Ohio’s primary voters have had their say, and now we move on to November’s general election.
The governor’s race between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton promises to be historic, expensive....and contentious.
We’ll have the rundown of statewide and congressional candidates squaring off in the fall. Bottom line: No big surprises.
Attorney General Dave Yost calls it quits, setting up the potential for some musical chairs at the statehouse.
And voters in Pickerington say no to a levy ask, leaving school leaders to grapple with stark financial realities.
We're discussing all of these topics during this week's Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Jessie Balmert, state government and politics reporter, The Columbus Dispatch
- Andrew Tobias, state government and politics reporter, Signal Ohio
- Susan Tebben, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to the All Sides Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on the political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Joining me on the Roundtable this week, we have Jessi Ballmer, State Government and Politics Reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. Welcome back, Jessie. Thanks for having me. And Andrew Tobias, State government and politics reporter for Signal Ohio. Welcome back Andrew.
Andrew Tobias: Happy Monday!
Juravich: And Susan Tebin, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Welcome back, Susan. Thank you. Let's jump right in. Governor DeWine did not waste any time. This morning, he named a new attorney general following Dave Yost's surprise resignation last week.
Speaker 4: After a great deal of careful consideration, it is my decision to appoint Andy Wilson as the next Attorney General of the state of Ohio. Andy has a very distinguished career. He is a graduate of Wright State University, University of Dayton School of Law, served in the Ohio National guard. Served as Clark County prosecuting attorney, which is where I first had the opportunity to meet him.
Juravich: Alright, so let's jump in. Jesse Balmert, who is Andy Wilson, besides what Godawine just said there?
Jessie Balmert: Yeah, Mike DeWine kind of laid it out. But former county prosecutor, he has most recently been serving as the Department of Public Safety Director. And he notably was involved in this massive Pike County massacre prosecution was one of the key people involved in handling those cases.
So that kind of brought him to prominence, but he's been in Governor Mike De Wine's like kind of sphere of influence. They've worked together quite a bit. And Mike DeWine has continually tapped him for various jobs and positions and kind of working groups. They work together on school best safety after there was a big crash there. So this is a person who Mike Dewine likes, sees a future for in politics or just public service.
Juravich: Do when you say he was working on the Pike County, do you mean with, is that before he was public safety director or as public safety Director?
Balmert: Um, he was kind of part of the special prosecutor unit that was working on that.
Juravich: Um, Andrew, what do you think of this pick? Were you, I mean, is this, were you surprised or does the, does the name, did the name stand out to you? Is it on a short list anywhere?
Tobias: Yeah, I mean, I had this happened so quickly. I didn't like go through the paces of everybody he possibly might have picked, but it really makes sense. DeWine, I think considered Andy Wilson to be Lieutenant Governor back when that was at that appointment became open last year. He, he almost suggested through his public comments that Wilson was like a runner up for that.
So if DeWin went, he had kind of two choices. I guess he had three choices. One would have been to elevate somebody inside DeWines or inside Joe's office who could basically kind of like run business as usual. He could have gone to some outside person and there was some lobbying of you know everybody you can possibly imagine with a law degree in republican politics probably at least like try to make a phone call on this or he could pick somebody within his own kind of divine world and he went with route three and so if that's the choice that he made it would make sense that he would pick Wilson for
Juravich: And Susan, in picking Wilson, DeWine resisted the temptation of picking something for, I guess, strategy for Republicans. He could have named Keith Faber, who is the outgoing auditor who is running for attorney general in November. Why do you think DeWine resisted? That's a definite, he could have put his thumb on the scale there.
Susan Tebben: Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably why, you know, I can't speculate on what the governor was thinking, but that probably did play into it just to not to, you know, endorse or not to do anything. And even Dave Yost has already released a statement saying that he thought Andy was a wise selection. He understands law enforcement. So I think there was a lot of agreement there. And yeah, I think DeWine probably was like, let's not go into that right now.
Juravich: Yeah, Andrew, I hosted "Columbus on the Record" on Friday, I was a guest host, and we talked about whether there would be a musical chairs situation, because if DeWine picked Faber, then he would have had to have picked a new auditor, and then it would just be a bunch of moving around. So I, that seemed unlikely knowing to wine, but what do you think?
Tobias: Yeah, so had he chosen the auditor to be attorney general, he would then have to pick a new auditor, which like in the musical chairs fun scenario, the secretary of state, Franklin Rose is running for state auditor. So why not appoint him there? And then you need a new secretary of State and the state treasurer, Robert Sprague is the Republican running for secretary of states. So you appoint him and then you have a treasurers office to fill. And so now you've appointed the entire Republican slate in office.
Juravich: Instead of letting voters vote for them, you do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around.
Tobias: This year is supposed to be, it looks like it's going to be a difficult national year for Republicans and you saw some signs of Republican voters even not liking that. There were a couple of state lawmakers from Delaware County who basically tried to switch chambers and they both lost their races and so I think that would have risked a real backlash.
Something else that I'm interested in seeing here, which is another sort of political consideration, is that I'm kind of like taking this in a tangent, but the Yoast Office is overseeing the first energy prosecutions. And there's another political angle there because Senator John Huston has been called as a witness in the first time that happened earlier this year until it was a mistrial. The new trial is scheduled to begin in September. And so to sort of another political question is how does this new attorney general handle that case knowing that it has such a strong political component with Houston running for reelection this year.
