Longtime readers of The Rooster might remember the halcyon days of February 2026 when we embroiled Ohio State’s right-wing make-work center for intellectual midwits in international opprobrium.

Ohio State Salmon P. Chase Center Assistant Professor Luke Perez is still on paid administrative leave following his assault on local documentarian Michael Newman for the high crime of trying to ask Vice President E. Gordon Gee a question about student loan debt.

Somehow, the much more bizarre performance belonged to Perez’s boss, then-Chase Center Associate Director and Professor Christopher Green.

Green, who was maybe the only person who had a better view than mine to the assault on Newman, went on a minutes-long tirade showing the value of a Yale Law degree by claiming that he had been assaulted “multiple times” while obstructing the entrance of a public elevator.

On March 27, The Rooster broke the news about the Chase Center stripping Professor Green of his Associate Director’s title after he had brazenly lied to Ohio State Police about the events on that fateful February night in Smith Laboratory.

However, Lee Strang, the integralist Executive Director of the Chase Center, painted a much different picture to Emma Wozniak of The Columbus Dispatch on April 4.

Brackets mine:

Despite the backdrop of recent events, Strang suggested that Green’s resignation was unrelated to what transpired between Perez and Newman.

Strang said Green never planned to stay associate director permanently, but rather took on the administrative role last spring because the center needed a senior faculty member to help with leading the center in its early days. Green’s resignation reflects his desire to return to teaching, Strang said.

[…]

When directly asked whether the timing of Green’s self-demotion is related to the events on Feb. 9, Strang said “Chris agreed last spring to serve in an administrative role to assist with leadership during the Center’s launch.”

“It was always his intention to return to a faculty position as soon as possible,” he continued. “Professor Lavertu’s availability made that transition possible.”

It certainly was convenient for Strang that French pervert (repetitive, I know) Stephané Lavertu appeared on the horizon, months after the Chase Center’s public relations nightmare, to take the administrative reins from Green, who apparently wanted to go back to comparing the lack of conservative college professors to civil rights violations akin to all-white juries in the Jim Crow era.

But none of that is true, according to Green’s personnel file, obtained by Michael Newman and sent to The Rooster for publication.

You can view that entire redacted personnel here:

Green, Christopher Personnel File Redacted

2.95MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

But the proof of Strang’s lies appears in an April 29, 2025, letter to Green informing him of his new tenured professorship with a base salary of $205,000 and his appointment as the Chase Center’s Associate Director:

You’ll notice how there’s no mention of Green assuming the role on a temporary or interim basis.

Executive Director Strang showed his integrity by concocting the tall tale to satiate the press.

It’s almost as if Strang lacks the intellectual fortitude required to mold the next generation of leaders, which is why he’s working in a legislative-mandated make-work center for right-wing lightweights and not an actual political science department.

Unsurprisingly, the Chase Center is hiring a public relations specialist to create propaganda for the amazing work that’s happening under that roof.

Ohio State investigation: “Sufficient evidence” the nutty professor violated university policy against violent behavior

Folks, it’s not looking good for Ohio State Assistant Professor Luke Perez.

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It’s been over a week since the Franklin County Commissioners and City Council approved $50 million in public money for a new women’s professional training facility on the soon-to-be ashes of McCoy Park.

The Haslam Group and minority investors like Dr. Pete Edwards and Nationwide paid a record $205 million fee to the National Women’s Soccer League for the rights to its 18th franchise.

The Rooster didn’t break the story until March 23, which means the general public had less than a month to process the deal and organize any opposition. Meanwhile, the Columbus Partnership already had the corporate astroturf campaign ready to roll through its various subsidiaries and network of stooges.

While Mayor Suburbs admitted this week that he began negotiations last summer, and Franklin County Commission President John O’Grady said last week that his body began negotiations roughly “six months ago,” Council President Shannon Hardin told The Rooster on Thursday that he only learned about the deal in late February.

In my opinion, that disrespect should have tanked the deal immediately. But for better or worse, the desire to make a deal—even in a situation where counsel was intentionally dealt the worst hand possible—is ingrained upon him.

That much was evident after our 20-minute conversation, which you can view in full below.

We discussed calling the mayor “incompetent,” his belief that Southwest Columbus residents will land a better park than the plans promised to McCoy, his defense of public-private partnerships, and Columbus City Schools.

I’m proud of this conversation, even if it will undoubtedly disappoint some readers because it didn’t end with me shouting about hobgoblins and flipping Hardin’s desk over before being tased by a private security officer.

That, however, would have been a disservice to the readership at large. These are the types of conversations that interest me most. Especially since local TV stations don’t seem interested in replicating anything close outside of 15-second soundbites sandwiched between breathless reports of property crime.

It’s good for my business, but bad for our society.

Which is why I commend Hardin for having the courage to sit down and talk on camera with a controversial blogger loathed by many influential forces in Ohio politics. He earned enemies he probably doesn’t even know about by inviting me into his office and treating me as an equal.

That simple sign of respect is small thing to me, given the conflicts we’ve had in the not-so-distant past and the ones we’ll assuredly have in the future.

And sure, stuff like that should be the bare minimum for a political leader. But we would not be in this predicament of ours if it were a common trait among Democratic politicians, especially in Ohio.

Hardin realizes that if the Democratic Party is ever going to return to power, its representatives must meet the voters where they are and speak in their terms.

Hardin on why he called himself “fucking pissed,” while calling the mayor “incompetent”

Make no mistake, Hardin voted for the NWSL deal.

But he looks like Moses compared to Mayor Suburbs, who would have gleefully written a $25 million check to MAGA billionaire Jimmy Haslam in exchange for a six-figure donation to his aligned PAC for the upcoming campaign against Hardin.

But I have never seen Hardin as viscerally angry as when he blasted the business community and the mayor for negotiating the original deal in secret. It was about as close as he could have come to declaring for mayor without saying the words explicitly.

He’s right to say that people like to see him angry, even if it’s just me. I don’t understand why more Democratic politicians aren’t angrier, given the circumstances.

But reading between the lines, the current leaders of the Department of Development will be sent to a gulag in Pataskala if Hardin becomes mayor.

Hardin on plans to fix the broken promises to McCoy Park patrons and the disabled community

Hardin contended that his work on the deal means Southwest Columbus residents will land a better park than the one that the mayor had planned for McCoy. And if the administration’s working group doesn’t find a replacement property within 60 days, the deal is off.

Local residents are demanding a new green space in the same census tract as McCoy Park.

Though Hardin didn’t explicitly say so, I got the vibe that city officials have already located a potential property for the replacement park, though it’d have to be much more south than McCoy.

Hardin also said that the $3 million paid directly by Jimmy Haslam will be used to purchase the new property or redevelop the land. Hardin revealed he shook Haslam down for the money in a private conversation.

Still, it’s hard for me to be more than ambivalent. Hardin again looks like Mother Theresa compared to Mayor Suburbs, who would have just taken the park from the city’s poorest residents, knowing they couldn’t have done a damn thing to hurt him at the ballot box.

But it’s like Councilwoman Nancy Day-Achauer said two weeks ago: Even on an ideal timeline, replacing McCoy Park will take years. All the new promises will do nothing for the kids currently living in the neighborhood with the state's lowest life expectancy.

Why Hardin ultimately voted with the Haslam Group

My other big beef with the deal was climbing further into bed with Haslam, an accused fraudster who bought his way out of a federal investigation and someone who just screwed Cuyahoga County and Cleveland by moving the Browns’ new abominable stadium to Brook Park.

He’s not a trustworthy business partner. He’s a sociopath who will only do whatever is in his best interest at all times.

Again, Hardin returned to his work to improve the deal. Because at the end of the day, if bringing women’s professional soccer to Columbus is the goal, there’s only one billionaire with ties to Central Ohio who can materialize that goal.

Well, the only Ohio billionaire whom the FBI didn’t label as an unindicted co-conspirator to Jeffrey Epstein, anwyay.

Shannon goes to bat for public-private partnerships

Another big point of disagreement was the public-private partnership.

On one hand, I see why Hardin vouches for them. It’s the way things have been done in this city, and the Columbus Promise of sending public school students to Columbus State for a free associate’s degree is the type of legislation that’s unfortunately way too rare in the richest country in human history.

And the business community deserves kudos for answering that bell after Mayor Suburbs tried to whack the program as an F-U to Hardin.

But if Columbus is booming, as all our leaders say, the public sector could more than afford to pay for the Columbus Promise itself if these same business interests were properly taxed by federal, state, and even local governments.

And obviously, the federal and state governments are taking the majority of that blame. Which makes the Columbus Partnership's decision to throw a fundraiser for Vivek Ramaswamy even more infuriating.

It allows the Partnership to maintain influence at City Hall while starving the beast and making it rely solely on the types of philanthropy it deems fit. We will never fix our schools as long as the state continues to elect Republicans.

I’ll never apologize for pushing Hardin—or any Democrat—to push for a more equitable world outside the constraints of “the way things are.

Hardin refuses a chance to declare for mayor, while offering a peek into what his future campaign might sound like

That Hardin is running for mayor can’t even be qualified as “the worst-kept secret in Columbus politics” anymore.

He would be a better mayor than the current regime, no matter how much anyone wants to quibble with the degree. Just the threat of the campaign has cost Mayor Suburbs more time on the golf course than he would like; that much I can tell you.

In my opinion, he missed a major chance to differentiate himself from the mayor and the cynicism that has taken hold in federal, state and local politics.

But for all the righteous anger about the deal that Hardin defends, he also knows that it will dissipate. That, when the chips come down, the loss of McCoy Park won’t be a motivating factor for many voters in Nov. 2027.

Yet if he wants to change this city for the better—and I believe that he does—he will need to differentiate himself from the mayor by a lot more than a two percent ticket tax and more promises of an accessible park coming to Columbus in the oh-so-near future.

Chat, is it good if your Democratic candidate has to reaffirm their support of organized labor days before a winner-take-all election?

Upper Arlington mayor Ukeme Awakessian Jeter, a Democratic candidate in the Ohio House District 7, issued two statements in response to The Rooster’s Thursday dispatch that laid out her administration’s years-long union-busting campaign against the Teamsters.

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On Jan. 27, The Rooster blew the whistle on Upper Arlington’s Democratic mayor, Ukeme Awakessian Jeter, kicking off her Ohio House District 7 campaign with a nest of stone-cold Republican hobgoblins.

Awakessian Jeter’s Republican leanings go beyond accepting money from the likes of former governor John Kasich’s communications director in a bid for political promotion.

According to a treasure trove of public records obtained by The Rooster, Awekessian Jeter’s administration engaged in textbook Republican union-busting tactics when fleet workers and library employees attempted to join their city colleagues with Teamsters Local 284, which has represented other divisions of full- and part-time Upper Arlington employees since Jan. 1999.

The trouble started on Nov. 9, 2022, when Upper Arlington Public Library Executive Beth Hatch contracted Jonathan Downes of Zashin & Rich, Co., LPA. to represent management in negotiations against the Teamsters.

Downes is a notorious union-busting lawyer who once pitched then-Governor Kasich’s infamous SB-5 legislation as a “cost-saving measure” because it mandated public-sector employees to pay at least 15% of their healthcare costs.

Kasich and Downes’ dream of gutting public employees’ rights to collectively bargain would have become reality hadn’t Ohio’s hog voters rebelled at the ballot box in 2011.

What follows is a condensed timeline of events supported by the public records in the aforementioned dossier.

Feb. 20, 2025 — Teamsters Local 284 notified Upper Arlington that 100% of its fleet workers had signed union cards and requested voluntary recognition from the city.

• Yet somehow, on Feb. 28, Zashin & Rich sent a $400 invoice to Upper Arlington before a contract was even in place between the firm and the city.

March 11, 2025 — Assistant City Manager Jackie Thiel and Public Service Director Gary Wilfong met with fleet workers to hear concerns and discuss wages, certifications and evaluations. Thiel would later conspicuously admit that he hadn’t met with the group “in a few years.”

