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Columbus, OH – Today, the Ohio Democratic Party released the following statement after Republicans on the Redistricting Commission failed to even agree on a co-chair, further delaying the redistricting process after more than a year and half of inaction from Republican politicians on the Commission. 

“After 16 months of inaction, Republican politicians have broken the redistricting process so completely that they can’t even agree on basic procedural decisions. It’s clear that Republicans on the Commission are already more concerned with settling political scores rather than doing the work they were elected to do. And Ohioans are paying the price. It’s time to put redistricting back in the hands of the people and remove politicians from the process,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. 

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LaRose’s Math and Excuse That Move is “Completely Incidental” Don’t Add Up

Columbus, OH –  Frank LaRose’s latest scandal is growing as taxpayers foot a steep, $600,000 bill for his decision to move the Ohio Secretary of State office to the same building as his current campaign HQ. As serious questions pile up about whether LaRose is using his government position to benefit his campaign for U.S. Senate, LaRose has offered no logical explanation for his decision and his math isn’t adding up. 

In a press conference yesterday, LaRose claimed that his decision to move the Ohio Secretary of State’s office to the same building that currently houses his campaign is “completely incidental,” but his office has failed to provide a detailed reason for why, of the hundreds of other buildings in the Columbus area and the three other buildings considered for the move, this building was chosen.  

LaRose also claimed the move would save taxpayer dollars due to cheaper rent of $11,000 a year, but even his own math doesn’t add up. Using LaRose’s justification, it would take 54 years to recoup the $600,000 in taxpayer dollars his move is wasting.

“Frank LaRose’s latest scandal is growing and Ohio taxpayers are paying the bill for his scheme to move the Secretary of State office to the same building as his campaign,” said ODP Spokesperson Reeves Oyster. “Ohioans aren’t buying LaRose’s excuses or his phony math as it becomes clearer every day that LaRose will do whatever it takes to advance his political career, regardless of how much it hurts – or costs – Ohioans.”

WATCH MORE FROM WCMH HERE

Key Points:

• “[Frank LaRose] is responding to a story NBC4’s Natalie Fahmy brought you last week about him moving his state office. His new office location will be at the same address he filed his Senate campaign run under with the Federal Election Commission and it will cost $600,000 taxpayer dollars to ready the new office for that move…”

• “LaRose says his campaign attorneys being in the same building as his official state office is purely coincidental.”

• Frank LaRose: “[The campaign office] happens to be in the same building that our new building is going to be in, but that is completely incidental…”

• “NBC4 has asked his campaign several times, this and last week, to confirm whether LaRose has done any campaign interviews from that address. They have not yet responded to that question.”

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Uihlein Bankrolled LaRose’s Amendment To Silence Ohioans In August and Organizations Working To Pass National Abortion Ban

Columbus, OH – According to a new report from Cleveland.com, Frank LaRose is set to fundraise with Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, one of the nation’s biggest supporters of a nationwide abortion ban and the benefactor of LaRose’s failed August amendment to make it harder for Ohioans to overturn Ohio’s abortion ban. 

The news follows LaRose’s admission that he would overrule the will of Ohioans and support a nationwide abortion ban in the Senate. 

Uihlein is the largest donor of Women Speak Out, a Susan B. Anthony List-affiliated political action committee seeking to federally outlaw abortion. 

“First, Frank LaRose tried to silence Ohioans by making it harder to change the constitution,” said ODP spokesperson Reeves Oyster. “When that failed, he rewrote the November ballot language to confuse Ohioans and make it harder for the amendment to pass. LaRose has admitted he wants to ban abortion nationwide – even if that means overruling the will of Ohio voters – and his decision to fundraise with one of the country’s largest supporters of a national abortion ban proves LaRose isn’t working for Ohioans and will stop at nothing to advance his political ambitions.”

Read more:

Cleveland.com: Frank LaRose’s U.S. Senate campaign gets backing from Illinois billionaire who funded push to make it harder to change constitution

Andrew Tobias

September 12, 2023

• An Illinois billionaire who largely funded the failed proposal to make it harder to change the Ohio constitution earlier this year now is helping one of the measure’s most vocal backers in his bid to get elected to the U.S. Senate.

• The invitation for the Chicago fundraiser says Family-PAC Federal has endorsed LaRose in part because of his record opposing abortion, including voting during his time in the state Senate for a law that bans abortion after six weeks into pregnancy, in contrast to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who supports abortion rights.

• A message has been left with the LaRose campaign for this story.