Juravich: Interesting. Okay. Well, we'll have to see if there if the new trial happens in September first of all, right?
Tobias: Yeah, he was asked about it. And as I understand, he basically said that he's going to become more familiar with the case and go from there.
Juravich: Yeah, he doesn't know. He has had the job for 20 minutes, right? And Jesse, let's talk for a minute about Attorney General Dave Yost leaving. So he announced last week that he was resigning. He will leave public service on June 7th. And he's headed to the Alliance Defending Freedom. The Alliance of Defending freedom has taken several cases to the US Supreme Court recently. They were instrumental in the overturning of "Roe versus Wade." So what do you make of Yost's new job choice and making it right now? Because it's kind of a statement job. It's not, he didn't just pick any old law firm to leave for.
Balmert: Yeah, I think the job makes a lot of sense for Dave Yost. These are issues and causes that he's been pretty involved in. He has defended Ohio's restrictions and bans on abortion, which are on the books, passed by Republican lawmakers, signed by a Republican governor. And also, just faith in his Christianity is very important to Dave Yose. So.
The job itself made a lot of sense for the attorney general. This is also a very, as you laid out, well-positioned organization. The current US speaker was involved with them, a former current US Supreme Court justice. And so this is an organization that if Davios has aspirations of going anywhere else going forward, those are connections that could be valuable to him. I was a little surprised about the timing. He still has a few months left in the attorney general, but really he has been in a weird position since he tried to run for Ohio governor and did not get the Republican nod and dropped out of that race.
Juravich: Yeah, I was wondering, Andrew, this job, they wouldn't have held it for him for six months for him to finish out his term.
Tobias: Yeah, I don't know enough to know whether there's some kind of special circumstances that would prevent them from doing that. But I guess that's what you have to assume that there was something pressing because I mean, Dave Yost was elected to serve this four year term and for him to kind of walk away from that, you know, I and it honestly it creates these other sort of like now these downstream political issues and if nothing else, like have the potential to trip up Republicans. So yeah, you do wonder what it was that caused him to decide to do it when he it.
Juravich: Yeah, I don't know if anyone knows, or Susan, I don't want to put you on the spot, but like, besides this first energy case, is there anything that Dave Yost was working on that Andy Wilson will have to like, finish now?
Tebben: The attorney general works on a lot of stuff. Other than the first energy, I can't think of anything. But I do think it's interesting with the trends that have come to the, like the Supreme Court is literally about to consider Miffl-Pristone mail order delays and bans. So it's interested that he who, Yoast who has tried to defend that in the state.
In abortion regulations in general, and also has had some trouble fighting against the constitutional amendment that was approved by 57% of the voters in 2023, and wrote an analysis that said that the constitutional amendment would make it hard for people to fight against this and regulate abortion in Ohio. So I wonder if moving to this one might be, you know, his way of trying to, you know, express. Desire to move forward with more legal things in a more national way.
Juravich: All right, we're going to leave the attorney general's office there for now. You're listening to the weekly reporter roundtable from All Sides. And this week we're talking with Susan Tebben from the Ohio Capital Journal, Andrew Tobias from Signal Ohio and Jesse Balmert from the Columbus Dispatch.
And then moving on to the the primary, Ohio's primary was last week. It did not have much drama. It's certainly not as much drama that Indiana had, but it did produce some interesting results. And of course, it produced candidates for the November election. In the race for governor, there were no surprises. Democrat Amy Acton was unopposed and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy easily won. The tech billionaire got a little bit more than 82% of the vote, compared with nearly 18% of vote that was won by conservative activist, Casey Pooch.
Jesse, this governor's race is already attracting national attention. I saw it featured in the "New York Times," it was on "CNN." Tell me what's at stake here? Is the whole entire country gonna care about the Ohio governor's raise?
Balmert: It's possible. I think they certainly cared about it last week because between us and Indiana, we were the only ones on the ballot. Maybe in November, there'll be a few more races that people are paying attention to. But this is a competitive race in a way that it hasn't been competitive for at least eight years and perhaps longer than that.
And just looking at kind of some of the national trends, some frustrations with affordability issues, high gas prices, the war in Iran, as Andrew was saying earlier, at the just kind of overall sentiment for. Republicans is in an unfavorable place for them, which is not untypical two years after a president is elected that the other party does pretty well.
But also Vivek Ramaswamy has made some comments that have caused some backlash and so forth. So just him as a candidate has been an interesting talking point. And then you have. Dr. Amy Acton, who is notably known for handling the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a pretty polarizing time for Ohioans, but she is well known from those daily press conferences.
Juravich: So both candidates spoke on election night. This audio is from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Ramaswami called his win decisive and said it shows how unified the Republican party is and he also said Acton would be the first socialist governor if elected.
Speaker 7: I do believe that this marks, without exception, the single most consequential election for governor that our state has ever seen in our history. There has never been a greater contrast between two candidates.
Juravich: Andrew do you agree with that? Never a greater contrast between two candidates?
