Speaker’s birthday present: $960K for campaign
HDarrel Rowland
ouse Speaker Larry Householder not only raised more campaign cash than Gov. Mike Dewine or any other Ohio politician in the first half of 2019, but he also almost did it in a single day.
The Glenford Republican took in nearly $960,000 from a June 6 birthday fundraiser at Victory’s, a few blocks south of the Statehouse, featuring classic rock cover band These Guys Live, campaign finance reports filed last week show. In all, Householder reaped $1.4 million during the sixmonth period, while Dewine got just over $1 million— $700,000 of which came from the Ohio Republican Party.
None of Householder’s haul came from the GOP; in fact, he gave the state party $47,000. Plenty of his cash came from individuals and groups with business before the legislature.
Among the donors who chipped in the maximum $13,295: coal company owners, a American Electric Power lobbyist, Friends of Ohio Hospitals, Ohio State Medical Association, Anthem insurance, Ohio Contractors Association, Ohio Realtors, Ohio Society of CPAS.
But the speaker, whose birthday bash renewed a fundraising technique popularized by former Democratic Speaker Vernal G. Riffe Jr., also swept in the maximum amount from such traditional Democratic-leaning organizations as unions representing firefighters, non-teaching school employees and operating engineers.
Ohio lawmakers traditionally have scheduled fundraisers during the state budget process when interest groups are fighting to get a piece of the pie. Of course, we must remember these groups’ assurances that their largesse only shows how much they are interested in good government, and that, as our elected officials always remind us, campaign cash has nothing to do with how they vote.
Some of the Householder money flowed in as early as May 2— the day a substitute version of the $69.8 billion state budget was unveiled, and the same day several changes were made to House Bill 6, the controversial measure (finally enacted last month) to bail out northern Ohio’s two nuclear power plants and subsidize coal plants, including one in Indiana.
Speaking of Dewine ...
Fresh off of being named an honorary co-chairman of Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in Ohio, Dewine got a few shoutouts from the president Thursday night during a Cincinnati rally.
Dewine was on hand to introduce Vice President Mike Pence at the U.S. Bank Arena event.
“Donald Trump and Mike Pence have kept their promises,” Dewine said. “They told us that they would appoint conservative judges to the federal bench, and they have done it to a person. And what about this roaring economy?”
Speaking of promises ...
Trump made a couple of big ones at the Ohio rally:
“We will be ending the AIDS epidemic in America very shortly, and curing childhood cancer very shortly.”
Critics pointed to a more mundane promise, made in a 2016 campaign stop in southwestern Ohio, that remains unfulfilled nearly three years later: fixing the bridge that carries I-71 and I-75 over the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Kentucky.
Speaking of Trump’s rally ...
The Trump campaign gathering also was used to tout the reelection of a pair of GOP candidates few Ohio voters probably would recognize: Supreme Court Justices Sharon Kennedy and Judith French.
“The conservative balance of the Ohio Supreme Court is at stake,” state Republican Chair Jane Timken told the crowd.
French led the pledge of allegiance, while Kennedy offered the opening prayer before Pence and Trump appeared.
Timken is right. For the first time in many years, party control of the state’s highest court actually is in play next year. For a long time, the GOP held such a strong majority on the court that Republican control was a given.
But with a pair of Democratic victories last year that chopped the GOP margin from 7-0 to 5-2, the donkey crowd actually could seize control if they knock off the two Republican justices next year.
drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland