think this is an affirmation by the voters that their township trustees and county commissioners are aligned with the best interests of their communities, and we appreciate the support of Richland County very much.”

Richland Farmland Preservation’s funders included organizations with ties to people and groups who have promoted the natural gas industry. Emails released last Friday show communications between Banks and a strategist for a political consulting firm that has done substantial work for The Empowerment Alliance, a dark-money group that promotes natural gas. Banks said that the strategist, Tom Whatman, is a ​“family friend.”

The links ​“should trouble every Richland County resident, regardless of how they voted,” said Bella Bogin, director of programs for Ohio Citizen Action, a statewide advocacy organization whose volunteers assisted Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development on the referendum. ​“This community deserved a fair process, and the fight to bring that back to the county is not over.”

Despite the loss, Brian McPeek, another leader of the campaign to end the renewables ban, stressed that the margin by which it lost in the very Republican county was quite narrow. ​“The big thing that we showed yesterday is that this was not a partisan issue.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

PJM Interconnection, based in the Philadelphia suburbs near Valley Forge, has been under scrutiny as record electricity prices in its auctions contributed to skyrocketing bills for consumers and businesses in the last year. 

In a report issued Wednesday, PJM said the growing demand from data centers and broader electrification of the economy is exacerbated by tightening supply as older, dirtier power plants retire and supply chain and permitting issues make new plants harder to build fast enough.

“The PJM region is now navigating a convergence of three structural forces that have pushed the system into disequilibrium,” the report says. “The result is a transition from an era of managing surplus to an era of managing scarcity — one that is anticipated to persist for some time based on current projections.”

PJM’s electricity pricing model depends on a concept it calls the “shared reliability compact” in which all customers, large and small, share the same standard of reliability and agree to pay to ensure it.

The organization’s board recognized price volatility — while economically rational — is creating unsustainable stress on the compact and called on PJM’s staff to reexamine its foundational assumptions in a resource-constrained world.

It also suggested that government intervention in the market has kept investors on the sidelines by undermining the credibility of economic signals that would normally spur the construction of new generation plants. 

In 2024, Gov. Josh Shapiro sued PJM demanding a limit on prices after an auction in July of that year resulted in a record price. Federal regulators agreed last week to extend the price control for a second time through 2030.

Shapiro pushed back on the notion that his administration’s intervention has dissuaded new investment.

“A core reason why the reforms described in this report are needed is that PJM hasn’t been moving fast enough to connect new resources for many years and continues to deny states a full seat at the table,” spokeswoman Rosie Lapowsky said in a statement. 

“The Shapiro administration looks forward to working constructively with fellow states and with PJM on next steps, but Gov. Shapiro is never going to let Pennsylvanians get stuck with a bill they don’t deserve,” the statement said. “That’s why any changes must prioritize reliability, protect consumers and increase transparency.”

Jon Gordon, director of the renewable energy industry group Advanced Energy United, said PJM finds itself in a tough spot and is taking fire from many elected leaders. He said the report is a self-reflective document.

“They’re trying to lay out the facts of the world. They want everyone involved in the solution.

These are really big, profound decisions,” Gordon said. “Time is short and we need to solve these problems yesterday, and that’s where the challenge will be.”

PJM, which manages the grid for 13 states, including Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., stopped short of offering a solution, but invited stakeholders to join in discussion to restore confidence in the system.

“Wholesale electricity markets are extraordinary institutions, and their most essential infrastructure is not a price curve or a performance obligation — it is legitimacy,” PJM President and CEO David Mills said in a letter accompanying the report.

“Generators, utilities, investors and consumers must all believe, at a basic level, that the rules are fair, stable and the product of a process they recognize as credible.” Mills continued. “It is built through the kind of deliberation this paper is intended to initiate — and it is the only foundation on which a durable market design can rest.”

The paper identifies three possible pathways for reform:

The first would stabilize the market by ensuring that the vast majority of power needed is obtained through longer-term agreements to insulate ratepayers from volatility. Any additional power needed would be secured through spot auctions to allow higher prices to ensure capacity is available for peaks in demand on the hottest and coldest days of the year. 

Another would do away with the shared reliability contract when supplies are scarce and develop a framework that differentiates between customers that can and cannot be cut off. Policymakers, including the PJM governors and the Trump administration, have backed a requirement for large loads such as data centers to build their own power plants.

“Path B focuses on physical accountability – those who do not bring or fund supply cannot lean indefinitely on the shared pool – but it requires a fundamental reorientation of how the PJM system allocates reliability as a scarce good,” the report says.

The third would pair long-term contracts that reduce volatility with a shift in how power generation owners recover revenue to cover the cost of producing electricity, placing an emphasis on payments for the underlying electricity commodity rather than the availability of power plants to handle peaks in demand.

This story was originally produced by Pennsylvania Capital-Star, 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.

Happy Harvest and Get Wright Lounge filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Court of Common Pleas after Ohio Senate Bill 56 took effect March 20 after Ohioans for Cannabis Choice failed to get enough signatures to get a referendum on the November ballot for voters to block the law.

Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Magistrate Jhay Spottswood-Harrison heard the preliminary injunction hearing. 

“This bill completely put my clients out of business,” said Scott Pullins, the attorney for the plaintiffs. 

“There were no ways to get rid of the inventory except to destroy it, and the court attempted and succeeded in fashioning a fair and equity remedy to solve that problem. Now, would we like to see it extended statewide to any other retailers in a similar situation.” 

Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey M. Brown issued a 14-day TRO on April 22 allowing Happy Harvest locations and Get Wright Lounge to sell their existing products, but the 10th District Court of Appeals stayed the TRO last week. 

Happy Harvest has locations in Delaware, Marion, and Wood counties. Get Wright Lounge has one location in Columbus. 

“The TRO restores the status quo that existed for years before March 20, 2026, and in fact, the TRO strengthens what the law was back then by expressly putting in more stringent age restrictions, more restrictions against marketing children, more restrictions as to products that look like hemp,” Pullins said. 

The state argued Ohio’s law now aligns with new federal restrictions on hemp products that are set to take effect Nov. 12.  

Congress voted in November to ban products that contain 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container when they voted to reopen the government. 

The only way to sell marijuana in Ohio starting Nov. 12 is by getting a license from the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control, said Ann Yackshaw, assistant section chief in the Ohio Attorney General’s office. 

“The only way for plaintiffs or anyone else to get that license is to let Senate Bill 56 continue in effect so that the Division (of Cannabis Control) can continue to regulate and continue to build out the regulatory framework to bring these people into cannabis regulation in the state of Ohio,” Yackshaw said. 

“Putting Senate Bill 56 on hold would put that rule-making process on hold, and then no one would be able to get into the cannabis program in the state of Ohio.”

Previously, the 2018 Farm Bill said hemp can be grown legally if it contains less than 0.3% THC. 

But the 2018 Farm Bill created challenges from a definition standpoint and a series of loopholes, said Andrew Makoski, chief legal counsel for the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control. 

“Hemp products exploded, not just in Ohio, but all across the country, where people were using the hemp definition to sell these intoxicating products that had the technical definition of hemp,” he said. 

“With any kind of unregulated marketplace, you don’t know what you’re actually getting. What you found was a large spike in accidental ingestions.” 

Stopping S.B. 56 would take Ohio back to an unregulated market where “any child or anybody could walk into a store buy whatever they want,” Makoski said. 

Ohio Senate Bill 56

The bill had to go to conference committee in the Ohio legislature after it passed the Ohio House, but the Ohio Senate voted not to concur with changes made to the bill at the end of October. 

“The General Assembly enacted a sweeping criminal statute through a midnight conference report that neither chamber ever read three times in its final form and that consolidated four separate bills … into a single omnibus vehicle,” Pullins said. 

Under the new law, THC levels in adult-use marijuana extracts will be reduced from a maximum of 90% down to a maximum of 70%, cap THC levels in adult-use flower to 35%, and prohibit smoking in most public places.

The new law prohibits possessing marijuana in anything outside of its original packaging, criminalizes bringing legal marijuana from another state back to Ohio, and requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk of their car while driving.

“Customers who wish to get lower prices and go to Michigan and other states have now been declared to be felons if they buy the product and bring it back here,” Pullins said. 

The new law funnels unregulated THC through the Ohio Division Cannabis Control, Yackshaw said. 

“That is the regulation that plaintiffs say that they were looking for, but they don’t want it because they don’t want to have to go through the stringent procedures that the Division of Cannabis Control lays out,” she said. 

Mark Fashian was the president of hemp product wholesaler Midwest Analytical Solutions in Delaware, Ohio, but he is now out of business because of the new law. 

“After March 20, my sales have died,” Fashian said. “(Senate Bill 56) basically made everything that I do illegal. … I have five employees, and right now they’re finding other jobs.”

Happy Harvest was one of his best customers and they have more than $200,000 of stranded inventory, Fashian said.

“Every day (Ohio Senate Bill 56) is enforced, it destroys lawful Ohio businesses, businesses operating a good faith reliance on the 2018 federal farm bill,” Pullins said. 

A Sandusky County judge last month issued TRO on the hemp portion of the new law which allows the sale of intoxicating hemp products to continue in Fremont. 

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 U.S. Supreme Court, specifically Justice Samuel Alito, ordered a one-week pause on a federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that stopped access to mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortions, through the mail, or through any other means outside of in-person distribution.

The circuit court took up the case after a Louisiana-based challenge to the FDA’s “justifications for remotely dispensing mifepristone,” justifications Louisiana officials said were “based on flawed or nonexistent data.”

Following the court of appeals decision on May 1, drug companies that make mifepristone requested a pause.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mifepristone distribution would be allowed for one week as the court decides next steps in the appeals process.

Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio praised the pause, adding that restricting the drug “would have devastating consequences in Ohio and nationwide.”

“Decades of research and peer-reviewed studies demonstrate mifepristone’s safety and effectiveness,” Dr. Bhavik Kumar, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said in a statement.

“It’s our sincere hope that the Supreme Court will make this restoration permanent so patients remain able to access this vital health care.”

Greater Ohio Planned Parenthoods plan to operate as usual until May 11, providing telehealth, mail and in-person medication abortion care.

Telehealth is a leading method of abortion care in Ohio, trending upward in the latest annual abortion report released by the Ohio Department of Health.

Kumar called the appeals court decision “another politically-motivated attack on abortion.”

“This decision dictates how providers must practice medicine and eliminates patients’ personal choices about their health care,” Kumar said.

Mifepristone has been FDA-approved for decades, and decades of studies have promoted their safety, despite anti-abortion rights advocates claims that the drugs were overall a danger to pregnant people.

“Americans have safely and effectively used mifepristone to terminate pregnancies since it was approved a quarter-century ago,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of the abortion rights group Abortion Forward.

“The actions by one federal court in Louisiana are both a drastic overreach impacting patients far outside their jurisdiction, and an unacceptable blockade against people in need of options.”

While Ohio passed a constitutional amendment in 2023 to add abortion rights into the state constitution, Republican state legislators have been working to go around the amendment, attempting to not only further regulate abortion care, but disincentivize funding for clinics who provide abortion.

The legal activity also comes as Trumbull County Probate Judge David Engler attempts to get the state amendment thrown out, claiming the constitutional clause is keeping him from being able to rule on cases in which a minor requests court approval to conduct an abortion without parental consent, which involves a longtime legal method called judicial bypass.

The lawsuit is supported by anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life, which has worked to garner support for legislative measures to further regulate abortion as well.

“Parents, and when necessary, a probate judge in their stead, should maintain the ability to be involved with a decision of this magnitude when it involves their underage daughter,” said Carrie Snyder, executive director of Ohio Right to Life.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Recent polling suggests that things may be a little different among Ohio Republicans.  

The Democracy and Public Policy Network in the Department of Political Science at Bowling Green State University conducted its seventh web-based poll from April 7-14, 2026, with insight from 1,000 registered Ohio voters.

The poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points. The weighted sample reflects a +11 recalled vote margin for President Trump in the 2024 presidential race.

To measure the strength of the MAGA movement, we asked those who intended to vote in the state’s May 5 Republican primary if they consider themselves part of the MAGA movement.  

Overall, 55% of those who said they planned to vote in the Ohio Republican primary identified as part of the MAGA movement.

What could explain the difference between Ohio Republicans and the national figure? 

First, the question was asked a little differently in each survey, with the national survey asking, “Are you a MAGA supporter,” while ours asked, “Do you consider yourself to be part of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement?” 

The slight difference in the wording seems unlikely to account for the difference, however.  

Also, the difference is unlikely because of Democrats planning to vote in the Ohio Republican primary. Only two of the respondents who planned to vote in the Republican primary identified as Democrats.  

The more likely culprit is that only just over half of those who said they planned to vote in the Republican primary have a very favorable opinion of Donald Trump, and nearly 20% believe the country is going in the wrong direction.

About half of Ohio Republican primary voters strongly approved of the Job Trump is doing as president.   

Which Ohio Republicans are more likely to identify as part of the MAGA movement?

Men (58%) were a little more likely than women (53%) to identify as part of the MAGA movement, as were those without a four-year degree (62%) compared to those with one (44%). 

Older voters were more likely than younger voters as well. 

Fully 65% of those aged 65 or older considered themselves part of the MAGA movement, whereas just under half of both 18-29 year olds and 30-49 year olds did.

More than 70% of those who consider themselves very conservative considered themselves part of the MAGA movement.    

Republican union members were only a little less likely (52%) than non-union members (56%) to identify as MAGA.  

Fully 62% of those who consider themselves Born Again identified as part of the MAGA movement, whereas only 50% of those who are not Born Again did, and 61% of those who say religion is very important in their lives considered themselves part of MAGA, while only 41% of those for whom it is not important at all did.  

Those who live in small towns or rural areas were substantially more likely than those who live in suburbs to consider themselves part of the MAGA movement.  

What does all this mean?

With only just over half of Ohio Republicans saying they identify as MAGA, that may reduce Donald Trump’s ability to influence the elections in November. 

Not only will Trump’s name not be on the ballot to provide coattails for Republicans, the shine of the MAGA brand may be coming off a little bit in the Buckeye State. 

Certainly the MAGA movement remains popular with those voters traditionally associated with it: older, rural, conservative men without four year degrees who consider themselves Born Again. But those voters are unlikely to be sufficient to carry the day in statewide elections in Ohio in 2026.  

On the other hand Democrats should certainly not be counting their chickens. 

The high percentage of Republican union members who consider themselves part of MAGA is a sign for Democrats that organized labor’s opposition to President Trump and his policies has not reached many of their Republican members. 

Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton are going to need those voters to prevail in November.   

Finally, all of this points to the possibility of Ohio once again becoming a battleground state, but for that to happen Democrats will need to prove it at the ballot box.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“If this is true, HEATHER HILL won the Republican primary and they stole it from us, Ohio!!” Hill wrote in a post to her campaign page. “I have been told by several sources that I received 23% to 25% of the vote as a withdrawn candidate – does anyone have a way of verifying this?”

Hill provided no source for the figure and no county-level data to support it.

Her claim conflicts with both the official tabulation and Ohio law. Unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office show Vivek Ramaswamy and his running mate, Senate President Rob McColley, with 673,902 votes (82.47%), and Casey Putsch and Kimberly Georgeton with 143,257 votes (17.53%), out of 817,159 total votes cast. Hill’s ticket is not included in the statewide tally.

The omission is by design. After Hill’s running mate, Stuart Moats, filed paperwork on April 22 to withdraw from the race, Secretary of State Frank LaRose declared Hill ineligible under a state statute that does not permit replacement of a lieutenant governor candidate within 70 days of a primary unless that candidate has died. LaRose’s office notified all 88 county boards of elections that votes cast for Hill and Moats would not be counted.

Where county boards have publicly tabulated the withdrawn ticket as a separate line item, the share has fallen far short of Hill’s claim. Ashtabula County’s unofficial results report the Hill/Moats ticket at 5.39% of votes cast in that county’s Republican gubernatorial contest.

Hill sued LaRose in an attempt to be reinstated, arguing that the law’s silence on withdrawal — as opposed to death — created a gap that should be resolved in her favor. On May 4, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously dismissed her case. The court — six Republicans and one Democrat — sided with LaRose and Attorney General Dave Yost, with justices writing that allowing a late replacement could invite “last-minute political maneuvering” in future races.

“The decision that we made was based in exactly what the law says: You can’t be a candidate for governor if you don’t have a candidate for lieutenant governor,” LaRose told WDTN-TV after the ruling. “My job is to follow the law. We did that. The Ohio Supreme Court affirmed that, and so she’s not a candidate for governor and any votes for her won’t count.”