Tobias: I mean, I've covered elections for a long time and candidates always say the one they're running in is the most important one. So I just sort of like laugh a little bit at that. But I do think that it's really fair to say I wrote, you know, in my like post-election analysis that this is the Most Consequential Governor's Race in Ohio that we're going to have had for a longtime, the last time that Democrats won the office and it's kind of the only time. So. Uh, was 2006.
And so, uh, with, uh that exception, um, basically Republicans have held the governor's office since 1992. And so it's been a long run of success for them. Amy Acton is somebody like Jessie said, who has like some national profile from her role in the, in the coronavirus pandemic and COVID 19. I mean, um. But you know, Vivek Ramaswami is somebody with presidential aspirations. He's shown that by literally running for president.
And it's also not hard to see him. Doing that again in the future, since he's been a candidate for office here, he's continued to kind of comment on national conservative issues. I think he's interested in engaging on like, what is the future of the Republican Party? And so you have this kind of like comeback opportunity for Democrats. This is going to be the best chance that they're gonna have in the near future. And then you have this kind budding national political career in Vivek Ramaswamy. And those two things are gonna converge in this race, which like I said, just very consequential. Because whoever wins there's going to be a lot of downstream effects.
Juravich: Susan, what do you make of Casey Pooch? It was virtually unknown before the primary, and he did get 18% of the vote. And I know 18 is not, you know, it's not this huge amount, but he has said that he was going to tell his supporters not to vote for Ramaswami. I mean, what's the impact there?
Tebben: I mean, I think in any election, especially these modern elections, you're going to have a lot of people that are, or have people that're going for the fringe vote, going for the people that really have a lot grievances with the government, have a lot of, whether or not they like the person that's in office, like if they like Trump or if they don't.
So I think that's not surprising to see him getting enough votes, it is. He was a problematic candidate because he said a lot of comments and he made some comments that people were connecting with Nazis and things like that. So I think it's just sort of a Noting the temperature of the election to see what these other candidates are getting Maybe that they're not ever going to win the election But that they are getting enough votes says something that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party should take note of
Juravich: Andrew, a GOP strategist, Gene Krebs, he used to be a state rep. He was on "Columbus on the Record" two weeks ago. And he said that if Casey Pooch got any more than 15% of the vote, that Ramaswami would be in trouble. Like they should take pause to that. Do you agree?
Tobias: I was there when Jean said that. Oh yeah.
Juravich: Oh, yeah, you were on that show. Yeah
Tobias: So the election that I think of, or at least that I was thinking about with this one, was Ohio's 2016 Republican primary for U.S. Senate. In that case, Rob Portman was the incumbent. He had just recently endorsed same-sex marriage, which is a pretty controversial position for Republican to take at the time, really anyone honestly, which 10 years ago, you can kind of put yourself back then. And he got 82% of the vote also.
He faced kind of a token opposition who was a Christian conservative named Elijah Eckhart. We've never heard of heard from him again, by the way. And Portman went on to win the general election by like 30 points. And so even at the thought at the time, too, was that that race was supposed to be competitive in the US Senate. Democrats put a lot of money into it and ultimately pulled out.
So the thing, though, about Casey Pooch is that he at least has a megaphone. Back then, I don't think that information traveled in the same way as it does now even, even though social media was around back then, too. And so it'll be interesting to see whether Pooche continues to be a player, whether. Some of these like fringe political elements in the Republican party continue to engage with this race through him.
But I know Democrats argue that Vivek Ramaswamy spent a bunch of money on ads leading up into this and quote unquote only got 82% of the vote. And so I'm not sure I personally read too much into it because there's just a history of Republican voters just kind of like being against whatever everybody else is for. But it's just something to kind of ponder over, I guess, as we're looking forward to November.
Juravich: Well, when you look at the election map, Jesse, Casey Pooch got 25, 30 percent of the vote in a lot of counties down in the southern part of Ohio, like in the Appalachian region. That's 30 percent is more than 18. I mean, is that significant?
Balmert: Yeah, I think his high threshold was in Adams County, so you're looking at these kind of really deeply rural places. It's really hard to say. These are not voters that Amy Acton are going to pick up. So the question is, are these people who are going stay home? But Republicans have a really tremendous history of solidifying behind their candidate. And I think you could see many of them supporting Ramaswami in November.
Juravich: So Acton, although she ran unopposed on the Democrat side, she did have a gathering on election night. Here are some of her remarks.
Speaker 8: This isn't about political party, guys. It's not about that anymore. It is about extreme wealth, power, ideology, special interests against everyone else.
Juravich: Andrew, you wrote a story about Amy Acton and her relationship with Ohioans that she formed during the pandemic and how she's transitioned into politics. You mentioned that a little bit already. But can she win a statewide vote? I mean, you hear in her remarks that there, she's even trying to be casual. She was like, this isn't about political party guys. Like, you know, what do you make of her and her political career, instead of being, you now, in charge of health.
Tobias: Her polling numbers show that she still has a lot of ground to make up before she's, you know, as well known as some other people are who have held a statewide office in Ohio, but they're remarkably high for somebody who's running for office for the first time and show that. She has some carryover visibility from the role that she played in the COVID-19 pandemic, even just for a few months, six years ago, just because it was such a seminal time in a lot people's lives.
