Matt Dolan, Frank LaRose Slammed by Ohioans for “Sweetheart Loan,” “Desire for Power”
September 5, 2023
Columbus, OH – Matt Dolan and Frank LaRose are taking heat from Ohioans after reporting showed Dolan is bankrolling his campaign with a too-good-to-be-true “cheap loan” and LaRose tries to “confuse” and “stack the deck” against Ohioans by rewriting the November ballot amendment language to support his political ambitions.
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Cleveland.com: LTE: Matt Dolan’s sweetheart campaign loan tells us everything we need to know about his approach to public office
Rick Bohan, Akron
September 2, 2023
- Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has shown he is driven by a desire for power, however obtained. It’s clear that he’s not the right choice for the U.S. Senate from Ohio.
- Now, we learn that Matt Dolan is using a sweetheart low-interest loan in his bid to be the Republican nominee. As reported Aug. 23 in The Plain Dealer (”How Matt Dolan financed his race with a cheap loan”), his campaign can still count on a 2021 campaign loan deal provided by friendly bank bigwigs to finance his latest Senate run. It seems he got his buddies at Morgan Stanley bank, which holds over $1 trillion in assets, to provide him with a line of credit worth millions of dollars at the ultra-low interest rate of 0.832%. Meanwhile, the rest of us who aren’t making such loan deals at the country club with our bankers are paying almost 10% on our home loans and around 20% on our credit cards.
- Matt will try to tell us that he understands our problems and will represent our interests in Washington. The only thing we can be sure of is that he’ll side with his wealthy cronies who are bankrolling his campaign.
Cleveland.com: How a multimillionaire U.S. Senate candidate financed his race with a cheap loan
Jake Zuckerman
August 22, 2023
- When Matt Dolan needed cash for his first U.S. Senate run in 2021, he found it in an unusual place: the Morgan Stanley office in Pepper Pike.
- He pays .832% interest on the loan, a staggeringly low rate from the company through which Dolan owns millions in stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and other investment vehicles. For comparison, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate for the U.S. in 2021 was between 2.7% and 3.2%, according to the Federal Reserve. That year, credit card interest rates were 14.6%, according to the Fed, and 24-month personal loans were 9.4%.
- The Morgan Stanley financing speaks to some of the financial gateways available to wealthy politicians but closed to most of the constituents they represent. However, even in terms of a U.S. Senate crammed with millionaires, Dolan’s financial arrangement sticks out.
- “It’s good to be rich,” McCaffery said.
- “If you’re not super wealthy, a bank is not going to give you a personal loan to fund a political campaign,” [Bob Salera] said.
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.
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.
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