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Columbus, OH — If you missed last cycle’s weekly newsletter on #OHSEN shenanigans then you’re in luck – we’re back! Here’s what you might have missed this week in what is already shaping up to be one of the messiest, most chaotic primaries in the country. 

BERNIE THROWS PUNCHES AND POTENTIALLY SETS A DATE TO OFFICIALLY ENTER THE RING.

Remember Bernie’s op-ed that said candidates who refuse to support Donald Trump should be “disqualified?” Us too. But Bernie isn’t just focused on Matt “One Person in the Race I Won’t Be Endorsing” Dolan – Frank LaRose is also feeling the hate.
 
BERNIE MORENO: “Maybe Frank LaRose decides that being Secretary of State isn’t that big of a deal… We just elected you for a job. Like, why are you looking for another one? It’s crazy. Do you not like that job? Right? Then you probably should have told us before the election.”
 
And there’s more…

MEANWHILE, LAROSE IS FACING NEW ETHICAL AND LEGAL QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS SHADOW CAMPAIGN FOR OHIO’S SENATE SEAT.
 
New reporting by The Daily Beast finds LaRose “repeatedly admitted that he’s actively raising money—including into a super PAC” for a potential U.S. Senate campaign but has failed to file with the FEC – “possibly trigger[ing] campaign finance regulations.” 
 
Candidates are strictly prohibited from coordinating with super PACs and the FEC requires any individual to file candidacy when they raise or spend more than $5,000. 
 
Yikes!
 
DON’T WORRY – LAROSE’S ETHICS TROUBLES AREN’T STOPPING HIM FROM NEEDLING HIS OPPONENTS.
 
FRANK LAROSE: “Well I think that Ohio needs somebody that actually has experience, somebody that’s battle tested, who’s won campaigns, who knows how to raise money, and who has deep relationships really in every part of the state. I obviously have those things…”
 
Ouch!
 
AND WE’RE STILL WONDERING – AFTER “RUSH[ING] TO TRUMP’S DEFENSE” JUST LAST WEEK, WILL THE #OHSEN FIELD STAND BY HIS CALLS TO DEFUND THE POLICE?
 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

Spectrum News’ Curtis Jackson on the Republican primary field: “We’re a long way from the guy or gal you want to have a beer with. We’re talking about people that are…these so-called country club Republicans.”

Cheers!
 

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Columbus, OH — New reporting by The Daily Beast is raising new ethical and legal questions for  Frank LaRose, who has “repeatedly admitted that he’s actively raising money—including into a super PAC” for a potential U.S. Senate campaign but has failed to file with the FEC. According to the report, LaRose has “possibly trigger[ed] campaign finance regulations.” 
 
Candidates are strictly prohibited from coordinating with super PACs and the FEC requires any individual to file candidacy when they raise or spend more than $5,000. 
 
“This report exposes how Frank LaRose doesn’t believe the rules apply to him and raises serious ethical questions,” said ODP spokesperson Reeves Oyster. “Ohioans deserve complete transparency from LaRose, who now needs to prove he hasn’t broken campaign finance law.”
 
Read more from The Daily Beast’s Pay Dirt Newsletter:

• Ohio GOP Secretary of State Frank LaRose has been covertly entertaining a 2024 challenge to incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)—possibly triggering campaign finance regulations, according to his own statements.

• Over the last month, LaRose, a two-term Secretary of State who first took office in 2018, has not only teased a run, he’s repeatedly admitted that he’s actively raising money—including into a super PAC.

• In the same interview, LaRose added that he had recently been asking allies for “some commitments for financial support for this.”

• He also alluded to a run in a March 29 interview with WFMJ radio in Youngstown. “I’m thinking about it,” he said. “I’m actively building a team and looking at it. And, uh, again, hopefully, can make an announcement later this year.” Earlier this week he repeated the fundraising claim in an interview with WTAM, claiming, “I’ve been building a team and starting to raise a little bit of money to see if, you know, I’m going to be able to do it.”

• Federal election law forbids candidates from coordinating with super PACs for fundraising and expenditures. Those laws also require anyone running for federal office to register with the FEC and file financial reports when they either raise or spend more than $5,000.

• LaRose hasn’t declared his candidacy or registered a campaign committee. There’s also no immediately recognizable super PAC aligned with him, though a single-candidate super PAC called “Defend Ohio Values” recently registered with the FEC.

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Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, the Cleveland.com editorial board pulled no punches this week in going after Republican politicians in Columbus for their multi-pronged effort to effectively kill citizen-led ballot initiatives.  

“It’s also not hard to see that behind HJR 1 and the revival of the August special election is the idea that a simple majority of Ohio voters shouldn’t be enough — that majority shouldn’t rule, that a majority of citizens’ wishes don’t count when it comes to overruling what Statehouse figures want. Yet, if we are to draw any lessons from the Larry Householder/House Bill 6 corruption scandal, it is that what Statehouse figures want is sometimes very, very bad for Ohio,” writes the editorial board. 

High-level Republicans, ranging from Matt Huffman to Frank LaRose (who Cleveland.com dubs Ohio’s cynic-in-chief), are pulling every lever they can to take away citizen-led ballot initiatives in Ohio, including by pushing legislation to create a $20 million taxpayer-funded special election in August – after they eliminated August special elections only months ago. 

