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For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Columbus, OH — This week, Frank LaRose went on the “Second Amendment Foundation’s Polite Society Podcast” and refused to condemn a host’s threat that violence was the appropriate response should elections not go the way they would like.

A transcript of the exchange, which starts at the 38:45 mark, can be found below:

Podcast Host: “Frank, there’s a statement out there and I know that it’s- they say that- that America is built on three boxes. And I think it’s the soap box, the ammo box, and the- and the voting poll, the voting box. And so I want to thank you for everything that you’re doing in the voting so that we don’t have to go reach for the ammo box, but we’ll continue on with this show in preparation, should that call ever happen.”

Frank LaRose: “Absolutely.”

This is the latest and most extreme example of LaRose embracing dangerous views after spending years carefully crafting a moderate image – a major reversal meant to set up a Senate run in 2024.

“Frank LaRose’s efforts to completely reinvent himself are now so extreme, he’s condoning violent threats to try to win over the most radical voters in his party. There’s never an excuse for violence, and LaRose should have had the spine to say so. Instead, he placated a radical podcast host all so he can lose a Senate race in two years,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.

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For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Toledo, OH — Earlier this month, the Ohio Democratic Party raised questions about whether Mike DeWine was playing politics when he appointed Lynn ‘Zac’ Isaac to the University of Toledo Board of Trustees. Ohio Democrats unveiled that Isaac had given $10,000 to DeWine since his campaign for governor in 2018, raising questions about if the appointment was politically motivated.  

Then, last Friday, DeWine submitted campaign finance reports that showed Isaac donated another $5,000 in late April, six weeks before DeWine appointed him to a state board, bringing the total donated by Isaac to DeWine to $15,000.

These latest revelations raise even more questions about whether DeWine rewarded a campaign donor with a cushy state board appointment.

“It’s hard for any Ohioan to believe that a donor gets appointed to a state board six weeks after cutting a big check to the Governor and it’s all pure coincidence. DeWine has been surrounded by corruption and pay-to-play schemes his whole career. Ohioans deserve answers about how this appointment came about and whether this appointment was politically motivated,” said Matt Keyes, spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Find the appointment announcement from DeWine HERE and below:

Find the records of Isaac’s donations to DeWine HERE and below:

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For Immediate Release:
Monday, June 13, 2022

Columbus, OH — Today, the Ohio Democratic Party released the following statement after Mike DeWine once again caved to the gun lobby and extremists in the legislature and signed dangerous legislation that would create more armed teachers in the classroom. The bill was opposed by Ohio teachers and law enforcement officers, but DeWine has received more gun lobby money than any other in-state politician, so of course, he signed it into law anyway. DeWine’s signature of this bill is just the latest way he’s broken his promise to “do something” following the mass shooting in Dayton in 2019.  

“This is not what Ohioans meant when they called on DeWine to ‘do something’ following the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton. Ohioans were counting on DeWine to grow a spine and stand up to the gun lobby. All he did was cash the gun lobby’s campaign checks and do its bidding instead,” said Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters.

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For Immediate Release:
Friday, June 10, 2022

Columbus, OH —  Amid calls to finally “do something” to combat gun violence following several recent mass shootings, DeWine instead has caved to the gun lobby once again and signed legislation that will make Ohioans less safe. On Monday, Ohio’s permitless carry bill will go into effect, legislation that would allow any eligible adult over 21 to carry a concealed weapon in Ohio without a permit, ultimately avoiding a background check in the process.

The legislation is widely opposed by groups across Ohio, including the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, the Ohio Mayors Alliance and many others because it would make Ohioans – especially law enforcement officers – more vulnerable to gun violence.

Mike DeWine, the gun lobby’s favorite Ohio politician, ignored those concerns and signed the bill into law anyway.

“Come Monday, Ohioans will be less safe because Mike DeWine is too scared to stand up to his gun lobby donors. Instead of keeping his promise to ‘do something,’ DeWine has made Ohio ground zero for some of the most extreme gun laws in the country. As Ohioans call for change, DeWine is taking Ohio even further backward,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.

After a tragic mass shooting in Dayton in 2019, Mike DeWine promised Ohioans that he would “do something” to address the threat of gun violence. Once again, DeWine has broken that promise, one of many he’s failed to keep as governor.

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For Immediate Release:
June 10, 2022

Columbus, OH — Several news reports highlight a new legal complaint filed against the Vance campaign for receiving unlawful support from a super PAC funded by Big Tech billionaire Peter Thiel. This scheme, which gave the Vance team access to detailed information – including polling, opposition research and even proposed ad scripts – on a secret Medium website set up by the super PAC may have amounted to as much as a million dollars worth of probably-illegal assistance.

