OHIO CAPITAL JOURNAL: ‘Top Husted aide lobbied for Ohio utility that profited from corrupt law’
May 15, 2026
COLUMBUS, OHIO — New reporting shows that Jon Husted hired an opioid and utilities lobbyist as a “senior advisor” in his office. The report reveals that before joining Husted’s office, the lobbyist’s clients “made millions” off the House Bill 6 scandal, which resulted in a billion dollar bailout for utilities that’s contributing to families paying thousands of dollars more on their energy bills.
As a reminder, Jon Husted remains at the center of the massive FirstEnergy corruption scandal, with new reporting from the Associated Press revealing Husted’s ties to be much deeper than previously known.
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Ohio Capital Journal: Top Husted aide lobbied for Ohio utility that profited from corrupt law
- When Husted reached the Senate five years later, one of his first moves was to hire as a top advisor a longtime utility lobbyist.
- The lobbyist’s client made millions off the scheme at the heart of the 2020 utility scandal. The same lobbyist had also represented a massive drug wholesaler that had paid out millions to settle claims that it had negligently distributed vast amounts of opioids in addiction-ravaged Ohio.
- Husted’s decision to hire the lobbyist, Sean Dunn, has some questioning whether average Ohioans’ welfare is Husted’s top priority.
- “It’s tone deaf because he’s an elected official who doesn’t see how cozy relationships can compromise his decision making,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, which advocates for accountable government. “Or he sees a benefit to these very cozy relationships.”
- According to disclosures filed with the Ohio Lobbying Activity Center, Dunn began lobbying for AES in 2009 and did so until February 2025.
- During that time, Dunn lobbied the state legislature and the executive branch on numerous measures relating to Ohio House Bill 6, the 2019 law that was the product of what one federal prosecutor said was “likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever in the state of Ohio.”
- In addition to Dunn’s ties to AES, he also lobbied on behalf of Dublin-based Cardinal Health, one of the three largest prescription-drug wholesalers in the United States. Dunn’s engagement with the company ran from 2009 to 2019.
- Federal enforcement actions and government lawsuits against the drug wholesaler alleged that Cardinal frequently ignored “blatantly suspicious orders” as it shipped billions of opioid pills into Ohio and other U.S. states.
- Disclosures also show that Dunn made $895,000 in the 15 months before he joined Husted’s team and was owed between $1 million and $5 million by his old firm.
- Husted’s office was asked what the senator was doing to relieve the affordability crisis, and to explain his decision to hire as a top advisor someone who’d grown wealthy lobbying on behalf of some of the industries driving the crisis.
- It didn’t answer.
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