If you kind of look at the limited polling that we have on that. It's a real like kind of a wash about whether people think that's a good thing or a bad thing, but we did see a lot of the state leaders who were in charge during that time get reelected, including Mike DeWine, by a pretty... Decisive margin. So the question for any Democrat in Ohio really has can can they just get elected? Can they get to 50% or whatever it requires to win?
And so we have a libertarian candidate in this race that could help lower the ceiling of what Democrats need to do. But when I look at polling of statewide races here, I don't look at what the margin is between them, although that matters. But it's more what is the percentage that the Democrat is pulling at and she has in some instances pulled close to 50% or above. But by and large, though, it's been stuck in the mid, you know, 45 percent, 46 percent, 47 percent. And so to get over the top, she's going to either need Republican voters to stay home, like we were talking about earlier, or she's going to have to get some Republican leading voters to vote for her. And that's just the big question facing her. And so she has to say, like, this is bigger than party because that's basically her path to get elected in Ohio.
Juravich: Well coming up we're going to talk about a few other races that caught our attention from Tuesday's primary. That is when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
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Juravich: You're listening to the All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we talk all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us, Andrew Tobias, state government and politics reporter at Signal Ohio, Jesse Balmert, state government and politics at the Columbus Dispatch, and Susan Tebin, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal.
I wanted to move on to the US Senate race for a few minutes. There was even less drama in that primary than others. US Senate, for the US senate, incumbent John Huston ran unopposed in the Republican primary. In the Democratic primary, former Senator Sherrod Brown easily defeated Ron Kincaid. Brown got 90% of the vote. Now Brown and Husted will square off in a race that could decide who controls the US Senate. How would you assess Husted's short time in Congress, Jesse? So Husted is the incumbent, but Sherrod brown had that office for a long time. So who's the true incumbent here?
Balmert: Right, it's interesting. It's really hard for either of these candidates to run as like the change candidate this year because they've both been in politics for such a long time.
Juravich: No political outsider here.
Balmert: Gonna try. But so John, he said, been in the Senate for a short period of time, but previously was lieutenant governor, served as Ohio Secretary of State, a job that Sherrod Brown also did and then was a house speaker. So just like a tremendous amount of public experience, public service experience, and then also Sherrod brown, having served in the senate for as long as he did Secretary of state. And so, it's a really interesting contrast with the governor's race, where we have two first time candidates who've never run statewide before, and then this is like the battle of the, I've been around and done some things candidates. Yes.
Juravich: Andrew, talk to me about the age factor. There's a lot being discussed here about in Congress, the Senate, and the House both about the age of candidates. Is this going to hurt Sherrod Brown that he is older than Houston?
Tobias: To talk again about everybody's my favorite topic, the 2016 election. Apparently that year, Ted Strickland was running for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. He was the former Ohio governor at the time. Seemed to be a pretty formidable opponent. And his Democratic primary opponent was P.G. Sittenfeld, who at the time was an up and coming Cincinnati, since a city councilman. And P.J.'s election ad showed him like this is a pretty common trope, but just running around Cincinnati. He was a jogger. I will
Juravich: Oh, literally running. Yes. Got it.
Tobias: Showing how you know spry and fast he was and I remember people are kind of like is this a thing about Ted Strickland's age? And it probably was but that kind of shows kind of what the taboo subjects were at that time So fast forwarded to the present
Juravich: Ten years later. Everything's on the table. All right, good
Tobias: And we just saw Joe Biden, you know, as president, spectacularly and kind of like memorably fail in a national televised debate because you know like his age wasn't as sharp as he used to be with a major maybe like the major election issue. And so I definitely think you'll see Republicans try to tap into that again.
You know, there was a short video in which, you know, maybe a few months ago. Sherrod Brown was just walking around and as happens in politics, somebody runs up to him with a camera in his face and starts shouting a question at him. And I saw the video and it kind of shows him like his aides and his wife kind of like pointing him into the event where he's supposed to go and Republicans try to make it seem like Sherrod was disoriented when they shared that clip on social media.
And I definitely think that is a preview of what we can expect there. But like other than the age issue, Sherrod Brown I was first elected to office in the early 70s. And so we've seen Republicans before talk about how he's just been around for a long time. And it's like, things have been bad for a time. You had your chance. So I think those two things will go hand in hand, but it would not surprise me at all if you see Republicans lean into that more given how big of a issue Joe Biden had just a couple of years ago.
Juravich: Well, but Susan, how much can Houston's campaign lean into that when he has basically been a politician his entire career, too? I mean, he has had every office, as Jesse said, but in Ohio, I guess, not at the national level. So that's what they'll lean into.
Tebben: Yeah, it's kind of a subsect of that old, the age old career politician argument that you've been in since they can't do that, they have to go to the age. And it's something that we've seen other elsewhere too, in the treasurer's race, Jay Edwards, who was a former legislator that's running for auditor, has said he wants to bring young energy to the office and he wants to keep the Trump Republican Stage there. So, I mean, it's it's something you're seeing come out in different races But yeah, since we can't do the career politician thing. We have to do the age thing
Juravich: I wanted to jump for just a couple of minutes to Ohio's ninth congressional race. Former state representative Derek Maron will try to unseat Democratic congresswoman Marcy Kaptur in November for the second time. He lost a very close race to her two years ago. He only lost by 2,400 votes. So Kapture holds the distinction of being the longest serving woman in congressional history and Maron says it's time for her to go.