Hill and Moats had publicly feuded in the days leading up to his withdrawal. On April 18, Hill posted on Facebook that she would replace Moats over “irreconcilable differences” and later accused him of using a racial slur — an allegation Moats denied. Moats filed his withdrawal four days later.

Hill’s name and Moats’s name remained on the printed ballots Tuesday because counties had already produced and distributed them, but votes for the ticket were not tabulated in the statewide totals.

Ramaswamy will face Democrat Amy Acton, the state’s former health director, in the November general election.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sen. Bill Reineke (R-Tiffin) is the lone remaining contender for Senate president after Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) ended his own bid for the position, according to a report Wednesday by Gongwer News Service, a subscription-based statehouse news outlet.

Cirino, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told Gongwer he had spent roughly a year and a half pursuing the role and had hoped to bring the presidency to a senator from northeastern Ohio, but concluded that he lacked the support of his Republican colleagues.

The seat will open because current Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) was selected in January as Vivek Ramaswamy’s running mate in the 2026 gubernatorial race. McColley’s current Senate term ends Dec. 31, 2026. Republican senators traditionally meet to choose leadership in informal caucus votes after the November general election.

Reineke, a partner in the Reineke Family Dealerships, currently serves as Senate president pro tempore — a position he has held since January 2025. He represents the 26th Senate District, which includes Seneca County, and previously served three terms in the Ohio House representing the 88th District from 2015 through 2020.

A leadership candidate tied to two of Ohio’s biggest scandals

Reineke’s potential elevation would place a lawmaker with documented ties to two of the most consequential corruption scandals in recent Ohio history at the top of the upper chamber.

In 2019, Reineke voted in favor of House Bill 6 — the FirstEnergy-backed nuclear and coal subsidy law that became the centerpiece of the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history. Federal prosecutors alleged that FirstEnergy funneled roughly $60 million through a dark money group to secure passage of the bill, leading to the racketeering conviction of former House Speaker Larry Householder, who is serving a 20-year federal sentence. Former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges was also convicted in the scheme.

According to a 2020 review of campaign finance records by the Ohio Capital Journal, Reineke received $1,500 from FirstEnergy’s political action committee in the years leading up to his vote for HB 6.

Reineke is also among the Ohio politicians who received campaign contributions from William Lager, founder of the now-defunct Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow online charter school. Ohio Secretary of State campaign finance filings show Reineke accepted $12,155.52 from Lager in October 2014, during his first run for the Ohio House. ECOT collapsed in 2018 after state audits found the school had overbilled Ohio taxpayers by tens of millions of dollars by inflating student attendance figures. Tiffin City Schools alone lost approximately $1.13 million in funding to ECOT over a six-year period, according to a report from the nonprofit Innovation Ohio.

The FBI subsequently investigated whether ECOT employees were reimbursed for political donations made to candidates including Reineke, as previously reported by TiffinOhio.net. Reineke has not been charged in connection with either the HB 6 or ECOT investigations.

The next Ohio General Assembly convenes in January 2027.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Creech took 6,712 votes to Smith’s 4,796 — 58.32% to 41.68% — according to unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State as of Wednesday afternoon. Smith, a Farmersville pastor, held the seat from 2018 until Creech defeated him in the 2020 Republican primary.

Creech now advances to the November 3 general election, where he will face Democratic candidate Timothy Hornbacker and Libertarian Joshua A. Umbaugh.

BCI investigation and “concerning and suspicious” findings

A minor female relative accused Creech in 2023 of climbing into bed and under the covers with her while erect, wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Text messages showed the minor complaining that Creech had been rubbing her legs and grabbing her waist, and that she was “put to tears” from being so uncomfortable around him, according to NBC4.

Creech told BCI investigators he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations. The case was first reported to the Preble County Sheriff’s Department in July 2023, but no investigation was launched. The Preble County sheriff and the county prosecutor — both personal acquaintances of Creech — recused themselves, and BCI did not begin investigating until November 2023, four months later.

Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, brought in as a special prosecutor, wrote in October 2024 that Creech’s “behavior during the time of the investigation was concerning and suspicious” but that “the evidence falls short of the threshold needed for prosecution.” No charges were filed. Creech has called the allegations “demonstrably false.”

Stripped of committees, then restored

House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) stripped Creech of all 4 committee assignments — including his chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee — in May 2025 and asked him to resign. Creech refused. In February 2026, Huffman reversed course, reinstated Creech to his committees, and signed a letter requesting the Ohio Republican Party endorse him for re-election. The party obliged.

Creech responded to the allegations on his official Facebook page by labeling his accuser’s statements “textbook parental alienation” — a concept that researchers, child welfare advocates, and the United Nations have described as pseudoscience deployed in family court to discredit children who report abuse.

The Click alliance

Creech is a close legislative ally of state Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), who is also seeking re-election in Tuesday’s Republican primary in Ohio House District 88. The two are cosponsors of House Bill 249, the so-called “Indecent Exposure Modernization Act,” which the Ohio House passed 63-30 on March 25.

During committee testimony on the bill in March, Planned Parenthood of Ohio’s Danielle Firsich called out Creech’s cosponsorship: “You have a man who was just put back on his committees, who was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, who is a sponsor on this bill.”

Click and Creech are also linked to House Bill 693, the “Affirming Families First Act,” which Click cosponsored alongside state Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania). The bill would write a statutory definition of “parental alienation” into Ohio law — the same framework Creech invoked publicly to dismiss his own accuser.

Both lawmakers were quietly removed from Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s official campaign endorsements page in April, with Click restored within hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting the change. Creech’s name was not restored. Both also appeared together on a March 19 endorsement graphic from U.S. Senate candidate Jon Husted’s campaign, where Click serves as Sandusky County campaign chair.

Outside money

A super PAC funded by the parent company of online sports betting giant DraftKings ran Facebook ads and sent campaign mailers boosting Creech in the closing weeks of the primary. One mailer featured a photograph of a young girl. Creech’s daughter said the group used family photos of children Creech “has not contacted or seen in years.”

If Creech wins re-election in November, it will be his last term in the Ohio House under the state’s term limits, having been first elected in 2020 to the seat then numbered District 43.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Andrew King lost the Ohio Supreme Court Republican primary to former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell, 32.15% to 29.72%. Kristina Roegner lost the Republican primary for state treasurer to former state Rep. Jay Edwards, roughly 53% to 47%. And state Rep. Josh Williams lost the Republican primary in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District to former state Rep. Derek Merrin, 44.1% to 25.3%, finishing a distant second in a five-way field.

Click himself survived his own primary in the 88th House District, but only by 599 votes — defeating challenger Eric Watson 52.28% to 47.72% while losing Seneca County to Watson by 8.5 percentage points.

Three formal endorsements, three losses

Click’s connections to the three losing candidates are documented in primary sources.

Roegner’s official campaign endorsements page lists “Gary Click, HD 88” among the Ohio House Republicans backing her treasurer bid — a list that also included Speaker Matt Huffman, Speaker Pro Tempore Gayle Manning, and Majority Whip Nick Santucci. Roegner ran with the backing of gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy, while Edwards consolidated support from Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Williams’s official campaign endorsements page at joshwilliamsforohio.com lists “Rep. Gary Click” among more than two dozen Ohio House members backing his congressional bid. Williams acknowledged Click’s endorsement on social media on Aug. 11, 2025, calling Click “a strong conservative & voice for faith, family, & freedom in Ohio.” The two have co-sponsored multiple pieces of Ohio House legislation, including House Bill 693 — the so-called “Affirming Families First Act,” which would write a statutory definition of “parental alienation” into Ohio law — and HB 249, the “Indecent Exposure Modernization Act.”

The King endorsement was issued by Click on Facebook. King’s own campaign endorsements page at voteandrewking.com does not list Click among the state representatives backing his Supreme Court bid; King’s site features Reps. Brian Lorenz, Mark Hiner, Thad Claggett, Marilyn John, and former Rep. Mark Fraizer.

The Williams endorsement, in context

Click’s continued backing of Williams was already a documented point of friction inside the Ohio GOP coalition before Tuesday’s results.

TiffinOhio.net reported in March that Williams had posted sexually explicit and degrading content about women on his public Facebook page in 2018 — material that resurfaced as he campaigned on a legislative record built around protecting children from obscenity. When confronted in 2023, Williams declined to apologize, telling The Rooster: “What do I gotta apologize about? I made the post in 2018 being funny while I was in college burning time.”

Click formally endorsed Williams’s congressional campaign in August 2025 — two years after Williams’s posts were first publicly reported. Williams quietly removed state Rep. Rodney Creech from his endorsements page in mid-April after TiffinOhio.net coverage of Creech’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation file, but kept Click’s endorsement on the page through Election Day.

Click’s near-loss compounds the pattern

Tuesday’s results landed against the backdrop of Click’s own narrowly held seat. Watson conceded Tuesday night but pointedly declined to endorse Click in the November general election, telling supporters “the topic of endorsements will not be discussed at this time” and signaling he intends to remain politically active. Watson carried Seneca County by 8.5 points; Click held on only because of his 15.4-point margin in his home county of Sandusky.

Click did get wins at the top of the ticket. Ramaswamy, whom Click endorsed for governor, defeated Casey Putsch and Heather Hill in the GOP primary. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, whose Sandusky County campaign Click chairs, was unopposed in the Republican Senate primary. But both of those races were structurally favorable to the candidates Click backed — Ramaswamy held the Ohio Republican Party endorsement issued more than a year before the primary, and Husted faced no opposition.

In the three down-ticket races where Click’s preferred candidate had to win on the merits of a contested Republican primary — Supreme Court, treasurer, and OH-9 — Click’s slate went 0-for-3.

A pattern documented before the votes were cast

The Ohio Democratic Party labeled Click — alongside Creech — as one of the GOP’s “most toxic endorsements” in an April 14 release, after Williams temporarily scrubbed Creech from his endorsement page. TiffinOhio.net’s subsequent reporting documented a pattern in which multiple Republican campaigns either removed Click from their public endorsement materials or were caught quietly restoring him after coverage. Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign briefly removed Click in April before restoring him within hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting the change. Watson, in the closing weeks of his own primary campaign, called Click “a liability” and built his closing message around Click’s distancing from other Republican campaigns.

What was characterization three weeks ago is now also a vote count. Three Republican candidates Click formally endorsed asked GOP primary voters to send them to higher office. None of the three got there.

Tuesday’s results across all three races are unofficial pending certification.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Shaver received 11,848 votes, or 28.68% of the 41,318 Democratic ballots cast across the district, according to unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State.

Martin M. Heberling III finished second with 10,662 votes (25.80%), followed by Daniel John Burket with 10,089 votes (24.42%) and Scott E. Tabor with 8,719 votes (21.10%).

“I’m truly humbled and honored to be the Democratic nominee for Ohio’s 5th District. Thank you to every voter who put their trust in me,” Shaver said in a post-election statement. “There’s real work ahead as we move toward victory over Bob Latta on November 3. Let’s come together to bring new leadership to D.C. and ensure the people of this district have a representative who works for them.”

Who is Brian Shaver?

Shaver, 48, teaches social studies at Fostoria Junior/Senior High School and lives on a small family farm in Fostoria with his wife, Elizabeth, and daughter, Genevieve, according to his campaign website. He has served on Fostoria City Council since 2019 and is the council’s current president.

During the primary, Shaver campaigned on congressional accountability, campaign finance reform, term limits and a ban on stock trading by members of Congress.

“I have to leave my personal views and religious views at the schoolhouse door,” Shaver told Richland Source in an April interview. “That positions me really well to serve all the people of this district.”

Shaver also argued the redrawn district gives Democrats their best opening in decades. “This is probably the best positioning for a Democrat to win the congressional district in about 70 years,” he said.

The road to November

Latta, of Bowling Green, has represented the 5th District since 2007 and is a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was unopposed in the Republican primary after challengers Erica Kelley and Robert Owsiak Jr. did not appear on the ballot, according to Ballotpedia.

The 5th District covers all or part of nine northern Ohio counties — Crawford, Hancock, Huron, Lorain, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca, Wood and Wyandot — and includes Fostoria, Tiffin, Findlay, Bowling Green, Norwalk and Elyria. The Cook Political Report rates the district solidly Republican.

Independent candidate Dalton Franklin will also appear on the November 3 general election ballot, per Ballotpedia.

In 2024, Latta defeated Democrat Keith Mundy with about 67% of the vote.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Richland County voters on Tuesday backed a move by their three county commissioners and preserved a ban on wind and solar power by a thinner margin than partisan politics may suggest. 

In a tight contest, 12,189 voters (52.9%) voted to uphold a ban on industrial-scale wind and solar in most of the county, while 10.853 (47.1%) voted to overturn it, according to preliminary election results.

This means the north-central Ohio county will maintain its prohibition on renewables in 11 of 18 townships there, a restriction imposed by the county’s three Republican commissioners. 

Solar power in Ohio is often polarized along political lines, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed. But only about 1 in 4 primary voters in Richland County picked a Democratic ballot, meaning a broad swath of Republican voters wanted to reverse the ban.

The referendum campaign tailored its messaging around Republicans, framing the issue as one of government overreach and not global climate change. 

Regardless, the effort fell short. 

Morgan Carroll, a central figure in the repeal campaign, said in a phone call Tuesday evening that the result was disappointing, but proved that solar isn’t a clean-cut partisan issue. 

“It wasn’t that far off from being 50-50,” she said. “It’s telling from such a Republican county that we’d even have that close of a result.”

Darrell Banks, a county commissioner who supported the ban, said the county won despite the outside money that poured in.

“This is an affirmation by the voters that their Township Trustees and County Commissioners are aligned with the best interest of their communities,” he said. “We appreciate the support of Richland County voters.”

Several interests from far outside Richland County sought to move the needle there. The Natural Resource Defense Council, a national environmental nonprofit via its political arm, and Ohio Citizen Action, a grassroots organization from Columbus, spent heavily in support of a repeal. 

On the other side, known Republican operatives backed the campaign in support of the wind and solar ban. 

The election was the second test in state history of a 2021 law that gives local governments broad powers to block renewable energy projects in their jurisdictions – powers they don’t have when it comes to coal, gas or nuclear energy projects. 

You can read Signal Ohio’s more comprehensive coverage on the referendum here.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Sixty-one percent of respondents to the survey, which asked how important several health-related issues were, said the price of healthcare will have a major impact on which party they support as control of Congress hangs in the balance.

Among MAHA voters, who are predominantly Republicans but also include independents and some Democrats, 42% said cost is their top issue heading into the elections. 

“While the issue of health costs is more salient for Democratic voters than for Republicans, larger shares across partisans say health costs will have a major impact on their voting decisions than say the same about vaccine policy or food safety,” the survey said. 

Seventy-two percent of Democrats, 63% of independents and 47% of Republicans said the cost of healthcare will have a major impact on which party’s candidate they vote for. 

Vaccine policy came in next, with 57% of Democrats, 46% of independents and 32% of Republicans surveyed saying it will have a major impact on their choice. 

Issues related to food safety came in third after 43% of Democrats, 40% of independents and 38% of Republicans responded that it will have a major impact on their choice of candidate.  

MAHA issues

For MAHA voters, twice as many listed health costs as their first priority than the next issue: restricting the use of certain chemical additives in food, which was a key concern for 21%.

Ten percent were interested in politicians who will reevaluate vaccine approvals, 8% want lawmakers to limit corporate interest in food and 8% want Congress to limit the use of pesticides in agriculture. Eleven percent said none of those or had no answer. 

The survey showed that a significant majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe the government hasn’t done enough to address chemical additives in food or pesticide use in agriculture, two core demands of MAHA supporters.  

“The public perception that there is not enough regulation may be rooted in broader skepticism toward the industries themselves,” the survey said. “Most U.S. adults do not trust pharmaceutical companies, food and beverage companies, or agricultural companies to act in the public’s best interest.”

Doctors and healthcare providers were the most trusted source of information at 70%, followed by agriculture companies at 40%, food and beverage companies at 25% and pharmaceutical companies at 21%. 

Seventy-five percent of those polled said the government hasn’t done enough to regulate chemicals in food, while 65% said it should do more to regulate pesticides in agriculture. 

The poll of 1,343 U.S. adults took place from April 14 to April 19. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points for the full sample and 6 percentage points for MAHA supporters.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

It’s all the president thinks about even as the war he started (for no good reason) takes a sharp bite out of your wallet every time you refuel.