• That same day, City Attorney Darren Shulman contracted with Downes as special counsel against the Teamsters’ Petition for Amendment to include fleet workers in the municipal park bargaining unit.

March 12, 2025 — Upper Arlington representatives had another meeting with fleet workers, where they discussed pay structures and civil service protections while noting the city “has a better relationship with other unions.”

April 1, 2025 — Teamsters Local 284 asserted to the State Employee Relations Board (SERB) that Assistant City Manager Thiel and Public Service Director Wiltfong met with individual employees. We know this because employees recorded their conversations.

April 7, 2025 — Teamsters 284 filed an Unfair Labor Practice case against the city, alleging the city interfered with employees’ rights during the organizing campaign.

April 9, 2025 — Zashin & Rice LLP filed a notice of appearance with SERB to represent the city.

Nov. 13, 2025 — SERB determined that “probable cause” existed for the Teamsters’ unfair labor practice claim against Upper Arlington, and both parties were ordered into mediation.

Dec. 10, 2025 — Mayor Awakessien Jeter posted about taking coffee meetings from Starbucks, while Starbucks Workers United were on strike in Ohio over the lack of a bargained contract.

Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, SERB announces a mail-ballot election to be conducted between Feb. 17, 2026 and March 3, 2026.

Jan 27, 2026 — Mayor Jeter hosted her campaign kickoff as a Democratic candidate for Ohio House District 7. The host committee included City Councilman Todd Walther and former City Councilmen Brian Close and Jim Lynch—all three have a 100% Republican voting record as previously reported by The Rooster.

Feb. 3, 2026 — The City of Upper Arlington sent a postcard rife with union-busting language to fleet employees. The flyer listed Assistant City Manager Thiel and Public Service Director Wiltfong as contacts for questions:

Feb. 12, 2026 — Mayor Awakessian Jeter met with local labor leaders with respect to her candidacy in the Ohio House District 7, per multiple sources in the room. She did not discuss the ongoing labor strife with fleet or library workers, but noted she saw no problem with the city's conduct during the negotiations.

Feb. 13, 2026 — City Manager Steven Schoeny emailed the fleet workers, addressing their concerns about the union-busting postcard and letter. He reiterated the position that Assistant City Manager Thiel, Public Service Director Wilfong, City Attorney Shulman and himself were only trying to ensure the workers had “all the information needed” to make the appropriate decision about unionizing.

Feb. 13, 2026 — City Councilman Benjamin Tracy posted on Facebook in explicit support of the fleet workers organizing.

• Former City Councilwoman Michaela Burriss, herself a candidate in the Ohio House District 7 race, posted on Facebook in support of the fleet workers organizing and called out the city’s union-busting activities.

March 9, 2026 — Fleet workers voted unanimously to join the existing Teamsters Local 284 bargaining unit.

City Council met later in the day, where Assistant City Manager Thiel and City Attorney Shulaman discussed the unionization of the fleet workers.

You can watch that meeting in its entirety through the city’s website, but here are the pertinent details:

• 54m00s: Assistant City Manager Thiel complains that the Unfair Labor Practice notice filed by the Teamsters in April 2025 was the third in her tenure, claiming another one came after the Teamsters missed an arbitration deadline in 2021 and the other because they didn’t promote a union steward in 2023.

• 55m00s: Councilman John Kulewicz, a Democratic candidate for Ohio Attorney General, asked if there was an option for the city to voluntarily recognize the members into the union.

  • Shulman stated the city “should have recognized the members,” but cited the “community of interest disparity” between fleet workers and the existing unit.

• 58m40s: Councilman Benjamin Tracy asked if there was an “indication as to why fleet workers did not want to negotiate their own contract and insisted on joining the existing unit.” Shulman did not provide a specific answer.

• 85m20s: Mayor Awakessian Jeter asked about the impact of service quality to residents of Upper Arlington, mentioning leaf removal specifically.

  • Thiel stated it’s not in “anyone’s interest” to disrupt service, but that he didn’t know what the impact of unionization would be.

• 89m30s: Councilman Kulewicz scolded Thiel and Shulman for not disclosing the Unfair Labor Practice to the Council in a prompt fashion. He went on to say that if workers want to join an existing bargaining unit, the burden is on the city to make it work.

  • Schoeney objected to the second statement, stating that the city has an obligation to “look out for the operation of the city,” and blamed the disruption on the Teamsters—an accusation that didn’t sit well with Councilman Kulewicz.

• 101m00s: Shulman stated the city mandated SERB mediation training for management employees, but neither he nor Thiel attended the training.

April 3, 2026 — SERB will presumably certify the election results at its next meeting.

April 6, 2026 — Upper Arlington adopted a new policy prohibiting employees from recording meetings with management. The policy was addressed to all staff by City Manager Schoeny.

April 7, 2026: Mayor Awakessian Jeter appeared at an official Upper Arlington event wearing a campaign button.

You can view the Union Bustin’ Ukeme trove of public records here.

In the interest of fairness, The Rooster gave Awakessian Jeter the chance to defend her record after an Ohio House District 7 candidate forum at The Ohio State University on April 9—a month after fleet workers voted unanimously to join the Teamsters.

Minutes after touting her city council colleagues electing her as mayor for her leadership skills during the forum, she threw the city manager under the bus while claiming no wrongdoing on her part.

You can watch the entire exchange here:

Awakessian Jeter wants to have it both ways. She cannot tout her leadership in Upper Arlington while disavowing the actions of her subordinates who engaged in a years-long attempt to deny public workers their right to collectively bargain.

Especially when her colleagues, Councilmen Kulewicz and Tracy, diagnosed the problem the second they heard about it.

In my opinion, Awalessian Jeter’s lack of understanding about organized labor can be traced to her four years at Taft Law Firm, which has a long and storied history of union-busting. It’s a job she held through January 2025—three years after becoming Upper Arlington’s first Black and immigrant mayor and city council president.

In the era of Trump and when the Democratic Party is hemorrhaging working-class voters, the superminority Ohio Democratic House Caucus doesn’t need a state representative who lacks the understanding of a core party constituency like organized labor—no matter how impressive their personal story might be.

This is a safe Democratic seat, and should not be held by someone who needs remedial classes about what unionization means to working people.

The Ohio AFL-CIO and Teamsters have endorsed Michaela Harris in this race, but The Rooster also walked away impressed with Dr. Zach Rossfeld in his limited speaking time at The Ohio State University’s candidate forum.

There is only one wrong option in this race, and that’s Mayor Awakessian Jeter.

THOSE WMDs. Democrats should treat Chief Justice John Roberts as a criminal co-conspirator… Franklin County Commissioner Kevin Boyce abstains far more than his colleagues and won’t say why… Adopted and locked away: Kids promised “forever homes” instead confined in for-profit institutions… Black children were jailed for crimes that didn’t exist… An autopsy of MAGA Communism.

We’ve got a double-barreled feature today.

Columbus education correspondent Gretta Gallows delivers another missive, while yours truly unleashes a much-anticipated exclusive interview with Franklin County Auditor Michael Stinziano da Gawd and a new reason, as if one was needed, about why we’ll have to ship Mayor Suburbs …

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On April 11, The Rooster received a specific, albeit anonymous, tip about notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy potentially dealing with a bombshell scandal behind the scenes of his gubernatorial campaign:

The tip came days after the Ramaswamy campaign laundered opposition research about Dr. Amy Acton and her husband’s “domestic disturbance” in 2020 through Republican reporter Henry Gomez of NBC News.

It was conspicuous timing for a hit, given that, traditionally speaking, the more savvy move would have been to drop that so-called “bombshell” much closer to the November election, when more than Ohio’s political pervert class is tuned into the contest.

Though I have yet to see the photographs or video, The Rooster is ready to put cards on the table about the alleged Cincinnati-based girlfriend.

All discussion leads back to Alicia Lang, the daughter of influential State Senator George Lang (R-West Chester):

The Rooster spoke with more than 10 trusted Republican sources over the past two weeks, all of whom independently relayed Lang’s name.

Her background supports the possibility.

After successfully managing Sharon Kennedy’s campaign for the Ohio Supreme Court in 2020, Lang went to work for Ramaswamy as his Deputy Chief of Staff, a position she held through Dec. 2022.

In 2023, Lang moved to Strive Asset Management, the J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel-funded company that Ramaswamy co-founded and has since moved to Texas:

Though Lang’s LinkedIn profile states she began working as an Associate of Marketing and Communications for Strive in March 2022, the agenda for the State Financial Officers Foundation meeting in New Orleans listed her as an employee of Strive Enterprises “as of” Feb. 14, 2022.

She was the only Strive employee listed at the meeting, although Ramaswamy, the keynote speaker, was billed as the author of Woke Inc.

Lang was promoted to Strive’s Director of Marketing & Communications in Feb. 2023.

Multiple sources have told The Rooster that Lang surprised many in her close circle by announcing a move to Florida to work as the Chief of Staff for Jacksonville-based Caplin Ventures, a self-described “first-generation investment firm with the sole focus of building community-impactful, best-in-class companies” in March.

Coincidentally, Caplin Ventures founder, Ricky Caplin, shared a suite with Ramaswamy at the Jacksonville Jaguars’ 31-27 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 14, 2025:

On a personal level, Lang has a reputation as a hard partier, according to multiple Republican sources.

Any man who cuts a political advertisement of his child’s birth might be no family man at all…

There would be no good time for these kinds of rumors to surface during a gubernatorial campaign, but they appeared in March 2026, the same month that Ramaswamy released an ad touting the birth of his third child in February.

The rumors also coincide with a startling flip in Ramaswamy’s odds of becoming the next governor on Kalshi, the gambling platform that circumvents regulations by billing itself as a “prediction market,” much to the ire of Ramaswamy’s former gubernatorial primary opponent, Attorney General Dave Yost:

Dr. Acton officially overtook Ramaswamy on Kalshi at approximately 9 p.m. on March 15, and the odds have remained steady ever since.

And sure, the odds could be explained by Donald Trump, who foisted Ramaswamy’s campaign upon the Ohio Republican Party with his “Complete & Total Endorsement” in Feb. 2025, becoming increasingly unpopular in the state that voted for him in the past three presidential elections.

But the flip in the odds also aligns, almost perfectly, with when these allegations are said to have reached Ramaswamy’s inner circle.

Public data also shows that Ramaswamy’s private jet was parked in Indianapolis for over a week in late Feb. and early March, with no campaign activity at that time:

“This is obviously false, and you know it,” Ramaswamy’s chief strategist, Jai Chabria, said in a statement to The Rooster. Chabria refused a chance to explain his seemingly omnipotent ability to ascertain the location of Ramaswamy’s penis.

Lang did not respond to multiple requests for comment ahead of the publishing of this article.

And what of the rumored videos and photographs?

Read more

I attended the first half of Turning Point USA’s astroturf campaign stop with notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy on Tuesday night.

My friend, Jim Swift at The Bulwark, has a full recap if you need a couple of chuckles before leaving the office three hours early on this beautiful Friday.

I left after a loan shark gave a speech pretending that the federal government had caused the student loan debt crisis, and the daughter of pardoned tax cheats launched into a weird monologue whinging about ChatGPT being woke.

Ramaswamy billed the event as a “packed house,” but organizers cordoned off the entire upper deck at Mershon Arena.

And if you removed everyone over 40 and student volunteers who received a photo-op with Ramaswamy as payment, there probably would have been fewer than 100 souls in the arena.

The most interesting moment appears to have come when a Casey Putsch-supporting nationalist crashed out on Ramaswamy after organizers announced the end of the question-and-answer session, which also included a clown interpreting for a mime:

To the untrained eye, this might appear like a madman peddling in internet rumors about Ramwaswamy’s fidelity.

However, it’s in reference to a very specific, albeit anonymous tip that The Rooster received on April 11:

More than 7 trusted sources have independently reported the same name for this mysterious married woman from Cincinnati.

