Ad targets Husted on data center support

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Mike Thompson: This podcast was produced Wednesday, July 15th at 2 10 p.m. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Yep, like President Trump will install an easy pass system along the Strait of Hormuz as an easy way to collect fees from those shipping vessels. Let's talk politics. This is Snollygoster WOSU Public Media's weekly look at Ohio politics and all those snollygosters those shrewd politicians who don't realize that if you make daylight savings time permanent, Ohioans won't see the morning sun in December until nine o'clock. Now making standard time permanent. That would be my choice. You know, I don't need daylight at 10 o' clock at night July coming up in the podcast how an economic ranking wins our Snollygoster of the Week award. But first, I hope you've all recovered from the big 250th American birthday celebration. I hope your holiday was filled with fun and was algae free. And now, as workers in DC drain the reflecting pool, we here in Ohio are getting back to our routines.

You're listening to All Sides. This week, we turn to WOSU-TV's Columbus On The Record panel. We discuss the race for U.S. Senate and Sherrod Brown's slightly risky new ad where he takes on Jon Husted and data centers. Despite getting hammered in TV ads, Democrat Amy Acton continues to hold her own against Vivek Ramaswamy in the governor's race and calls grow for greater transparency and tighter rules for Jobs Ohio, Ohio's public but privately run economic development agency. We will start. With data centers as a growing issue in this year's campaign. As you may have heard, Ohio has become a magnet for the warehouses filled with computers. We have more than 200 in this state. It puts Ohio in the top five of data center population in the country. The data centers draw opposition because they consume a lot of electricity, water, and farmland. But they also create lots of construction jobs, union construction jobs. Which is why a new ad by organized labor champion Sherrod Brown is a bit surprising. He's been called.

Sherrod Brown Campaign Ad: The face of data centers in Ohio. Why? Because Jon Husted spent years aggressively recruiting data centers to the state, cutting sweetheart tax deals and fast tracking approvals while ordinary residents watch their electricity bills explode. We are here with Ohio Senator Jon Husted to be a lot of experience with something called data centers. Jon Huested, who's he really working for? I'm sure Brown and I approve this message.

Thompson: The ad could win Brown votes in rural Ohio, but it could turn off building tradespeople to discuss this topic and more. We welcome this week's panel, Joe Engels from Ohio Public Radio, Jake Zuckerman from Signal Statewide, Republican strategist, Mike Ganodakis, and Democratic strategist Brian Rothenberg. Brian, we'll start with you. If the skilled trade unions support data centers because of the construction jobs and also the maintaining jobs, HVAC, plumbers, electricians, how much of a risk is it for Sherrod Brown to come out pretty hard against them?

Brian Rothenberg: Well, first of all, the voters are speaking very loudly, for one, and Teamsters just came out in favor of them today. But what's really interesting about it is I think it's been mischaracterized a little bit. I don't think he's saying you can't have a data center. I think what he said, which is no different from what other elected officials, including myself, as trustee have said, is that they have to pay their fair share, local government should have a say and the environment should be protected. If that happened, I don't think it would be a problem. The bigger problem for the Republicans in this state is that if they don't do those things, it's going to the ballot next year and it will get voted down. The safest thing, if you wanna have those jobs in Ohio, is to get those things taken care of instead of the state taking over all of it.

Thompson: Mike, is Jon Husted vulnerable? He was the point person in the Dwight administration, the economic development point person. He recruited a lot of these companies, a lot folks did. Is he now vulnerable for that success in getting data centers here?

Mike Gonidakis: No, I don't think so. He's no more vulnerable than Sherrod Brown. Look, guys, let's not forget, Sherrod Brown was in the legislature for four decades, almost, that's 40 years at home kids. And when the first data center came to Ohio, he was United States Senator, quiet. When all these things happen that he criticizes Jon Husted for, he was there in the United States Senate when all this has happened. But now it's a big deal. Look, two years ago, Mike, the voter said no to Sherrod Brown. They always get it right, whether they vote for my person or not. And they're not gonna just all of a sudden wake up and say, well, Sherrod, Brown's the new guy. No, he's not. He's the old guy with old ideas that supported Joe Biden. Never opposed data centers until, what, three months before an election. So to answer your question, I don't think Joh Husted is any more vulnerable than Sherrod Brown.

Thompson: Do voters care that data centers get tax breaks or that they have to pay for electricity or they just don't want them in their backyard?

