It Will Take Money, Folks (and Fair Play by the State Central Committee)
Will Dave Yost and Robert Sprague Fail The "Prisoner’s Dilemma" Challenge In Front of Them?
This note isn’t an appeal for funding. That note won’t come until I officially file paperwork allowing me to legally raise and spend money. This note is a preemptive missive laying out for you why we will need more than phone banks and door knocking to beat the Establishment in 2026. The simple fact is there are four keys to a successful campaign:
(1) Message: I’m confident the bold colors agenda I laid out back in January is the message that will resonate most with Republican primary voters. I base that claim on the overwhelmingly enthusiastic responses I’ve gotten in the countless speeches I’ve made so far. I also base it on recent history in which the status quo pale pastel agenda of Mike DeWine and Jon Husted failed to get 50% of the support in the Republican Primary in May 2022. As incumbents, that is a damning indictment that Husted will wear around his neck, along with the consequences caused by his severe pandemic shutdown of businesses and schools.
(2) Messenger: while far from perfect, when compared to my likely competition of Husted, Dave Yost, and Robert Sprague, I believe pound-for-pound, I am the better messenger. I’m an outsider; they are insiders. I’m not a career politician; they are career politicians. I don’t owe special interests, lobbyists, long-time financial backers, or Establishment poh-bahs anything; they owe their livelihoods to those people. I don’t need this job as part of a life-long climb to power; they desperately need this job and have chased it their whole careers. I keep things simple and straightforward; they make excuses about why we can’t do X, Y, or Z because real reform is hard or too complex or too risky they say. I haven’t been part of the system for two decades that has Ohio still in the back of the pack; they ARE the system.
(3) Organization: the Establishment candidates may have the upper hand in this category because the same small group of campaign hacks have been circling the wagons for these men for a long time. That said, having been part of the top congressional and U.S. Senate races in the country, I know first hand what needs to be done and the quality of staff required to win big campaigns. My national network of top-notch people will ensure that the team I put together for this run won’t be outworked, outmaneuvered, or outthought.
The fourth key is Money. The mistake many people make is to believe that a winning campaign must raise as much as the Establishment candidates will raise. Some say I will need $20 million to win. Again, recent history shows otherwise. In 2022, Joe Blystone, Jim Renacci, and Ron Hood collectively spent less than $6 million to snare 52% of the vote against a well-funded INCUMBENT governor. That incumbent had no other Establishment candidate to compete with, as the outsiders split the vote. Conversely, spending an enormous sum doesn’t mean you’ll win if you lack or are weaker in one or more of the other keys, as Mike Gibbons showed last year when he spent over $18 million to secure a 4th-place finish with 12% of the vote in the U.S Senate primary. In 2026, the Establishment and their funders will have two-to-three candidates from which to choose.
Each one of those Establishment candidates will have his voters and his loyal donors, thereby dividing the Establishment pie amongst themselves. Many other large Establishment donors will opt to remain on the sideline so as not to pick the wrong horse to ride. Does anyone believe Blystone’s voters will pull the lever for an Establishment candidate? Not a chance. I’m sure some Renacci voters might, but they also will opt to get behind an outsider like me. I don’t need all of them to win; rather, I just need a combined plurality of Blystone (22%) and Renacci (28%) voters that get me somewhere north of 35%. That goal is eminently doable.
How? By having enough money to ensure that my message reaches them via direct mail, social media, radio, and television. To do that, I won’t need the same amount of money the Establishment candidates will need. No amount of money can cover the deficiencies of a pale pastel message or a boring messenger uttering the same Republican pablum voters have heard for the last two decades. Those Establishment candidates also will split the forty-four or so State Central Committee (SCC) members who believe it should put its thumb on the scale by endorsing in a primary. To get the endorsement and, critically, his name on the slate card sent to all Republican primary voters, someone has to get thirty-four votes out of those remaining forty-four (or less if we can continue to raise the number of members who oppose endorsing in primaries from the twenty we have locked in). I won’t get it, but I also am confident we can stop one of the three Establishment candidates from getting it, thereby keeping the playing field level.