She’s the politically-connected daughter of a very influential Southwestern Republican. (No, not that one. Another one.)

I believe the pictures to be real. As did several high-ranking Republicans who spoke to The Rooster on condition of anonymity for obvious reasons. One Republican lobbyist said that “contingency plans” are being made, should those pictures surface after the May 5 primary but before the deadline when the Republican Party would be stuck with Ramaswamy on the ballot.

We plan to have some uncomfortable conversations this weekend with a select group of people as the (figurative) noose continues to tighten around Ramaswamy’s neck.

We expect some cards to hit the table within Monday’s dispatch.

The dwindling number of haters and losers will say it’s gossip and innuendo. Well, they can ask Madison Sheahan how that turned out for her regarding the damaging information that The Rooster originally reported in January.

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This week in Ohio Man…

I’m old enough to remember when Big Tech gremlins pitched the future of “Artificial Intelligence” as something that was going cure cancer and turn everyone into a genius.

Several years into their project, I’m only seeing it rape the environment, explode everybody’s utility bills, and be used by the sickest members of society to create fake pornography.

This week, an Ohio Man earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first person convicted of creating deep-fake AI porn.

From Bruna Horvath of nbcnews.com:

An Ohio man is the first person to be convicted under the Trump administration’s Take It Down Act, a federal law that criminalizes posting nonconsensual explicit imagery, including AI-made deepfakes.

The man, 37-year-old James Strahler II, used AI to create nonconsensual images and videos of both adult and minor victims, the department said in the release. He was arrested in June 2025 and pleaded guilty Tuesday to cyberstalking, producing obscene visuals of child sexual abuse material and publishing digital forgeries — the law’s term for deepfakes.

According to the release, Strahler used images of boys he knew in his community and morphed their faces onto the bodies of adults or other children to create material of them engaged in sex acts, specifically with their family members. Strahler posted over 700 images of people and animations online to a website dedicated to child sexual abuse.

Why is it that Ohio seems to be a breeding ground for criminal sexual deviants? It’s hard to say for sure, but it’s an active investigation here at The Rooster, and we’ll have more as it develops.

This week in The Rooster…

It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, including two 210-second sermons at City Hall and the County Courthouse about the theft of McCoy Park.

• Shannon Hardin’s first and perhaps last stand. If Council President Hardin would like to prove his reign would be different than Mayor Suburbs', he (had) an opportunity to show that on Monday night.

• The 5 craziest moments from Slapshot Carter’s crashout. Oh, that brother was starving.

• The crooks win again if you can believe that. In retrospect, McCoy Park never stood a chance.

• The Rooster’s April 2026 Mailbag. Answering the readership’s burning questions, despite their desire to see me further take my future electability by revealing more details about life in Marion, Ohio.

We’ll do it again next week at the same time and place.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. How the tech world evil-musk-bezos-thiel… Contemporary filmmakers on the creative process… The horrors that could lie ahead if vaccines vanish… What kills long-distance relationships (and how to avoid it)… North Korea as it is: The case for a cold peace… Who goes to see Vivek Ramaswamy at Ohio State?

Welcome to the April Mailbag! Questions from the Patriots Caucus never disappoint, but that’s almost doubly true this month.

Is the Music Man sweating for other reasons than his apparent steroid usage? Why shouldn’t you vote for Congresswoman Joyce Beatty? And will I further damage my electoral chances by revealing another vivid memory from a childhood condemned to Marion, the City of Kings? (Yes.)

If you enjoy The Rooster’s social media presence, on-the-ground videography or even the occasional free email—that’s all sustained by the brave and noble soldiers within the Patriots Caucus.

Our funding model means we answer to no AI-loving executive, corporate sponsors, or reclusive coastal benefactors.

We’d be honored if you considered this moment to join the ranks and help sustain the vehicle that delivers unparalleled psychic damage in Ohio’s corrupt political class by clicking the banner below:

As always with the mailbag, the questions are in bold with responses in standard text.

Some questions have been lightly edited for grammar, syntax and/or clarity.

Let’s get on with the show!

Another Marion Story, please.

I played football in eighth grade for the now-defunct Baker Middle School. We were not very good for reasons beyond our coach being a smallish man overmatched against the responsibilities of overseeing a football team of 14-year-old never-do-wells.

During one practice, he was trying to install a new handoff play. Assuming the running back position, he stressed—multiple times—that this was a mere walkthrough and there would be no hitting.

Our middle linebacker, a rather disturbed fellow named “Schmidty,” who would later become one of Marion’s most renowned copper thieves, didn’t process that message for reasons only known to him.

When our coach advanced up the middle of the offensive line, Schmiddty, in full helmet and pads, leveled him in a disrespectful manner that would have made ESPN’s “Jacked Up!” segment later in the week.

You can probably imagine how we reacted to seeing our tyrant baptized like that by a member of the proletariat.

The coach got to his feet, enraged and with blood flowing down his forehead. He undressed us as a gang of losers who were never going to amount to much in life.

In his rage, he went to kick the football he had fumbled like he was kicking a 60-yard field goal to win the Super Bowl.

He whiffed.

And if he had a gun, he probably would have killed us in that moment. Last I heard, he has since moved to California, where most people don’t remember that fateful fall day in 2000.

What’s going on with your public records lawsuit against Shayla Favor?

Favor sent some gremlin to the Court of Claims to cry about how “The Rooster” didn’t have standing to sue or something like that. I black out whenever I read more than two paragraphs of that 18th-century pervert language that lawyers pay $350K to learn at universities less prestigious than Twitter Law.

I’ve since turned the case over to my associate, the Public Records Raptor, who relishes a legal fight even more than I do.

Unless she changes course, she’ll be sued again in the near future. We remain confident in our case despite the Court of Claims not being renowned for its speed in litigating matters.

One of your recent Instagram Stories was a repost from a tattoo shop. You getting ink or are you supporting a friend?

Oh, that was me. I got “Hilltop” across my lower thigh, as an ode to Hilltop Husband. The Rooster would not exist, at least in its current state, without her not-so-invisible hand in my life.

Is the Music Man actually starting to sweat about getting reelected?

Well, it’s possible Congressman Max Miller (R-Bay Village) could be sweating due to apparent steroid usage, given his Barry Bonds-sized head in recent weeks.

But yes, if any Republican Congressional candidate is going to lose in November, the Music Man would be at the top of that list.

Curiously, Miller’s PAC is wading into the Democratic primary, trying to boost former Cuyahoga County executive Ed FitzGerald by running false-flag negative attack ads against him:

Regardless of opponent, Miller is a uniquely unlikable loser with no natural constituency in the district. The base of their party reviles him, and a sizable amount of voters won’t turn out anyway if Donald Trump isn’t at the top of the ticket.

But don’t weep too hard for Music Man. He hates life in Congress, is currently being called a deadbeat father by his ex-wife, and is said to be leaving office after his next term, even if he wins.

Where is the best park bench in Columbus, and what qualities make it the best?

My favorite bench(es) are the ones next to the Umbrella Girl statue in Schiller Park. It’s always quiet and shaded.

The lack of bike racks or one public drinking fountain has always bothered me about Schiller on a meta level, though.

If you had to live in a Cbus suburb like our beautiful mayor, which would be your last choice and why?

New Albany. The white picket fences and slave plantation vibes have never sat well with me, even before I learned how much that city is forever tied to Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein.

When I’m governor, all I can say is that my solution will involve the National Guard and a dome.

In the OH-07 Democratic primary, I got a mailing from candidate Brian Poindexter telling billionaires to "shove it." These mailings are paid for by some out-of-state PAC.

Also, he has long supported Jimmy Haslam's crooked deal to move the Browns out of downtown Cleveland. This includes a vote YESTERDAY, per the Plain Dealer. My question is: What the fuck?

Mr. Poindexter’s position can be explained by his being an ironworker.

Don’t forget that David Wondolowski, the obviously corrupt fool who leads the Cleveland Building Trades & Construction Council, betrayed Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne by endorsing the move to Brook Park.

The trades will make a nice chunk of change by building the new Cybertruck football stadium in the suburban wasteland of Brook Park.

As for the out-of-state PAC, that’s most likely explained by Poindexter being the Democratic Congressional Committee's preferred candidate. But I have heard rumblings that the DCC is worried he won’t get across the finish line in a seven-way primary.

Does Joyce Beatty have any tangible legislative accomplishments that would justify her re-election? Really want to vote for her opponent here.

As a resident of Columbus, I am gerrymandered into a district that includes Miami County in Western Ohio.

I can’t vote against Beatty. But if I lived in OH-3, I would be voting for her opponent, Joe Gerard.

Beatty isn’t a serious legislator by any metric of the phrase and largely uses the position to fulfill her dream of being a socialite. And now, she’s reached the point where she can’t imagine life without a staff or a title.

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You can submit your questions anonymously through Jotform.

Political questions are always welcome, but feel free to ask about anything else. An eclectic mix representing The Rooster’s unique readership is always what makes the mailbag fun to write (and hopefully read).

In a little over three weeks, Columbus and Franklin County’s Democratic leadership gifted MAGA billionaire Jimmy Haslam a combined $50 million in public subsidies for an NWSL expansion franchise announced hours after the vote.

The Haslam Sports Group and other minority investors paid $205 million for the rights, the largest fee ever obtained by the women’s soccer league.

McCoy Park, the only public green space in Columbus’ poorest neighborhood, won’t last much longer.

It only seems like a whirlwind effort to the untrained eye. In reality, the Haslam Group began negotiating with Mayor Suburbs and the Franklin County Commissioners roughly six months ago.

The original plan, as pitched by the Haslams, was for a $50 million straight payment.

The Franklin County Commission rebuffed that plan, with Commission President John O’Grady telling The Rooster he considered it a “bad deal.”

What changed?

According to one source, Haslam’s wife, the so-called “Sweet Dee” Haslam, called O’Grady asking what she could do to change her mind. O’Grady apparently told her that he had “$25 million reasons to say no.”

The deal in place looks a lot different than the initial offer.

From Jordan Laird of dispatch.com:

The county's deal requires the team to stay in the county for 25 years or money will be clawed back. The county will take out $25 million in bonds and pay back the debt with fees and other revenue, not county taxes. The ownership group has committed to donating $12 million back into the county over a 12-year period focused on early childhood education, workforce development and food insecurity.

The scholarship on giving public subsidies for billionaire sports teams is clear: It’s a terrible idea. (There are three links there, by the way.)

But our hog politicians love the inflated prestige of bringing non-major professional sports teams to our humble attempt at a city, even if it means pretending that Haslam is a good-faith partner filled with civic pride and not a blood-soaked mercenary for sale to the highest bidder.

And while the commission at least shook the Haslams down for $12 million, it’s hard to celebrate putting $25 million (plus interest) on the county’s credit card even if it will be paid back through “fees and other revenue and not county taxes,” as if that money couldn’t be spent on early childhood education, workforce development, and food insecurity instead.

But once again, the commissioners showed why they have one of the sweetest rackets going in Ohio Democratic politics. Three of them oversee 1.5 million people, and they never, ever catch any of the social justice heat that their city hall counterparts do.

The Council Meeting was stacked on Monday night for the vote. I had to submit a speaker slip at 12:50 a.m. to ensure I’d be able to speak because of Council’s draconian policy of only allowing a maximum of three naysayers to speak on any given issue.

Less than 24 hours later, the commissioners had only had to listen to one naysayer in front of a crowd that was largely bureaucrats with business in front of the legislative body.

Seven minutes of Hell! Famous actor Brad Pitt addresses City Council & County Commissioners over the shambolic NWSL to Columbus votes

Noticeably, Commissioner Kevin Boyce abstained from the NWSL vote, which passed the commission 2-0.

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Ted “Slapshot” Carter was the third or fourth selection in the search to replace former president Kristina Johnson at Ohio State.

