All is not lost for Democrats in Ohio after election
All is not 100% bleak for Democrats: General Assembly Republicans are attacking their fellow Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, over his fight against COVID-19.
And for the first time since 1952, Franklin County’s prosecuting attorney will be a Democrat, former Ohio Court of Appeals Judge Gary Tyack. He unseated veteran GOP Prosecutor Ronald O’Brien.
Franklin County’s prosecutor has jurisdiction over alleged felonies committed at the GOP-run Statehouse. And Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein, also a Democrat, has jurisdiction over alleged Statehouse misdemeanors. Given the HB 6 scandal, which may be a plus for Democrats who voted against that bill, the Franklin County result couldn’t, in a way be better, for Democrats.
Not so in Cincinnati:
Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Democratic City Council member Alexander (P.G.) Sittenfeld, age 36, on corruption charges. Sittenfeld, a rising star among Ohio Democrats, unsuccessfully challenged ex-Gov. Ted Strickland for the party’s 2016 Senate nomination.
True, Republicans gained Ohio House seats at this month’s election for the 2021-22 session. But it takes 66 House votes to override a veto. And the House GOP will have 65 votes. That may give the session’s 34 Democrats tactical leverage.
Salting the soup is the chance another Republican could challenge DeWine’s re-nomination in 2022’s GOP gubernatorial primary: U.S. Rep Jim Jordan, an Urbana Republican, has loudly indicated he opposes DeWine’s moves to fight COVID-19. And by December’s end, GOP legislators may send DeWine an insultingly broad expansion of Ohio’s gun laws. After 2019’s mass murder in Dayton’s Oregon District, DeWine asked the legislature to tighten gun laws.
Democrat Tyack’s victory reflects Franklin’s transformation from GOP turf to a Democratic preserve. Still, Ohio’s squishy “ethics” laws can make it tough for an Ohio prosecutor to win convictions.
That aside, a federal grand jury indicted thenOhio House Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican from Perry County’s Glenford; ex-Republican State Chair Matt Borges; political consultant Jeff Longstreth; and lobbyists Juan Cespedes and Neil S. Clark, on corruption charges.
The grand jury alleged the five defendants, by spending $60 million-plus in so-called “dark money,” won HB 6’s passage in the legislature. The bill requires Ohio’s electricity customers to bail out two nuclear power plants (Perry and Davis-Besse). Cespedes and Longstreth have pleaded guilty. Householder, Borges and Clark are presumed innocent unless convicted. The House removed Householder
as speaker soon after his indictment. DeWine, who signed HB 6 as soon as it passed. has called for its repeal. But neither the House, led by Speaker Robert Cupp, a Lima Republican, or the Senate, led by President Larry Obhof, a Medina Republican, has done that.
In fairness, there must be completely innocent reasons why at least 50 House members and 17 senators just can’t agree to repeal HB 6.
■ HB 6 passed the House with one vote to spare, the Senate with just two votes to spare. Obviously, no Ohio legislators had any suspicions about HB 6. Nah; those tight tallies were just coincidences.
■ In another unhappy coincidence, Senate GOP chief Obhof and House GOP chief Cupp both voted “yes” on HB 6, making a reversal (repeal) embarrassing. (In fairness, both have said they favor repeal.)
■ The chair of the Cupp-picked panel talking (and talking …) about repealing HB 6, Rep. Jim Hoops, a Napoleon Republican, voted “yes” on HB 6; one more darned coincidence.
Bottom line: House Bill 6 passed because nobody in the legislature had any idea it’d force Ohio electricity consumers to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars to stock market speculators. Yeah. Right.