Republican County Chairs Need to Serve Their Voters, Not Their Personal Interests
The Ohio Republican Party is made stronger by vigorous competition and the full embracing of our First Amendment right to free speech.
John Kasich. Do you remember him? Republican county chairs fawned over him from 2009 to 2015 (some even did through 2016). It didn’t matter that he fought to raise taxes on Ohio’s energy production FOUR TIMES, thereby chasing energy companies away and stalling investments in Ohio. Or that he evaded the legislature to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, thereby ceding control of the state budget as enrollment exploded by over 1,100,000 people and state costs skyrocketed over the next decade. Or that he pushed for a billion dollar-plus quasi-government economic development entity ironically called JobsOhio that was devoid of accountability and transparency, which after twelve years of working its “greatest EcoDevo in America magic” resulted in Ohio being the 39th state to finally recover the jobs lost from the DeWine-Husted shutdown and 49th state to finally get back to the March 2000 job record every state hit before the dotcom crash. Kasich had a big title, so who cares that he did long-term harm to Ohio, its citizens, and its businesses.
Had everything about Kasich remained the same except he governed as a Democrat, those same county chairs would have suddenly taken issue with the same politician they cheered. While county chairs were begging Kasich to headline their Lincoln Day Dinners, I was in the trenches fighting all of those big government, non-conservative Kasich policies because I’ve always put principle and policy ahead of party. In some cases, I was the lone voice fighting those fights, as Kasich and his henchmen targeted me and my funding. Now, it is popular to deride Kasich after his tantrum failure to show up at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016 and his five years of doing little more than throwing bricks at Republicans on CNN. Kasich couldn’t win a Republican primary in Ohio for state dogcatcher. I went mano-a-mano against Kasich for eight years with the entire power of state government and most of the Republican Party behind him, including every current statewide official. It wasn’t a popular position. He, however, is now persona non grata among Republicans in Ohio and I’m still pushing the bold color ideas to fix what he broke and get policymakers to do the things he failed to do.
My points in highlighting the Kasich story are (1) that career politicians often times disappoint us and (2) failing to call a spade a spade when they err is a gross disservice to our citizens. You’d think party leaders would have learned this post-Kasich/Taft/DeWine. I understand statewide officerholders as such deserve to be heard and even given preference over others. I’m fine with that. Does that, therefore, mean county chairs should ban their possible competitors from speaking to their voters? As a gentle reminder, two tickets other than the DeWine-Husted ticket won twenty-five counties in the 2022 Republican primary election, with 52% of Republican primary voters voting for a ticket other than the DeWine-Husted ticket. While county chairs personally may have supported them, a majority of Republican voters in all but nineteen counties voted against them. Let me repeat that: in sixty-nine out of eighty-eight counties, a majority of Republican primary voters REJECTED the DeWine-Husted ticket. Thus, it is fairly safe to say that a majority of Republican voters in most counties are interested in candidates other than Jon Husted. Why would county chairs unilaterally block those candidates from speaking in their county to those voters at meetings and events? Is that really their job as chairs?
Of the county chairs reading this note, did you really like the DeWine-Husted pandemic shutdown of your county’s businesses, schools, and houses of worship? The federal government didn’t order those shutdowns. DeWine and Husted did, so stop blaming Donald Trump (reminder: Joe Biden didn’t take control until January 2021). Are you really proud that the DeWine-Husted jobs recovery record from the pandemic was America’s 39th best? For those counties outside of the Greater Cincinnati and Greater Columbus areas, are you really feeling good about the number of big projects feathering the nests of those areas, as your counties are hollowing out with population declines, job losses, and opioid deaths (and as resources are sucked out of your county for Intel and the EV battery plant in the Cincy-Columbus corridor)? And, as other states without the supermajority Republican legislature we have here take on these vital issues, are you okay that the DeWine-Husted Administration does nothing to stop woke ideology in our classrooms, protect girls in bathrooms and on sports pitches, and ensure transradicalism doesn’t irreparably harm the lives of our young? Are their big titles THAT mesmerizing that failure-after-failure should be ignored or forgotten?
The fact is all of Ohio and its citizens need help. In five years, the DeWine-Husted Administration has done enormous harm with their severe pandemic shutdown and series of omissions on other key issues. Remember, roughly 400,000 Democrats voted for them last November because they LOVED their pandemic shutdown. In nearly five years of holding power, Ohio’s private sector is up a measly 75,600 total jobs, or just 16,500 net jobs per year on average. In comparison, during the same period of time, Florida added 1,091,800 private sector jobs, or 238,228 per year, which, of course, means that Florida on average each year netted over three times as many jobs as Ohio did in nearly five years. Ohio Republican Party officials clearly believe more of that record is what Ohio needs. As Chazz Michael Michaels said in “Blades of Glory," “Mindbottling, isn’t it?"
Instead of using their platforms, the other statewide elected officials sat back silently and watched. Just because these men are on “our side” doesn’t mean we should not hold them accountable for their acts and omissions, or we should ignore what they’ve done. I believe their jobs as county chairs require them to zealously represent the best interests of their citizens. Serving as a rubber stamp for statewide elected officials no matter what they do or don’t do is why there is a rot among the Republican Party in Ohio. Not one Republican outside of Ohio ever points to Ohio as an example of what his state should be doing. Not one. Thank God Ohio Democrats are so incompetent or we’d lose control given the track record of Republicans the last two decades. I firmly believe that the Ohio Republican Party is made stronger by vigorous competition and the full embracing of our First Amendment right to free speech so that our voters hear all viewpoints and positions. It is the progressive Left that wants to strangle competition and suppress the voices of those not part of its power structure. We should always strive to be and do better than that. Some Republicans in Ohio don’t and that needs to change.
ICYMI, read my long Twitter/X thread dissecting Mike Pence's WSJ op-ed, which is little more than a pile of steaming horse dung.
P.S. I was glad to see the Ohio Republican Party State Central Committee unilaterally join me in opposing any effort by the DeWine-Husted Administration to impose any new mandates due to the recent increase in COVID cases. As my note two weeks ago highlighted, their severe pandemic shutdown and mandates were wrong in 2020 and they should apologize for the damage they did to Ohio. We will aggressively fight any attempt by the DeWine-Husted Administration to do so again.