Leading public universities—even ones ostensibly as prestigious as Ohio State—in Republican-dominated states isn’t as prestigious a job as it used to be.

The lack of public funding and increasingly bizarre legislation aimed at …

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City Council will vote on the corporate astroturfed #NWLtoColumbus plan tonight.

The legislation, which calls for a $25 million upfront payment to billionaire Jimmy Haslam and the removal of the only green space in Columbus’ poorest neighborhood, appears on the agenda in the same form as last week’s reading.

The former is a sad, albeit standard, scam in American politics that the billionaire class has propagated upon American cities and states for the last 30 years.

The latter is especially galling given that Columbus would reneg on a long-awaited transformation of McCoy Park into the only accessible outdoor park for disabled residents, not only in Franklinton, but the city as a whole.

From the Franklinton Area Neighbors Civic Association:

As one West Side reader told The Rooster over the weekend, McCoy Park was set to be the only park in the city where her husband, a disabled veteran, could play with their children.

That’s all set to go away, because the Haslam Sports Group, in their quest for haste, wants the only public land in the vicinity of downtown that they won’t have to remediate, as evidenced by this EPA map of area brownfields and hazardous wastes:

Mayor Suburbs is already in the tank for the deal he negotiated in private months ago, with details made public only at the full City Council’s “economic impact” meeting two weeks ago.

From abc6onyourside.com (brackets mine):

“Mayor Ginther has identified an opportunity to create $118 million in new tax revenue, create hundreds of jobs, bring global attention to our city, and show Columbus girls and women that their city believes and invests in them.

He is also committed to working with the neighbors of the South Side to provide them with the recreation opportunities they desire and deserve.

As the Mayor said on [April 9], no one will be left behind in the opportunity this team will create. And that starts with our neighbors on the South Side.

These simple sentences exemplify why I’ll see our mayor in the deepest pits of Hell.

“Creating $118 million in new tax revenue” is a fabricated figure intended to justify the deal and to hide the $25 million upfront payment to the Haslam Group that the city is putting on its credit card.

There will be no repercussions or even any evidence provided to the public, as the Haslam Sports Group fails to produce anywhere near the $118 million that Mayor Suburbs specifically avoided providing a timeline for.

But again, this is where, at times, it’s easier to deal with the antics of the Republican Party. They rob from the poor and give to the rich. Why? Because fuck you.

Mayor Suburbs is doing exactly what the Republican State Legislature did this year, but since he’s an alleged Democrat, he’s obligated to peddle a bunch of woke bullshit about being “committed to working with the neighbors” he’s robbing while also claiming “no one will be left behind” in a deal that’s more corporate welfare in exchange for an expansion of a soccer franchise.

Just because he says those words doesn’t make them true! But he (or his team of paid gremlins) knows they have to at least peddle the illusion of sympathy for the plight of the poor people that they’re about to screw over for “global attention” to Columbus.

Much like the Republican Party, we expect this from Mayor Suburbs. Selling out common residents for corporate interests is how someone as unaffable and mean-spirited as him climbed the ladder of the city’s machine politics to his current position.

The bigger question, however, will be whether Council President Shannon Hardin wants to follow the mayor down that path a little over a year before he’ll campaign as a better alternative.

While the agenda item remains unchanged since last week, it’s at least possible that an amendment could be added that would radically alter the terms of the deal.

The Haslam Group, to put it bluntly, is pregnant.

Jimmy Haslam has most likely felt stirrings in his pants over the idea of a new asset with which he can further inflate his net worth; that the asset would come at the expense of poor people probably makes it as close as he’s come to an erection in 20 years.

Council could take a lesson from Brook Park, which is now demanding $24.8 million from the Browns to pay upfront infrastructure costs for their new cybertruck stadium.

Council could demand a similar payment from the Haslam Sports Group. It could tell them that McCoy Park isn’t for sale. It could just vote down the entire deal as it stands.

Councilmembers Melissa Green and Nancy Day-Achauer will do their part and vote no.

Nick Bankston is in the tank, as he’s clearly been tasked with shepherding the Haslam-approved message through council.

The rest of the members, other than President Hardin, have remained silent for the past two weeks, preferring instead to discuss their thoughts in private, where this deal has been primarily negotiated since January.

No half-measure will be acceptable in my eyes, because as Day-Achauer pointed out last week, finding a new park in South Franklinton would take years to develop, even if there were an ideal alternative site available, which there isn’t.

If Hardin can’t differentiate himself on this issue from Suburbs and a serial fraudster like Haslam, then why should anyone trust him to govern differently than Suburbs if he’s elected mayor in 2027?

By voting for this deal, he would show that he serves the same interests as Mayor Suburbs.

Perhaps Hardin feels that he can make this deal, given that, in electoral terms, next year’s primary is roughly 500 years away. He wouldn’t be wrong, especially given the minuscule number of voters who know the grisly details of this deal ahead of tonight’s pivotal vote.

Hardin is well aware of the power that the Columbus Partnership wields in our local politics—especially in the post-Citizens United era, when the CEO class can funnel millions of unaccountable dark money dollars into a mayoral election if they want.

Unseating an incumbent mayor—even one as flawed as Suburbs—is no easy task, even without that corporate money flowing into various PACs.

But if Hardin goes down this road, he will show that he, like a lot of politicians before him, see their electorate as a lump of mass that can be manipulated for their personal gain.

How can he campaign on changing the city for the better if he’s not willing to say “No” to a MAGA superdonor like Haslam?

He can’t play both sides on this issue. Either he’s going to protect vulnerable residents and the revamped park that the council promised them, or he’s going to bankrupt his future campaign before he’s even officially launched it.

I’d love to be wrong about my suspicion about tonight’s vote. It would delight me to know that City Hall is reading this morning’s dispatch and chuckling to themselves.

But I have seen how politics works in this city. I’ve seen the interests that have backed this astroturfed campaign while calling it “equity.”

Those same interests are hosting a fundraiser for Vivek Ramaswamy in Columbus on Thursday because they know that a little public outcry about poor people being screwed over pales in comparison to their plans.

Casey Putsch lacks the honesty to discuss his political views in public

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The Rooster has been pounding the drum on the Columbus Partnership’s upcoming fundraiser—orchestrated by Wexner World lobbyist Bill Byers—for the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Ramaswamy’s campaign touts “lower costs and bigger paychecks” despite him being an admittedly high-class prostitute for the various capitalist interests that have looted Ohio and America for the past 45 years.

In Ramaswamy’s defense, Ohio’s hog voters—that is, primarily the rural stooges that think they’re somehow owning the city slickers and their tall buildings by voting Republican—have shown over the last 20 years that they can’t get enough of the slop.

But what Ramaswamy means is lower costs and bigger paychecks for Central Ohio’s Epstein class, which funds his campaign alongside school privatization magnate Carl Yass, who just deposited his second $10 million check into Ramaswamy’s campaign despite residing in Pennsylvania.

But the fundraiser will also feature lesser-known, albeit still cloying, peverts desperate to attach themselves to an ostensibly surefire political campaign that’s for sale to the highest bidder.

Listed on the invite as a co-sponsor is Howard Lee Mosbacker, the self-described co-founder and CEO of “Cyrannus,” a New Albany-based startup attempting to “reinvent the venture ecosystem.”

A former Cyrannus employee is currently suing Mosbacker in the Franklin County Court of Pleas for serial sexual harassment, sextortion, and tax evasion.

Case 26 CV 001029:

• Mosbacker misclassified his Chief of Staff, with an annualized salary of $120,000, as an independent contractor to avoid payroll taxes and healthcare benefits.

• He paid her through “a combination of wires, Venmo payments, cash and payments from both personal and business accounts, frequently leaving her significantly behind on wages owed.”

• Mosbacker “repeatedly injected sexualized comments, personal advances and boundary-crossing communications into the same channels used to assign work..”

• Mosbacker “routinely placed Paintiff in sexual environments tied to work, including adult-themed entertainment venues, intimate spa and massage appointments, strip clubs, and late-night social settings during business and travel conferences.”

• He “made demeaning and sexualized comments about plaintiff’s appearance, expressed jealousy and personal control over her dating life, and requested personal or sexualized images.”

• In Sept. 2025, at the New Albany Country Club, Mosbacker told her that she had “two options” for her future: “(a) enter a romantic relationship with him or (b) accept a formal employment contract.”

• Mosbacker pressured the plaintiff “to choose the romantic relationship, promised personal financial support and a future together, and discussed leaving his wife.”

Coincidentally enough, Vanessa Mosbacker is listed alongside her husband on the flyer for the Ramaswamy fundraiser.

And sure, these are allegations from one woman that have yet to be fully litigated in court, even if Mosbacker will most likely cut a check to make these problems go away.

However, this news doesn’t appear to have surprised those familiar with Mosbacker’s antics going back years.

Mosbacker is a “world-class piece of shit,” said a tipster.

“He also fucked over a Black female entrepreneur who won a contest at Ohio Wesleyan. The university paid to avoid backlash. Lee refused to take accountability.”

He’s a “bigger turd than most realize,” said one trusted source.

“I met him a couple of times through a mutual friend. He’s rich from patents for tech (lasers, I think) but an absolute scumbag.”

The source claimed to have ended the association with Mosbacker when he started posting “racist and misogynistic crap” on Facebook and LinkedIn.

According to public records, Howard and his wife have donated a total of $38,484.22 to Ramaswamy’s campaign since April 2025—apparently with more on the way next week.

But this is another example of Ramaswamy’s team willing to take money from anyone, even abortion doctors once targeted by insane Christian fundamentalists.

That Mosbacker would find himself in the orbit of the Columbus Partnership and Bill Byers isn’t a surprise, either. These guys are smart enough to read the political tea leaves, even in Ohio.

Donald Trump gets more unpopular every day, a trend that probably won’t be reversed between now and November. The Ohio Republican Party hitched itself to a bizarre, out-of-touch snake oil huckster in subservience to that increasingly unpopular war criminal.

Thankfully for the Epstein class, campaign finance laws have never made it easier for them to exert outsized influence on our elections. Couple that with a dilapidated and docile ownership class among the state’s once-thriving media apparatus, and you start to understand how we arrived in our current predicament. At least a little bit.

If you know anything about Mosbacker’s misdeeds, please submit that information anonymously through the Dirtbox.

We do things differently here at The Rooster. We are a 100% reader-supported publication, meaning that corporate sponsors or leathery benefactors don’t dictate our coverage.

The political class hates us because they can’t go crying to an octogenarian boss about our “unfair” coverage, because we take pride in knowing how to hit these perverts where it hurts.

This week in Ohio Man…

As I have written before, I’m from a little place called Marion, the City of Kings, where street monikers and nom de plumes are commonplace. It’s much easier to remember a guy named “Fuzzy Slippers” than the 100th “Steve” you’ve met on your travels in the cosmic game of life.

But if you’re a criminal of any persuasion, you would probably be wise to choose a more humble sobriquet than “King Dinero,” as one Cleveland man found out the hard way this week.

From Nikki Gasiewiski of cleveland19.com:

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Darren Lassiter of Cleveland, also referred to as “King Dinero,” was sentenced to life in prison Thursday morning.

Lassiter, previously featured on Cuyahoga’s Most Wanted was found guilty of 13 charges last month, including trafficking, rape and prostitution.

In a press release provided by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, Lassiter is described as having “targeted and controlled four victims through physical and sexual violence.”

Kudos to Dusty Dave Yost for the conviction, but it would be nice to have an Attorney General also concerned with “targeted and controlled … physical and sexual violence” as it pertains to Central Ohio’s Epstein class.

Alas!

This week in The Rooster…

It was another week of brisk business for Rooster Worldwide LLC in the quest to deliver the kind of news you won’t read anywhere else in the polluted backwater outpost that we are unfortunate enough to call home.

• They’ll shove you into the wood chipper in the pursuit of power. An influential Republican called DraftKings “the most powerful entity in state politics at the moment.” It’s hard to disagree.