Read more from the Cleveland.com editorial board HERE and below:

• As an exercise in cynicism, it’s bad enough that GOP lawmakers contend proposed House Joint Resolution 1 is just to keep the Ohio Constitution from being cluttered up with all sorts of special-interest nonsense.
• In reality, the measure, which is still in committee, would all but trash citizen-initiated constitutional amendment rights Ohioans have enjoyed since 1912.
• But the cynicism of HJR 1 is made worse, if that can be possible, by the push to revive the August special election option that legislators virtually abolished just two months ago. Abolished so definitively, in fact, that Republicans have had to introduce another bill to allow (and authorize $20 million to pay for) a possible special election Aug. 8 to try to get HJR 1 passed before the November election.
• It’s also not hard to see that behind HJR 1 and the revival of the August special election is the idea that a simple majority of Ohio voters shouldn’t be enough — that majority shouldn’t rule, that a majority of citizens’ wishes don’t count when it comes to overruling what Statehouse figures want.
• Yet, if we are to draw any lessons from the Larry Householder/House Bill 6 corruption scandal, it is that what Statehouse figures want is sometimes very, very bad for Ohio — and that, if citizens as a whole want to amend what happens at the Statehouse, they should be able to, without poison-pill legislative maneuvering or dark-money corruption.
• In January, August special elections were seen as unneeded, costly exercises by Ohio cynic-in-chief Frank LaRose, who as Ohio secretary of state is Ohio’s chief elections officer. LaRose was full of praise in January when Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 458 into law. The bill, into which all manner of major electoral changes, including photo voter IDs and tighter absentee-ballot deadlines, had been crammed, started out life — and is titled — “Eliminate August special elections except for US House nomination.”
• Now, he and others can hardly wait to hold another August special election, courtesy of $20 million of our tax dollars (if Senate Bill 92, which is now pending in a Senate committee, or another measure authorizing this passes, of course).
• Far less widely noted are two provisions that apply only to citizen-initiated efforts and that would make it almost impossible for regular citizens even to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot. HJR 1 would mandate petition-signature targets in all 88 Ohio counties, not just the 44 required now, and it would eliminate the 10-day “cure” period to fix any deficiency in signatures by gathering more if some are disallowed.
• At one stroke, HJR 1 could wipe out those reforms and leave Ohio citizens’ referendum rights in tatters.

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Columbus, OH — Today, former President Donald Trump called on Republicans to defund the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI. Just days after Senate candidate Matt Dolan and his likely opponents Frank LaRose, Warren Davidson, and Bernie Moreno “rush[ed] to Trump’s defense,” will they stand by the former president’s comments that federal law enforcement agencies should be defunded?

“Ohio’s GOP Senate candidates were stumbling over themselves to kiss Trump’s ring last week. As the fight for his endorsement heats up, Ohio voters deserve to know if Matt Dolan, Frank LaRose, Warren Davidson, and Bernie Moreno will stand with Trump as he calls to defund the police,” said Reeves Oyster, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.     
 

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Columbus, OH — It’s barely April and one thing is clear: the fight for Donald Trump’s endorsement has already begun in the #OHSEN primary — and it’s only going to get messier from here. After news of Trump’s indictment broke, confirmed and potential candidates were “quickly jumping” to defend the former President, whose endorsement was called “the most powerful voice and endorsement in the country” by one Ohio GOP official. 

And while the race to win over Donald Trump rages on, some candidate’s vulnerabilities in a GOP primary are already rising to the top:
 

“The knives are starting to come out in the Ohio Senate Republican primary,” said ODP spokesperson Reeves Oyster. “From battling for Trump’s endorsement to attacking one another to get ahead, it’s clear already that whoever emerges from this primary will be bruised, battered, and unpopular with the voters that will decide the general election.”

Read more about the fight for Trump’s endorsement: 

NBC: GOP Senate prospects in 2024 battlegrounds rush to Trump’s defense

Henry Gomez

March 31, 2023
 

• “Candidates and elected officials quickly jumping to defend President Trump against the politically motivated prosecution proves that President Trump is still the most powerful voice and endorsement in the country,” Emily Moreno Miller, executive chair of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party in Ohio and a former Trump campaign aide, told NBC News.

• Businessman and likely candidate Bernie Moreno — Miller’s father — tweeted that Trump’s indictment was “un-American & corrupt to the core.” Another possible GOP contender, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, advanced the inaccurate claim of “record-setting crime” in Manhattan while scolding District Attorney Alvin Bragg for pursuing the Trump case. 

• “This is what happens when liberal activists take over the mechanisms we use to deliver justice,” tweeted LaRose, who once aligned himself with No Labels, a bipartisan organization known for embracing centrist politics and eschewing incendiary rhetoric. “America is fed up.”

• Even Matt Dolan, the one GOP Senate hopeful in Ohio who has avoided cozying up to Trump, offered sympathetic words in a statement circulated by his campaign.

• “There is little doubt that the actions taken today in New York are politically motivated,” said Dolan, a state senator. “Let there be no mistake, Democrats and the media want to make 2024 about nothing more than endless investigations and show trials. We need a Republican nominee that will defeat Sherrod Brown, not someone who willfully plays into his hands.”

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