In response to this complaint, Protect Ohio Values Executive Director Luke Thompson decided to dig the hole deeper. According to the Columbus Dispatch, “While they did not share the website with Vance’s campaign, [Thompson] said, they made staff members for the super PAC’s donors aware of it.” An earlier Politico report already detailed how Big Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has “been an active participant in the Vance and Masters campaigns.”

“J.D. Vance owes Ohioans an explanation for why he outsourced his campaign to a San Francisco Big Tech billionaire in an illegal coordination scheme,” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Read more below:

Daily Beast: J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel Accused of ‘Secret Website’ Shenanigans
Roger Sollenberger
June 9, 2022

• According to a new legal complaint, investment banker J.D. Vance knowingly received unlawful support from a super PAC funded by his friend and billionaire backer, Peter Thiel.
• The complaint, which watchdog groups Campaign Legal Center and End Citizens United filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday and shared exclusively with The Daily Beast, alleges that the Vance campaign and the Protect Ohio Values super PAC coordinated for months through a secret website, where the PAC posted hundreds of pages of valuable information—including strategic assessments, messaging proposals, opposition research, video footage, internal polling data, and even a draft script the campaign adopted in for a late-game ad.
• The deal was mutual, according to the filing, pointing to pages of evidence that the Vance campaign accepted and used the material to the candidate’s benefit, helping him land ex-President Donald Trump’s endorsement and leapfrog past competitors he had trailed for months.
• Federal law prohibits coordination between campaigns and super PACs. And the watchdogs lay out a remarkably brazen scheme that spanned several months, accusing the groups of unlawful coordination, reporting violations, and impermissible in-kind donations with a value in the millions of dollars.
• Saurav Ghosh, director of federal reform at CLC and a former enforcement attorney at the FEC, said that the arrangement exemplifies “inequity and corruption in our elections.”
• And while campaigns and super PACs have tried a number of inventive ways to sidestep coordination laws over the years, the extent of the Vance arrangement—even if ultimately found to be within the law—is unheard of.
• The 94-page complaint offers evidence indicating the super PAC designed the Medium website to be undiscoverable. It didn’t show up in a number of Google keyword combinations, for example—even including the word “Medium.” And when Politico published a sensitive internal poll in February, Protect Ohio Values leadership was reportedly stunned; they suspected the site’s servers had been breached, and even tried to smoke out an internal “leaker,” according to Politico.
• “While I have seen sites like these, both Democratic and Republican, where campaigns and super PACs make information public, the sheer amount of information shared on this site was absolutely unprecedented,” the staffer said.
• “Access to this detailed information (polling, opposition research, even proposed ad scripts) likely saved the campaign over a million dollars of spending and clearly attempted to help dictate and coordinate the messaging of the campaign and Protect Ohio Values,” added the staffer, who had not seen the complaint.
• The complaint trots out troves of evidence to suggest the coordination between groups was knowing and willful, including, ironically, multiple posts on the site itself.
• The most egregious example is an Oct. 4 post where the super PAC openly admits it planned to share information with the campaign through a common vendor, DeepRoot.
• The complaint also highlights the super PAC’s recommendation that Vance focus on immigration issues to win Trump’s endorsement. The advice included a draft script, which, according to the legal filing, the campaign later appeared to draw heavily from in an advertisement.
• As evidence of this coordination, the complaint points out several instances where the campaign seemed to take messaging advice straight from the super PAC’s post:
  • Script: “I was raised by my grandparents because my mother got addicted to opioids.”
    Ad: “I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border.”
    Script: “This is personal to me.”
    Ad: “This issue is personal.”
    Script: “No kid should have to grow up without a mother.”
    Ad: “No child should grow up an orphan.”

• Three days after Protect Ohio Values suggested in a Feb. 17 post that Vance announce he would “declare the drug cartels terrorist organizations,” Vance said in two interviews and a tweet from his official campaign account that “[w]e need to declare the Mexican drug cartels terrorist organizations.”
• Trump endorsed Vance 10 days after the campaign launched the anti-immigration ad.
• Thiel, a billionaire tech mogul who has funded Vance’s investment firm, has reportedly met with Trump multiple times on Vance’s behalf, including around the time the PAC proposed a pivot to immigration. In all, Vance’s business partner and mentor contributed more than $13 million to the group—nearly its entire bankroll—including $10 million in seed money about four months before Vance officially launched his campaign.
• Over the course of the campaign, the super PAC spent more than $7.5 million in direct support of Vance, along with other expenses totaling more than $620,000 for data management, $750,000 for polling, and $600,000 in consulting fees.
• The Vance campaign and Protect Ohio Values didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Columbus Dispatch: Groups accuse pro-J.D. Vance super PAC of illegally providing info to U.S. Senate campaign
Haley BeMiller
June 9, 2022