Jake Zuckerman: I think they do care. I mean, I think there's some provincial concerns with data centers. These are huge projects. They're noisy. I think that there's something very frustrating when you don't want something to hear that it's tax abated. Just fundamentally what gives? I have to pay my full tax bill and this thing that me and my community asked to not come gets a tax deal. So there's just a certain unfairness. And I think, that there are some existential fears about AI. Is it going to take my job? Is it gonna make my power bills go up? And that sort of attitude is almost imposed on these facilities. And I don't know what the political consequences will be, but I think Sherrod Brown's ready to poke the bear.

Thompson: Yeah, data centers are symbolic for a lot of technology fears. Joe, every candidate is sort of threading this needle. They don't want to say they oppose data centers because the data centers do mean jobs and it does mean economic development. So they say, okay, I don't wanna tax breaks. I wanna make sure they don't use up all of our water and they pay their fair share of electricity. It's hard to thread that needle. They're all doing it. Rameswamy, Acton, Houston, Brown.

Jo Ingles: Well, and a lot of the voters that I hear from, they're also saying the same thing. They're not saying we don't want data centers, period. They're saying that they're seeing their electric bills go up and they are upset that someone else maybe comes in and to at least their view doesn't pay their share. That's a big issue, not just with data centers. That's a big issue in this campaign, people not paying their fair share. And I think we're going to see the politicians speak to that on more than just data centers.

Thompson: Let's take a look at where this race stands right now. A couple of polls came out in the past few weeks. The real clear polling average of the last few polls shows that they're basically tied. Sherrod Brown has less than a point lead over Jon Husted. I think this shows us that that "Fox News" poll from a few weeks ago with showing Brown with an eight point lead was an outlier, Brian Rothenberg. Is this why Sherrod brown is kind of going a little hot, not necessarily, it's going harder against the data center issues than perhaps he would have a month or two ago.

Rothenberg: Well, I think the interesting thing is these numbers have not moved in public polls and private polls anywhere, and Republicans have spent a lot of money. Sherrod's just going up, but usually when you spend, the governor's race spends $20 million, Houston and the national Republicans have spend God knows how much attacking Sherrod, and it's still the same place. Part of that is because of the change in the way that media works now. It's no longer three TV stations, digital is out there. And so the real question for Houston is, how come my numbers haven't moved? I've been attacking this guy forever.

Thompson: Are the ads just not as effective as they used to be, Mike? They're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this race.

Gonidakis: Yeah, well, I think, you know, it's the old old saying wait till after Labor Day, right? Because if you want to see real spending, the tsunami is coming, guys, this is nothing. This is just puddles of water here. And then when the voters are paying attention, when people are actually watching TV again, watching a little bit during the World Cup, of course, we broke some records, which was pretty cool. But Buckeye Saturdays, you Sunday NFL, you're going to see ad after ad after ad. And that's when people going to formulate their opinion. So I think they're setting the stage now. Jon has a lot of work to do things he can't control the price of food. Pricing price of groceries that I ran more can't control it. You know, if that doesn't get better, it's gonna be a bad cycle for my guys

Thompson: Do you see ads changing? The stuff is out there, there's no real, everyone knows Sherrod Brown, everyone knows Jon Husted, the ads for the most part these days, Jake.

Zuckerman: I don't know, I'm thinking back to the 2024 cycle and just going off memory here, I recall Sherrod Brown with a hefty lead that winnowed and then eventually dissipated by the end of the election. So I don't take polls right now. Like Mike just said, there's going to be so much money coming. The data center issue, though, it strikes me that there's a lot of entropy here. The Democratic caucus, the Democratic constituency is split. There's some union affiliation there. There's also just this, I just don't like this new thing that keeps popping up all over the state, all over the country. Similar issues going around, like the Epstein issue, that just these things don't fall so neat upon Republican-Democrat lines. So I'm curious, can someone tap into that entropy? Can someone channel that anger that's floating around?

Thompson: It could be, Joe, you're just trying to peel off one little group at a time. This person's worried about Epstein, this person's worry about data centers, everyone's worried about affordability.

Ingles: Yeah, and I think that's what's happening, and we're seeing them try to peel off, but I think there's also an underlying thing here. It's that, you know, the man has it, you now, the big guy gets all the fun, they get all the money, they everything. And I think we're starting to see the politicians start to play that card a little bit more in their ads and in what they're saying, and were going to see that more after Labor Day event.

