Letter shows Trump-like talk from Portman
Despite giving credence to the latest GOP allegations about Hunter Biden last week, Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman isn’t known for catering to the right wing of his party – much to the chagrin of Ohio Democrats who question his image as a reasonable conservative.
But a fund-raising letter that arrived in many Ohioans’ mailboxes last week strikes a more strident tone. And it is filled with the kind of statements that fact-checkers call out in many of President Donald Trump’s speeches.
Portman claims that Democrat Joe Biden favors “socialized medicine, which they call ‘Medicare for All.’” Actually, the former vice president espouses offering the option for the public to sign up for government health care but has rejected Medicare for All.
Portman ties Biden to New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-cortez’s Green New Deal, “which would ban oil, gas and coal.” Biden has not signed onto the plan, although as he said in Thursday’s debate with Trump, his climate-change proposal seeks a gradual end to U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.
As Trump often does, Portman identified Democrats with socialism, “the roadmap to a future like Venezuela.”
“The Democrats and their cheerleaders in the liberal media dislike President Trump so much they can’t see straight,” said Portman, who is trying to raise $30,000 in 30 days via the missive.
Portman is up for re-election in 2022.
“It tells everything”
Statehouse lobbyist Neil Clark described to reporter Cathy Candisky how he’s finishing a “tell-all” book: “What Do I Know, I’m Just a Lobbyist.”
“I go from birth to the day of the arrest,” said Clark, a fixture at the Statehouse since 1980. He was charged last summer with racketeering along with former House Speaker Larry Householder and three co-conspirators in what federal authorities described as a $61 million bribery scandal to pass a nuclear power plant bailout bill.
“It’s everything I participated in from the time I walked in the Senate. … It tells everything. There is not a stone that goes unturned. There is not a (significant) Republican member that goes untouched,” Clark revealed to the longtime Dispatch journalist.
“It is as truthful and honest as I can be.”
The book includes the Statehouse honorarium scandal in the mid-1990s, the 2000 deal between Householder and then Rep. Bill Harris to share the speakership, and the recent House Bill 6 scandal.
“I had to say what I did and I do that,” Clark said
Legislative secrets
This column’s exploration two weeks ago of whether now-secret records with the Legislative Service Commission showing the true origin of Ohio legislation should be made public drew a couple of interesting responses.
“I’ve always wondered if it was a good idea to keep LSC stuff secret,” said Senate President Larry Obhof.
The Medina Republican said he doesn’t want to chill legislators’ frank communication and information-gath
ering process with the nonpartisan commission, which performs drafting, research, budget and fiscal analysis, training, and other services for lawmakers.
But he’s less sympathetic about keeping secret any material from outside groups, often already prepared in Ohio’s official bill format, handed to LSC.
Obhof especially would like to see the origin of spending amendments to the two-year state budget bill, items frequently produced from a feeding frenzy of lobbyists.
Currently, he sees lawmakers who espouse to constituents their tight-fisted ways with taxpayers’ money, while at the same time privately adding major spending proposals to the budget, which stretches hundreds of pages.
“If you knew requests were going to be public, we might not be spending as much,” Obhof said.
Another issue lies in amendments approved along with the multibilliondollar state budget that never would have passed as stand-alone legislation. He pointed to mysterious language that made its way into the budget approved last year essentially allowing Ohioans to secede from one school district and join another.
“I don’t even even know where that came from ... because the House would never tell me,” the Senate president said.
The provision was struck down in federal court last month.
Dennis Morgan, director of the Legislative Budget Office (later folded in with the commission), emailed to say the confidentiality rules should remain intact.
“Why is it important to know that the idea for a member’s proposed bill came from the National Rifle Association? Or Emily’s List, or (the National Conference of State Legislatures) versus (the American Legislative Exchange Council)?
“The content of the bill should be how it is judged. To know if the bill was proposed by Emily’s List, that I can dismiss it just because the origin of an idea for a bill came from a group I dislike? Even the NRA and Emily’s List can sometimes propose a decent idea. Judging an idea by the content of a bill, not a label, is how we should evaluate a bill,” he said.
“It’s not popular or politically correct for a member to support maintaining this confidential relationship, but I strongly believe that eliminating this would do significant (perhaps unseen) damage to the legislative process.” drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland