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Ohio man victim of gangland-style execution on Island of Enchantment (no, not Put-in-Bay) as local police tab “person of interest”

Heavy news this week as it appears we lost an upstanding member of the Ohio Man diaspora to some sort of heinous crime in Puerto Rico. Where an ex-patriot (read: white immigrant) was found on the beach, shot in the back of the head.

From PEOPLE:

Friends and family of an Ohio man found dead in an execution-style killing on a beach in Puerto Rico earlier this month are criticizing local police and saying they’re looking to hire a private investigator.

Tyler Wilkin,35, was found dead by a man taking a morning walk on the remote Playa la Selva beach in Puerto Rico on July 10, according to local outlets WKRC, WCPO, and WXIX.

According to WKRC, the Wilmington, Ohio, native had moved to a nearby area in Puerto Rico in 2024, where he later met his girlfriend Iva Mo. Mo is among those leading the call for further investigation into Wilkin’s death.

“He wasn’t just a victim of a homicide,” Mo told WXIX this week. “He was the love of my life — my best friend. Tyler deserved to come home. And he deserves some answers — and our entire community deserves justice.”

Wilkin reportedly had texted his girlfriend about some sort of “rowdy man” near his campsite, claiming that he had been “howling” and shooting off fireworks.

Local police, meanwhile, seem to have fingered a top suspect.

However, Spanish-language-based El Nuevo Día reports that police aren’t releasing any other details of the suspected shooter.

This week in The Rooster…

It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC. Here are things you may have missed in your inbox—especially you freeloading hogs huffing fumes in the parking lots.

Be sure to subscribe to The Rooster for the full experience.

• That time Vivek Ramaswamy embarrassed himself in front of Jason Aldean. Southwestern Ohio hasn’t treated the hometown boy well in recent years. Plus, Mike Newman strikes back against both(!) nutty professors while our City Our Say looks headed toward a brokered agreement on redistricting reform with City Hall.

• Brian Chavez is Republican rule in rural Ohio. State Senator Brian Chavez is profiteering on forever ruining his neighbors’ water table. He is exactly the type of character that Ohio Republicans’ cartel-styled power structure is designed to protect.

• Elephant in the Room: How Matt Huffman hand-picked his next partner in crime. A Columbus-based Republican operative returns to give their vantage point on how Speaker Matt Huffman helped anoint Senator Bill Reineke as the next president of the state’s most opulent retirement home.

• The stain of it all. Ohio Republicans remain silent as the Trump Administration, with help from the crooked Supreme Court, stabbed Ohio’s Haitian immigrants in the back in a betrayal that will forever blight us. Plus, why Senate Republicans could toss Jon Husted to the wolves, and the latest ineptitude from Dr. Amy Acton’s campaign.

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

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. Corrected link from this morning’s dispatch: Inflammation keeps us alive, but it also makes us sick… The caped billboard bandit of Chicago… Has NASA already found proof of life on Mars?… How war redefined marriage in Gaza… The joys and tribulations of multiple-choice ordering… Can the ultra-rich actually have people killed?

The notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy visited the Butler County Fair on Wednesday.

Butler County is renowned for its ability to elect political crackpots like sentient human rights violation Sheriff Richard Jones, who was pictured in a Ramaswamy campaign photo, if you can believe that.

Where most men my age have storied memories with their beautiful family, I have a mind that instantly reflexed to the last time Ramaswamy and Sheriff Jones collaborated with… country singer Jason Aldean at a Butler County Republican fundraiser concert.

From the Aug. 12, 2024 dispatch of The Rooster:

Eventually, however, organizers bagged their guy: Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who brought his security entourage to the event.

That’s where things got interesting.

Ramaswamy wanted to introduce Aldean to the crowd, but organizers said that wouldn’t be possible. That role had already been promised to Sheriff Richard Jones, who you might have seen over the years railing about The Border on Fox News while wearing a cowboy hat for some reason.

The attendees at the event know and love Jones. That can not be said about Ramaswamy, who apparently became increasingly agitated as organizers remained steadfast that he wouldn’t introduce Aldean.