Thompson: Vivek Ramaswamy has a big money advantage. The Republican and his supporting groups have spent millions of dollars on ads introducing the billionaire and attacking Amy Acton. But as far as the polls are concerned, they have yet to have a real impact. That real clear polling average of polls has this race tied as well. This week, the Cook Political Report moved the race from lean's Republican to toss-up because of the polling. Mike Gonidakis, millions and millions of dollar Vivek Ramaswamy has spent introducing himself to voters. Now his packs associated with him are attacking Amy Acton, but he still is tied. What's going on there?

Gonidakis: To Jake's point still early this summer looks going to my Facebook page half the state of Ohio's in Myrtle Beach the past 7 to 10 days so not a lot of people are paying attention there at the polls are doing other things but. So I spent the money in the first place. That's a great question, but to my personal like you know, yeah, Charmin ads whatever no one's ever run out of money running for governor of Ohio or Senate United States Senate so if we're spending millions now 10's of millions more are coming okay, so maybe they're setting the stage now. You know, we haven't seen Amy spend much money yet, you know, and she has some money, she does. I look to you and I, the average person, it's a lot of money, she has nine million or whatever it is, but to run a race and win in Ohio, it's not a lot money.

Thompson: That's going to be good news for Amy Acton. She hasn't been up on the air to aggressively with ads and she's still in the race

Rothenberg: And she's doing the race. It's great news. I mean here. They've spent 20 million dollars beating her up, and it's gone nowhere absolutely nowhere and Better and more important than that is the internal poll one of which was released from the down ticket candidates in the case of John Kulewicz versus Keith Faber like 73 percent of the people didn't know who Keith Faber was but they're tied So it's got some legs right now now what happens from Labor Day on is going to determine this but You know, Kulewicz is starting to raise money, she's starting to raise money. Sherrod's going to have whatever money he wants. If this is tied in September and this Iran stuff continues and affordability continues to be an issue and gas is still up. It's going be a really tough, tough fall for guys like Mike Gonidakis.

Thompson: Well, Democrats.

Gonidakis: I'm not on the ballot.

Rothenberg: I know.

Thompson: Democrats, Joe, are always, I mean, sure, Brown had a lead two years ago, Richard Cordray had a leave, you know, eight years ago over Mike DeWine, and Republicans came home, they fell in line, they voted in a red state, they vote for their person.

Ingles: Yeah, and it's still early so I caution anyone to look at polls right now and try to predict anything from them. I certainly don't. But I think one thing we're forgetting too is that younger voters in particular right now are just not keyed in. They are not watching network TV. So all this money that's spent on network TV ads, you might as well, you know, flush it down the toilet when it comes to young voters because a lot of them don't even have the access to local stations anymore.

Thompson: But they're seeing it on YouTube and the TikTok and the Instagram Reels. Actions lead among independents, Jake, 28 percent. That's an eye-catching number. Even though it is early and we have to take polls with a grain of salt, but 28 percent lead among Independents.

Zuckerman: I wish I could do the mental math. I don't know what the number needs to be, but mathematically there's gotta be a very sizable number of independents to go in for her. I, again, there's so much money that's gonna come out. I think opinions are just so malleable now. It's just too hard to predict the future.

Thompson: So when does Amy Acton start running ads? When does she go after Vivek Ramaswamy in ads? She does it on social media. I mean, is she running ads now? I haven't seen them.

Rothenberg: Well, I think right now if you're not going anywhere and they're not being effective against you, why spend the money now, especially given what we've talked about. If she can get through to August into early September, not only are we going to see money flowing from her, but you're going a lot of national money. If it's tied in September at Labor Day, this race is already getting more attention in some ways than even Sherrod's race.

Gonidakis: She doesn't have enough money. I believe it or not. I mean, a 30 second ad right now on during, when people are watching, whether it be a Buckeye game or something like that, 50, 60, 80 million dollars, excuse me, $80,000, excuse me. For one, 30, one, not two, one 30 second ads. She doesn' have enough to saturate the marketplace. We have 12 media markets in the state of Ohio. You need tens of millions of dollars to get a message, to punch a message through. She doesn't have enough right now. Unless.

Rothenberg: There are so many people that are entrenched, there's just a small amount of people that are making this decision, and that may be where we're headed. That might be why numbers aren't shifting.