• Reeves Oyster, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party, issued a statement about the Chicago fundraiser referencing LaRose’s support for some sort of federal legislation setting a national limit on abortion.

• “First, Frank LaRose tried to silence Ohioans by making it harder to change the constitution,” Oyster said. “When that failed, he rewrote the November ballot language to confuse Ohioans and make it harder for the amendment to pass. LaRose has admitted he wants to ban abortion nationwide – even if that means overruling the will of Ohio voters – and his decision to fundraise with one of the country’s largest supporters of a national abortion ban proves LaRose isn’t working for Ohioans and will stop at nothing to advance his political ambitions.”

See also: Frank LaRose Called Out for Putting “Thumb on the Scale of Fairness – Again” After Rewriting November Ballot Language; Shot, Chaser, Lime: Frank LaRose Tries to Silence, Overrule Ohioans *Again;*Frank LaRose Slammed for “Trying to Stack the Deck” Against Ohioans; Frank LaRose “Twists” Ballot Language to “Confuse,” “Deceive” Ohioans; WATCH: Loser LaRose Doubles Down on National Abortion Ban; “Issue 1 Flop” Looms Over Frank LaRose’s Senate Campaign, Becomes “Political Target” for Republicans

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Columbus, OH – Frank LaRose is being called out by the Cleveland.com Editorial Board for putting his “thumb on the scale of fairness – again” after rewriting the November ballot language to include confusing and misleading language. 

LaRose has already been called out for “playing dirty” to mislead and silence Ohioans ahead of the November election and has said that even if the amendment passes, he would overrule the majority of Ohioans who oppose banning abortion by voting for a national abortion ban if elected to the Senate.

Read more: 

Cleveland.com: Putting full text of reproductive rights amendment before voters would end fight over ballot language: Editorial

Editorial Board

September 8, 2023

• Republicans on the Ballot Board, led by Secretary of State Frank LaRose made the changes last month, inserting phrases that backers of the abortion rights amendment – formally known as The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety amendment — say amount to propaganda.

• Putting the full amendment on the ballot is the simple fix.

• A change amounting to no more than 20 words in length on the ballot could make the lawsuit go away.

• LaRose is Ohio’s highest elected officer charged with monitoring elections and keeping them fair and impartial. He should make it happen.

• The issue’s supporters say the Ballot Board summary is intentionally misleading and fails to meet the standards required by Ohio law.

• At the least, it’s an attempt by LaRose to have his thumb on the scale of fairness – again. That behavior was on full display ahead of the August vote on a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made it harder, if not impossible, for citizens to amend their state constitution.

• Ohio voters saw through that deception, trouncing that Issue 1 at the polls. LaRose was clear that he had viewed the issue as a way to thwart attempts to enshrine abortion rights. A candidate for the U.S. Senate, he sought donations totaling millions of dollars from his GOP Senate rivals in support of the issue.

• In his Senate campaign materials now, LaRose touts his anti-abortion stance as part of his platform, bragging that he is the only candidate with a 100% voting record against abortion rights.

• The solution here is so simple. Print the proposed amendment on the ballot. The coalition has asked the Supreme Court to order that be done. LaRose should just make it happen.

Huffington Post: Ohio Republicans Twist Ballot Language For Pro-Choice Provision In Likely Attempt To Confuse Voters

Alanna Vagianos

August 25, 2023

• In November, voters will consider a ballot initiative that seeks to enshrine abortion rights and other reproductive freedoms into Ohio’s Constitution. But the five-member Ohio Ballot Board, led by anti-choice advocate and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, on Thursday approved anti-choice language to be used in the initiative, which may confuse voters.

• “Secretary of State Frank LaRose today exploited the Ohio Ballot Board process in a last-ditch effort to deceive and confuse Ohio voters ahead of the November vote on reproductive freedom,” Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, one of the main groups advocating for the amendment, said in a press release on Thursday.

• LaRose gave the deciding vote to approve the language in a 3-2 final vote. The Ohio secretary of state was a vocal advocate for the August ballot measure, Issue 1 ― an initiative to raise the threshold for altering the state constitution from a simple statewide majority vote to 60%. Although a simple majority has been the standard in Ohio for over 100 years, anti-abortion advocates in the state called for a special election to raise the vote threshold in a preemptive attempt to block the pro-choice constitutional amendment.

WVXU: Analysis: Ohio GOP’s re-write of abortion rights ballot language is unlikely to make a difference

Howard Wilkinson

August 30, 2023

• In the Aug. 8 special election, Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, was told in no uncertain terms that voters had no use for his plan to raise the bar for passing constitutional amendments to 60%.