Two months ago, the erratic felon in the Oval Office dragged the U.S. into a quagmire in the Middle East with no clearly defined objective or exit strategy.

Trump just bombed Iran, a nation that posed no imminent threat to America — if we take him at his word. Last summer, Trump repeatedly said Iran was decimated following U.S./Israeli airstrikes that “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities. 

But he launched an epic attack on Iran anyway, amassing over 50,000 troops and multiple carrier strike groups in the region, rapidly depleting key munition stockpiles and running up a tab of at least $25 billion-and-counting.

Iran retaliated (predictably) by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint.

Which gets us back to soaring gas prices and ballrooms.

Closure of that vital waterway in the Persian Gulf is directly related to what you’re paying for a full tank of gas today over what it cost in late February. 

Why? Gasoline prices are primarily determined by supply and demand in a global market, not a domestic one.

When supply of crude oil, used to make gasoline, is disrupted — courtesy of Trump’s Iran war — and demand for gas stays the same, (because you still need to get to work) prices rise. Worldwide. Plus, higher transportation costs mean you also pay more for other products from groceries to clothes.

But as gas prices surge to record highs in Ohio, compounding cost-of-living spikes everywhere else, and the global economy is knocked sideways by Trump’s reckless “excursion” into Tehran, the president is laser focused — not on an urgent way out of the mess he created — but on a gold-plated legacy to dwarf the White House.

“We need a ballroom,” Trump said ludicrously as warning signs of recession flashed around the world. A petulant plutocrat obsessed with opulence not governing.

The serial liar, who promised no taxpayer money would be spent on his ballroom, sent a bill to Congress for $400 million to build it.

A Trumpian Palace of Versailles done on the public dime — while you can’t afford gas for your car.

But the Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” mentality King Donald and his billionaire cronies assume in their gilded bubble, isn’t constrained to only the Trump circle.

Last week, Ohio’s power brokers in state government gloried in the groundbreaking of the palatial pet project of a multi-billionaire NFL owner.

Jimmy Haslam had called in his GOP chits to get hundreds of millions in public funding for his private sports facility investment.

Jimmy and Dee Haslam, owners of the Cleveland Browns (who should henceforth be called Brook Park Browns) padded the campaign coffers of leading Ohio Republicans and dropped $100,000 on their efforts to defeat an anti-gerrymandering ballot issue two years ago to grease the skids for lavish government subsidies for a new domed stadium/entertainment complex in Brook Park.

Call it another billionaire bailout on the backs of Ohioans struggling to stay afloat with climbing electric bills, rent hikes, rising out-of-pocket medical costs, worsening food price inflation, and gas prices that recently spiked nearly 40 cents in a single day.

But Ohio “needed this” gushed Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine as he rubbed elbows with the Big Money gathered to break ground on the Haslam’s $2.6 billion suburban boondoggle.

He was there to chat about what the state’s role might be in lessening the financial burdens of a football team owner whose personal net worth is $10.3 billion and whose family’s overall worth is $14.4 billion.

The state has already agreed to kick in a whopping $600 million via unclaimed funds, (currently tied up in court) and Brook Park expects to throw in another $245 million, to be generated via tax revenues.

The Ohio Department of Transportation approved $35 million in state funding to help upgrade infrastructure near the new stadium site.

The Haslams are angling for a bump in the Cuyahoga County sin tax, maybe doubling or tripling the rate, to pull in more public money for maintenance.

DeWine lauded the largesse of the state plan to subsidize a privately owned, for-profit business owned by an enormously rich sports industry titan and suggested, with a straight face, that the massive handout in public funds to the Haslams “did not interfere with the money we need for education and all the other things we want.”

Yet before Republican lawmakers gifted their generous GOP donor with a generous state grant (to leave Cleveland in the dust) Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman — who pocketed $60,999 from Jimmy and Dee between Jan 1, 2024, and March 24, 2025 — maintained the state couldn’t afford to fully fund public education and passed a budget (the governor signed) that cut the Fair School Funding Plan by two-thirds.

That budget also slashed state aid to libraries and cut millions from Ohio food bank funding, childcare, clean water programs, etc.

If only the state had $600 million to spare for desperately needed quality of life initiatives.

If only the plutocrats drawn to domed playgrounds and gaudy ballrooms pumped their own gas. 

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Races for the state’s top judicial positions were made explicitly partisan when Republican state lawmakers added party labels to the races starting in 2022. Brunner is currently the only Democratic justice on the 6-1 Republican court.

O’Donnell said she was “humbled” by the election results.

“This is not just a victory for my campaign team, but for all Ohioans who support law and order, public safety, and fair, consistent court decisions,” she said in a statement late Tuesday night.

In addition to working in the Franklin County Courts, O’Donnell also previously worked for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. She’s also served with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and most recently as a federal immigration judge in Laredo, Texas.

O’Donnell came out ahead in a tight race with Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King. Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger and Second District Court of Appeals Judge Ron Lewis were also on the ballot Tuesday.

The May primary included party affiliations for judges, after state lawmakers decided to add the labels in 2022.

A win for O’Donnell and for incumbent Republican Justice Dan Hawkins in the Nov. 3 general election would establish a full 7-0 Republican Ohio Supreme Court.

Hawkins faces First District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas to defend his seat.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Both candidates received high-profile endorsements, with Roegner backed by Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican candidate for governor, and Edwards touting the support of Republican Vice President JD Vance.

During her primary campaign, Roegner touted her experience and her goal to maintain financial discipline, along with returning money to Ohioans from the state’s unclaimed funds, rather than allowing it to be used for sports stadium funding, as legislators pledged.

Late Tuesday night, Roegner congratulated Edwards and said it was important for Ohio to stay “on a strong fiscal path.”

“Ohio Republicans remain united in our commitment to responsible government, strong economic growth, and protecting the hard-earned tax dollars of Ohio families,” Roegner said in a statement.

Edwards used his campaign promising to bring “young energy” to the Ohio Treasurer’s Office and help maintain the “Trump Republican Party.”

While he said the pledge to use unclaimed funds for sports venues “could have been spent a better way,” but has said he’s not against the idea “if we can afford to do them, and if we’ve checked all the other boxes.”

Edwards will face Democrat Seth Walsh, a Cincinnati community organizer, in the Nov. 3 general election. Walsh was unopposed in the primary.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The three-term Vickery Republican defeated challenger Eric Watson 52.28% to 47.72% across the two-county 88th District, with 6,859 votes to Watson’s 6,260. But the geography underneath that headline number is the story. According to Decision Desk HQ data with more than 95% of the vote reporting, Click won Sandusky County — his home county — by 15.4 points, with 7,189 votes cast there. In Seneca County, where 5,930 votes were cast, Watson beat Click by 8.5 points. Click’s Sandusky margin alone produced the entire district-wide win.

For an incumbent who has represented both counties since 2021, that split is not a routine home-county effect. It is a Seneca County problem. And the Democratic nominee waiting in November lives in Tiffin.

What the primary actually exposed

Click’s path to renomination was narrower than it should have been for a sitting incumbent in a deep-red district. The shape of that narrowness matters.

Five days before the primary, Ohio Gun Owners downgraded Click from a C-minus to an F, citing what the group described as undisclosed campaign contributions from gun-control lobbyists. Watson held the organization’s top non-incumbent rating. End Abortion Ohio endorsed Watson outright; Click responded by calling the group “clowns” on his official Facebook page and watched the comment thread fill with rebukes from his own supporters. In April, Vivek Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign briefly removed Click from its endorsements page, restoring him within hours of TiffinOhio.net coverage.

None of those individual stories was fatal. Together, they describe a primary in which the activist right, the gun lobby, and at least one statewide GOP campaign were willing — publicly — to put distance between themselves and a sitting Republican representative. The 47.72% Watson received is the receipt for that distance. The Seneca County loss is the receipt for what that distance looked like on the ground.

Watson concedes the office, not the voters

Watson confirmed his loss Tuesday night with a written statement that drew a deliberate line on the central question of the November race.

“Tonight, we proved a lot of people wrong,” Watson said. “Many said this campaign wouldn’t even clear one-third of the vote, but we won Seneca County by a significant margin and built a movement that nobody can ignore. While we came up short tonight, I am incredibly proud of what our team and supporters accomplished in such a short amount of time.”

Watson said he had spoken directly with Click: “Earlier tonight, we called Representative Gary Click to congratulate him on his victory. We had a gracious conversation focused on the people of District 88 and the future of our communities.”

Then the line that mattered: “The topic of endorsements will not be discussed at this time. This is not the last the people of District 88 have seen of Eric Watson.”

That is not the language of a defeated challenger folding into the nominee’s coalition. Watson conceded the office. He did not concede the voters. The roughly 6,260 Republicans who picked him in the primary — gun-rights hardliners, anti-abortion absolutists, opponents of corporate data centers, opponents of digital identification — are now voters Click will have to win back without a public hand from the candidate they preferred. Watson’s statement leaves the door open for that to change. It also leaves the door open for it not to.

Why Seneca County is the story

The second variable is Aaron Jones, and Jones is the variable Click has not faced before.

In 2020, Click won the open seat against Democrat Chris Liebold with 62.9% of the vote. In 2022 and 2024, he defeated Democrat Dianne Selvey, a Whirlpool retiree from Clyde, in two consecutive general elections. Both Liebold and Selvey ran modest campaigns against an incumbent who outspent them and benefited from a deeply Republican district.

Jones is a different kind of candidate. He is a U.S. Army veteran who served four years as an Airborne Infantryman with the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment — the Old Guard. He has worked more than 20 years at Toledo Molding & Die in Tiffin, where he is a production supervisor. He was elected to Tiffin City Council in 2024 to represent the 1st Ward. In March, the national veterans organization VoteVets endorsed his campaign. He held his April 16 campaign kickoff at a downtown Tiffin event open to anyone who walked in.

And he lives in Seneca County. He represents Seneca County constituents on Tiffin City Council. His institutional base — Tiffin City Hall, Tiffin’s downtown, the manufacturing workforce at TMD, the local Democratic infrastructure — is concentrated in the same county where Click just lost a Republican primary by 8.5 points.

Republican primary voters are not the November electorate. Seneca County will not vote in November the way it voted Tuesday. But the Seneca County Republicans who turned out — the most reliable Republican voters in the county — preferred a first-time challenger to a three-term incumbent. That is a brand problem in the county where Click’s general-election opponent has spent the last two years building name recognition.

Local issues now have a candidate willing to talk about them

The third structural change is the local terrain.

The Seneca Poultry concentrated animal feeding operation in Bloom Township and the Sunny Farms Landfill near Fostoria — both of which directly intersect with drinking water, agricultural runoff, and the limits of state versus local regulatory authority — have been the dominant constituent issues across the district for over a year. Both are in Seneca County’s backyard. Watson hammered Click on both during the primary. Jones, at a March 19 League of Women Voters forum at Tiffin Middle School that Click did not attend, told voters his hometown’s “only water source” is the Sandusky River and tied state oversight failures directly to a well drilled near a closed landfill.

Click skipped that forum, citing an Ohio House session conflict. The House’s published schedule confirms it was in session March 18 — but those sessions begin at 2:00 p.m., and the LWV event was held in the evening. Watson and Jones both showed up. Voters in the room saw the contrast.

For an incumbent who built his legislative profile around statewide social-issue bills — the SAFE Act, the “Personhood Act,” and a string of culture-war proposals — the local issues now driving the race are not on his menu. They are on Jones’s. And the geographic center of those issues is Seneca County.

The structural reality

None of this means Click is favored to lose. District 88 remains Republican-leaning. Donald Trump carried both Sandusky and Seneca counties decisively in 2024. A Democratic upset would still require a swing well outside the historical norm.

What is true is that Click is heading into the general election having lost one of his two counties to a first-time primary challenger, having shed nearly half of his own primary electorate, against a Democrat whose home base is that same county, with local issues he has not previously had to defend, and with a fundraising profile — heavily weighted toward corporate PACs and out-of-district donors — that Jones will be in a position to make a campaign issue.

Whether Click’s narrow primary becomes a leading indicator or a footnote will depend on three things observers can measure between now and November: whether Watson’s voters consolidate or stay home, whether Jones can convert his biographical and institutional advantages into name recognition across both counties, and whether the Seneca Poultry and Sunny Farms files produce additional disclosures that put Click further on the defensive.

What’s no longer true is the assumption that District 88 is a foregone conclusion. Tuesday’s results retired that assumption. The Seneca County map retired it loudly.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Former Ohio state Rep. Derek Merrin will compete against Kaptur, who has represented Ohio’s 9th congressional district since 1983 — making her the longest-serving woman in congressional history.

Results will remain unofficial until they are certified by election officials later this month.

“Northwest Ohio is ready for fresh new leadership,” Merrin said in a news release. “That’s why we are going to defeat Marcy Kaptur this November. After decades in Washington, she’s part of the problem—not the solution. Our campaign offers a clear alternative: new leadership, a focus on lowering costs, supporting law and order, and putting Northwest Ohio first. Tonight is the beginning.”

Merrin served four terms as an Ohio state representative for the Toledo district from 2016 to 2025. He lost a close race to Kaptur during the 2024 election.

Merrin received 44.1% of the vote, Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams received 25.3% of the vote, former deputy director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan got 20.2% of the vote, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Alea Nadeem received 5.5% of the vote, and healthcare industry worker Anthony Campbell received 4.9% of the vote, according to unofficial results by the Associated Press. 

President Donald Trump won this district by 11 points in 2024. 

The Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously passed a new congressional map in October, increasing the Republican advantage in the state 12-3. 

Republicans currently hold 10 out of 15 Ohio U.S. Congressional districts.

There are currently 217 Republicans and 212 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. There are five vacancies. 

Ohio District 1

Former CIA officer Eric Conroy won Ohio’s 1st Congressional District’s Republican Primary with 71.9% of the vote, the Associated Press projects. 

“Republican voters in Southwest Ohio sent a clear message: it’s time for new leadership,” Eric Conroy said in a statement. “I’m grateful, I’m humbled, and I’m ready to get to work.”

President Donald Trump endorsed Conroy in the election. 

Former businesswoman Holly Adams received 19.7% of the vote and nonprofit CEO Rosemary Oglesby-Henry got 8.4% of the vote, according to unofficial results by the Associated Press.

Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman of Cincinnati beat Damon Lynch IV in the Democratic primary — receiving 68% of the vote, according to unofficial results by the Associated Press.

Conroy will now face Landsman, who has served in Congress since 2023, in the Nov. 3 election.  

Ohio’s 13th District

Carey Coleman won Ohio’s 13th Congressional District’s Republican Primary with 473% of the vote, the Associated Press also projected.

Leetonia Mayor Kevin Siembida received 18.8% of the vote, businesswoman Margaret Briem got 16.9% of the vote, businessman Neil Patel received 14.5% of the vote, and medical school graduate Sanjin Drakovac got 2.6% of the vote, according to unofficial results by the Associated Press.

Coleman will now challenge incumbent Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes, who has served in Congress since 2023. 

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.

Ray finished with 4,338 votes (58.99%) to Tischler’s 3,016 votes (41.01%), according to unofficial returns from the Sandusky County Board of Elections. A total of 7,354 Republican ballots were cast in the race.

The roughly 18-point margin gave Ray a clear win in a primary that played out against the backdrop of months of TiffinOhio.net reporting on overlapping financial, disciplinary, and political relationships inside the Sandusky County courthouse.

A primary shaped by accountability reporting

The contest unfolded as TiffinOhio.net documented a series of relationships between Tischler and other Sandusky County officeholders. In April, the outlet reported that Tischler had formally abated a $33,300 state audit Finding for Recovery against Probate and Juvenile Court Judge Brad Smith with Ohio Attorney General approval and no repayment required, then publicly backed Smith’s re-election while seeking the bench herself. Smith later endorsed Tischler’s campaign on Facebook.

One week before the primary, Sandusky County Sheriff Christopher Hilton — who serves as Tischler’s campaign treasurer and was one of six county officials who signed the March 2023 letter requesting the abatement — appeared in uniform on Facebook urging voters to support her.

The Ickes connection

The race also intersected with disciplinary proceedings against Sandusky County Common Pleas Judge Jon Ickes, who is facing recommended sanctions before the Ohio Supreme Court in Case No. 2025-1323. According to the amended complaint in that case, it was Ray himself who first brought the underlying allegations to Tischler on April 29, 2024, contacting her in her capacity as the court’s statutory counsel. Tischler then reported the allegations to Sandusky County Administrator Theresa Garcia, helping set the formal accountability process in motion.