“West Chester Police told him if he didn’t calm down he would be asked to leave,” said a source. “He [left] anyway without even going in the tent to greet people.”

To get into that tent—again, billed as part of the “special guest” package, cost a minimum of $1,000. Many attendees paid $5,000.

One heavy roller dropped $10,000 according to a source.

What truly makes that story a special chapter in Ohio political chapters is that organizers settled on Ramaswamy after a chain reaction started by Senator George Lang telling a Trump campaign crowd that Civil War might be needed if the upcoming election went the wrong way.

Ramaswamy, to his credit, turned that embarrassing low point into a gubernatorial campaign that every non-term-limited statewide Republican kissed his ring without any resistance worth marking in the historical record.

Ramaswamy’s strategy has, thus far, been to pound the airwaves with Epstein Class money while jet-setting around the state to deliver canned remarks to favorable invite-only crowds.

His biggest blunders have been in organic moments where he can’t resist revealing himself as a tone-deaf megalomaniac who’s indifferent to the concerns of people who have to work for a living.

Like, for example, in his so-called home of Cincinnati on Wednesday evening, when he was unable to finish a planned 30-minute speech due to rowdy attendees at the oligarch-funded Young Americans for Liberty Conference:

You can view a thread of videos from that aborted oratory, if you think that famous left-wing blog is somehow being unfair to our old friend Ramaswamy.

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The average Ohio State Senator sees themselves somewhere between Alexander the Great and Cicero in civilization’s pantheon of Real Serious Guys.

Senator Brian Chavez (R-Marietta) is one such example. He arrived in Dec. 2023, when his predecessor, former Frank Hoagland (R-Adena), quit like a dog to focus on hoarding black-market military weaponry and ammo in his bomb shelter.

I jest with that last part.

In reality, then-Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima), who has never supplied a solid alibi for April 19, 1995, finessed Hoagland’s resignation and Chavez’s appointment to block either then-State Rep. Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) or Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville) from joining the higher chamber through a contested election for an open seat.

Either man would have been about as welcomed by party leadership into Ohio’s most luxurious retirement home as either would have been about as welcomed as colon or brain cancer.

Chavez, a former fossil fuel executive, quickly rose the ranks to Energy Committee’s chairmanship, which is a sentence only possible in a place as cosmically condemned as the Ohio Statehouse.

Jake Zuckerman, who was then with cleveland.com, only needed six months to expose why Chavez might have a vested interest in steering not only his region, but the state’s energy policy in a certain direction.

Senator’s leaks: Two fracking waste injection wells owned by Ohio Sen. Brian Chavez have leaked toxic brine, via nearby gas production wells, on five occasions since 2010 according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

As Jake Zuckerman reports, one of those leaks caused a fish kill, 42 gallons per minute of brine spraying like a sprinkler, and a $1.3 million cleanup effort.

The state of Ohio paid for the cleanup and suspended operations at the two injection wells, but isn’t asking Chavez to pay it back.

God forbid a corporate polluter be asked to pay back a $1.3 million cleanup effort caused by their greed and negligence. Not in our polluted backwater outpost of a state.

It turns out, unfortunately for Southeastern Ohio, that Chavez is the symptom of a much larger disease, and that’s the State Legislature treating the poorest region of the state like a toxic waste dump.

From Quinn Glabicki of the New York Times:

For years, it has arrived in a caravan of tanker trucks that come night and day to deposit the toxic brine in injection wells that pump it thousands of feet underground, where it is supposed to stay forever.

But the brine is spurting to the surface, and locals fear it could soon contaminate the drinking water source for 32,000 people. “It would destroy the city,” said Susan Vessels, president of the Marietta City Council. “Once the damage is done, it cannot be undone.”

Residents and local officials were for years “completely unaware” of their place at the heart of an interstate marketplace for toxic waste, Ms. Vessels said. They’ve come to realize, she said, that their corner of Ohio has become a major destination for fracking brine.

It’s not a surprise that residents would be thunderstruck by that kind of news, especially in the era when corporate consolidation has liquified local news in places a lot richer than Appalachian Ohio.