Thompson: How about other ways to get attention? When do these candidates agree to do pointed interviews? Not just interviews on Fox or MS Now, but local interviews.

Ingles: Or do they? That's what I'm wondering. That's the other thing. I think that candidates, we're seeing the message being very measured right now. Access is really buttoned down. And if you want to be a reporter and talk to a candidate, it's hard to say, hey, come talk to me for 10 minutes about anything I want to talk about. They're very stuck on their message. They don't want to get in a situation where they're stepping into a landmine.

Thompson: And they're not providing a whole lot of details. Even on big issues like data centers and affordability, it's just all kind of vague.

Zuckerman: What we're gonna do? I'll point out the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign here He has said whether you like him or hate him the ideas are some of the more interesting ideas I've heard thrown out there the one that comes to mind right now is getting rid of summer break in schools You can see right off the back how that parents are either gonna go all in for that They're gonna lose their minds and anger when they hear that and these things sort of go out there And then there's an endless line of people like me who say that's interesting. Tell me more about that Why do you want to do this? Why is this a good idea? Should we do this And we can't get them to do that. And there have been a couple of these instances where these really, I don't want to say splashy, these really splashy ideas come out, and then there just aren't people willing to go out there and give voice to them. And I don't know totally what to make of it, but I'm getting a very risk averse sense from both candidates.

Thompson: Risk-averse is the term, I think. Anyway, the controversy over the state's private public economic development agency, Jobs Ohio, continues. A candidate for attorney general is raising conflict of interest issues. Democrat Jon Kulowitz has filed an ethics complaint against the chair of the Jobs Ohio board. He claims that Josh Rubin has a conflict of interests because Rubin's lobbying firm has big clients that stand to receive Job Ohio grants, clients like American Electric Power. Jobs Ohio recently created a $100 million fund to help companies develop many nuclear power plants. AEP could benefit from that fund as it is exploring those small reactors. Jobs Ohio says it has strong ethics policies in place and that no money from that fun has been awarded yet. Of course, this complaint follows Jobs Ohio's support of a questionable podcaster who was tied to former OSU president Ted Carter. Jack Zuckerman, a lot of talk this spring about more oversight of Jobs Ohio after that podcasting controversy. Where does that stand now?

Zuckerman: Well, right now we're in the break. There's not gonna be another legislative session until after November. I couldn't rule out something coming up in that lame duck session, but I just, it doesn't seem very likely given the lack of real interest and real legislative hearings on it. I think that there's always, sometimes these scandals come and go around Jobs, Ohio, but in the last 10 years, it's been renewed twice. I don't think it's going anywhere. I don't think any crackdown is coming or I don't see any reason to believe one is. And I'll say that as long as Ohio chooses to stack some of these boards with lobbyists, we are always going to have these conflicts of interest really perceived. It's inevitable.

Thompson: Mike, that is an argument that Catherine Turser from Common Cause is calling for no lobbyists on the Jobs Ohio board. Is that a reasonable requirement, do you think?

Gonidakis: Could be reasonable, you know, look, I was on your show recently and I said, look Ohio law says the governor appoints all the members of the Jobs Ohio board and the governor's on the board. There's no oversight, there's no Senate confirmation hearings, you know, why don't we add that in there, a simple layer, you know, do that. Perceptions reality in politics, Mike, I don't know if there's a conflict or not, but there is a perception that's not good. You know, if he's the, this guy, whatever his name is, is the, also the big lobbyist for AEP. They've been getting some sweetheart deals lately, too. You know, it just, it raises red flags. It just does.

Thompson: Right, you fought against Jobs Ohio for quite some time, but CNBC this week just named Ohio number one in the country for jobs or business. They're driving around town with these digital billboards, Jobs Ohio is touting that ranking.

Rothenberg: So here's the interesting thing about that. So on this Jobs Ohio issue, one of the people that are most concerned about it is the Manufacturers Association which believes that allowing power companies to have the power generation and to do these nuclear energy pieces is going to drive up the cost even more and that we don't really have the problem that people are saying they're overstating it. And full disclosure, I work with John Kulewicz but what he's really saying here is that. Not only does Josh Rubin, the executive director of Jobs Ohio, have a firm that represents AEP, but they represent also data centers, stuff like Amazon. So the real question here is, coupled with the fact that all the local authority on power generation has been given to the power setting board, plus you're going to have $100 million to develop this technology that could go to AEP. There's really only two power companies it could go too. Plus. We are going to mandate 50% of every data center has on-site generation. You are literally mandating that you could have a nuclear power plant in your town, in your backyard, with no oversight. The 100 million.