So, Jesse, tell them to talk to me about this race, because... Derek Maron won, it was a competitive primary though, so he had to spend some money in order to win that. But now it's a rematch between him and Captor, but the district was redrawn slightly. So what's that gonna play out for that race?
Balmert: Yeah, I think there's, I mean, there's a couple of factors that are really going to be a play in this race. One is through redistricting. This district is a little bit more Republican than it was previously. When they went through the congressional redistricting process, it was very clear that Marcy Captor was, you know, target number one on the list.
And so there's that. But then we also have that kind of national sentiment that is not going the Republicans way right now, at least. And so how much will those two things offset each other? Either any way you slice it, it's going to be extremely competitive race. And so we'll see a lot of the same issues that popped up in the last round come back again. Also critical to that race was a libertarian third party candidate who made it even closer.
Juravich: Yeah, Andrew, do you think they redrew the district to give what would Derek Barrett need about 3,000 more votes?
Tobias: Yes, I do. Very plainly, yes. They redrew the district to try to help a Republican win that seat.
Juravich: And I didn't look up their ages. I don't, Marcy Captor is a long-serving woman. And did you, I don, I, no, I dunno. I don't know how old they are. Is Derek Marion younger than her? I guess.
Tobias: Yeah, he's around 40, I would guess.
Juravich: Um, but he defeated, so he had to spend some money to win the primary. He, um, he defeated state representative Josh Williams and also Madison Sheehan, who is a latecomer into the race, but notable because she was the deputy director of ICE. Um, what did you make of this primary? I mean, was Derek Marin the front runner? Was there a front runner
Tobias: You know, I've been following cal she adds or call she odds rather as the betting site we can bet on everything, including politics and Marin was favored with like 85, 90 percent odds. And so, you know, it's like I'm kind of evaluating whether that's a reliable indicator. And apparently, at least they're like it worked out.
So I know there was there was a lot of thought that when she had entered the race. That it was undecided. I think the big thing in Republican politics is that Donald Trump never endorsed any candidate in this race. I mean, you still saw Marin's campaign point out that he is a Trump endorsed candidate because Trump endorsed him in 2024.
Juravich: Oh, okay, yeah.
Tobias: That apparently didn't provoke any backlash against him because Trump, as I understand it, doesn't like it when people do things like that. So, I mean, that I think led the race to be unsettled. It was interesting that Sheehan didn't make any inroads. She ended up placing third in that race after kind of coming in with a splash. So, you might assume that Marin came in with some name ID where people remember his name from a couple of years ago and they didn't really know who the other candidates were, but yeah.
Tebben: And Josh Williams definitely was trying his hardest to, you know, make a name for himself in the legislature, because he is currently there. Dozens and dozens and dozens of bills, trying, you know, headlines about Josh Williams and his, you know, the legislation that he was doing, some on child care fraud, some on, you, know, all sorts of things. So he was definitely trying to, you know put himself out there. I don't know how much difference it made.
Juravich: And one of my producers looked it up. So Marcy Kaptur is 79 and Derek Marin is 40. So Jesse, you're nodding. Again, like we were just talking about with the US Senate race, is age gonna be a factor?
Balmert: Yeah, I mean, I think in both the Democratic and the Republican Party, you see this desire for new fresh ideas, not the same things that have perhaps not been working for these parties. And so the desire for like the fresh change candidate is going to be out there. Does that necessarily mean age? You know, we'll find out. But I think there is a desire for change in this election.
Juravich: And this is the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking with Jesse Balmert from the Columbus Dispatch, Andrew Tobias from Signal Ohio, and Susan Tebin from the Ohio Capital Journal. One of the closest races from last Tuesday night was for the GOP nomination for treasurer. Not the most well-known race. I know everyone talks about treasuring, right? No, not really.
But former representative Jay Edwards prevailed, but barely. Edwards, the interesting thing about this was the endorsement. So Edwards was endorsed by Vice President J.D. Vance and Senator Bernie Moreno, but his opponent, Senator Christina Rogner, she was backed by Ramaswami and she lost. So I'm not sure who wanted to take that, Susan. What do you think of that race and how...
Tebben: Close it was. And thank you for doing that, because I think I said earlier that Jay was running for auditor and treasurer, and it's just treasuer.
Juravich: Oh, why not? Run for everything.
Tebben: Yeah, but that was sort of the play. If you watch J. Edwards' ads, he pushed the JD Vans endorsement. Christina Rogner, when I talked to her, she talked about not only having her endorsement at the top, but also Rob McCauley and legislative leadership that she's worked with for years in the legislature.
So, yeah, that was definitely what they were sort of pushing at is, who do you trust more, I guess, for endorsements? But also, you know, talking about their experience. You know, Robner has a lot of experience that would go into the treasurer's office, whereas you have J. Edwards, who has experience in the legislature, but is a young candidate and wants to, you know push that idea that he is young as we have been talking about all this time. So, it was a very tight race, yeah.
Juravich: So Andrew J. Edwards won. Who will he face on the Democratic side? I didn't write it down. I'm sorry. I don't know.
Tobias: Seth Walsh, Cincinnati Councilman.