As a brief aside on the SCC, there are three issues I hope new Ohio Republican Party Chairman and SCC Member Alex Triantafilou will support—though I’ve heard from a very good source that he is actively seeking to remove anti-endorsement SCC members without his fingerprints being on the activities to help Husted. First, discontinuing the practice of endorsing in contested primaries. I’m a firm believer in Proverbs 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” The SCC should let us truly compete on a level playing and see who wins. SCC members are free in their personal capacity to do all they can to promote a favored candidate, but they represent their districts, not their personal interests. As noted, despite the endorsement, DeWine and Husted couldn’t even muster majority support in the gubernatorial primary last year, which is a clear indication that the SCC was wrong in making an endorsement in that race. Second, issuing endorsements on a whole slate versus on each race. This abhorrent practice is the EXACT smoke-filled backroom insider conduct that causes Main Street Ohioans to lose faith in their leaders. It promotes unsavory and unethical quid pro quo horse-trading to force through unpopular career politicians (you swallow my bitter pill by endorsing the slate for my guy and I’ll do it for your guy). Not surprisingly, such a practice is never employed for any candidate other than the statewide musical chair men who are part of the status quo and, therefore, part of the problem. Lastly, allowing secret voting on any endorsement. We conservatives have long believed that sunshine is a great disinfectant, as transparency and accountability are paramount principles to good governance. Allowing SCC members to hide behind secret balloting grossly undermines both transparency and accountability. If SCC members want to issue an endorsement, then they should have the guts to vote for that endorsement on the record.
A final note: these issues won’t get resolved unless large political donors withhold ORP funding until Triantafilou commits to ending the three mechanisms to thwart grassroots candidates and stops whatever funny business he is engaged in to take out anti-endorsement SCC members. In politics, money talks. I also hope Yost and Sprague will join me in demanding these reforms to the SCC endorsement process. As the great Indian political strategist Kautlya wrote in “Arthashastra" (yes, I read it), “The enemy’s enemy is a friend.” In this setting, I hope Yost and Sprague realize that joining me to stop Triantafilou’s pro-Husted machinations and to push the anti-endorsement count above thirty-four SCC members is in their best interest so as not to risk Husted getting the endorsement and placement on the ORP slate card that goes to all Republican primary voters. Hopefully, neither of these men fail this "prisoner’s dilemma" challenge.
As for me, I know how much I will need and I feel confident that I can raise what I need to win. And, I’m not a novice at fundraising. I’ve raised roughly $5 million in Ohio when I ran The Buckeye Institute and for my current think tank, Opportunity Ohio. Let me tell you, it is far harder to raise money for think tank ideas than it is for candidates. As Richard Weaver famously wrote in his book by the same title, “Ideas have consequences,” (yes, I read that, too), but ideas are also just ideas. A candidate is someone who isn’t just selling ideas; rather, they are selling themselves as the lever through which the ideas can get implemented. I’m not suggesting it won’t be hard for me to raise funds to be competitive and win. I’m just saying I’d much rather pitch a candidate with ideas than just ideas. Here is what I mean:
Will you donate $2,000 to my think tank so I can develop a paper on why eliminating the state income tax is a good idea?
or
Will you donate $2,000 to my campaign so I can eliminate the state income tax?
Honestly, which do you think gets more funding? Given the flood of money in politics versus the scarcity of money in think tanks, the answer is, well, obvious.
This is where you come in. I absolutely will need you as a volunteer as part of my organization to do phone banks, knock on doors, walk in parades, host events at your home, and spread the word among your family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers. That won’t be enough, however, to win. When the time comes, I also will need you to step-up and help fund our winning effort. In some cases, that might be a large contribution, but for most people it will be whatever you can sacrifice at the time no matter how small. Every little bit truly will matter. Our ability to reach every Republican primary voter via direct mail, social media, radio, and television will depend on whether small donors step up in a big way. So, chew on this note over the coming year and decide how badly you want fundamental, bold color changes in Ohio.
I want it bad enough that I’m willing to enter the arena and sacrifice to renew Ohio. And, I’ll have skin in the game, too. Not a loan to my campaign I can repay myself with donor funds like most candidates do, but an outright donation that I won’t get back. After all, if I’m asking you to believe in me and donate, I can at least show you that I believe in myself enough to put my money where my mouth is. Together, we can and will climb this mountain and change the arc of Ohio.
In case you missed it, here is my weekly interview on the Bruce Hooley Show on The Answer in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton where we discussed the latest development in the Biden Family corruption drama, biased media I’ve long referred to as JINOs (Journalists In Name Only), and Yost’s joining Husted and me in the 2026 governor’s race. I do have to chuckle because the Establishment, pundits, and JINOs rolled their eyes when I announced my exploratory run back in January because it was “so early.” Six months later, my entry clearly pressured both Husted and Yost to jump in, as well, with Sprague rumored to be throwing his hat in the ring shortly. I guess I’m a trendsetter.
P.S. If you want to help build momentum for our effort, you can do me a huge favor today. Follow me on social media and invite your friends and family to do the same and to join our movement by signing up to get these weekly notes (https://ohiomatt.com/join-the-movement/). Send them my bold colors agenda at this link (https://ohiomatt.com/). The more people who hear about my bold colors agenda, the greater our collective voice gets. Here are my various social media links:
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