• What public-private partnership looks like in Columbus. It’s no partnership at all, but rather the private sector suborning local government to its interests.

• When is it not about capitalism at the Statehouse? State Reps. Tex Fischer and Adam Bird offer dueling views on high school NIL. Plus another dynamite dispatch from education correspondant Gretta Gallows.

• Bill Byers: The Statehouse lobbyist that binds Central Ohio’s Epstein class. Byers is the powerful common thread from Republican billionaires like Jimmy Haslam and Leslie Wexner to Columbus Democratic leaders like Mayor Suburbs and City Attorney Zach Klein.

We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. The moral calculations of a billionaire… Four months as a private prison guard… When trauma becomes trope… Blowing in the wind: How Nordic companies made electricity free… Anger and heartbreak on Denver’s Bus No. 15.

The Columbus Partnership will host a multimillion-dollar fundraiser for notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy next week at the Junto Hotel.

It’s a who’s who of Ohi…

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I remember arguing online with some of the Ohio State football fandom’s most beautiful minds about paying players in 2011.

I didn’t see the problem, considering I attended Ohio State in the era of Terrelle Pryor, the phenom quarterback that flaunted exorbitant wealth like mismatching designer clothing, two BlackBerries, and a rotating cast of rental cars…

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Columbus City Council hosted one of the spiciest meetings in recent memory on Monday night.

To the casual observer, it might have looked like two council members willing to express concerns about bad public…

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All cards on that subject will be placed on the table at 4:33 a.m. on Wednesday.

There’s no intern to blame, as this one’s on me for choosing to spend a relaxing weekend in a city that, unfortunately, is also k…

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The Main Bar was one of my favorite watering holes during my—in retrospect—terminal alcoholism years.

The downtown institution was founded in 1890 as the Hare and Corbin Saloon and was one of the last egalitarian institutions in downtown Columbus.

You could be sitting between a drunken state representative—shoutout to former State Rep. Mike “Liquor” Loychik—and some down-and-out who just used his last $2.75 on a Bud Light bottle to contemplate the next move in the cosmic game of life.

Everyone was treated the same.

However, that went away in February 2021 when a local real estate gremlin named Scott Schiff bulldozed the establishment for a surface area parking lot, years after trying to eject the institution from the building he owned.

In the haze of 15 Double Tito-N-Sodas, undoubtedly served stiff by one of my favorite Columbus bartenders, Pretty Mary, I must have conflated Michael Schiff with his brother Scott, the personal injury lawyer I routinely saw on TV and billboard advertisements.

Or so I thought this morning, when his brother, Michael Schiff, had been arrested on felony drug charges.

In this game, you have to know how to hate. You have to bide your time against richer, older, and more powerful enemies until that fateful day they tumble from grace like the fellow degenerate you always suspected them to be.

Unfortunately for me, my source also conflated Michael with his brother Scott by including a picture of Scott at his day job for comparison. You have to admit, they look alike! It’s almost like they share the same gene pool.

Thank you to the BlueSky user who corrected me. Eating shit on issuing corrections sucks. It’s embarrassing. But it’s what separates The Rooster from the many propagandists that populate social media in place of the institutional power that the legacy press used to hold in America.

For example, minutes ago, you might have received a Rooster dispatch that claimed I conflated the wrong Schiff brother with bulldozing Main Bar.

Actually, I had it right! (Thanks to the Dirt Box submission.) Personal injury lawyer (and his adult large son) Scott Schiff also have a real estate arm and actually own more real estate than his brother, Michael Schiff.

Michael Schiff’s Schiff Capital profile looked like this as of 10:34 a.m. Friday morning:

Apologies to Scott Schiff and his large adult son. You two are hereby re-sentenced to the one-sided blood feud that I have carried for the past six years.

Far be it from me to spike the football on an old man with substance abuse issues, but it’s my hope that the Schiff family will have to sell the old Main Bar property to a developer to finance Michael Schiff’s legal defense.

Downtown Columbus needs mixed-use density–not another surface storage lot for personalized motor vehicles.

In other news, I’m obviously exhausted and need a break, as I don’t even feel like firing the intern ultimately responsible for the now compounded gaffe.

If you catch me walking naked into the Scioto River later this afternoon, don’t intervene. I’m right where I want to be.

This week in Ohio Man…

J.D. Vance is a lifelong bootlicker who once sold his own mother’s addiction down the river to obtain personal clout.

In many ways, he could be more dangerous than Trump. But in January 2025, Vance’s circle was of the belief that he was a shoo-in to be the next president as the MAGA heir apparent.

The world looks a lot different in April 2026. Recently, President Business Deals exiled Vice President Boss Baby to Hungary in support of the fascist Viktor Orbán while Trump and Little Marco Rubio plotted a genocide in Iran.

Thankfully, Trump humiliated himself (and America) with a “ceasefire” that empowered and will also somehow enrich Iran on the world stage.

Vance, who was originally sent to voicemail twice by Trump when trying to impress Hungarian rallygoers, will never have “The Juice,” as evidenced by the betting markets trimming Orbán’s chances after the Vance rally that was supposed to have the opposite effect.

From Kate Plummer of newsweek.com:

The likelihood of Viktor Orbán winning Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary election has dropped since U.S. Vice President JD Vance made a speech endorsing him, according to the latest betting odds.

Speaking at a press conference in Hungary‘s capital, Budapest, on Wednesday, Vance said he would help the incumbent prime minister in his election campaign and praised Orbán ahead of the April 12 poll.

Since then, betting markets show Orbán’s stock has fallen marginally, though there is no suggestion that his declining fortunes have been caused by Vance’s intervention.

This is the example of the Republican Party’s problem when Trump is no longer around to be kingmaker, which, knowing the consequence-free life he has led, will probably be in 2035 when he dies of natural causes while surrounded by the sons he loathes and the daughter he always wished he could fuck.

Vance does not have The Juice. Little Marco does not have The Juice. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis definitely doesn’t have the juice.

And Trump’s most admirable quality is how he will throw any sycophant in the dumpster at the earliest opportunity, no matter how much they debased themselves in their servitude to a career white-collar criminal.

There is no bigger sycophant than Vance! And I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump let him drift in the wind and endorsed Marco in 2028 as a way to send the party into chaos and prove, once again, that they are nothing without his hog DNA.

But that last part is mere speculation from a blogger at this time.

This week in The Rooster…

It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, with the type of coverage that makes us a unique voice in Ohio politics.

• Dr. Amy Acton’s two biggest pulled punches, explained. Why Acton won’t be bludgeoning the Republicans on data centers and Leslie Wexner any time soon.

• Why I’m voting to send a college professor to Congress. Thanks to Republican gerrymandering, I share a Congressional district with Miami County. If you also live in the 15th District, I hope you’ll join me in voting for Don Leonard in the Democratic Primary on May 5 (with early voting open now).

• Columbus corporate consent manufacturing machine goes ‘brrr’ for #NWSLtoColumbus. If the economic impact of bringing a women’s professional soccer team to Columbus will be such a boon for Central Ohio, why does the Columbus Partnership need an astroturf campaign to mimic legitimate public support?

• The Columbus Partnership bows down to the notorious conman. Days after The Rooster detailed how the Columbus Partnership operates as a Republican cartel over local politics, key players are set to host a fundraiser for notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy at The Junto Hotel later this month.

We’d be honored if you considered a subscription to sustain the project that’s put unparalleled psychic damage on Ohio’s corrupt political class.

We’ll do it at the same time and place next week, starting with a hot one in your inbox at 4:33 a.m. on Monday.

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. The open-air prison for ISIS supporters—and victims… How Trump took America to war in Iran… Deciding when life is no longer worth living… My fight to renounce my Russian citizenship… The ghost of Pickering Trail.

Yesterday, The Rooster detailed how Columbus’ “benign conspiracy” of “civic-minded CEOs” (read: Republican shadow government) were all stroking each other off over #NWSLtoColumbus while propagating the notion of grassroots support.

The plan calls for $50 million in public money to the Haslam Group, led by crooked billionaire (repetitive, I know) Jimmy Haslam, while also allowing him to destroy the only public green space in the city’s poorest neighborhood with the shortest life expectancy in the state.

Hours later, The Rooster obtained a fundraiser flyer for notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy for an event at the Junto Hotel in the Bottoms “Scioto Peninsula.”

The host committee is a who’s who of disgustingly rich Republicans who have an outsized say on Democratic public policy in Columbus. Many of whom are directly involved in pushing the plan for a $50 million payout, including Haslam, who, along with his wife, the so-called “Sweet Dee,” is also on the list.

• Jason Hall, the CEO of the Columbus Partnership.

• Matt Scantland, the CEO of CoverMyMeds, the company that got a $77 million “tax incentive” from City Hall, only to lay off half his company while raking in record profits with zero clawbacks of the money despite his failure to produce any of the numbers that allegedly justified the tax cut.

  • His brother, Pete Scantland, serves on the Columbus Partnership Board of Advisors as CEO of Orange Barrel Media.

• “Cocaine James” Hagedorn, CEO of Scott’s Miracle-Gro, the corporate sponsor of New Crew Stadium.

• Kirt Walker, CEO of Nationwide, which stands to profit on the NWSL deal as well. He sits on the Executive Committee of the Columbus Partnership.

• Kara Trott, the self-described “visionary founder” of Quantum Health. She also serves on the Ohio State Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee of the Columbus Partnership. Here she is talking about the “girls in the stands” becoming the “women who lead,” maybe of the political party that’s actively trying to disenfranchise married women before the next election?

• Steve Steinour, Chairman, President & CEO of Huntington Bancshares Incorporated and Columbus Partnership co-chairman.

• Jeff Edwards, a downtown real estate pervert and member of the Columbus Partnership Executive Committee.

• Paul Judge, CEO of Axium Packaging and member of the Columbus Partnership Executive Committee.

• Jason Hollar, CEO of Cardinal Health and member of the Columbus Partnership Executive Committee.

A well-connected source estimated this group, which also includes hilarious cameos from Coingate figure and the Scottenstein’s pint-sized failson, Brian “Da Schott” Schottenstein, will net north of $2 million for the conman’s campaign.

But this is the problem with letting CEOs dictate public policy. They only care about making money and maintaining their power and influence at the expense of everyone else.

If they thought Dr. Amy Acton had a chance, they would probably be rolling out the red carpet for her and then trying to convince her to run the exact type of campaign that she’s already running. They either feed into the worst elements of the GOP, or they shower favored Democrats (like Mayor Suburbs) with cash in order to keep the left wing of the party in check.

Columbus will never reach its potential under a Republican-dominated Statehouse.

That the Columbus Partnership is trying to gaslight us into believing there’s widespread popular support for a plan that includes another eight-figure public payout to a MAGA billionaire while also stealing a public park from poor people is obscene.

City Hall politicians are apparently used to the abuse, in perhaps a textbook example of Stockholm Syndrome. But Haslam and the Partnership feting a Republican charlatan—who is campaigning on abolishing the income tax in a year where hog voters could abolish property taxes via constitutional amendment—is an affront to every Democratic voter in this city.

The Partnership operates this way because it knows the legacy press has no interest in covering fundraisers of this nature. You have a better chance of seeing Jesus resurrected on local TV than you do of seeing any in-depth reporting from our corporate-owned stations.

And worse yet? City Hall Democrats will stay silent. The County Commissioners will join them. As will Chairmain Mike “Big Sexy” Sexton and the Franklinton County Democratic Party’s leadership.

At least in public!

Because every single one of them owes their power to this group of “civic-minded CEOs.” They’ll let these guys raise millions of dollars for the party that actively defunds Columbus and Franklin County, and then turn around and demand $50 million for the Haslam Group and call it “equity for women.”

And then Democratic leaders will act concerned about “the residents being left behind,” as if it’s some cosmic mystery that can’t be solved by another “tax incentive” or “public-private partnership.”

It gets to a point.

Would you like to buy Jay Schottenstein’s bizarre collection of rich guy things?