Juravich: Okay, uh, what do you make of that race or do people not are not people gonna pay attention to the treasurer chase? Yeah
Tobias: Yeah, like truly if Democrats have a chance there it's because they have a chance at the top of the ticket and you know we don't often see a strong you know divergence between the top the ticket in the bottom but you know Seth Walsh
Juravich: So basically, if Acton wins, there's a better chance that other Democrats will win. Yeah.
Tobias: Yeah, I mean, there's he's a Cincinnati councilman. He's well regarded down there. He has a background like in government finance. He is a smart guy. I'm guessing that he has some friends in the Cincinnati business community. So like, he might do a little bit better there than a normal Democrat would or just as an average Democrat, I mean, but yeah, we're these races are really decided at the top.
Juravich: All right, before we run out of time in this segment, I wanted to talk about the four-way race for Ohio Supreme Court. So former Franklin County common police judge, Colleen O'Donnell, ended up pulling out the win there with 32% of the vote. Susan, tell us a little bit more about this race, because it was interesting because there were four Republicans running, and whichever of those four won, they're going to face incumbent Jennifer Bruner in the fall. So, but to have four Republicans running was interesting.
Tebben: Right it was a dense race yeah yeah Colleen O'Donnell is the daughter of Terrence O'Donell who was a former Supreme Court justice she also touted the fact that she was after she was Franklin County she went to Texas to become an immigration judge so she did a lot of asylum cases and she's very proud of the fact she did not grant asylum in any of the cases that she faced so that was a lot hers but they were all sort of when I did my reporting and I talked to all of them the basic thing is they were all constitutional conservatives, so that means they take a very originalist stance, which not to get too legal, but they take the Constitution as it was written, when it was written, as opposed to thinking it's a fluid document, something that changes, something that you can interpret based on the recent happenings of things.
So that was basically the discussion there, and so it was a matter of whether you... Looked at one candidate or the other, their values all sort of were similar. And so it was kind of a hard one to filter through, I'm sure, for voters to look at whether they wanted to. And it just seems like O'Donnell took a little bit of an edge, whether that was because of the name or because of immigration stance, any of that.
Juravich: You just grazed over that, yeah, because of the name. So the name O'Donnell, whenever you look at the four names who were listed, do people tend to vote her an O'Donell?
Tebben: I would think because she has that, you know, pass with her father having that name. It could play, you name recognition is a big, big thing, but who knows? If you look at the Cuyahoga...
Balmert: A county bench there are a lot of Irish names there so that tends to be it doesn't hurt I would say. It didn't hurt her to have a last name though.
Juravich: Of O'Donnelly.
Balmert: It's also, Jennifer Brunner is the sole remaining statewide Democrat in Ohio right now. And so I think that was another reason why there were four people lining up to take out potentially the last remaining Democrat.
Juravich: Yeah, Susan, I think it was, was it your story that I read that you talked to Jennifer Brunner, right? Like, because the Democrats have their sights set on protecting this one seat that is the one statewide office the Democrats hold. What's their plan? What did Jennifer Bruner tell you?
Tebben: To tell you.
Juravich: Well, those were comments from the Ohio Democratic Party's event that they had on election night.
Tebben: But yeah, she said she's planning on protecting it and Marilyn Zias is running against Dan Hawkins in a different race. The incumbent is Dan Hawkin. So they're both trying to make inroads with the Supreme Court because otherwise, we have either a 7-0 if Bruner loses and Dan Hawking's defense or maybe two.
And Marilyn Zia was saying, she's an appellate court judge right now, she was saying. You know, if we can get these two seats or keep these two seeds, then in 2028, we can even make more progress. So it's more of a, it's a thinking of this can be a gradual thing where we sort of take over year by year by here if we can. But the first thing we have to do is keep Justice Brunner where she is. And Justice Bruner is, you know saying she will create the foundation where Amy Acton can lead in Supreme Court.
Juravich: This is the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News, and coming up, we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about school levies, and we might touch on library levies as well. That is when All Sides continues on 89, 7 NPR news.
You're listening to All Sides and the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host Amy Juravich. Still with us, we have Andrew Tobias, State Government and Politics reporter with Signal Ohio, Susan Tebin, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, and Jesse Balmert, State Government and politics reporter for The Columbus Dispatch.
I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about school levies. It used to be that school levys almost always passed, but not anymore. Voters in Pickerington School District, for example, rejected a 1.25% income tax levy. It would have raised close to $33 million for operations. Now the school district says they're going to have to make some steep cuts to erase a $14 million operating deficit. Was Pickerington an outlier? They were trying an income tax levy instead of a property tax leby, but then it's still lost. So talk to me about school levies. They didn't, I mean, they didn't all lose, but they didn't all do well.
Tobias: Yeah, so about a third of all levies for schools passed. And that was a mix of income tax and property tax questions. The property tax ones actually did a little better than the income tax ones, which is interesting because I've talked with school officials who are interested in whether an income tax might be a better way to go, given all of the concerns that are out there about increasing property taxes.
Uh, these, these levies, which I think like it's fair to say that this is a more democratic leaning electorate than a normal primary election. And we still saw the school of these fair, much worse than they have in the recent past. And so I think voters are sending a signal, um, you know, whether that's we want to see schools cut or whether we want it, see them ask for less money or whatever, it's going to kind of be something that gets born out. I think in the future, but I'm sure that school officials are concerned when they have saw the results the other day.