Tischler later testified in the Ickes disciplinary hearings, rating him a 9 out of 10. The Board of Professional Conduct’s recommendation in that case remains pending before the Ohio Supreme Court.

In a written response to TiffinOhio.net before the primary, Tischler said: “My decision to run against Judge Ray, and the fractured relationship between Judge Ray and my office have nothing to do with him reporting Judge Ickes to discipline.” She did not elaborate on the nature of the fractured relationship she described.

Ray’s record on the bench

Ray, a Bellevue native, was first elected to the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas in 2018. He began his legal career as an assistant prosecutor in Erie County before entering private practice and later co-founding the Fremont law firm Mayle, Ray & Mayle. The General Division has jurisdiction over felony criminal matters, civil cases above the statutory threshold, and domestic relations cases.

Tuesday’s results are unofficial pending certification by the Sandusky County Board of Elections.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Frankart finished with 3,051 votes (50.4%) to Distel’s 2,998 votes (49.6%), according to unofficial returns from the Seneca County Board of Elections with all 51 precincts reporting. A total of 6,049 Republican ballots were cast in the commissioner race.

The margin — fewer than one percentage point — left the incumbent advancing to the general election while signaling that nearly half of the Republicans who voted in the primary preferred the challenger.

A primary shaped by oversight controversies

Frankart’s first term in office has been dogged by questions over his handling of the Seneca Poultry concentrated animal feeding operation in Bloom Township. Earlier this year, the Seneca Conservation District publicly corrected him after he told voters in an Advertiser-Tribune candidate Q&A that the facility was “locally monitored” by the district. The conservation district confirmed the operation falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Division of Livestock Environmental Permitting.

A separate timeline document prepared by the Seneca County General Health District, obtained by TiffinOhio.net, showed Frankart called the county health commissioner in January to express concerns about her inquiry into the poultry facility — an inquiry that had been prompted by a Common Pleas judge and a resident worried about a well drilled near a closed landfill.

One day before voters went to the polls, the Advertiser-Tribune published a report based on a deposition transcript in which Frankart acknowledged under oath that some of his past public statements about a regional landfill and the Ottawa-Sandusky-Seneca Joint Solid Waste Management District were inaccurate and had not been corrected. The deposition was taken in May 2024 in connection with litigation involving WIN Waste Innovations.

Frankart’s record and Distel’s challenge

Frankart, a grain farmer from Adams Township, was first elected commissioner in November 2022 and serves as vice president of the three-member Board of Commissioners. Before joining the board, he served 14 years as an Adams Township trustee.

Distel, a Clinton Township trustee, told the Advertiser-Tribune during the campaign that he had heard from residents who “felt dismissed or intimidated” when they raised concerns about the poultry operation, and pledged he would “never bully residents or approach decisions with a predetermined outcome.”

The commissioner race was one of the most closely watched contests in a primary cycle that featured unusually heavy intra-party competition in Seneca County, including contested Republican Central Committee races in 30 of the county’s 51 precincts.

An independent waits in the fall

No Democrat filed for the commissioner seat. Frankart will instead face independent candidate David Ziegler, an Eden Township trustee, in the November 3 general election.

Ziegler has served on the Eden Township Board of Trustees and previously testified before the Ohio Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee in 2021 in support of Senate Bill 52, the law that gave local governments greater authority over the siting of large solar and wind projects.

Tuesday’s results are unofficial pending certification by the Seneca County Board of Elections.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click, a three-term incumbent from Vickery and ex-pastor who quietly stepped down from his church in 2025, finished with 6,859 votes (52.28%) to Watson’s 6,260 votes (47.72%), according to unofficial returns from the Sandusky and Seneca county boards of elections as of 9:21 p.m. Tuesday. The 599-vote margin out of 13,119 ballots cast left nearly half of the Republicans who voted in the two-county district choosing the challenger over their sitting representative.

The result was one of the narrowest GOP incumbent primary margins in northwest Ohio this cycle, and it landed after months of escalating attacks that pulled Click — once considered a safely conservative incumbent — into a defensive posture against an opponent running to his right.

A district split in two

The headline number masked a sharper geographic split. According to Decision Desk HQ data with more than 95% of the vote reporting, Click carried Sandusky County, where he lives, by 15.4 percentage points. In Seneca County, where Watson lives, Watson won by 8.5 points. Sandusky cast 7,189 votes in the race; Seneca cast 5,930.

Click’s home-county margin alone produced the district-wide victory. Without it, the result inverts.

The split is not a routine home-county effect for an incumbent who has represented both counties since 2021. It is a 14-county-point swing between two adjacent counties that share a state representative. And it lines up with the geography of the campaign — Watson held forums and built his volunteer base in Tiffin and Fostoria, while Click’s institutional support and donor network sat closer to Fremont and Clyde.

A primary that turned personal

The contest grew sharper in its closing weeks. Five days before Election Day, Ohio Gun Owners downgraded Click to an F rating, citing what the organization described as undisclosed campaign contributions from gun-control lobbyists. Watson held the group’s “Aq” rating — its top score for non-incumbent candidates.

The endorsement of Watson by End Abortion Ohio earlier this spring prompted Click to label the group “clowns” on Facebook, a post that drew rebukes from his own supporters in the comment section.

The candidates also clashed in person. At a Sandusky County Republican Women candidate forum in March, Watson drew repeated applause as he pressed Click on guns, digital identification legislation, and data center policy. Click skipped a separate League of Women Voters forum in Tiffin the night before, citing a House session conflict.

A challenger from the right

Watson, a Tiffin small-business owner who founded Watson’s Hat Shop in Cave Creek, Arizona, before returning to Seneca County in 2022, campaigned on opposition to data centers on farmland, an end to property taxes, rejection of digital identification, and what he described as defense of “conservative Christian values.”

Throughout the primary, Watson hammered Click over campaign finance records showing the incumbent raised the bulk of his money from corporate political action committees and donors outside the 88th District. A TiffinOhio.net analysis of Click’s contributions from 2020 through 2025 found that less than 14% of his total campaign funding came from individual donors inside Sandusky and Seneca counties.

Click, who chairs the House Community Revitalization Committee and sponsored House Bill 68 — the “SAFE Act” restricting gender-affirming care for minors and transgender participation in school sports — leaned on his legislative record and ties to House Republican leadership to defend his seat.

Watson concedes — but holds back endorsement

In a written statement issued Tuesday night, Watson conceded the race and confirmed he had called Click to congratulate him, but pointedly declined to offer an endorsement. The statement led with the Seneca County result.

“Tonight, we proved a lot of people wrong,” Watson said in the statement. “Many said this campaign wouldn’t even clear one-third of the vote, but we won Seneca County by a significant margin and built a movement that nobody can ignore. While we came up short tonight, I am incredibly proud of what our team and supporters accomplished in such a short amount of time.”

Watson said he had spoken with Click directly: “Earlier tonight, we called Representative Gary Click to congratulate him on his victory. We had a gracious conversation focused on the people of District 88 and the future of our communities.”

On the question of whether he would back Click in the general election, Watson was unequivocal: “The topic of endorsements will not be discussed at this time.” He closed the statement by signaling future political plans: “This is not the last the people of District 88 have seen of Eric Watson.”

What’s next

Click will advance to the November 3 general election against Democratic nominee Aaron Jones, a Tiffin City Councilman, U.S. Army veteran, and longtime manufacturing supervisor who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary. Jones lives and was elected in Seneca County — the same county Click lost to Watson on Tuesday. Libertarian Ben Machoukas is competing as a write-in candidate.

Tuesday’s results are unofficial pending certification by the Sandusky and Seneca county boards of elections.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Results will remain unofficial until they are certified by election officials later this month.

In the Democratic primary, Kulewicz defeated former state Rep. Elliot Forhan.

“You have chosen a lawyer who is ready to restore the office of Attorney General to the people of Ohio,” Kulewicz said at an Ohio Democratic Party event after the race was called.

The Upper Arlington attorney campaigned on Ohio’s need for a lawyer in the Attorney General’s Office, instead of a politician, and plans to combat “price-fixing monopolies that are raising the prices that we pay for the necessities of our lives,” Kulewicz told the Capital Journal in April.

Kulewicz will now take on current Ohio Auditor Keith Faber for the job in the Nov. 3 general election.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Results will remain unofficial until they are certified by election officials later this month.

Both candidates are political newcomers who’ve distinguished themselves as communicators. They’ll have ample opportunity to make their case.

Acton is breaking Democratic fundraising records in Ohio; according to pre-primary reports her campaign has cleared $10 million. Ramaswamy has spent that much on campaign ads already, and with a $25 million personal loan, appears ready to spend more. And that doesn’t even account for the Super PAC supporting his bid.

Acton, who didn’t have a primary challenger, described herself as a “scrappy kid from Youngstown” in a speech to supporters Tuesday night. She drew comparisons between her own struggles as a child facing homelessness and the challenges Ohioans today face in making ends meet.

“I am running for governor because people in this state are struggling,” Acton said. “They are doing everything right. They’re working harder than they ever have, but there is no more breathing room. They’re struggling with the cost of everyday life, and I refuse to look the other way.”

And Acton needled her opponent for criss-crossing the state in a private jet.

“When you are looking at a state from 30,000 feet, my opponent cannot possibly see the struggles and the stories that I’m hearing on the road,” Acton said. “Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t just out of touch. He is out for himself. That is what is happening here.”

The AP called the Republican primary race for Ramaswamy less than 30 minutes after polls closed.

“I do believe that this marks, without exception, the single most consequential election for governor that our state has ever seen in our history,” Ramaswamy told a crowd of supporters at sports bar in Columbus’ Arena District Tuesday night.

“There has never been a greater contrast between two candidates,” he said, insisting he celebrates success while Acton villainizes it.

“She will remind you every day that I’m a billionaire,” he said, “and I will remind you that I was not born a billionaire. I was not born a millionaire. I was not born an anything-aire.”

Meet the candidates

Acton built a career in public health both as a practicing physician and a teacher at Ohio State University. But her introduction to Ohio voters came as the calming voice alongside Gov. Mike DeWine early in the COVID-19 pandemic. She conveyed empathy and encouragement to Ohioans stuck in their homes, and she had a knack for breaking down complex information in an understandable way.

The rare Democrat in a state government dominated by Republicans for more than a decade, Acton was blamed by some in the GOP for COVID lockdowns. She ended up resigning as state health director in June of 2020, just months after the pandemic began.

Ramaswamy told supporters the COVID lockdowns were bad, but Acton quitting was the greater sin.

“To me, that is the most damning indictment of somebody who wants to lead this state,” he said. “I will never quit on Ohio.”

Ramaswamy is not the first billionaire businessman to try his hand at politics, but that resume isn’t really what brought him here.

About the time he stepped down as CEO of his biotech firm, Ramaswamy wrote the first in a string of books tapping into growing “anti-woke” sentiment on the right. He rode that success to frequent appearances on cable news and then launched a quixotic 2024 presidential bid.

The fast-talking, long-shot candidate made big promises and got under the skin of his Republican rivals.

But Ramaswamy never criticized Donald Trump and later endorsed him after bowing out of the race. He parlayed that support into a short-lived stint at the head of the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk.

Primary competition

Since emerging in 2020, Acton has been a high priority recruit for state Democrats. She announced her candidacy in Jan. 2025, while big name Ohio Democrats were still mulling their 2026 plans.

Following his loss in 2024, former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown left the door open to running for U.S. Senate again or for governor. Last August he decided on a U.S. Senate run. Democratic former U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan weighed his chances for governor or U.S. Senate, too. In the end, he pursued neither.

When Ramaswamy announced he was running for governor in Feb. 2025, Trump’s endorsement came just hours later. In May of last year, the state party endorsed Ramaswamy. A few days later, his most significant challenger, Attorney General Dave Yost, dropped out of the race. Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel never jumped in.

But Ramaswamy did draw a notable challenger in Casey Putsch. The Perrysburg man has a following on YouTube and started the nonprofit Genius Garage which trains students to build race cars.

Putsch also has a history of Holocaust denial and last month made winking reference to the Beer Hall Putsch — Adolf Hitlers first, failed attempt to gain power — in a Putsch “beer hall rally” in Toledo. On Facebook, Putsch dismissed that characterization as a “psy-op,” and offered to buy a beer for anyone who showed up in a German car.

He’s also made openly race-based attacks against Ramaswamy and courted ‘groypers’ — a far-right fringe group known for nativism and antisemitism.

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.

The Associated Press projected Tuesday evening Russo’s victory over oncologist Bryan Hambley and that Sprague had defeated Marcell Strbich.

Russo has served in the Ohio House since 2019, and headed up her legislative caucus as Ohio House Minority Leader from 2022 to 2025.

She pointed to her experience as a lawmaker, and her tenure as part of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, in which she stood in opposition to almost all of the maps approved by the Republican-majority commission.

She voted for the most recent Ohio Statehouse district maps, but she and the other Democrat on the commission, Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, said they approved the maps after being threatened with worse maps by GOP members of the commission. They said they wanted the process to be considered by voters, though the 2024 ballot measure to prevent gerrymandering was defeated.

Having gone through the process, Russo said she’s prepared to “use the bully pulpit” of the Secretary of State’s Office to make changes and act as a “guardrail” against overreach from the legislature or the president.

Hambley was an underdog coming into this year’s Democratic secretary of state primary. A cancer doctor at the University of Cincinnati, Hambley has never held public office, giving voters a potential blank-slate candidate. 

Hambley called Russo to concede around 8:15 p.m. as the race was called.

He said he was proud to endorse Russo as the next secretary of state and her “vision for democracy which returns the power of the vote to the people of Ohio.”

“We lost today because most Democrats in the state of Ohio went to vote and they voted for Rep. Russo’s vision for our state,” Hambley said. “That is exactly how it is supposed to work in a democracy. All of the Democratic ticket, from Sherrod Brown and Amy Acton and Rep. Russo on down, I hope that tonight they ensure they don’t leave any community or county in Ohio behind,” Hambley said.

The overall theme of the campaigns on both sides of the aisle was upholding the integrity of elections, though the means of upholding that tenet differed.

On the Republican side, Sprague’s campaign released ads featuring children’s show-like puppets, zombies, and space aliens, in an effort to emphasize his goal to keep voter fraud away from the ballot box, in a state where the current secretary of state has said fraud is rare.

“My north star is to hold the most secure elections in the state of Ohio,” Sprague told the Capital Journal on Tuesday night.

While Sprague pushed for universal voting machines with a secure paper trail for all votes but defended the state system as strong, Strbich criticized the system as a whole, and called for updated software security systems, pointing to his military security background as evidence of his qualifications.

Every vote cast in Ohio is already documented by either paper ballot or a voter-verified paper audit trail.

Toledo resident Tom Pruss ran on the Libertarian ticket, and received about 1,000 votes.

Sprague and Russo now begin their campaigns for Ohio’s general election Nov. 3.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

That sets up a general-election race between Brown and Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, whom Gov. Mike DeWine last year appointed to fill a seat that was vacated when J.D. Vance became vice president.

Brown defeated Columbus software developer Ron Kincaid in the Democratic Primary.

Husted faced no primary challenger on the ballot and has secured the Republican nomination.

Brown in 2024 lost his seat after three terms. Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno beat him in a climate in which voters were upset over inflation and the economy.

With war and tariffs spurring further inflation — and with cuts to healthcare causing economic insecurity — the Ohio U.S. Senate race is one of 11 that are being closely watched because the outcome of each could determine control of the U.S. Senate.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Click, the three-term incumbent in Ohio House District 88, used the post to accuse former state Rep. Jay Edwards — running in the May 5 Republican primary for Ohio Treasurer — of being “Larry Householder’s right hand man” and part of “the cabal” that elevated former House Speaker Jason Stephens with Democratic votes in 2023. The target of the attack was Click’s primary challenger, Eric Watson, who had announced Edwards’s endorsement of his HD-88 campaign earlier in the day.

The post, captured in screenshots preserved by TiffinOhio.net and other observers before its removal, read in full:

“Wow. Fascinating to learn that my opponent was just endorsed by Larry Householder’s right hand man. If 🌵 had not been in Arizona, he might have known about this scandal. Jay was also a part of the cabal that partnered with Democrats to elect their choice for a speaker who allowed abortion to get into the Ohio Constitution. That what happens when you are clueless because you haven’t been here. 🤦”

The cactus emoji is a recurring jab Click and his allies have used to reference Watson’s Arizona background. Watson, who moved back to Ohio after a short stint in Arizona, has been nicknamed “the Arizona Kid” by Click’s supporters throughout the primary cycle.