As The Rooster exclusively reported on Nov. 25, Vivek Ramaswamy agreed to a $15 million deal for American Eagle CEO Jay Schottenstein’s Bexley manse that sits steps from the governor’s mansion.

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Back in 2019, the illustrious Sam Allard, then of the alt-weekly Cleveland Scene, wrote about a 30-year-old article that foretold the political problems that plague the city through today.

It described how “a benign conspiracy of CEOs” tapped George Voinovich, who would prove to be one of the most corrupt politicians in Ohio history, to lead their political response against the populist mayoralship of Dennis “The Menace” Kucinich.

The article, titled “How Business Bosses Saved a Sick City,” by Myron Magnet, was later anthologized in Cleveland: A Metropolitan Reader, edited by Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz and David C. Perry. The contents of the article resonate years later. Residents have watched as cooperation among the city’s business and political leaders has proven extraordinary beneficial, time and again, to the businesses doing the cooperating. Meanwhile, the city itself — I’m referring here to the physical area and the people who live within it — is still bedeviled by the ills that made Cleveland “a microcosm, almost a caricature” of industrial America’s woes during the middle 20th century.

Here’s the key paragraph:

“E. Mandell de Windt, the now retired CEO of Eaton Corp. and unofficial dean of Cleveland businessmen, organized the troops and devised a strategy, setting in motion a benign conspiracy of executives and entrepreneurs that still operates. The impressive feat of organizing that cabal and persuading Cleveland’s most senior businessmen to take charge of the grittiest aspects of civic life was the real key to the town’s turnaround. Cleveland bosses are arguably more public spirited than most, but they had hitherto focused that spirit on their especially successful United Way or their superb art museum or the world-famous Cleveland Orchestra, not on bread-and-butter civic matters.

By the start of the Eighties, though, top executives realized they had to get their hands dirty if they wanted to keep viable the Cleveland life they liked so much — the Cleveland of excellent cultural institutions and big-league athletic teams, the Cleveland ringed by enviably comfortable, old-fashioned, family-oriented suburbs, where $300,000 buys you $1 million worth of house by New York City or Boston suburban standards.”

As Allard noted, what these business leaders hated most about Kucinich was that he treated these apparent titans of humanity as “the archenemy,” mainly because he fought to protect public utilities from privatization.

Ohioans see the effects of the privatization of public utilities every time they open one of their bills from our most beautiful energy conglomerates.

It’s also easy to see what that business-first mentality did for the residents of Cleveland:

That strategy has had identifiable results: Cleveland is among the nation’s poorest, hungriest and most segregated cities, one where students attempted or considered suicide more than students at every other big city school district in the country in 2017. These are hardly hallmarks of a flourishing economy.

In his somewhat of a tell-all book, disgraced (and deceased) parasite lobbyist Neil Clark claimed Voinovich would “turn off his hearing aides” whenever his brother discussed their various public corruption projects as governor.

Coincidentally enough, Leslie Wexner, an unindicted co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein who House Oversight Democrats believe repeatedly lied under oath, told the Harvard Business Journal that Voinovich advised him to “organize” Columbus in the same way.

Voinovich’s advisement led to the birth of the Columbus Partnership, which Wexner said Wolfe family patriarch J.W. Wolfe originally pitched as a civic-minded organization that got to decide “who’s mayor and where the highways went.”

The Columbus Partnership pitches itself as “a non-profit, membership-based organization of CEOs from Columbus’ leading businesses and institutions” to “drive meaningful economic growth and prosperity for Columbus.”

It ignores that their mission is what we elect the mayor and City Council to do.

But much like the Republican sinecure syndicate of JobsOhio, it’s the typical “public-private partnership” that empowers an unelected, unaccountable body of CEOs to siphon hundreds of millions of public dollars into private interests.

Franklin County Auditor Michael “da Gawd” Stinziano released a report in 2025 that shows how much tax revenue has been forgone by the Partnership’s preferred arrangement of tax abatements to spur the cherished “prosperity” of Columbus.

Three key metrics compiled from 2016 to 2024 stand out:

• Total Foregone Tax: $126,798,337

• Total Diverted TIF Tax: $150,976,050

• Tax abamatements incereased 143.3% since 2016

These tax abatements never include clawback language, even if the receiving enterprise fails to produce anything close to the numbers they pitched while securing these oh-so-critical tax breaks.

We saw the most recent example with CoverMyMeds, an organization led by Matt Scantland, whose brother, Pete Scantland, sits on the Partnership’s Board of Advisors as CEO of Orange Barrel Media.

From Samantha Hendrickson of The Columbus Dispatch on March 30:

Columbus-based CoverMyMeds is restructuring and letting multiple teams of employees go just two years after massive layoffs.

The health technology firm, owned by health care services company McKesson, announced the “transition” in an internal email obtained by The Dispatch on March 27. In 2023, the company laid off over 800 people and closed their Arizona branch.

An internal email did not specify the number of people who would "ultimately separate" from CoverMyMeds, but the layoffs and restructuring were due to "products and services that no longer align with [CoverMyMeds'] future direction." The first layoffs will begin in early June, though others impacted by layoffs won't lose their jobs before January 2027.

CoverMyMeds received a 15-year, 100% property-tax abatement worth up to $77.7 million in 2018.

After CoverMyMeds laid off 800 employees in 2023, then-mayoral candidate Joe Motil noted that in the nine months prior to Dec. 31, 2022, CoverMyMeds posted a revenue of $3.2 billion, with profits over $400 million.

Motill’s call to scuttle the $77 million swindle of Columbus went unheeded at City Hall, with Mayor Suburbs soaring to re-election later that year.

Columbus is witnessing another public-partnership swindle, led by the Partnership of civic-minded CEOs, in the plan to gift $50 million in public money to billionaire MAGA crook Jimmy Haslam for an NWSL training facility that would scrap the long-awaited transformation of McCoy Park, the only public greenspace available in a neighborhood with the shortest life expectancy in the state of Ohio.

As The Rooster exclusively reported on March 30, OneColumbus, a subsidiary of the Columbus Partnership, is behind the astroturfed campaign #NWSLtoColumbus to manufacture consent for a plan to propagate the scam that is public subsidies for billionaire profits.

We saw them at work on Monday, outside City Hall, holding a rally to peddle the notion of grassroots support for the plan.

OneColumbus, as another unaccountable public-private partnership, will never be forced to reveal how much it paid for this campaign.

But while Mayor Suburbs felt the need to take a picture with his fellow cartoon characters… It’s worth noting that the Clippers, the Crew, and the Columbus Blue Jackets all receive public subsidies while their leaders sit on the Partnership's Board of Advisors.

• Susan “Sweet Dee” Haslam, owner-operator of the Crew, and wife of Jimmy Haslam, the MAGA superdonor seeking $50 million in public subsidies as part of the plan. The Crew received $140 million in public funding for a new stadium as part of the “Save the Crew” effort.

  • The Haslams also closed on a $25 million mansion in Palm Beach in 2025, days after the Haslam Group successfully extorted $600 million from the Republican-dominated State Legislature for a new Cybertruck of a stadium in Brook Park, defying the wishes of the Cleveland City Council and the Cuyahoga County Commission.

• Michael “Mike” A. Priest, CEO & President of the Columbus Blue Jackets, the main beneficiary of the planned $100 million in public bonds for a $400 million renovation to Nationwide Arena.

Stephen (Steve) D. Steinour, CEO, President & Chairman of Huntington Bancshares Incorporated, sits on the Partnership's Executive Board. Huntington sponsors the Columbus Clippers Stadium.

Also in attendance at the rally, as pictured in today’s header photo, was notorious Epstein associate Brutus Buckeye.

New Ohio State President Ravi Bellamkonda and Wexner Medical Center President John J. Warner, MD, sit on the Columbus Partnership's Board of Advisors.

At the rally, Mayor Suburbs posed for a campaign photo while holding a “COLUMBUS LOVES WOMEN’S SPORTS” t-shirt, with which The Rooster took some artistic license in today’s header photo.

But it’s apparently easier for our beautiful mayor to hold a t-shirt as part of a corporate astroturf campaign to support women, rather than donate the $90,000 he has taken from Wexner, the unindicted Epstein co-conspirator who co-founded the Partnership and is still listed as “Chairman Emeritus.”

The rally, meant to show the organic, grassroots support for the plan, was actually orchestrated by Irvin Public Relations, a longtime Columbus-based firm that was paid an amount of money, likely from OneColumbus, that taxpayers footing the bill will never be able to ascertain through a public records request.

The shell game emerges at city council, with only two members apparently ready to do due diligence in public on a $25 million upfront payment to a crooked billionaire

Rumors have swirled in recent weeks that Councilmember Nick Bankston, a longtime personal friend of Council President Shannon Hardin, is looking for an exit from the council in order to “make money” in the private sector.

Bankston, who has two young children, is apparently feeling the affordability crunch like the rest of us despite his part-time council salary as well as an unspecified salary as the Director of Community Partnership & Strategic Initiatives at Alvis, a Columbus-based “nonprofit human services agency” that receives at least some of its revenue through a “partnership” with City Council.

The Rooster cannot confirm those rumors at this time. Councilman Bankston will be the first to say he’s no fan of our operation.

But, if Bankston were looking to “make money” in the private sector, one way to do so would be showing he can be trusted to shepherd yet another billionaire payout through the council under the guise of manufactured grassroots support.

I’m not saying that’s what’s happening! But if it were, it would look a lot like what transpired at City Council on Monday in front of about 70 residents.

The Rooster commended Council President Shannon Hardin for rebuffing the Haslam Group’s initial demand for a $25 million payment to subsidize the future training facility for a yet-to-be-secured women’s professional soccer franchise.

In his initial statement, Hardin cited the need for Columbus capital money to be spent on sidewalks, rec centers and fire stations throughout the city.

It was more resistance than Mayor Suburbs, Hardin’s opponent in the upcoming 2027 mayoral election, was willing to offer.

While praising Hardin in the March 30 dispatch, The Rooster noted that it’s fair to be suspicious of the move, given that Hardin, like Suburbs, came to power through the city’s archaic machine politics.

Unfortunately, Hardin’s still trying to play both sides of the fence—offering notable differentiation from the mayor while still showing he’s willing to play ball with the unaccountable Columbus Partnership.

Hardin, of all people in Columbus, knows the outsized role that those “civic-minded CEOs” play within our local politics.

Hardin returned days later with a plan to increase the local ticket tax at Crew Stadium from 5% to 7%, a two-percent increase that he claimed would mean only the local residents who attended stadium events would foot the bill.

But the plan was never released in full to the public before Monday’s meeting, where we learned the brutal truth: The Haslam Group would receive a $25 million upfront payment, which would mature to more than $27 million through interest on bond payments in a deal that, by the city’s own math, wouldn’t make taxpayers whole for 26 years—if ever.

The first three speakers before the council, given special seating usually reserved for media, city hall staffers or lower public officials, all had a connection to the Partnership.

• Haslam Group President of Business Operations Mary Shepro, who pitched the local investment they would offer without mentioning the kind of things that could be done with a spare $25 million in this year’s capital budget.

• Linda Logan, the President & CEO of the Greater Columbus Sports Commission, an organization that touts a mission to “rally Columbus to bid on and win sporting events.” The Sports Commission lists the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Columbus Crew, and the Ohio State University as “championship partners.” Mary Shepro sits on the Executive Committee.

• Cassie Sistrunk, a three-year women’s soccer letterman at Ohio State. Left unsaid: Her husband, Randall Sistrunk, is a former city council member, fellow Alpha Fraternity brother of Hardin’s, and the current Vice President of “Public-Private Partnerships” at the aforementioned Partnership-connected Orange Barrel Media.

No council member offered the appearance of interest in doing due diligence on a $25 million upfront payment to a billionaire, except Melissa Green and Nancy Day-Achauer.