• A super PAC bankrolled by tech magnate Peter Thiel illegally provided resources to J.D. Vance’s U.S. Senate campaign to propel him to victory in the GOP primary, a new complaint alleges. 
• Two watchdog groups filed the complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Monday, claiming Protect Ohio Values used a Medium website to circumvent rules that prevent coordination between campaigns and super PACs. With Thiel’s backing, Protect Ohio Values spent millions to boost Vance in the contentious primary contest.
• The website at the center of the complaint was revealed by Politico on the day of the primary. The super PAC published information there for months, highlighting polls, research, video b-roll and other materials. There was even a document detailing Vance’s campaign vulnerabilities, but it was removed after Politico published its story.
• In their complaint, End Citizens United and the Campaign Legal Center say the materials on the Medium website were essentially contributions from Protect Ohio Values that went unchecked. 
• The groups repeatedly cited information published on Medium as part of their claim:
• Protect Ohio Values helped recruit staff for Vance and followed him around to shoot b-roll for his campaign announcement.
• The campaign and super PAC hired the same data science company, allowing them to access each other’s information.
• A February post suggested ad language on border security that closely mirrored what Vance said in a television ad two months later.
• A spokeswoman for Vance did not respond to a request for comment.
• Thompson disputed that the website was hidden. While they did not share the website with Vance’s campaign, he said, they made staff members for the super PAC’s donors aware of it.

Ohio Capital Journal: Campaign watchdogs sue Vance campaign, super PAC over alleged covert website scheme
Nick Evans
June 10, 2022

• The Campaign Legal Center and End Citizens United are suing J.D. Vance’s campaign committee and the super PAC Protecting Ohio Values for alleged illegal in-kind contributions during this year’s U.S. Senate primary election. The lawsuit, filed earlier this week, was first reported by The Daily Beast. It points to a covert website, uncovered by Politico last month, where the super PAC posted numerous campaign research, polling and strategy documents.
• Protecting Ohio Values’ compiled a trove of information that would be useful if you happened to be running a campaign to get J.D. Vance elected to the U.S. Senate in Ohio. Which is perfectly legal — super PACs are allowed to collect unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations, and then spend that money to directly support or attack whichever candidates they choose. They just can’t contribute to or coordinate with a candidate’s committee.
• And that’s exactly what the PAC and the Vance campaign did, the federal complaint alleges.
• The complaint also attempts to rebut a potential defense from the super-PAC: How can this be a contribution when we simply made it publicly available?
• The plaintiffs note that although the website was technically publicly available, it couldn’t easily be found through search engines — even if one knew what they were looking for. They add, again pointing to the Politico story, that once the super PAC’s leaders found a different campaign using data they’d posted to the site, they treated it as a data leak.
• The complaint emphasizes that campaign finance law prohibits candidate committees from accepting “anything of value” without reporting it, and that making use of strategy and said research from a friendly super PAC ought to qualify.
• Saurav Ghosh heads federal campaign finance reform efforts at the Campaign Legal Center, and he’s a former enforcement attorney with the Federal Elections Commission. He argues the agency needs to investigate the Vance campaign and the super PAC.
• “When candidates and campaigns flout federal campaign finance laws, they are fostering a system that elevates the voices of the rich and drowns out the voices of everyday Americans —increasing the risk of corruption,” Ghosh said. “The FEC, which is responsible for enforcing campaign finance laws, should protect American voters against inequity and corruption in our elections.”
• Vance’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Insider: A new complaint alleges JD Vance and Peter Thiel PAC illegally coordinated to help him win the election and an endorsement from Trump
Kelsey Vlamis
June 9, 2022

• Watchdog groups filed a complaint about JD Vance’s campaign and a PAC funded by Peter Thiel.
• The complaint said the campaign and the PAC used a secret website to flout campaign finance law.
• The website included campaign strategy documents, opposition research, and text for campaign ads.
• A new complaint alleges Senate candidate JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio, illegally coordinated with a super PAC funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, a cofounder of PayPal and friend of Vance’s.
• The watchdog groups said Vance’s campaign and Protect Ohio Values super PAC used a secret website to share information that included campaign strategy documents, polling data, opposition research, draft text for TV campaign ads, and advice on how to get an endorsement from former President Donald Trump.

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