• Issue 1 failed miserably; and was clearly aimed at making it harder for abortion rights advocates to pass the reproductive rights amendment on the November ballot, which would write access to abortion into the Ohio Constitution.

• LaRose was left with egg on his face.

• But the secretary of state/U.S. Senate candidate wasn’t done.

• Now, the Republican majority of his five-member Ohio Ballot Board — chaired by LaRose and tasked with the job of approving ballot language — stands accused of trying to stack the deck against the abortion rights amendment by inserting what abortion rights groups call misleading, inaccurate and inflammatory language into what should be a simple statement of fact.

Ohio Capital Journal: LaRose pushes unfair, inaccurate language for voters on November Ohio reproductive rights amendment

Marilou Johanek

August 29, 2023

• Lawmakers rushed a game-changing ballot amendment to an August election (in violation of state law) to sabotage the abortion rights amendment in November. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose spearheaded the shady maneuver to cancel self-governance by majority vote — just to keep a majority of Ohio voters from having their say on abortion access as a constitutional right. 

• The state’s elections chief actively campaigned to end the only enduring recourse of ordinary citizens to circumvent a crooked government because he didn’t want an abortion rights amendment to pass. Sit with that for a minute. The guy who administers the electoral system in Ohio tried to undercut the electorate.

• Frank LaRose, the public servant responsible for conducting free and fair elections in Ohio is playing dirty to win. It’s wrong. But it’s only the beginning. Issue 1 was a preview of the depths Ohio Republicans will go to when they can’t persuade. They cheat.

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Columbus, OH – In case you missed it, WVXU’s Howard Wilkinson today penned an analysis outlining Ohio Republicans’ repeated refusal to follow the law on redistricting, pushing through GOP-gerrymandered maps and letting politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around. As the redistricting process is set to begin again, Ohio Democrats are reminding any out-of-touch GOP politicians looking to once again gerrymander our state: voters are watching and ready to remove them from the process if they ignore the law.

“Then there is the question that LaRose and his fellow Republicans on the commission will not answer: You have known since May of last year — 16 months ago — that you would have to approve new maps. Why wait until the last minute? The only possible answer is that they wanted to create a false sense of urgency to do something they fully intended to do all along — pass maps with little public input, with no real role for the commission Democrats to play, all in order to preserve the Republican dominance of Ohio’s government. There is no other way to explain it,” writes Wilkinson. 

“Last year, Republicans on the commission repeatedly ignored Court rulings and deadlines, stalling and delaying – despite repeated calls from Democrats to meet – and ultimately relying on politically-friendly judges to temporarily rubberstamp their maps and implement GOP-gerrymandered maps for 2022. Now, as we begin the process again, voters will be watching carefully to see if these out-of-touch politicians once again try to force through gerrymandered maps in a shortened timeframe that limits public input and rigs Ohio’s democracy against voters. If they do, we are ready to take the process out of the hands of politicians and back into the hands of the people,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. 

Read more about how Republicans have broken the redistricting process here.

And read more from Wilkson here and below:

• Once again, the best advertisement for taking Ohio’s redistricting process out of the hands of elected officials is the Republican majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

• The seven members of the commission — five of whom are Republican elected officials — will be meeting in a hastily-arranged session Wednesday to begin the process of coming up with new maps for state legislative districts in 2024.

• Any maps produced by the Republicans now will likely be rubber-stamped by the court’s GOP majority.

• So why bother to produce balanced maps that truly reflect the partisan split of Ohio? They are free to adopt maps that will not only set in stone the GOP supermajority in the legislature but satisfy their own personal political interests.

• “There is no sincere interest in a sincere process, but it is best not to just come out and say so,” said David Niven, professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. “Therefore, it’s time to issue urgent deadlines.”

• Then there is the question that LaRose and his fellow Republicans on the commission will not answer: You have known since May of last year — 16 months ago — that you would have to approve new maps. Why wait until the last minute?

• The only possible answer is that they wanted to create a false sense of urgency to do something they fully intended to do all along — pass maps with little public input, with no real role for the commission Democrats to play, all in order to preserve the Republican dominance of Ohio’s government.

• There is no other way to explain it.

• Is this what 71% of Ohio voters wanted in 2015 when they created the commission as a redistricting reform measure?

• Not even close.

• Maybe it’s time for Ohio to stop letting the politicians chose their voters and let the voters choose their politicians.

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