Green, Day-Achauer, and Tiara Ross were the only council members who stayed in their seats throughout the entire meeting.

Councilwoman Green revealed that the Arts Council, the recipient of the previous 5% ticket tax, has called the actual money produced “underwhelming”—a canary in the coalmine of any notion that the public will ever be made “whole” through a two percent ticket tax increase.

Eventually, however, the hogs got to have their say:

Most people know I’m a recovering alcoholic. Not as many people know I’m also a recovering fan of the Cleveland Browns.

In retrospect, watching Jimmy Haslam pay $270 million guaranteed to a brittle sexpest who wasn’t even good at playing quarterback anymore was the final straw.

But if it wasn’t, watching Haslam extort $600 million from our Republican fiscal hawks in the State Legislature for a Cybertruck of a stadium in the suburban wasteland of Brook Park would have been.

Days later, the Haslams closed on a $25 million mansion in Palm Beach—the same number they now have their hands out for in Columbus.

Haslam is a crook. His company defrauded minority truck owners, and he would have been in prison for the scheme, rather than paying $92 million to settle the lawsuit with federal prosecutors.

Unsurprisingly, he (and his entire family) are MAGA superdonors. They spent $6.5 million on politics in under two years.

Jimmy and “Sweet Dee” were the largest donors to the effort to defeat the anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment in 2024. They donated $175,000 to Bitcoin aficionado Bernie Moreno to oust then-Senator Sherrod Brown as the chair of the Banking Committee.

And that’s just a taste of some of their greatest hits.

Their largess is only attainable through our broken tax code, which pigs like Haslam have paid government stooges to tilt in their favor in their insatiable quest for more money.

They donate to the same politicians who have defunded local governments, leaving Columbus unable to fund the Gladen Food Pantry in West Franklinton.

There are only “East,” “West,” and “South” Franklintons because Wexner and the Partnership drove three highways through the neighborhood, segregating it from downtown despite being a stone’s throw over the river.

We should expect this behavior from the Republican Party. We should never accept it from so-called leaders of the Democratic Party. On any level.

Columbus educator destroys the tax-abatement swindle that has led to Republican-like defunding of our local schools

Kelsey Gray, an English teacher at Independence High School, spent hours of her spring break waiting in line to testify against the deal and highlight the robbery happening in broad daylight within our public schools.

City Council isn’t to blame for the Republican-dominated state legislature’s never-ending quest to privatize public education. But as she noted, the city council is “at least aware” of the situation.

My favorite part was when she turned to Mary Shepro, apologized, and then dispelled the myth that the Crew’s “Stay in the Game” initiative was anything more than a drop in the ocean that is chronic absenteeism in Columbus City Schools.

It made me wonder what the City Schools could have done with that $126 million in forgone tax that the City Council chose to put in the pockets of corporations, developers, and billionaire-owned sports teams through the Partnership’s fetish for so-called “tax incentives.”

What McCoy Park means to South Franklinton

Columbus City Council recently greenlit funding for a long-awaited transformation of McCoy Park, the only public green space available in the city’s poorest neighborhood, with a life expectancy of 60, the lowest in the state.

Or so neighborhood residents thought!

Southwest Area Commissioner Liz Reed spoke about plans to transform McCoy Park into a place every resident, disabled or abled, could enjoy: pickleball courts, rolling paths, sheltered picnic areas and bathrooms, and even a fishing lake.

That all went away when the Patnership and Haslam snapped their fingers.

Worse yet, the city recently “streamlined” neighborhood feedback reports going back to the late 2000s. The number one concern? Flooding and pondage issues.

The city had identified fixing McCoy Park drainage as a way to alleviate that problem for the neighborhood. One well-connected West Side source said the city has been “noncommittal” about those plans once the Halsams’ Death Star appeared over the park.

In my opinion, the Haslams chose McCoy Park because it was most likely the cheapest option available within Columbus, even if it meant their team of world-class athletes would be breathing highway smog while training.

If the city’s plan is to create a new park for South Franklinton, the options don’t look great if they’re unwilling to bulldoze some gravestones in Mount Calvary or Green Lawn cemeteries.

Maybe they could renovate the landfill?

McCoy Park is a vibrant area, especially on weekends, despite everyone needing to travel to the park via personal vehicle because there are no sidewalks on Harmon Avenue or Stimmel Road.

It’s a wonder how many of those residents who will be down there this weekend to play soccer even know the consolidated corporate power that’s moving against them at City Hall.

Probably not many.

Earthworm Jim gets his chance to repeat a bunch of made-up statistics about “economic impact” and “workplace development”

Columbus Partnership CEO Jason Hall schlepped to City Hall to add his two cents, as if it was needed.

Hall, whose organization still lists unindicted Epstein co-conspirator Leslie Wexner as a chairman emeritus, pitched the “workforce development” that would come with Central Ohio girls being able to watch a women’s soccer team.

He also recited the factoids already listed on the ColumbusOne-produced #NWSLtoColumbus webpage.

“80 percent of female Fortune 500 CEOs played competitive sports,” Hall said.

In his defense, it’s probably true! But you start to wonder whether sports played a bigger role in their current position than their parents’ incomes or their attendance at elite private schools.

Hall’s organization apparently doesn’t have much to say for the girls who don’t play competitive sports in Columbus, since programs have been slashed across the city due to historic budget shortfalls that are frankly becoming unsustainable.

I would argue that allocating the $50 million that Columbus and Franklin County plan to gift to Haslam would do more for girls’ futures in the city.

West High School, which I bike past almost every day, could use a sizable investment from the capital budget.

But what do I know? I’m just a blogger, not the CEO of a group of “civic-minded CEOs” whose idea of prosperity seems to be starving public coffers and privatizing the political power in Columbus and Central Ohio.

I went into the hallway, expecting to have a civil conversation with Mr. Hall after his little propaganda sermon. My first question probably would have been, “How much do you make a year, brother?”

Because those are the types of questions that don’t get answers in the private half of the so-called “partnership.”

My second question would have been, “If this is going to be such an amazing ‘economic impact’ on Central Ohio, why does OneColumbus need to astroturf its petition drive?

“Why do they need to pay a public relations firm to host a ‘rally’ with mascots to present the idea of grassroots support? Why do they need to roll out a dog and pony show at the city council?

Perhaps in the most obvious display of how much influence the Partnership holds in City Hall, staffers allowed Mr. Hall and his henchman to abscond through a second-story emergency exit with a disabled alarm rather than face the music from a low-rent blogger.

This is how politics actually functions in Columbus.

The unaccountable CEO class colludes in private and goes to the mayor.

He goes to the council, sometimes without even presenting them the full set of facts.

But everyone, except apparently two council members, will still pretend that ejecting our poorest residents from their only public green space and paying $50 million to a billionaire crook like Haslam for a women’s professional soccer expansion team will lead to more prosperity for everyone in the city.

Because we know how Haslam-produced sports productions go. The Milwaukee Bucks went from an NBA championship to the toilet. The Browns somehow found new depths in their eternal damnation to the toilet. The Crew got lucky because Haslam wasn’t hands-on with them when they won a championship, but now that he is, they’re having the worst season in recent memory.

And this is the guy we’re bending over to gift $50 million, so he can turn around and buy another mansion or make a max donation to some Republican hobgoblin who thinks women shouldn’t vote?

In reality, Columbus will likely receive another pedestrian sports team with another set of suites for the executive class to treat their mistresses to free vittles and suds on weeknights before drunk driving them home to their off-campus apartments.

If it were such a good idea that would lead to such prosperity, the Columbus Partnership wouldn’t have to spend an untold amount on a circus trying to gaslight us into believing the city is clamoring for more public money for private billionaire profits.

This measure would crash and burn at the ballot box in an up-or-down vote. If the council can’t come to its senses on this, then it’s just another example of who they ultimately serve in Columbus.

We only need to look to Cleveland to see what awaits us the second Columbus stops growing, thanks to our own Republican shadow government of “benign conspiracy of civic-minded CEOs” that we’ve allowed to take root in our humble attempt at a city.

The Rooster is a 100% reader-supported publication.

The mayor loathes us. Speaker Matt Huffman wants us dead for telling the truth about his whereabouts on April 19, 1995.

We welcome their hatred and would be honored if you considered a subscription to help sustain the project.

Don Leonard quit his job on Ohio State’s faculty to launch a first-time political campaign for Congress in Ohio’s 15th District. But first, he’ll have to beat longtime Franklinton County Democratic Party insider (and former State Rep. Adam Miller) for that right.

In the name of ethics, Hilltop Husband already donated an untold amount of my wifely allowance to Leonard’s campaign as we reside in the 15th District, which, thanks to Republican gerrymandering, somehow stretches from German Village (where MAGAfied incumbent Congressman Mike Carey lives) to Miami County in Western Ohio.

If I had been undecided, the decision would have gone Leonard’s way yesterday, when Miller sent a text blast touting his military service in the George W. Bush boondoggle that was Afghanistan, on a day where the military stood on standby to faithfully execute a genocide in Iran before Donald Trump thankfully chickened out.

I would have voted for Miller if he were the only Democrat running, even though he got away with living in the affluent village of Marble Cliff while representing one of the poorest districts in the state, thanks to a ghost apartment in the district.

The stakes are that high.

But Leonard answered the call.

We sat down in March—before his viral arrest at the No Kings Rally in Grove City—in a get-to-know-you interview that covered his desire to run, his views on Leslie Wexner, Israel and why he thinks he can succeed in flipping a Republican gerrymandered district as a first-time candidate.

I found Leonard engaging, funny and the kind of new-look candidate for which Democratic Party primary voters seem hungry as we approach a pivotal primary on May 5, with early voting already open.

You can watch the full video on YouTube.

I will warn that the audio is suboptimal, which was my fault in a poor choice of microphone to deploy, given the acoustics of the room and the apparently vicious head cold that had wrecked my otherwise melodic voice.

Rest assured, Rooster Worldwide LLC fired the intern ultimately responsible for the subpar performance. We apologize to the Leonard campaign and will be more than willing to make it right after his victory in May.

Why does Don Leonard want to run for Congress?

Running for Congress, especially as a first-time candidate, is an act of ego.

But it’s not as glamorous a job as a casual observer might think! Especially if Leonard succeeds in flipping the seat in November. He would, almost assuredly, be a top target for national Republicans in 2028.

But beyond that, it’s a job that requires constant travel, albeit only a 45-minute direct flight from Columbus, but also constant fundraising to prove your worth to party elders.

It’s also an act that is almost assuredly to see your popularity drop in your hometown, even among some ideologically aligned supporters.

It’s no wonder that so many power-hungry jackals roam the halls of Congress.

But Leonard cited specifics on the ramifications of what national and state Republicans have done to higher education in the era of Trump. He also cited his time on Medicaid as a child, which means he knows the types of hardships that primarily rural voters are facing in the wake of yet another cut to social services to pay out to America’s richest citizens and corporations.

I also applaud his ability to laugh and breeze past my obvious joke about referring to Congress as a syndicate of cocaine orgies. It’s a power that some Democrats don’t have, which is the opposite of what we need in the increasingly hogified country that is America.

Leonard probably won’t be working at Ohio State again after he dumped Leslie Wexner’s sorry ass in the Olentangy

I couldn’t resist asking Leonard about his take on Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein, given The Rooster’s recent reporting on the subject.

But to me, it’s a litmus test for any politician, but especially Ohio Democrats. You would think distancing themselves from a Republican billionaire who financed the construction of Pedophile Island would be the easiest win possible, given the current state of the country.

But as we have seen with Mayor Suburbs, County Commissioner Kevin Boyce, and City Attorney Zach Klein—that’s hardly the case!

Thankfully, Leonard passed the test, which, given he could one day be looking to return to employment at Ohio State, was a moral courage sorely lacking from the ostensible leadership within Central Ohio’s Democratic ranks.