What Click did not say in the post is that the man he labeled “Householder’s right hand man” was endorsed in February by Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno. Vance, in announcing his endorsement, called Edwards a “son of Appalachia” and “a strong America First conservative.”

The Watson post that prompted Click’s response remains live on Facebook. It reads: “I’m honored to have the endorsement of Jay Edwards for Ohio Treasurer! His support means a lot to our campaign as we fight for our rights, our farmland, and real change in District 88. Jay happens to be endorsed by Vice President JD Vance and Senator Bernie Moreno! Vote Eric Watson and Jay Edwards today!”

A candidate who once paid to defend HB 6

The credibility problem with Click’s election day attack is that Click himself spent campaign money to defend the very law at the heart of the Householder bribery scandal — and his official campaign website still describes that law in approving terms today.

As TiffinOhio.net previously reported, Meta’s Ad Library shows that The Committee to Elect Gary Click, treasurer Jerri Miller, paid for a sponsored Facebook ad that ran from September 20 to September 22, 2019. In it, Click — then a first-time candidate for the 88th House District — shared a U.S. Department of Energy post about the closure of the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and added: “I’m glad that Ohio’s leaders thought this through, keeping our best interest at heart!” The post used the hashtag “#YestoHB6” and tagged then-Speaker Larry Householder among other Republican leaders.

The ad ran in the closing weeks of the petition drive opponents were running to put a referendum on House Bill 6 on the 2020 ballot. The repeal effort fell short, and HB 6 took effect. The federal racketeering case against Householder and his associates surfaced 10 months later, in July 2020.

Click’s current campaign website still defends HB 6. Under the “Energy” section of his issues page at garyclick.com, the site reads: “House Bill 6 was a necessary investment, providing stability by preserving nuclear energy in Ohio.”

What’s verified about Edwards’s record

Click’s central factual claim — that Edwards joined Democrats to elect Stephens — is accurate. As reported by the Statehouse News Bureau in January 2023, Edwards was one of 22 Republicans who joined all 32 Democrats to elect Stephens speaker over the GOP caucus’s choice, Derek Merrin. The group has since been labeled the “Blue 22.”

Click’s broader characterization of Edwards as Householder’s “right hand man” tracks with documented connections that Edwards himself has acknowledged. Edwards voted for House Bill 6 in 2019 — the same bill Click’s campaign committee was paying to defend on Facebook that fall — and later voted against expelling Householder from the Ohio House. Edwards was also reportedly present at an FBI-recorded dinner with Householder and indicted lobbyist Neil Clark months before the bribery indictments. Edwards has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.

Edwards has publicly addressed the relationship in interviews this year, telling the Cincinnati Enquirer of Householder: “He did wrong. He’s serving his time. He’s paying for the consequences that he made.”

The piece of Click’s post that does not survive scrutiny is the claim that Stephens “allowed abortion to get into the Ohio Constitution.” Issue 1, the reproductive rights amendment Ohio voters approved in November 2023, was a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment placed on the ballot through petition signatures, not legislation a House speaker could block.

The Treasurer’s race undercurrent

Edwards is in a contested Republican primary for Treasurer against state Sen. Kristina Roegner of Hudson. According to the Dayton Daily News, Roegner has been endorsed by gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and by Republican leadership in the Ohio House and Senate. The Ohio Republican Party declined to endorse in the race.

That places Click’s election day attack squarely in the lane of one Treasurer candidate against the other — on a day when Click’s own primary should have been the only race on his mind. The attack also pitted him directly against a sitting Vice President from his own party, a fact the deletion suggests his campaign recognized within 45 minutes.

The deletion

By approximately 1:56 p.m. on May 5, the post had been removed from Click’s Facebook page. As of publication, Click has not posted a replacement attack, an explanation, or any further commentary on Watson, Edwards, or the deleted post. Watson’s post remains live.

Polls in Ohio closed at 7:30 p.m. on May 5. Click is on the ballot against Watson in the Republican primary, with Democrat Aaron Jones unopposed for his party’s nomination. Click is seeking a fourth and final term under Ohio’s term-limit rules.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The motor club AAA clocked the average price of regular gas at $4.46 per gallon and diesel at $5.64, as Iran and the U.S. remain at a stalemate over opening the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s petroleum passed through prior to the war.

“Gasoline prices rose in every state over the last week, with some of the most significant and fastest increases concentrated in the Great Lakes, where states like Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois saw sharp spikes, while Wisconsin experienced more modest gains,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a statement Monday. 

“At the same time, diesel prices surged to new records in parts of the region, with some areas touching the $6-per-gallon mark,” he added.

De Haan said refinery outages drove prices up, but other factors like Middle East oil output and President Donald Trump’s plan to free oil tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf could help.

“However, with so many moving pieces, the outlook remains highly fluid, and while some localized relief may emerge, broader price volatility is likely to persist in the near term,” he said.

Trump’s approval ratings, particularly on everyday costs, are sinking. About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the cost of living, and 66% disapprove of the president’s handling of the Iran war, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll published Sunday. 

Trump’s overall disapproval of 62% was the highest the survey recorded since he first took office in 2017.

The nationwide average for a gallon of regular gas was $4.10 one month ago. Last year at this time, it was $3.16, according to AAA.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, jumped to $114.90 a barrel Monday, the second-highest price jump since Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022.

During a small business summit at the White House on Monday, Trump said the war “is working out very nicely.”

“They thought that energy would be at $300 right, $300 a barrel. And it’s like at 100 and I think going down,” Trump said, incorrectly describing the current trend in prices. “And I see it going down very substantially when this is over.”

Navy escorts through strait

Trump on Sunday announced “Project Freedom,” an operation to guide cargo ships and oil tankers through the strait with the guidance of the U.S. Navy.

The “humanitarian gesture,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, is “merely meant to free up people, companies, and Countries that have done absolutely nothing wrong — They are victims of circumstance.”

Some 20,000 merchant ship crew members have been stranded in the Persian Gulf during the ongoing war, according to United Nations estimates at the end of March.

Trump threatened that Iran would “be dealt with forcefully” if they interfered with the operation.

As of Monday, U.S. Central Command said two U.S.-flagged merchant ships had been escorted through the strait. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps disputed the claim as “baseless and completely false,” according to a statement reported by Iranian state media.

“Any other maritime movements that contradict the stated principles of the IRGC Navy will face serious risks, and any violating vessels will be forcefully stopped,” the statement read.

War continues

The IRGC also claimed to have hit two U.S. military vessels in the strait Monday, a claim categorically denied by U.S. Central Command.

U.S. Central Command’s Admiral Brad Cooper told reporters on a press call Monday that the IRGC launched multiple cruise missiles and drones at merchant ships that “we are protecting.” 

“We have defeated each and every one of those threats through the clinical application of defensive munitions,” he told reporters. 

U.S. Apache and Seahawk helicopters sank six small Iranian boats Monday, according to Cooper.

The United Arab Emirates defense ministry reported Monday it was intercepting Iranian missiles and drones over various parts of the country. Iran’s air strikes on its U.S. ally neighbors have largely quieted in recent weeks.

U.K. Maritime Trade Organization, which reports on security conditions, has kept the strait’s regional threat level as “critical.”

Trump said Saturday he was reviewing a new deal from Iran to end the war. Talks have failed since the U.S. and Iran announced a tenuous ceasefire on April 7.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

About 30,000 Haitians with temporary status live in central Ohio and an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians call Springfield, Ohio home, with a mixture of temporary protected status, citizenship and other legal statuses.

Roughly 350,000 Haitians have been in the United States with temporary protected status since a devastating earthquake in 2010. Their status has been renewed numerous times since.

Arguing that the stays were meant only to be temporary, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in November announced that the administration would end that status for Haitians and for about 6,000 Syrians.

Lawyers for the Haitians sued, arguing that Noem had failed to follow the 1990 law creating temporary protected status. It requires that the government conduct a mandatory review of conditions in a group’s home country to certify that it’s safe to return before forcing them to leave.

Instead of doing that, Trump and Noem simply decided to eject Haitians out of “racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians, in particular,” their lawyer, Geoffrey Pipoly, told the Supreme Court during last week’s oral arguments, according to SCOTUSblog.

The influential court watchers said it’s unclear after the arguments whether a majority of the court will allow the Haitians’ and Syrians’ claims to go forward, or whether they’ll win if they do.

But an organization who counts Albert Einstein among its original founders reports that if Haitians with protected status are forced back to their Caribbean nation, they’ll confront “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.”

A predecessor organization to the International Rescue Committee was formed by Einstein and a group of humanitarians in 1933. It now works in 40 crisis-afflicted countries under the leadership of David Milliband, a former British foreign secretary.

In an assessment released last week, the organization said that conditions have only worsened in Haiti since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021.

“Conditions threaten to deteriorate further as the indefinite postponement of elections increases political instability and the UN-backed gang suppression force begins to deploy, leading to more clashes between gangs and security forces that could drive even higher levels of displacement and food insecurity,” the International Rescue Committee assessment said.

In the absence of an effective government, gangs control 90% of Port-au-Prince, the capital, the assessment said.

It added:

• 73% of families said they felt unsafe where they slept. Only 5.5% said they lived in their own homes, with displaced families “sheltering in insecure, overcrowded conditions.”
• Nearly 25% of households said there were unaccompanied children in their communities who had been separated from their caretakers.
• Nearly 60% of children are not in school. And child recruitment by gangs jumped by 200% in 2005, so that they now make up half of all gang membership.
• 75% of households can’t afford medical care, increasing preventable deaths.
• 36% of households have untreated drinking water, increasing the incidence of diseases such as cholera, typhoid and other waterborne ailments.

“Millions of people in Haiti continue to face a compounding crisis of food insecurity, forced displacement, deadly disease outbreaks, and surging violence,” Alice Ribes, the International Rescue Committee’s director for Haiti, said in a written statement.

“Public services in many areas have collapsed under gang rule, leaving people with limited or no access to clean drinking water, food, medical care, and education.”

While conditions in the majority-Black country are dire, critics accuse Trump and his administration of racist motivations for trying to force Haitians in the United States to return.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, both Trump and now-Vice President J.D. Vance repeated the racist lie that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing their neighbors pets and eating them.

Gov. Mike DeWine, who is also a Republican, wrote a column in the New York Times refuting the claims.

And in blocking the attempt to revoke Haitians’ protected status, a federal judge cited a social-media post by Noem as evidence of racial motivation.

“I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” Noem, who was then Homeland Security secretary, posted on X on Dec. 1.

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Ohio is a notoriously difficult state for building renewable energy. Many counties ban wind and solar outright, but even in those that don’t, state regulators often rely on local opposition to deny permits for developers.

Fossil fuel companies, on the other hand, do not face these hurdles. This discrepancy is underscored by the fact that plans to build two fracking-waste wells in Ohio’s rural Washington County are poised to move ahead despite objections from residents, environmental groups, and nearby town governments. DeepRock Disposal Solutions aims to use these deep holes in the earth to push toxic liquid waste from fracking oil and gas into porous rock layers far underground.

Last week, a Franklin County Court of Appeals magistrate — a court officer who handles preliminary matters as well as detailed issues in complex cases — recommended the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Buckeye Environmental Network in opposition to the wells. The group argues that the state illegally relied on outdated rules when permitting the project, which risks contaminating local groundwater supplies.

DeepRock applied for drilling permits in late 2021, about a month before the state adopted stricter waste-well regulations that are meant to better protect public safety and health. Although the state didn’t complete a technical review or issue DeepRock’s permits until 2025, it relied on the more lax standards in place when the company had first applied. Buckeye Environmental Network says that the current rules would have required a denial of the permits.

In recommending that the Franklin County Court of Appeals dismiss the lawsuit, Magistrate Thomas Scholl wrote that Buckeye Environmental Network had not adequately shown that the state ​“had a clear legal duty” to use the new rules. To reach that conclusion, he noted that DeepRock had a ​“vested and substantial” interest in the agency applying the old framework, adding that ​“permit applications require substantial investments of time, capital, and technical resources to complete.”

Renewable energy firms, by contrast, have historically not gotten similar deference from state regulators.

Opposition by local government boards and area residents has been enough for the Ohio Power Siting Board to deny permits for certain solar projects, even after developers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on studies, hearings, and other work to meet legal requirements. Last month, for example, the flip-flop of a single township trustee’s vote led to the denial of a permit for the 94-megawatt Crossroads Solar Grazing Center. (The Ohio Supreme Court is currently considering whether local government opposition was sufficient grounds for denying a permit in the case of Kingwood Solar.)

Parties in the fracking-waste lawsuit — which include state regulators, DeepRock, and Buckeye Environmental Network — have until April 30 to file objections to the magistrate’s recommendation. But if judges at the court agree with the magistrate — as they often do — and dismiss the case, it could clear the way for DeepRock to drill its wells in the coming months.

“We believe that the decision speaks for itself, so we have no additional comment,” said Karina Cheung, spokesperson at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

“How much waste can one county take?”

Ohio already has more than 200 Class II injection wells that together accept more than a billion gallons per year of super-salty fluids from fracking activities. This brine can contain heavy metals, radioactive chemicals, and ​“trade secret” compounds. Seventeen of those wells are in Washington County, along with many other wells for drilling for natural gas, Buckeye Environmental Network reports.

“Washington County has been forced to accept over 71 million barrels of oil and gas wastewater since 2010,” said Bev Reed, Appalachian community organizer for the network. ​“How much waste can one county take before someone looks at this and says ​‘enough is enough’?”

Others are pushing back, too. The city of Marietta, whose municipal water system and source water protection area is roughly two miles from DeepRock’s project sites, passed a resolution last year to oppose one of DeepRock’s permits. In March, officials for the city of Marietta and nearby townships also asked Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio lawmakers to impose a three-year moratorium on additional wells in Washington County. Although similar opposition from local governments has tanked renewables projects, these efforts have not yielded results.

One of the primary concerns is that the waste wells will leak and contaminate groundwater. In multiple instances, waste from oil and gas wells in the region has moved outside injection wells, said Megan Hunter, an attorney with Earthjustice who represents Buckeye Environmental Network in the case.

It is the Department of Natural Resources’ responsibility to enforce the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, she added, and given the risks, the agency should have applied the stricter rules when considering DeepRock’s permits.

“This role comes with tremendous power and mandates that [the department] not issue a permit unless the applicant demonstrates the disposal well will not endanger underground sources of drinking water and public health and safety,” Hunter said. “[The department] has the discretion — indeed, the responsibility — to thoroughly investigate these reports and to subject any new wells permitted in Washington County to the full rigor of the existing application process.”

Compared with the new rules, the old ones require the state to examine a much smaller area around a proposed well when approving permits. For DeepRock’s projects, that meant regulators ignored nearly 200 oil and gas wells within a two-mile radius of the projects, including some abandoned and ​“orphaned” wells that can act as pathways for waste to contaminate water or other resources, Reed said.

The Department of Natural Resources’ director, Mary Mertz, pushed back on the idea that her agency disregards residents’ concerns about risks. At an Ohio State Bar Association event in March, she acknowledged the frustration of residents who oppose oil and gas industry activities, but said that regulators have a duty to grant permits when companies meet various conditions spelled out by law.

Mertz added that the agency has followed up in the ​“very few” places where fracking waste has apparently migrated out of injection zones. But its personnel have not yet come across an instance in which groundwater has been impacted, she noted.

Ultimately, Mertz said, she thinks that what residents in areas with oil and gas waste disposal are ​“concerned about is really a policy issue: Should we have these injection wells? And how do we feel about them?”

Even so, there’s a clear bias in how the state’s lawmakers and regulators treat different energy sources, observed Cathy Cowan Becker, board president for Save Ohio Parks, a group that opposes fracking of public lands and which is not a party to the case.

“Oil and gas are heavily favored,” she said, ​“while solar and wind have been made almost impossible to site.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The newspaper, citing a deposition transcript obtained through a public records request, reported that Frankart was questioned for several hours by attorneys for WIN Waste Innovations as part of ongoing litigation involving the Ottawa-Sandusky-Seneca Joint Solid Waste Management District.

During that testimony, Frankart said he had taken no steps to correct earlier claims he made publicly and in written testimony to state lawmakers, the Advertiser-Tribune reported.

Among the issues discussed was a statement Frankart previously gave suggesting Seneca County had been consistently outvoted by other counties on oversight matters. According to the report, he acknowledged during the deposition that the claim was not accurate during his time serving on the board.

The Advertiser-Tribune also reported that Frankart was unable to provide specific examples, under questioning, to support prior assertions that the landfill had a pattern of regulatory violations in recent years.

