campaign
Lawmaker proposed $300m handout to nursing homes; then raised $52,000 from their liaisons
An Ohio lawmaker last year proposed allocating $300 million of federal COVID-19 relief funds, divvied up among Ohio’s nursing homes with no strings attached. Ten days later, Rep. Sara Carruthers, R-Hamilton, received a $13,200 campaign contribution from the CEO of a chain of 59 nursing homes, $13,200 from his business partner, and another $13,200 from […]
In town hall, Renacci embraces culture wars in primary against DeWine
In a televised town hall, Jim Renacci made a case steeped in conservative culture wars as to why he should represent Ohio Republicans as a gubernatorial candidate. During the 30-minute event, the former congressman blamed “illegal immigrants” for record drug overdose deaths in Ohio; pledged to take on “critical race theory;” and criticized what he called […]
Who funded Ohio Statehouse politics in 2021?
Education and construction unions, natural gas utilities, the beer and wine industry, optometrists, car dealers, telecommunications firms, nursing home operators, doctors’ associations and others dumped money into lawmakers’ accounts in 2021. These funds set the stage for the maiden elections on yet-to-be finalized maps setting the district lines. (The Ohio Supreme Court overturned the GOP-passed […]
Health care PACs fund campaigns of anti-vaccine legislators
Nearly 3,900 Ohioans are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, the most since mid-January, when vaccines were a scarce commodity allocated only to the neediest recipients. Through the pandemic, meanwhile, the Ohio Hospital Association’s PAC has contributed $13,000 to Republican lawmakers who co-sponsored legislation to ban vaccine mandates from hospitals, colleges, and employers in Ohio. Critics of […]
GOP megadonor gives $10,000 to small-town council candidate
One of the biggest donors in Ohio politics wrote a $10,000 check to a candidate running for city council in Worthington, a Columbus suburb with a population just below 15,000. Virginia “Ginni” Ragan, who The Columbus Dispatch identified as the biggest state-level political donor of the last decade, gave $10,000 to Mike Duffey’s Worthington City […]
Amid corruption scandal, energy money continues to flow to state lawmakers
It’s going to take more than a bribery scandal on a historic scale to get energy money out of Ohio politics. Campaign finance reports, submitted late last week, show the campaign contribution pipeline from the natural gas and utility industries to Ohio lawmakers’ campaign accounts is alive and well. The vast majority went to Republicans, […]
After bailing out AEP’s plants, lawmakers returned its campaign checks, records show
Records show Ohio state politicians refunded nearly $50,000 in recent months to a political action committee of American Electric Power, a beneficiary of a massive coal-fired power plant bailout via scandal-tainted legislation enacted last year. Nine state senators and two House representatives, all Republican, returned a total of $19,500 in campaign contributions to an AEP […]