Juravich: Yeah, there were 60 some levies on the ballot for all of Ohio. And I think it was that 44 of them failed and 24 of them passed. So not I mean, you know, but for there were a couple of renewals out there. For example, the Jonathan Adler School District had a renewal and theirs passed kind of narrowly, but it passed. So voters were a little more inclined to do a renewal, Jesse.
Balmert: Yeah, I'll quote from the illustrious Karen Kessler here, but it does seem like the renewals pass at about 80% of the time generally. So when you're asking people, hey, you're already spending this money, let's just keep it rolling, versus asking them for more money, additional money, a new way of taxing, it's just, it's harder. It has always been hard, but under this current environment, it is even harder. It's Susan is this just basically
Juravich: showing I mean is it going to show lawmakers that like they need to do something about property taxes because this is not sustainable school districts are not going to have the money they need
Tebben: I mean, a lot of people would say it should, yes, because with the property taxes, you're just going to have to ask for more money. And people already don't want to pay more money, that's why there's a movement out there to lessen or get rid of property taxes. So yeah, I'm sure people are hoping that this does send a message and it puts a fire under them, but we'll see.
Juravich: And Susan, you also wrote about libraries. So once again, Ohioans proved that they love libraries. So 12 of the 14 library levies on the ballot passed on Tuesday. So libraries did better than schools. You wrote about how much Ohioans love their libraries. What do you make of the fact that libraries passed but schools didn't?
Tebben: Yeah, I mean, again, as Jesse was saying, renewals always do better, even in library senses. But yeah, we are seeing a lot, especially because we've seen some federal support for libraries under danger. There's the Institute for Museum and Library Services that Trump had an executive order to eliminate all the funding for which That is a federal fund.
It's a federal fund that gets distributed. The State Library of Ohio gets a lot of that funding and then distributes it on for resource sharing and things. So that's not something that public libraries directly get. But that it has been something that has shown to have the public disapproved of having that Institute eliminated and it hasn't been now through some court lawsuits and things like that. So you are seeing a lot of support for public libraries generally. Overall, all that stuff, we only had two that lost, and so that shows that there is still just support for additional and renewals in the library since.
Juravich: Willing to pay property taxes for the free books at the library, but not for the.
Tebben: And the broadband service and all that.
Juravich: For the very costly public education, yes. Andrew, I wanted to just touch real quick. Your colleague, Jake Zuckerman, wrote about voters in Richland County. They voted to ban large-scale solar and wind farm projects in 11 of 18 townships. It was kind of close, but talk to me about this. Why did Richland county feel like they needed to go to the voters to ban solar and win farms?
Tobias: So Ohio law allows county governments to ban solar projects. And these are like, if you go through Indiana and like in a very few places in Ohio, you might've seen, these are industrial scale solar panels for acres, that kind of thing. And so the law also allows for voters to force a referendum on those bans.
So you saw citizens group in Richland County successful in collecting the 3000 sub-signatures in order to put this thing up for a vote. And so what we were interested in in this one is that it's a real world application of do you support solar energy or not basically. And this is a very Trump friendly area. I don't remember the exact percentage but Donald Trump won it easily in Richland County. And this ban was upheld by a majority but it was pretty close.
And so that shows that there is some crossover support among voters for these kinds of projects. Whether it's because They like solar energy and they like green energy and they have like an affinity for sort of like the policy arguments behind these things or whether it's, and this is, you really saw the repeal or the, I guess the pro-solar campaign lean into this, whether it was about property rights.
They were arguing that the government shouldn't be allowed to tell farmers whether they can sell their land to whoever they want, you know? And so that's kind of where you see those arguments and the emphasis in these kinds of campaigns going. So I think that If I were an environmental group or a pro-solar group, I would be heartened by this and think that you might have a chance to compete in some of these kinds of elections in the future. It's hard for me to do the mental overlay of who's banned solar and how Republican-leaning are they, but I think it's like a moral victory for them, even though that sounds kind of lame because they lost the actual vote.
Juravich: A moral victory, but they lost the vote. But so just in Richling County, a farmer, if he wanted to sell his land to someone who was gonna put solar panels on it, he couldn't do that? Correct. Or the person, or he could sell his land to whoever he wanted, but that person couldn't put solar panel on it. Is that what?
Tobias: Is that it? Yes.
Juravich: Okay, so this just bans a large scale solar farms in Richland County.
Tobias: Yeah, and you've you've just seen generally a policy environment here where these investors who are interested in doing industrial solar development have just they're kind of pulling out because they've had trouble at the state level getting through the Public Utilities Commission.
But they've really had trouble. At the local level, ever since lawmakers made it easier for county governments to reject these. And by the way, they also
Juravich: Well, they also lost incentives at the federal level. I mean, the federal government's not incentivizing solar farms at all, either.
Tobias: Yeah, and it's connected to like the county government opposition is like the PUCO considers whether there's community support for a project and they've been clearly instructed through the law to weigh, you know, like county government, opposition or even township government opposition. So it's Ohio's made it very difficult to build these projects.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking this week with Andrew Tobias from Signal Ohio, Susan Tebin from the Ohio Capital Journal, and Jesse Balmert from the Columbus Dispatch.