In addition, when asked whether he had evidence that landfill operations had caused health impacts or exceeded regulatory thresholds, Frankart indicated he did not have such information, according to the deposition excerpts cited in the report.

The deposition took place in May 2024 in connection with a lawsuit filed by WIN Waste in Sandusky County. That case was later dismissed, and a separate federal case involving related parties was resolved in 2025.

The Advertiser-Tribune said it sought comment from Frankart ahead of publication. A response provided on his behalf did not directly address the questions but indicated additional time was needed to review the information.

WIN Waste, in a statement to the newspaper, criticized Frankart’s past statements and pointed to inspection data it said showed no enforcement actions in recent years. The company did not provide underlying records but said they were available for review in person.

The report was published one day before the Republican primary election in which Frankart is seeking another term as county commissioner. Click here to read the full report on the Advertiser-Tribune’s website.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

“BOOM: @JonHusted just won the most sheriff endorsements in Ohio history!” the Husted campaign posted on X Monday morning, listing “75 total. All 3 Independents. 1 Democrat.” A paid graphic accompanying the post listed each endorsing sheriff by county. Among them: Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski.

What Zuchowski posted in 2024

On Sept. 13, 2024, Zuchowski posted identical messages to his personal Facebook account and his campaign Facebook account that drew condemnation from the ACLU of Ohio, the Portage County Board of Elections, the U.S. Department of Justice and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

The post read in full: “When people ask me … What’s gonna happen if the Flip - Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say … write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo … when the Illegal human ‘Locust’ (which she supports!) Need places to live … We’ll already have the addresses of their New families … who supported their arrival!”

The post was reported by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC News and local outlets including WKYC and Ideastream Public Media. DeWine, asked about the post, told reporters the comments were “very unfortunate” and “not helpful.”

ACLU, election board and DOJ all weighed in

The ACLU of Ohio sent Zuchowski a letter calling the post an unconstitutional “impermissible threat” against residents who wanted to display political yard signs and demanded he take it down. Local Democrats filed complaints with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and federal authorities. The office of Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said the post did not violate state election law.

One week after the post, on Sept. 20, 2024, the Portage County Board of Elections voted 3-1 to remove the sheriff’s office from its early voting security plan. Board member Randi Clites, a former Democratic state representative, made the motion. She was joined by Democratic chair Denise Smith and Republican member Doria Daniels.

“As Board Members we are charged with preventing violence and disorder at the polls, and to conduct a safe and secure election process,” Clites said before the vote. “It is clear by public comments in the past week there is perceived intimidation by our Sheriff against certain voters.”

By mid-October, more than 60 voter intimidation complaints had been filed with the Ohio Attorney General and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. On Oct. 15, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would monitor Portage County’s compliance with federal voting rights laws during early voting and on Election Day, citing “concerns about intimidation resulting from the surveillance and the collection of personal information regarding voters, as well as threats concerning the electoral process.”

Zuchowski deleted, then doubled down

Zuchowski deleted the original post after the ACLU letter. In a follow-up post, he wrote that his comments had been “misinterpreted” and asserted his First Amendment right to express political views.

He went on Fox News to defend the post. “We need to remember where these signs were,” he said, “because when there’s nowhere else to put these people, I look at it as a welcome mat.”

Zuchowski won reelection on Nov. 5, 2024, defeating Democrat Jon Barber by 1,198 votes — 50.7% to 48.7% — according to unofficial results from the Portage County Board of Elections. He had won his first term in 2020 by 12 points.

Husted’s endorsement rollout

Husted was appointed to the Senate by DeWine on Jan. 17, 2025, to fill the seat vacated when JD Vance resigned to become Vice President. Husted was sworn in Jan. 21, 2025, and is unopposed on Tuesday’s Republican primary ballot. The general election in November 2026 will determine who serves the remainder of Vance’s term, which expires in January 2029.

The Democratic primary features former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is the heavy favorite, against Ron Kincaid.

Monday’s rollout placed Husted’s campaign emphasis squarely on law enforcement support. The graphic, marked “Paid for by Husted for Senate,” listed all 75 sheriffs by county across three columns under the heading “Endorsed by Ohio Sheriffs.” The Husted campaign did not single out or distinguish Zuchowski from the other 74 names on the list.

Not the first controversial endorsement Husted has touted

Monday’s sheriff rollout is not the first time in recent months that Husted’s campaign has publicly promoted endorsements from Ohio Republicans with documented allegations or controversial conduct in their backgrounds.

On March 19, 2026, the Husted campaign posted an endorsement graphic on X listing dozens of Ohio House Republicans backing his Senate bid. Among them: state Reps. Gary Click (R-Vickery) and Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria). The campaign reposted the graphic several hours later.

Creech was accused in 2023 by a minor female relative of climbing into bed with her while erect and wearing only his underwear, according to Bureau of Criminal Investigation documents obtained by the Statehouse News Bureau. Creech admitted to investigators he had gotten into bed with the minor in his underwear but denied the sexual nature of the allegations. Clark County Prosecutor Daniel Driscoll, serving as special prosecutor, declined to file charges but called Creech’s conduct “concerning and suspicious.” House Speaker Matt Huffman stripped Creech of all four committee assignments in May 2025 and asked him to resign; Creech refused and Huffman reinstated him in February 2026.

Click also serves as Husted’s Sandusky County campaign chair, according to a county-by-county leadership graphic the campaign posted on Dec. 10, 2025. In 2023 sponsor testimony for House Bill 68, Click — a former Baptist pastor — told the Ohio House Public Health Policy Committee that “young girls” had described to him in graphic detail what painful sex was like. Click has never publicly identified who these girls were or in what capacity he was discussing sex with them.

Other Ohio Republicans have publicly or quietly distanced themselves from Click and Creech ahead of the May 5 primary. Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy briefly removed both names from his campaign’s endorsement page. U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno was dropped as the headliner of Click’s campaign kickoff. OH-9 GOP candidate state Rep. Josh Williams quietly removed Creech from his own endorsement page before later restoring him. Husted has done none of those things.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The service is available to Tiffin residents who live within city limits and have active residential accounts with Rumpke. Each household may place up to five bulk items at the curb for collection.

Items must be set out no earlier than 18 hours before the regularly scheduled pickup day.

Accepted materials include appliances that are free of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and properly tagged by a certified technician, as well as furniture, mattresses, carpet, and similar bulk items. Upholstered items must be wrapped and sealed in plastic.

The company will not collect certain materials, including car parts, batteries, ashes, dead animals, or 35- or 55-gallon drums containing hazardous liquids such as paint. Items weighing more than 75 pounds are also excluded.

Residents with questions about the program can contact Rumpke customer service at 800-828-8171.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The agreements, which take effect in the fall 2026 semester and continue through the 2031 academic year, establish structured academic pathways across counseling, criminal justice, teacher education and nursing.

University officials said the partnerships create opportunities for dual enrollment, allow students to complete graduate-level coursework earlier and streamline credit transfers between the two institutions.

“These agreements create clear and intentional pathways that help students move more efficiently from undergraduate study into graduate and professional preparation,” said Tiffin University President Dr. Lillian Schumacher. “By aligning programs, expanding access and strengthening academic continuity, we are making it easier for students to stay focused on their goals and enter high-demand careers prepared to lead and serve.”

Heidelberg University President Rob Huntington said the collaboration reflects coordination between two institutions serving the same community.

“These partnerships reflect what is possible when two institutions in the same community intentionally align their strengths in service to students,” Huntington said. “By creating structured academic pathways across multiple disciplines, we are expanding opportunity, reducing barriers to graduate education and strengthening the talent pipeline to our community and the region.”

Officials from both universities said the agreements also focus on improving advising systems, coordinating faculty efforts and maintaining consistent academic standards across programs.

Heidelberg Provost Dr. Courtney DeMayo Pugno said the structure of the agreements connects undergraduate and graduate education more directly.

“Students benefit from clearer academic pathways, stronger career alignment, earlier access to advanced coursework and reduced duplication of effort across programs,” she said.

Dr. Peter J. Holbrook, provost and chief operating officer at Tiffin University, said the partnerships are designed to address workforce needs in education and healthcare while improving academic continuity.

“By forging streamlined pathways into teacher education and nursing, we are not only addressing current workforce needs but also pioneering the evolution of education to create sustainable, impactful careers in education and healthcare,” Holbrook said.

The five agreements include:

• A counseling pathway allowing Tiffin students to transition into Heidelberg’s Master of Arts in Counseling program, with reserved seats and up to six graduate credits earned during undergraduate study
• A criminal justice bridge enabling Heidelberg students to enter Tiffin’s Master of Science in Criminal Justice program with up to six graduate credit hours completed early
• A teacher education collaboration in which Tiffin provides subject-area coursework and Heidelberg delivers licensure and certification training
• An expanded education licensure pathway for first-time, full-time Tiffin students across multiple teaching disciplines
• A nursing pathway allowing students to progress from associate and bachelor-level coursework through licensure and into bachelor’s and master’s-level nursing education

Administrators described the agreements as part of an ongoing effort to coordinate academic planning between the institutions.

“This collaboration builds on the strengths of both universities and reinforces our shared responsibility to support the educational and workforce needs of this region,” Schumacher said.

Holbrook said the agreements also emphasize consistency between academic programs and professional expectations.

“This work reinforces how we link knowledge to professional practice by ensuring academic expectations remain consistent and intentionally connected across both institutions,” he said.

University officials said the partnerships are intended to support students from undergraduate enrollment through graduate and professional preparation within a coordinated academic framework.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. The Seneca County Board of Elections is at 71 S. Washington St. in Tiffin. Voters who haven’t cast an early ballot can verify their polling location and view their precinct ballot through TiffinOhio.net’s 2026 Primary Election Voter Guide.

Here are the top races to watch.

Ohio House District 88 — Republican primary

Three-term Republican State Rep. Gary Click of Vickery faces a primary challenge from Tiffin entrepreneur Eric Watson in a race that has drawn substantial outside spending. Click is term-limited after this cycle and is seeking his fourth and final two-year term.

The American Conservative Fund — a super PAC whose only stated income through the end of 2025 came from a $500,000 transfer from Win For America, which itself reported $2 million from DraftKings parent DK Crown Holdings — has spent roughly $190,000 in the District 88 race, according to Cleveland.com reporting. The ads have promoted Watson and attacked Click, who is a primary sponsor of legislation to ban mobile sports betting prop and parlay bets.

Days before the primary, Ohio Gun Owners downgraded Click from a C-minus to an F rating, citing what the organization characterized as unreturned campaign contributions from gun-control lobbyists. Watson holds the organization’s top non-incumbent “Aq” rating.

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will face Tiffin City Councilman and Army veteran Aaron Jones, the only Democrat on the District 88 ballot, in the November general election.

Seneca County Commissioner — Republican primary

Republican incumbent Bill Frankart faces Clinton Township Trustee Jim Distel in a primary shaped by Frankart’s handling of the Seneca Poultry concentrated animal feeding operation in Bloom Township. Frankart, elected commissioner in November 2022, was the subject of a public correction by the Seneca Conservation District after he incorrectly told voters the facility was locally monitored; the conservation district publicly clarified that the facility falls under exclusive Ohio Department of Agriculture jurisdiction.

Distel told the Advertiser-Tribune he had heard from residents who felt dismissed when raising concerns about the operation and pledged not to approach decisions with a predetermined outcome.

No Democrat filed for the seat, meaning Tuesday’s winner will run unopposed in November.

Governor — Republican primary

Five statewide executive offices are open in 2026 because every current Republican holder is term-limited — a once-in-a-generation reshuffle that has produced contested primaries up and down the ballot.

The marquee race is the open governor’s primary. Tech entrepreneur and former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, running with Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, holds the Ohio Republican Party endorsement and an endorsement from President Donald Trump. He is the heavy frontrunner.

Tiffin native Casey Putsch, founder of the Genius Garage nonprofit, is running with Warren County Republican Central Committee member Kimberly Georgeton.

A third ticket — former Morgan County School Board member Heather Hill and Stuart Moats — will appear on the ballot but cannot receive valid votes. After Moats filed paperwork on April 22 to formally withdraw, the Secretary of State’s office determined Hill no longer qualified to receive votes for governor under Ohio Revised Code 3513.30. Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections have been instructed to post notice at polling places that votes for the Hill/Moats ticket are void.

Former Ohio Department of Health director Dr. Amy Acton, running with former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper, is unopposed on the Democratic ticket and advances to the November general election.

Secretary of State — both parties

Both major parties have contested primaries for the office that oversees Ohio elections.

On the Republican side, term-limited Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague faces retired Air Force Lt. Col. Marcell Strbich. Sprague holds the Ohio Republican Party endorsement and the backing of most county GOPs. Strbich, an election-integrity activist who endorsed Watson in the District 88 primary, has secured backing from conservative groups including Ohio Value Voters. Both candidates have called for moving Ohio away from electronic-only voting machines, but Strbich’s proposal would require hand-marked paper ballots; Sprague’s would accept ballots produced by ballot-marking devices.

On the Democratic side, former Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo faces Cincinnati blood cancer physician Bryan Hambley. The Ohio Democratic Party did not endorse in the race. Russo led Hambley 32% to 8% with 60% undecided in a Bowling Green State University poll released in mid-April. Hambley has criticized Russo for her 2023 vote on the Ohio Redistricting Commission to approve current state legislative maps and for accepting corporate PAC money during her tenure as legislative leader. Russo has pointed to her experience and to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s endorsement of her bid.

Treasurer of State — Republican primary

State Sen. Kristina Roegner of Hudson faces former state Rep. Jay Edwards of Nelsonville in a Republican primary that has split the GOP’s national leadership. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno endorsed Edwards. Ramaswamy and most of the legislature’s Republican leadership endorsed Roegner. The Ohio Republican Party declined to endorse in the race.

Roegner, a Wharton School graduate and former corporate finance consultant, has emphasized fiscal discipline and her current legislative experience. Edwards, a former House Finance Committee chair, has run on his familiarity with the state budget and has signed petitions for a constitutional amendment to abolish Ohio’s property taxes.

Cincinnati City Councilmember Seth Walsh is unopposed on the Democratic side and advances to November.

Ohio Supreme Court — Republican primary

Four Republicans are competing for the GOP nomination to challenge Justice Jennifer Brunner, the only Democrat on the seven-member Ohio Supreme Court. The candidates are Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger, Second District Court of Appeals Judge Ronald Lewis, and former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell. The Ohio Republican Party did not endorse in this race.

O’Donnell was the subject of a judicial campaign grievance filed in March alleging she violated rules governing how judicial candidates may use the title “judge” after she reposted an Ohio Value Voters endorsement that referred to her as a sitting judge. The case proceeded after a panel of appeals court judges found probable cause.

The winner faces Brunner, unopposed on the Democratic ballot, in November. The other Supreme Court seat features Republican Justice Daniel Hawkins against Democratic First District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas; both are unopposed in their primaries.

Ohio’s 9th Congressional District — Republican primary

Five Republicans are competing for the right to challenge longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the longest-serving woman in congressional history. The district now leans Republican under maps the Ohio Redistricting Commission approved in October 2025.

The candidates are former state Rep. Derek Merrin, who lost to Kaptur by roughly 2,300 votes in 2024; Ohio House Majority Whip Josh Williams of Sylvania Township; former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Madison Sheahan; Air National Guard Lt. Col. Alea Nadeem; and health care industry worker Anthony Campbell.

The race has been roiled by a series of damaging headlines targeting Merrin, Williams, and Sheahan in the closing weeks of the campaign. Reporting by the Toledo Blade tied a website attacking Williams to digital fingerprints linked to a consultant paid by the Merrin campaign. Williams faces continuing scrutiny over sexually explicit Facebook posts first surfaced by The Rooster in 2023. Sheahan has denied an April allegation by a former Trump campaign worker about a past relationship.

Ohio’s 5th Congressional District — Democratic primary

Four Democrats are competing for the chance to challenge Republican Rep. Bob Latta in a district that includes Seneca County and stretches across Crawford, Hancock, Huron, Lorain, Sandusky, parts of Richland, Wood, and Wyandot. Latta is unopposed on the Republican ballot and was reelected in 2024 with 67.5% of the vote.

The Democratic candidates are Daniel John Burket of Findlay, a small-business owner and Hancock County Developmental Disabilities board president; Martin M. Heberling III, a Lorain City Schools teacher and former Amherst at-large councilman who ran for the seat in 2022; Brian A. Shaver of Fostoria, a Fostoria City Schools social studies teacher and Fostoria City Council president; and Scott E. Tabor, a retired Local 33 sheet metal worker.