Thompson: Dollars to help nuclear power plants, small ones, get developed, still long ways off if it can even happen. Is there a hundred million dollar fund from Jobs Ohio for solar and wind projects, Joe?

Ingles: No and that won't happen. I think we're pretty safe saying that but you know the thing is that this is going to come down to what people feel. What do individuals feel and right now I can tell you that I hear people talking about their energy bills. They're talking about the electricity that's gone up significantly and you know now that people are using their air conditioners that you know their next bill is going really hurt. And that's cumulative. When you take that and you put it with other things that cost more, your groceries, your gas, and everything else, people view life through that lens of where they are.

Thompson: So what will it take, if it ever happens, for the legislature to make some changes to how Jobs Ohio is run? They have a $300 million budget. It's funded through what used to be, it still technically probably is, a public resource, the liquor sales in the state of Ohio. So it's quasi-public money, but there's no real public oversight.

Zuckerman: Look, a lot of these things come down to inertia and the legislature had a perfectly good opportunity when it renewed, or I think it came through the controlling board, but this was brought to the public. I think there was some pressure saying that successfully delayed the controlling boards vote on this. The controlling board which is made up of members of the Ohio legislature by and large went ahead and voted for it. It feels like the legislature really lost its moment. And then we get some of the byproduct of when you have opaque governance happens. You have these things. You have these sorts of affairs. And public money go in places where it shouldn't. I'm happy to eat my words when the legislature comes up with this eleventh hour jobs ohio oversight bill but I don't see what evidence has presented itself to suggest that will happen.

Gonidakis: To add on to Jake though, the governor's gonna veto it. He probably will. If they pass something during lame doc to put oversight, he probably vetoes it on his way out the door.

Thompson: I guess was the podcasting scandal big enough? I mean, if it comes out that there's a sweetheart deal with a large corporation from Jobs Ohio, that might be the needle. That would be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I mean this was what, $60,000 or something like that. It didn't look good. The president of Ohio State lost his job over it, but it wasn't earth-shattering.

Zuckerman: Well, this is a lot more money with a much higher, I'd argue, likelihood of failure. There's no working small modular reactor in the United States, and there's a hundred million dollars coming from the state of Ohio to breathe one into existence. I mean, that's speculative. I think you put money out there like that with a reasonable understanding that this might not happen. We might not be the pioneers of small modular reactors.

Thompson: For those of us who remember the protest over nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s and how hard it was to build those atomic plants, it is hard to imagine how small reactors will be popping up around Ohio anytime soon. My thanks to the Columbus On The Record panel this week, reporters Joe Ingalls from Ohio Public Radio and Jake Zuckerman from Signal Statewide, as well as Republican strategist Mike Ganodakis and Democratic strategist Brian Rothenberg. We'll be right back.

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Thompson: Coming up our Snollygoster of the Week segment, but first, we want to ask a favor, we've asked it before, but just to remind you, if you like what you hear, please give us a good review on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you are using. And don't forget to tap that follow button so you get every episode. Time now for our schnolligoster of the Week segment where we honor the shrewdest politician or political move of the past seven days. This week we give it to the cable television channel CNBC. Last week, it named Ohio the number one state in the nation to do business. And right away, the Ohio business bandwagon was overflowing. Archie Griffin recorded the intro for the CNBC segment. Governor DeWine did a live interview on CNBC, touting Ohio. And as we mentioned, Jobs Ohio wasted no time heavily promoting the ranking. It was a nice way to counteract the governance and oversight questions. Jobs Ohio faces. Democrats are taking advantage of the ranking in a slightly different way. Democrats are using it against their Republican opponents. This week, the Democratic Party of Ohio quoted CNBC's claim that Ohio is among the best positioned to land AI data centers, despite rising public opposition. We go back to the opposition for data centers on how it might be an advantage for Democrats in Ohio. Anyway, it seems like every Ohio politician is quoting CNBC, which is a pretty shrewd move for the cable channel. So CNBC gets our Snollygoster of the Week award. That'll do it for this week's edition of Snollygoster. We are a part of the NPR network. For our digital producer Michael DeBonis and our audio engineer Dalton Jones, I'm Mike Thompson for Snollygoster from WOSU Public Media.