Leonard understands some Democrats act a lot like Republicans

As we have seen with Central Ohio Democrats, apparently ready to hand $50 million in public money to MAGA billionaire crook Jimmy Haslam, malignant financial forces are flowing through the party that stand in the way of improving material conditions for the working class.

Leonard understands the problem and the assignment. And sure, it’s fair to say that talking is the easy part.

But I am someone who observes and sometimes interviews Democrats for a living. Not all of them can even pass the talking part!

If we’re going to climb out of the hole we’ve dug—starting with the bankrupt Citizens United decision—we need Democrats willing to combat consolidated corporate power, even if that power sometimes funnels money to Democrats to play both sides of the fence.

If you, like me, have been carved into the Republican gerrymandered 15th District, I hope you join me in voting for Don Leonard during early voting (open now!) or on the May 5 Election Day.

The Rooster will be posting more clips from Leonard’s interview in the coming days on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and BlueSky.

In the meantime, here are a few ways to support Don Leonard for Congress:

• Donate to his campaign.

• Visit his official website.

• Follow Leonard’s campaign on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook.

Speaker Matt Huffman must be enjoying life!

Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima), who has never supplied a solid alibi for where he was on April 19, 1995, attempted to expand iGaming in Ohio through last year’s budget process.

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If Southwest Ohio Republicans have their way, the state’s hog voters will have a chance to ban data centers via a constitutional amendment in November.

The days of a Democrat winning with a coalition of multiple rural counties are over for the foreseeable future. But while a Democrat won’t win Miami or Marion counties this year, it’s important for the party not to get beaten by 50 points in all of those counties.

Barack Obama understood the assignment and reaped the rewards.

But Obama was aided by a robust turnout in Cleveland, which has since seen declining numbers, a trend likely to continue in this cycle.

That makes the Democratic margin game in rural Ohio that much more important, especially in a year when the Republicans will either have a bizarre jet-setting billionaire or a YouTube Nazi atop their ticket.

Other than the fool’s errand of eliminating property taxes, there is no better issue animating rural voters than the ongoing corporate colonization of data centers.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., all use shadowy LLCs to purchase farmland as stealthily as possible to evade scrutiny from residents for as long as possible.

No supporter of data centers—private politician or Facebook troll—would ever voluntarily live next to one. They’re loud, poison the local water table, heat the immediate area by more than 15 degrees, and almost assuredly be abandoned by the corporations at the earliest convenience, most likely as soon as their exorbitant tax breaks disappear.

Not to mention the colossal energy costs every Ohioan sees on their electric bill.

Unlike the coal plants, meat packing plants and factories of the 19th century that also brought noise and pollution, data centers do not offer the community-uplifting living wages (or union protections) that made those jobs something American politicians love to reminisce about even today.

Even the specter of a data center animates local politicians in formerly reliably Democratic areas like Lorain County.

From Hannah Drown of cleveland.com:

LORAIN, Ohio — When Lorain Councilwoman Mary Springowski fired off an email five years ago to Intel’s CEO urging the tech giant to consider her city for its next chip manufacturing plant, she had a vision of living-wage jobs and long-neglected industrial land getting a second shot.

What she did not envision, she says, is the controversial mega site that now sits at the center of a bitter dispute over farmland, development and the future of rural Lorain County.

“This was never what I had in mind,” she said in a recent interview. “My focus was always repurposing defunct industrial sites where the infrastructure already exists. I never wanted to impact rural areas.”

Lorain actually dodged a bullet by not landing the Intel deal, which, four years later, since Ohio’s Republican leadership soiled themselves while announcing the deal, is little more than an $800 million crater.

That money will never be recouped thanks to the contract signed by JobsOhio, the public-private “partnership” that, in reality, is an unaccountable slush fund of public money controlled by political lackeys.

Jobs Ohio, coincidentally, touts data centers at “creat[ing] positive economic momentum” in the state that brings unspecified “significant benefits to local communities.”

Last week, Amazon paid $20.5 milion to northeast Oregonians living “with contaminated ground water in exchange for no admission of guilt in polluting,” according to Alex Baumhardt of the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

The pollution is, in part, a byproduct of fertilizer-laden wastewater collected from industrial food processors and data centers at the port that is then sent out to area farms to be spread across fields.

[…]

The port’s wastewater, which a Capital Chronicle investigation found was overapplied in the winter for years, allowed excess nitrate to seep into groundwater that well-users in the area depend on. Many of those who rely on wells in the affected areas of Morrow and Umatilla counties are low-income and Latino. Overexposure to nitrates over time is harmful to infants and can lead to cancer and thyroid disease in people of all ages.

Amazon spokesperson Kylee Yonas, the company’s paid liar, said Amazon, which made $717 billion in 2025, paid the settlement to “avoid a lengthy legal battle.”

If I were advising the Acton campaign, which they will be the first to tell you that I am not, I’d want her to throw her arms around the potential of banning data centers through a constitutional amendment.

It’s clear, precise language that even the most partisan Republican can understand, and something that her likely opponent, conman Vivek Ramaswamy, an alleged billionaire, will be able to replicate in any meaningful manner.

Ramaswamy is a creature entirely enthralled by the corporate interests that Republican voters claim to hate, though maybe not more than the idea of a transgender teenager using the appropriate bathroom.

Instead, Dr. Acton’s campaign page for “reducing costs” breezes past the issue by “ensuring” that “consumers and other ratepayers” won’t shoulder “these added costs.”

Energy bills are also spiking for too many Ohioans. New data centers are causing bills to increase, and as Governor, I will ensure that Ohio consumers and other ratepayers are not the ones shouldering these added costs.

There’s nothing about the insane tax breaks pushed by the private-public “partnerships” that have an outsized influence on state and local government.

New data centers are treated as an inevitability. Compare that to Ramaswamy, who calls the “data center boom … good for our region.”

Dr. Acton cannot speak in the clear and concise terms that this issue requires, in large part due to her support from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers of Ohio (IBEW), which recently endorsed her:

Data centers are a modern-day gold rush for building trades unions, but especially electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians.

From Nick Lichtenberg of fortune.com:

This bears a strong resemblance to what’s happening in the trades as of 2026, with electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians commanding strong premiums, especially on data-center construction. Construction workers on data center projects currently earn an average of about $81,800 annually—roughly 32% more than those on non-data center builds.

[…]

Some electricians are pulling in $260,000 a year, with electrical work accounting for an estimated 45% to 70% of total data center construction costs. The U.S. will need roughly 300,000 new electricians over the next decade, in addition to replacing the 200,000 expected to retire.

The dirty secret is that these jobs require more labor than Ohio unions can provide, which means recruiting out-of-state union workers (usually from Southern states with fewer worker protections and lower wages) to plug the non-significant gap.

And we love that for our tradesmen, don’t we, folks?

But the problem is that building trades unions haven’t been a reliable member of the coalition.

Affiliated Construction Trades (AFT)—led by noted HB-6 prostitute Matt Szollozi—endorsed Ramaswamy earlier this year.

AFT joined their fellow tradesmen in the Northwest Ohio Building & Construction Trades Council, the Cleveland Building & Construction Trades Council, the Central Midwest Regional Council of Carpenters, the Ohio State Association of Plumbers & Pipefitters, and the Ohio Conference of Teamsters in endorsing Ramaswamy.

It’s fair to say that these union leaders were only following the will of their membership, but that in and of itself only speaks to the Republican problem that our most beautiful trade unions have.

Even the IBEW’s endorsement of Acton won’t prevent almost half of its rank-and-file membership from voting for a jet-setting billionaire to fix the problems created by 15 years of unchecked Republican rule of Ohio. That so many Republicans are infecting the rank-and-file speaks to the lack of political education that happens inside these unions.

Dr. Acton’s advisors are engaging in bad calculus and committing malpractice by not coming out swinging against the data centers.

But that pales in comparison to her failure to hang the odious Leslie Wexner on her opponent.

Longtime readers of The Rooster probably won’t have a hard time imagining how the Ohio Republican junta would react if an Ohio-based Democratic billionaire, who had given millions to candidates and causes over the years, had been exposed for also enabling the creation of a literal island of pedophilia fantasy.

But in a stroke of luck, the pedophile enabler is a longtime Ohio-based Republican thong and teenage anorexia magnate.

In the halycon days of 2025, Dr. Acton had no problem (correctly) blasting Ramaswamy for “protecting pedophiles” after previously campaigning to release the Epstein Files right until they implacated Donald Trump over 5,000 times.

But like Ramaswamy no longer caring about Epstein once Trump fell into the investigative crosshairs, Acton has pulled a similar stunt with Leslie Wexner’s involvement.

I agree with House Oversight Committee Democrats—sans Rep. Shontel Brown, who apparently had bigger fish to fry than Wexner under oath in New Albany—when they said Wexner was dishonest and outright deceitful during his testimony, laughably claiming that Epstein was never his friend.

It’s an issue that Republicans certainly don’t want to talk about, as evidenced by Senate President (and Ramaswamy running mate) Rob McColley hiding behind a fleet of henchmen while explaining he donated $5,000 in Wexner money to “a food bank” without an announcement.

The Rooster is still waiting to confirm that supposed donation in the next campaign finance report.

But again, it’s not hard to imagine how Republicans would respond if a Democrat caught in a similar situation donated that money to charity.

They would still blitz him with ads labeling the Democrat as a pedophile protector. It’s something that perennial Senate candidate Sherrod Brown understood, despite his daughter also having tens of thousands of dollars from Wexner World on her still-active Columbus-based campaign committee.

But Acton, who correctly stated that Ohio deserves a governor who won’t tolerate predatory behavior, hasn’t even uttered Wexner’s name.

It’s even more baffling after Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-Columbus), a longtime “friend” of Wexner’s, dumped his money via an Instagram post on Friday evening, roughly 12 hours after The Rooster excoriated her for her silence, which has continued unabated since then!

It’s hard to envision Acton changing course on Wexner, considering the sinecure she enjoyed with the Columbus Foundation after she (sensibly) quit the DeWine Administration at the height of the COVID pandemic.

From Ohio State’s Alumni Magazine in Nov. 2020:

Her new position as director of The Columbus Foundation’s Kind Columbus initiative dovetails perfectly with her continued advisory relationship with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.

It’s unclear what Acton accomplished with the Kind Columbus initiative. One source close to her revealed that she showed up to work one day with “a couple of million dollars in a bank account” with no clear guidance on how that money should be spent.

Acton left the Columbus Foundation in Feb. 2021 to “consider” a Senate run, with her family ultimately talking her out of it due to concerns about how she would handle the pressure, a year removed from being treated as Hitler reincarnated throughout Republican political circles.

The Columbus Foundation is a subsidiary of the Columbus Partnership, which, according to Wexner’s own words, was founded by J.W. Wolfe to decide “who’s mayor” and “where the highways went” in Columbus.

Columbus Foundation President and CEO Doug F. Kridler sits on the “Board of Advisors” to the Columbus Partnership.

It’s another example of how Central Ohio’s Epstein problems run deeper than one obscenely rich, elderly pervert.

Dr. Acton cannot impugn Wexner without impugning the Columbus Partnership and the Columbus Foundation, the former of which still lists Wexner as a “Chairman Emeritus.”

But in Acton’s defense, it’s true that she has a shot as the kindly grandmotherly figure in contrast to a weird, alleged billionaire Hindu monotheist who can’t resist flying his private jet to far-flung places like Cleveland and Cincinnati.

Donald Trump gets more unpopular every day, something that’s sure to metastasize if he’s dumb enough to send ground troops into Iran, which he absolutely is.

But the Democratic Party has played it safe throughout my adult life. “When they go low, we go high,” as Michelle Obama once quipped to an avalanche of cheering.

We can see where the high road has led America and Ohio.

I would prefer that Dr. Acton’s campaign not suffer a similar fate.

Which Ohio Republican did TMZ fail to spot in Scotland?

I’ve heard from a handful of associates lately that “TMZ is stepping on [my] turf.”

To which I can only say, “Music to my ears.”

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