U.S. Senate — Democratic primary

Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown faces Ron Kincaid in the Democratic primary for the unexpired Senate term ending Jan. 3, 2029 — the seat vacated when JD Vance became Vice President in January 2025 and currently held by appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who is unopposed in the GOP primary. Brown is seeking a return to the Senate after losing his 2024 reelection bid to Bernie Moreno.

Voter information

Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Voters in line at 7:30 p.m. are entitled to cast their ballot. Ohio voters must present an unexpired photo ID, and Ohio primaries are open — voters do not need to be registered with a political party in advance to choose a partisan ballot. Voters may also request a nonpartisan ballot to vote on local issues only.

The Seneca County Board of Elections is located at 71 S. Washington St. in Tiffin. Voters with questions about polling locations or registration status can contact the Board of Elections directly.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

In Ohio, they’re particularly stark between white people, Black people and Hispanic people. A panel of experts recently said a raft of cuts passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump will only make them worse — which may be why Trump is trying to make them harder to measure.

It’s long been known that poorer people have less access to quality care and are sicker than their better-off neighbors. But differences among racial and ethnic groups persist even when members of those groups have incomes similar to their white counterparts.

“Racial disparities are among the most persistent and well documented in the U.S. health care system,” a report released last week by the Commonwealth Fund said.

“Landmark studies have shown that racial and ethnic disparities remain even after accounting for insurance coverage, income level, and access to care. The root causes for these disparities are multifactorial, and include the historical and continued consequences of structural racism, the impact of social drivers of health, variations in health coverage, and unequal treatment within health care.”

Ohio fared particularly badly in the study.

States were rated for “health system performance” — health outcomes, access to care, quality of care, and use of health services.

For white people, Ohio’s score wasn’t great, ranking 33rd overall. But for two minority groups it was even worse.

For Hispanics, Ohio scored 16th-worst among the 48 states for which researchers had sufficient data. And for Black people, Ohio ranked 10th-worst among the 39 states for which there were sufficient data.

Those numbers are likely to get worse, said Joseph Betancourt, a family doctor and president of the Commonwealth Fund. 

“The data in this report reflect the most recently available information on how the health system was performing through 2024 before the expiration of enhanced marketplace credits from the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid funding cuts, elevated eligibility rules and restrictions on coverage for legal immigrants all took effect,” he said last week during a virtual press conference.

“These recent changes are likely to make it even harder for people to afford and access care, and risk widening the very disparities this report documents.”

Betancourt was referring to nearly $1 trillion in funding cuts to Medicaid — mostly through new work and eligibility requirements that were part of the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed last summer.

He was also referring to subsidies for insurance bought on Affordable Care Act marketplaces that Republicans allowed to expire at the end of last year.

Betancourt added that instead of addressing racial and ethnic health disparities, the Trump administration seems intent on blinding itself to them.

KFF, the health-information nonprofit, in September said data from which disparities could be detected was being disappeared by the federal government.

“The Trump administration has taken actions to eliminate equity-related initiatives and has removed federal data from online sites, deleting sociodemographic variables from datasets, and has delayed the release of some data,” it reported. 

KFF added, “Decreased availability of federal data may impede efforts to identify and address health needs and disparities, trend changes in health and health care among different groups over time, and impact how resources are allocated, which could lead to overall declines in the nation’s health and productivity.”

Or, as Betancourt put it, “We know you cannot fix what you cannot measure.”

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

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Columbus was selected late last month as the NWSL’s 18th franchise and the team will be owned by Haslam Sports Group, Nationwide, and Drs. Christine and Pete Edwards. 

The team will play home games at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field — where the Columbus Crew play — but the training facility will be built at McCoy Park on the city’s southwest side, in the neighborhood with the state’s lowest life expectancy. 

“We want to be excited about women’s professional soccer coming to the city of Columbus, but the fact that you did it off of the backs of an area that is so underserved … it has muddied any kind of excitement that would have been built around this team coming here,” said Columbus resident Jennifer Crayton. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers discovered Census Tract 51, which includes McCoy Park, had an average life expectancy of 60 years — the lowest in Ohio. 

“It was a vital resource for a community that is continually underserved and we don’t have the equity that some of our other neighborhoods in Columbus have,” Crayton said. 

“This is the only green space in this area between the south side and the west side of any significance that would be a safe place for our kids to go.”

The city of Columbus had previously announced plans to upgrade McCoy Park with adaptive soccer and softball fields, pickleball courts, a pond and a splash pad by next year, according to the city’s website. 

Crayton’s husband is a disabled veteran, so they were looking forward to the adaptive fields. 

“This park meant everything because it allowed him the ability to play with his kids again and create those memories that kids so desperately need with their parents,” she said. 

The next closest park with adaptive fields would likely be in the suburbs, Crayton said. 

“It’s too far for us to go,” she said.

The city of Columbus now has to come up with a plan to figure out where else in the Southwest Side they can build the type of park that was promised and the ownership group will donate $3 million toward the new park, Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin said.

The plan is for construction on a new park to break ground this year and for it to be complete by the end of 2027.

“Let me be very clear — no plans, no site, then no money,” Hardin said. 

The City of Columbus and Franklin County will both pay $25 million to build the training facility at McCoy Park and upgrades to ScottsMiracle-Gro Field.

The city of Columbus plans to pay back its debt with a 2% ticket tax on all events at the ScottsMiracle-Gro Field. 

“Everyone in our city will benefit from this team, which will create tax revenue and jobs, bring additional global notoriety to our city and show Columbus women and girls that we want them to shine on the biggest stage and under the brightest lights,” Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said in a news release. 

Hardin supports bringing a professional women’s soccer team to the city.

“I think it’s the right thing to do for our city, and I don’t want us to miss out,” he said during a press conference. “But how we do things matters. Process matters, and honoring commitments to neighborhoods, especially underserved neighborhoods, matters.”

He said there will be some public access to parts of the training complex, including some of the soccer fields. 

Crayton invites Jimmy and Dee Haslam to Columbus’ south side neighborhood.

“Come walk this neighborhood with me,” she said. “Come see what we deal with because when you’re looking at it from the outside in, it has a different impact than when you’re looking from the inside out.”

The Haslam’s also own the Cleveland Browns and the Columbus Crew. 

“Sports are one of today’s greatest unifiers and are incredible for their communities,” Haslam Sports Group Managing Partner Whitney Haslam Johnson said in a news release.

“The NWSL will have a significant impact on Columbus within and beyond sports, now and for future generations.”

The club is set to begin play in 2028 and the team’s official name and colors have yet to be determined. 

“As the NWSL continues its rapid growth, expanding to Columbus is a natural next step,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said in a news release.

“This is a city with a rich soccer tradition, a proven track record of support at the highest level, and an ownership group making meaningful, long-term investments in women’s sports.” 

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.

Races for the state’s top judicial positions were made explicitly partisan when Republican state lawmakers added party labels to the races starting in 2022, joining seven other states in the U.S. With a recent decision, the current partisan Ohio Supreme Court made Ohio the first state in the nation to allow political endorsements from judges.

The Ohio Supreme Court has two seats up for election this year, one held by Brunner and the other held by Republican Justice Daniel Hawkins. The Republican primary for the nomination to challenge Brunner features four candidates.

From factories to farmland, the judges facing off in Tuesday’s May 5 primary say their experience outside of the courtroom feeds into their work ethic.

They say their career moves meet the qualifications to become the justice who would make the Ohio Supreme Court a full 7-0 Republican panel, should Hawkins defeat a Democratic challenge to his seat as well.

Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger

Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger worked midnights at a gas station, and with her mom at a factory in Seneca County before working her way up in the legal field.

Lanzinger interned for a public defender’s office, was mentored by an Akron judge, and worked for the Stark County Prosecutor’s Office, before becoming a judge in Barberton and Summit County. She’s served on the Ninth District Court of Appeals since 2023.

“I’m just a woman who likes the law, desires to do good, and would just really love to be on the supreme court and have these bigger issues,” Lanzinger told the Capital Journal.

Now in her seventh judicial election, the appellate judge fully supports the idea of voters getting their say in the judges that stand in the courtrooms of their communities, and in the panel answering the highest constitutional questions in the state.

“When you’re elected, you’re elected by the people, they can get to know you a little bit,” Lanzinger said. “But you have an obligation to follow the law … and if there’s something (voters) want to change in the justice system with the judiciary, or you don’t like something a judge is doing, then you can make a campaign and get them out.”

She says riding the line between campaigning for the job and adhering to legal ethics standards in not taking sides is something that is expected for judges and justices. In the same way as all of her competitors, Lanzinger considers herself a conservative.

“I think the word conservative is partly about my personal views, that I’m personally conservative, and I think the Constitution requires us to make sure that the government is limited,” Lanzinger said.

Her judicial philosophy on interpreting the law boils down to the thought that “most of the time, the words say what they say.”

“The (U.S.) Constitution says what it says, the Ohio Constitution says what it says, and the statutes say what they say, and then the question is does one conflict with the other,” Lanzinger said.

Colleen O’Donnell

Former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell came to the legal field honestly, as the daughter of now-retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell. But the judge has since moved her career from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to a decade-long tenure in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. She’s also served with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and most recently as a federal immigration judge in Laredo, Texas.

“I was very comfortable in the immigration court, I was comfortable managing a busy docket, I was comfortable taking testimony and reviewing evidence for admissibility,” O’Donnell said.

The judge said she never granted asylum in any of the cases before her in the Texas court, while honoring her “oath and obligation to interpret the law with integrity and to approach every case with an open mind.”

Growing up with a father as a judge, O’Donnell and her siblings had a unique perspective into the importance of serving the public, she said, and how that work must be done without the presence of bias.

“Regardless of my personal, emotional feelings about what I think the law should say, or what might make it better, or what it might make it worse, I’m quite comfortable with how to compartmentalize, how to honor the oath that any judge should take to simply interpret the law,” O’Donnell said.

As part of interpreting the law as written, the judge said she believes in ruling on cases based on the language of legal statutes, “and give those words the meaning that they had at the time that they were enacted.”

“I do not take the view that the Constitution, for example, is a living, breathing document,” she said.

Judge Andrew King

For Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, the judicial field started with night classes at Capital University after he made the decision to change his career path.

“It was sort of a do-over for myself, put myself on a new path kind of thing,” King said.

Since then, King has worked as a private lawyer, public defender, assistant prosecuting attorney in Delaware County, and legal counsel for several agencies. In 2024, he returned to Capital as an adjunct law professor.

In considering cases during his career, and talking to voters during his campaign for the Ohio Supreme Court, King sees the law as a field that is “responsive to society.”

“It’s never really done, it just keeps going, and that’s why I think these issues ebb and flow and change over time,” King told the Capital Journal. “We’re encountering new things that we as a society prioritize and deprioritize.”

That includes topics like immigration, the Second Amendment, data centers, and even emerging technology.

“20 years ago we wouldn’t have been talking about AI, but now every conference I go to is about the impact of AI,” King said.

The direct impact of court proceedings is why the judge sees the importance of an elected judiciary. He encourages voters to research a judge’s previous rulings, history in the field, and the judges approach to cases as they decide who is right for their community.

“I think most voters get that who their judges are matters a lot, because that’s going to determine what the next step in the process is,” King said. “Are we going to need to go back to the lawmakers, are we going to need to do a rule amendment, are we going to need a constitutional amendment? How judges approach those things sort of determines the next steps.”

The approach judges take has to be different than that of lawmakers or the governor, for example, because there’s no room for promises other than following the law in the role of a judge, according to King.

“I can be conservative in my own personal life and my own personal views, but if the law, the constitution, dictates an outcome that maybe I personally would not prefer, well my oath and obligation as a judge is to follow the law,” King said. “So it’s not you recasting the law to fit a view, you deal with what’s right in front of you.”

Judge Ronald Lewis

After graduating from law school, Judge Ron Lewis spent some time in Washington, D.C., working as congressional legal counsel, but a postage-stamp-sized backyard drove a desire to get back to his family’s Greene County farm where he was born and raised, and worked in his family’s excavating business.

“I was probably a lawyer for at least 10 years before I’d spent more time behind a desk than I did in a field or a ditch,” Lewis said.

The now-Second District Court of Appeals judge, who was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine in 2022, previously served on the Xenia Municipal Court and as the city’s law director and prosecutor, along with work in private practice and on agencies from the Ohio State Highway Patrol to the Greene County Animal Control, according to a biography on the appellate court’s website.

But the Ohio Supreme Court is where the legal impact on voters really comes to a head, which is why Lewis is campaigning for a seat behind the bench.

“It’s that 1% of cases that go on to the Ohio Supreme Court that impact the majority of people in the state and society,” Lewis told the Capital Journal.

Like his fellow Republican candidates in the race, Lewis said he’s interpreted the law as written. He said that’s what voters want in a judge, even though it may not always bring a legal decision in the way they wish.

“While you might like it when I bend (interpretation of the law) in your direction today, I might bend it away from you the next day,” Lewis said. “I don’t have to be pro this or con that, because quite honestly, my opinion really shouldn’t matter … I apply (the law) as it was originally intended.”

Voter education

Lewis and the other Republican candidates for the state supreme court have spent their time campaigning on originalist ideals. For voters, they say there is a balance between educating the masses on the importance of judicial elections, and pointing to their own values as reasons to vote for them.

“Ultimately, you just have to educate people about who you are and what you stand for, and where you come from,” Lewis said. “Hopefully they relate to you.”

For O’Donnell, the votes cast in the May 5 primary are important not only because they show support for a particular candidate, but they drive the vote into the Nov. 3 general election.

“Having high voter engagement and as much participation from our electorate is what everyone on the ballot or off the ballot should seek,” O’Donnell said.

Upholding the law without promising voters a particular outcome leads judicial campaigns to be more like job interviews, the judges said.

“It’s a lot more work to keep your job, a lot more people contact,” according to Lanzinger. “When you’re looking at judges, these are the people who make those decisions and make sure that happens … so it’s important we look at judges and see if they’re doing that, see if they’re following the law.”

For King, a judicial philosophy is not chosen by a judge, but shown through the way in which they made decisions, and while judges shouldn’t be laying out how they’d rule on specific cases, the way one runs their courtroom should be indication enough of what kind of judge they are.

“So when I go talk to people, I say hey, I can’t tell you, and you don’t really want me to tell you how something’s going to come out, but I can tell you how I approach cases, and the methods and concepts that I use to try to help me resolve cases,” King 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 U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the cases of the only two people who have served prison time related to the largest utility corruption scandal in Ohio’s history.

Ohio’s House Bill 6 saga arose out of efforts by the utility FirstEnergy to obtain more than $1 billion in subsidies for its former nuclear plants in the state. Although lawmakers revoked that part of the law in 2021, HB 6 still cost Ohio utility customers approximately half a billion dollars and delayed the state’s energy transition by gutting its clean energy standards and subsidizing two 1950s-era coal plants.

In 2020, the federal government indicted former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges, a previous head of the Ohio Republican Party, among others, on charges related to HB 6. The racketeering charges included allegations that the defendants had accepted some $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries in exchange for their actions in pushing HB 6 through the legislature and then blocking a bid to let voters reject the law.

FirstEnergy admitted it had bribed Householder in a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.

Householder and Borges were convicted in federal court in 2023 for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as RICO. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions last May.

The men appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court in petitions last December. Householder and Borges essentially argued that they couldn’t be held liable because, in supporting HB 6, Householder was carrying out a campaign promise to FirstEnergy — and such promises are protected by the First Amendment.

The government responded unequivocally: There was no basis for reversing the convictions.

“The Court has explained that the First Amendment does not protect corruption, whose ​‘hallmark’ is ​‘the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors,’” lawyers for the Department of Justice wrote in their brief in March.

The Supreme Court’s April 27 order is the end point of the Householder and Borges appeals process. It does not say why the justices denied review.

The ruling leaves open a path for prosecutors in the related federal criminal case against former FirstEnergy executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling. The two men face retrial in September on state criminal charges after jurors failed to reach a verdict in March. The trial date for the federal case has yet to be set.

Canary Media has not heard back from lawyers who represented Householder and Borges on their petitions to the Supreme Court.

Scott Pullins, a longtime lawyer for Householder on other matters, said it was a sad day for Householder’s and Borges’ families, and ​“even a sadder day for free speech and the rule of law.” Efforts to release Householder through executive action — perhaps a presidential pardon or commuted sentence — would resume, he added.