Susan, can you catch us up on what's happening with the court action involving the abortion pill? So the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stopped access to Mifoprestone. That's the drug used in medication abortions. But then the US Supreme Court put a pause. On that stop, which is confusing to say it like that, right? So the pills are still allowed because the Supreme Court paused the stop.
Tebben: They're allowed in person, you have to have in person appointments for that. This is mainly talking about mail order, talking about distribution for pharmacies via telehealth, that kind of thing. So, yeah, the Fifth District did that and then the Supreme Court, the parties in it requested for the U.S. Supreme Court to look at it and the Supreme court last week said that they would take a pause just so that they could.
Figure out these requests and figure out what they were doing in the next steps in the appeal. So it purportedly might be considered today. They might push it back again. We'll see. But yeah, this will be a big discussion on whether mephepristone has been a big talking.
John Hustad has been in Congress talking about that, being a part of whether or not mephipristone should be allowed to be distributed through telehealth, through or that kind of thing. So it's not surprising that the Supreme Court is looking at a case like this, so it will be interesting to see because this will be something that Ohio women's health clinics, reproductive health clinics will be talking about because this would change how they work because they've also had other financial, you know, barriers with the federal funding going out. So that was one of the ways that they were still helping to have services. So if they can't do that, then we have to look at what else can Ohio Clinic do to be able to care for these women and pregnant people.
Juravich: The U.S. Supreme Court ruling, like we're waiting on the Supreme Court to make a ruling, does it just involve Ohio or is this a nationwide thing?
Tebben: No, this is a case out of Louisiana, so this is the national thing.
Juravich: It's a national thing. And so basically, we're just waiting to see if the Supreme Court does something this week, Jesse? Yeah.
Balmert: Yeah, and this really just underscores, I think, when Ohio approved the abortion rights and reproductive rights measure in 2023, sometimes you think, okay, we handled that, this issue is over, but you see how these federal court decisions can still impact access to abortion medication, abortion pills in the state of Ohio, despite that statewide constitutional protection. And so there's just a lot of factors at play here.
Juravich: We're running out of time, but we have a few minutes left. Jesse, you wrote about Democrats have not made much headway in moving gun control legislation or measures related to the safe storage of firearms. You wrote about a case involving an 11-year-old girl who was shot and killed by her 14-year old cousin and the gun was unsecure. This isn't the only case. What did you find out about how often that happens and what are lawmakers trying to do?
Balmert: Yeah, so this is a bill from a Democratic lawmaker who would like to say if a kid gets a hold of your unsecured gun and either hurts or kills someone else that you would face additional penalties. It's a version of safe storage that Democrats have been pushing for a while.
And I think this lawmaker is just trying to find any sort of like way into this issue. The concern with unsecure guns is, you know, kids or people with mental health issues. It can lead to suicide, et cetera, can access these guns that are unsecured.
Most responsible gun owners already lock up their guns. This is a pretty common practice. And so is this a way into some sort of more gun safety that's not directly going after gun control in a more overt manner? But various prior iterations of this bill have not gone anywhere in the Ohio legislature. Groups like Buck A Firearms Association say that if someone is in this scenario, they're gonna face penalties anyway, which is the case with Amaya Frazier's uncle, who was the person who left the gun, allegedly left the unsecured.
Juravich: Okay, Andrew, we have about two minutes left. I just wanted to touch on the Ohio lawmakers have been away from the state house. They took a break leading up to the primary. So are they back this week? What's on the agenda?
Tobias: They are, and I haven't had a chance to look yet, but there's definitely some unfinished business. The thing that just like pops into my head being asked about this is the data center legislation that, so Mike DeWine overturned or he vetoed a attempt from a public and lawmakers to eliminate the tax exemption that data centers get for the expensive computer equipment that goes inside of them.
Huffman was trying really hard to overturned the veto before the primary election. I think you saw it become an issue in some elections, honestly. And so I think that given I think, you know, I think because the primary election showed that we likely have as competitive as an election environment as we're going to have here. I think there's just some evidence for that anyways.
You know, I expect them to pick that back up because I think voters will want to see the parties doing something about this. And you don't see either Democrats or Republicans being anti-data center, but there are things that around the edges I think they can do to at least show their voters that they're not just letting these tech interests run amok over the state. So that's something that comes to mind.
Juravich: Okay, now we have 30 seconds. So either Susan or Jesse, what are you covering this week? Anything else you want to add?
Balmert: There's a case coming up about the private school voucher system. That's on appeal on Tuesday. And so The lower level judge said that this was unconstitutional the way that Ohio was spending taxpayer money for private school Vouchers, but we'll see this has a date with the Ohio Supreme Court eventually So we're kind of in this intermediary step, but it could inform the discussion going forward
Juravich: Well, we're out of time. This is the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. I want to say thank you to Jesse Balmert from Columbus Dispatch. Thank you. Happy to be here. And Andrew Tobias from Signal Ohio, thanks for your time. Thank you And Susan Tebben from the Ohio Capital Journal. Thank you Thank you And this has been the Reporter roundtable on 897 NPR news. I'm Amy Juravich.