Pullins is also the treasurer for Householder’s political campaign committee, which remains active. In December 2025 it paid Pullins $5,000 as a legal retainer.

For now, clean energy advocates are counting the court’s action this week as a win.

“If we want more clean energy, then we need clean government,” said Howard Learner, CEO and president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. ​“The racketeering conspiracy and bribery actions engaged in by Householder distorted the public process, leading to unfair FirstEnergy utility charges. Justice is now being served.”

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Thirteen state Medicaid programs are covering GLP-1 drugs for the treatment of obesity this year, down from 16 last year. 

Medicaid programs in California, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have eliminated coverage of the drugs for weight loss, because the expense strained state budgets. 

In Massachusetts, the governor’s proposed fiscal 2028 budget would not fund the state’s Medicaid program, MassHealth, to cover GLP-1 medications for weight loss alone, though the state would continue covering the drugs for diabetes and other conditions. The legislature is still debating the state budget. 

Rhode Island’s governor also has proposed removing GLP-1 coverage from the state’s Medicaid program for weight loss treatment. 

North Carolina reinstated such coverage in mid-December after having dropped it in October. 

Medicaid programs in Delaware, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin also cover the drugs for obesity treatment, according to KFF, a health policy research group. 

But some states, such as Michigan, have restricted eligibility for these medications to morbidly obesity patients rather than those who are overweight or obese. The move is expected to save the state an estimated $240 million. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Louisiana are debating whether to allow Medicaid to cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment if enrollees have another chronic condition, or comorbidity, such as prediabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease.  

The medications generally have been too expensive for people without insurance. In February, one of the largest producers of these drugs, Novo Nordisk, announced it would reduce their list prices to $675 per month in 2027. 

Gross spending on Medicaid prescriptions for GLP-1s — for diabetes as well as for weight loss — has increased from around $1 billion in 2019 to almost $9 billion in 2024 as demand for these drugs has risen, according to KFF. 

At the same time almost 40% of adults and a quarter of children with Medicaid have obesity and may benefit from having access to the drugs, according to KFF. 

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@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.

Charles Tingler of Defiance filed a public complaint with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission, which operates under the Ohio Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division, and a separate grievance with the Ohio State Bar Association’s Certified Grievance Committee. Both filings are dated May 1, 2026.

The complaints center on publicly visible transaction records on a Venmo account operating under the handle @BuckeyeBradSmith, which received payments with memos explicitly identifying them as campaign contributions. On April 8, 2026, Charles Yamarone sent a payment with the description “Campaign contribution: BS4Judge.” The same day, Adam Greenslade sent a payment described as “B Smitty for Judge.” A third payment from Stacey Gibson is dated March 25, 2026. The same account also shows personal transactions, including payments for Ohio State football tickets and kart racing entry fees.

TiffinOhio.net reported on the Venmo transactions and their apparent conflict with Ohio campaign finance law after a review of publicly visible records on the @BuckeyeBradSmith account. Smith did not respond to a request for comment submitted by reporter Dave Miller before a noon May 1, 2026 deadline.

Ohio Revised Code §3517.10(D)(3)(a) requires campaign committees to deposit all monetary contributions into an account separate from any personal or business account of the candidate. The Ohio Elections Commission addressed the issue directly in Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04, issued December 16, 2021, concluding that peer-to-peer payment platforms such as Venmo are permissible under Ohio law only when the account is established specifically for the campaign committee and kept entirely separate from any personal account of a beneficiary of the campaign fund. The opinion states that receiving campaign contributions into a personal Venmo account before transferring them to a campaign account is not acceptable under Ohio campaign finance law.

The complaint filed with the Ohio Election Integrity Commission enumerates 7 alleged violations. Counts 1 and 2 allege Smith violated R.C. §3517.10(D)(3)(a) and Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04 by receiving campaign contributions through an account that also reflected personal transactions. Count 3 alleges the campaign treasurer failed to maintain the strict accounting of contributions required under R.C. §3517.10(D)(2). Counts 4 and 5 allege that if the Venmo contributions were omitted, understated, or incorrectly reported, the campaign violated the itemized reporting requirements of R.C. §3517.10(A) and §3517.10(B) and the accurate filing requirements of R.C. §3517.13(B), (C), and (D). Count 6 alleges potential knowing concealment or misrepresentation of contributions under R.C. §3517.13(G)(1). Count 7 alleges that if any campaign finance filing knowingly omitted or misstated the Venmo contributions, the filing may constitute election falsification under R.C. §3599.36 — a fifth-degree felony.

The Bar Association grievance raises additional concerns specific to Smith’s status as a sitting judge. The filing alleges potential violations of Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct Rules 1.1, 1.2, and 4.4, which require judges to comply with the law, act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and handle judicial campaign contributions in accordance with applicable rules. The grievance also cites Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct Rules 8.4(b), 8.4(c), 8.4(d), and 8.4(h), which prohibit conduct involving dishonesty or misrepresentation, illegal acts reflecting adversely on honesty or trustworthiness, conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice, and conduct adversely reflecting on fitness to practice law.

Tingler’s complaint requests that the Ohio Election Integrity Commission obtain the full Venmo records for @BuckeyeBradSmith, all campaign bank records for the relevant election cycle, all campaign finance reports filed by Smith’s committee, and any records showing whether contributions were transferred to a separate campaign account. The complaint also requests that the Commission refer the matter for criminal investigation if evidence shows knowing concealment, misrepresentation, or election falsification, and refer any judicial ethics issues to the appropriate disciplinary authority.

The complaints are allegations. Neither the Ohio Election Integrity Commission nor the Ohio State Bar Association’s Certified Grievance Committee has made any findings in this matter. Smith has not publicly addressed the allegations. He serves as judge of the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division, a position he has held since 2009. TiffinOhio.net’s prior reporting documented a $33,300 state audit finding against Smith that was formally abated by Sandusky County Prosecutor Beth Tischler with no repayment required.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The reporting lands three days before Tuesday’s Republican primary, in which Ramaswamy is the front-runner.

A national registry to ‘segregate’ Americans

One of Ramaswamy’s companies — the healthcare data firm Datavant — pushed for a national COVID-19 registry that would have allowed the small share of Americans gaining natural immunity to “get back to normal life,” while the rest of the population would continue to be “segregated,” the AP reported Saturday. The quoted language comes from the proposal itself.

The concept did not originate with Datavant alone. In April 2020, Ramaswamy told the host of a Rockefeller Capital Management podcast that he had been discussing the idea with policymakers, including a U.S. senator, according to reporting by Contra that transcribed the interview.

“Could we tolerate a national system in which certain people on the basis of a biomarker are segregated?” Ramaswamy asked on the podcast, according to Contra. He answered his own question: “I personally think that it is better than the status quo if we can send 10 or 20 percent of the people back on the basis of having immunity.”

A discussion draft obtained by Contra showed Ramaswamy proposing a “public-private partnership” featuring an entity he called “Organization X” — described as “a division of government, a private company, or a nonprofit organization” — that would maintain “the registry of individuals who are immune and individuals who should be prioritized for testing.”

Five days after the Rockefeller podcast appearance, The Wall Street Journal reported that Datavant was “spearheading” an effort to create a national COVID-19 patient registry by pooling medical records. By November 2020, Datavant had entered into a partnership with the National COVID Cohort Collaborative — a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, according to the company’s own press release at the time.

In an interview with the AP this week, Ramaswamy said his support for the registry was about getting the economy moving again. He described his overall position on the virus as nuanced.

$2.25 billion from COVID-19 vaccines

On March 3, Roivant Sciences — the biotech firm Ramaswamy founded in 2014 and led as CEO until 2021 — announced that subsidiary Genevant Sciences and partner Arbutus Biopharma had reached a $2.25 billion global settlement with Moderna over the pharmaceutical company’s unauthorized use of their lipid nanoparticle delivery technology in its COVID-19 vaccines, including Spikevax.

Under the terms of the settlement, Moderna will pay Genevant and Arbutus $950 million upfront in July, with an additional $1.3 billion contingent on a future appellate court ruling, according to the announcement.

Datavant was incubated under Roivant in 2017. Ramaswamy stepped down from the Roivant board in early 2023, before launching his 2024 presidential campaign. According to the AP, his gubernatorial campaign referred questions about his time at Roivant to the company, which did not respond.

Attacking Acton on the same issue he profited from

Ramaswamy has built much of his Republican primary campaign around attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton over the public health orders she signed as Ohio’s health director in 2020. The AP reports that Ramaswamy has accused Acton at his rallies of spreading dangerous COVID ideology.

Acton’s campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, told the AP that Acton is proud of the work she did with Gov. Mike DeWine to put public health over politics and save lives, and called Ramaswamy’s framing an attempt to play politics with the issue.

A private-sector adviser to Ohio’s pandemic response

While running Roivant during 2020, Ramaswamy advised Ohio’s then-lieutenant governor on the state’s COVID-19 response, according to a 2021 op-ed Ramaswamy himself wrote for Cleveland.com that the AP cites in its reporting. The lieutenant governor at the time was Jon Husted, who was appointed to the U.S. Senate by DeWine in January 2025 and is now running in Tuesday’s Republican primary special election to keep the seat.

Husted was a regular participant alongside DeWine and Acton at Ohio’s daily pandemic briefings throughout 2020.

Ramaswamy told the AP his discussions with Husted, like his support for the COVID registry, were about restarting the economy.

A pattern of pandemic deflection

The AP also reported Saturday that in early 2023, Ramaswamy paid an editor to remove a reference to his service on Ohio’s “COVID-19 Response Team” from his Wikipedia page. He told the AP the edit was a simple correction, saying the panel never met.

TiffinOhio.net previously reported on the same February 9, 2023 Wikipedia edit, which also removed references to Ramaswamy’s Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship. According to Mediaite’s review of the edit history, the COVID-related content was removed at Ramaswamy’s explicit request.

DeWine endorses Ramaswamy but rejects the Acton attack

DeWine has endorsed Ramaswamy in the Republican gubernatorial primary, but he has publicly rejected one of the campaign’s central attack lines against Acton — the ad faulting her for the order suspending in-person voting in Ohio’s March 2020 primary. The governor told the AP that he, not Acton, made the call to issue that order.

Ohio’s primary is Tuesday, May 5. Polls open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

The campaign, titled “The Ritz at 100 — A Legacy in Light,” will fund facility upgrades, modern technology, accessibility improvements and long-term sustainability efforts intended to keep the theatre operating for future generations.

The Ritz hosts more than 60 events each year, including concerts, comedy, films and educational programming.

Campaign leadership

Co-chair Celinda Scherger said the theatre’s reach extends beyond its programming.

“The Ritz Theatre enriches our community through accessible, high-quality entertainment and education,” Scherger said. “Its impact reaches far beyond the stage.”

Co-chair Jeff Stockner framed the venue as a multigenerational community space.

“This is more than a building — it’s a place where memories are made and shared across generations,” Stockner said.

Executive Director Michael Strong said the campaign is intended to secure the theatre’s future while honoring its legacy.

Financial position

The campaign builds on what organizers describe as steady financial progress at the nonprofit theatre. The Ritz currently covers about 70% of its operating expenses through earned revenue and has reduced long-term debt from $2.7 million in 2004 to less than $240,000 today, according to the campaign announcement.

Additional support, including an endowment held by the Tiffin Community Foundation, continues to bolster the theatre’s financial base.

A 1928 movie palace

The Ritz opened on December 20, 1928, drawing more than 1,500 patrons to what was billed as “Tiffin’s quarter-million-dollar movie palace.” It is the only one of Tiffin’s four vaudeville-era theatres still standing and underwent a major restoration in 1998.

How to get involved

Community members can learn more about the campaign at ritztheatre.org/ritz100 or contact the theatre at getinvolved@ritztheatre.org.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of new data centers — 67 percent — are being built in rural areas. And three-quarters of those are in Midwestern and Southern towns. That includes 166 in Ohio that are already operating plus another 57 scheduled to be built. That’s one of the highest total figures in the country.

The negative effects have not gone unnoticed. A new data center in Southaven, Mississippi, for example, is reportedly terrorizing the community with high levels of noise and air pollution, and residents are now regretting its existence.

But it’s not just the pollution, the depletion of water systems, and the increased energy costs to consumers that should lead communities to resist data centers. When you dig a little deeper, you begin to see how data centers are built on exploitation that goes far beyond small-town USA.

Data centers are both products and producers of wars that kill people and destroy the planet on a global scale. The rapid expansion of these data centers requires raw materials, especially fossil fuels — resources often obtained through violence — and they fuel a technology that is increasingly used to commit war crimes.

Fossil fuels provide almost 60 percent of the power for data centers, especially for “emergency generators.” AI data centers run almost 24/7, so these “emergency” generators are consistently operating.

Control over fossil fuels, of course, is a driving factor behind the U.S. regime change efforts in Iran, Venezuela, and other resource-rich regions. And the extraction of other needed minerals — like silicon, gallium, lithium, and cobalt — requires both the destabilization of the sovereign regions in which they are found and inhumane mining practices, including the use of child labor.

Then there is the question of the moral and ethical use of generative AI. The expansion of data centers comes at a time when AI and LLMs (large language models) are increasingly being used by the Pentagon for militarism domestically and internationally.

The Pentagon recently agreed to massive deals with both Palantir and OpenAI. The employment of AI in military operations has already resulted in war crimes. For instance, Anthropic’s Claude was used in the bombing of the girls’ school in Minab, Iran, which killed around 170 students and teachers. Do towns that pride themselves on family values want to be behind a killing machine capable of murdering young girls?

It’s easy to understand why the announcement of these data centers can seem like good news for areas facing dire economic conditions. Existing low-wage jobs are difficult to survive on. But the evidence suggests data centers create very few local jobs in the towns where they’re built. Should this small number of jobs come at the expense of people and the future of our planet?

The state officials brokering these deals with tech companies could instead work on bringing jobs that design, install, and maintain renewable energy systems to replace fossil fuel reliance. They could sign contracts with companies that manage and protect the beautiful natural ecosystems, habitats, and biodiversity that often surround rural towns.

We need jobs that sustain the heartbeat of the Midwest and the charm and hospitality of the South — not jobs in an industry that terrorizes communities and kills people.

Data centers are not just toxic installations in communities’ backyards — they are a driving force behind wars and instability, and they keep American workers tied to the endless cycle of wars for fossil fuels.

In defense of the planet, our communities, and communities around the world, I hope urban and rural communities alike can unite to stop data center projects — especially across the Midwest and the South, where they have so much beauty and love to protect.

Rural communities’ future is not AI. We should be investing in what makes us great: the people and the land.

Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK.This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.

Smith’s Venmo account, operating under the handle @BuckeyeBradSmith, is publicly visible and shows multiple transactions in which senders explicitly identified their payments as campaign contributions. On April 8, 2026, Charles Yamarone sent a payment to the account with the memo “Campaign contribution: BS4Judge.” The same day, Adam Greenslade sent a payment with the memo “B Smitty for Judge.” A third payment from Stacey Gibson, dated March 25, is also visible on the account’s public feed.

The same account shows transactions unrelated to Smith’s campaign, including a December 2024 payment from Adam Smith described as discounted Ohio State football tickets as a birthday gift, along with multiple payments in September 2024 for kart racing and street racing entry fees — including a $40 entry labeled “Clyde GP Vintage Entry Fee” — indicating the account is used for personal financial activity.

Under Ohio Revised Code §3517.10(D)(3)(a), campaign committees are required to deposit all monetary contributions “into an account separate from a personal or business account of the candidate or campaign committee.” The Ohio Elections Commission addressed peer-to-peer payment platforms including Venmo directly in Advisory Opinion 2021ELC-04, issued December 16, 2021, concluding that such platforms are permissible under Ohio campaign finance law only when the account is established specifically for the campaign committee and is maintained separately from any personal account of a beneficiary of the campaign fund.

TiffinOhio.net submitted written questions to Smith on April 30, 2026, asking whether @BuckeyeBradSmith is a personal or campaign-dedicated account, whether campaign contributions received through it have been transferred to a separate campaign account, and whether Smith’s campaign committee has a designated campaign Venmo on file with the Ohio Secretary of State. Smith did not respond by deadline.

Smith serves as judge of the Sandusky County Court of Common Pleas, Probate and Juvenile Division, a position he has held since 2009. He is the subject of prior TiffinOhio.net reporting regarding a $33,300 state audit finding that was formally abated by Sandusky County Prosecutor Beth Tischler with no repayment required.

Originally published on TiffinOhio.net.