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The betrayal of the Haitian community in Springfield is the type of blight that will stain Ohio history books for generations.

Thanks to Donald Trump and the unelected lizard cabal that is the Supreme Court, roughly 300,000 Haitians living in America recently saw their Temporary Protected Status expire on a whim.

All of them now are facing a glut of unsav…

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I owe an apology to the notorious conman himself Vivek Ramaswamy, if you can believe that.

On Friday, with a foot out the door, The Rooster attributed Ramaswamy’s jet flying to New York City as part of the ongoing series, “How much does Vivek Ramaswamy spend outside of Ohio?”

Ramaswamy’s jet arrived at Farmingdale Aiport in NYC on Wednesday, but Ramaswamy was not on it. It appears ConAir is back with Talon Air, the jet’s operator, like for scheduled maintenance.

These things are only fun if they’re accurate. We have stricken those three previously credited days on the calendar, meaning that, by all appearances, Ramaswamy has spent at least 80 of a possible 208 days (38 percent) outside of Ohio in the year of our lord 2026.

Today’s dispatch features the return of Elephant in the Room, a Columbus-based Republican operative looking to get his soul right with God.

Here’s how and why Speaker Matt Huffman, who has never provided a solid alibi for April 19, 1995, came to put his thumb on the scale for State Senator Bill Reineke in the presidency race.

Enjoy the show!

The Road to Reineke: How Matt Huffman Hand-Picked His Next Partner in Crime

By The Elephant in the Room

If you still hold onto the quaint, high school civics lesson notion that laws in Ohio are crafted by independent representatives debating open policy on the floor of the Statehouse, I have a bridge over the Scioto River to sell you.

At the corner of E. Broad and High Street, the real government doesn’t operate in the daylight of committee hearings or public floor votes. It operates in dark-paneled steakhouse backrooms, through undisclosed dark money pass-throughs, and inside the hyper-exclusive, closed-door gatherings of the Ohio Senate Republican Caucus.

To understand how Ohio is actually governed, you have to understand how leadership races work. Official floor votes for House Speaker or Senate President are merely theatrical formalities—stamped and sealed long after the actual power dynamic has been decided.

Because Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers, the real power grab occurs in what is known as the “unofficial caucus vote.” Months before the public ever sees a gavel drop, GOP legislators gather behind locked doors to vote on who will wield absolute control over committee assignments, bill references, campaign cash distribution, and legislative priorities.

In a healthy republic, these leadership battles would be intense contests of ideas, vision, and legislative skill. In Columbus, however, they boil down to three brutal metrics: fundraising capacity, district map manipulation, and raw, unforgiving political capital.

And no one has mastered the machinery of all three better than Matt Huffman. As far as I am aware, Huffman is the only person who has ever successfully made the jump back to the lower chamber to assume the gavel as Speaker of the Ohio House directly after a four year term as the Senate President.

Huffman has built a terrifying reputation across Cap Square as a master chess player who routinely puts his heavy thumb on the scale of leadership races, ensuring that no matter which chamber he happens to be sitting in, he controls the gavel in both.

We saw it in 2023 when he pulled every lever available to guarantee that Representative Derrick Merrin would come down with the gavel—a move designed to give Huffman an easy, pliable partner across the rotunda and pave the runway for his own eventual eight-year reign as Speaker after wrapping up his Senate tenure.

We saw it again when he handed the Senate Presidency off to Rob McColley, who waltzed into the post virtually unopposed after Huffman cleared the field.

And most recently, when Huffman deployed his endless supply of dark money, unprecedented political leverage, and institutional statehouse support to direct traffic behind the scenes and lock up the upcoming Senate leadership race for Senator Bill Reineke. Reineke is set to replace McColley, completing another crucial piece of Huffman’s long-term master plan to maintain total control over both chambers.

To trace how we arrived at this moment, you have to look past the press releases and look at the bodies left along the road—starting with Senator Jerry Cirino.

The Loyal Foot Soldier vs. The Stubborn Maverick

On paper, the contest to replace McColley as the next Senate President should have been a fierce ideological and financial battle between two prominent Republican figures: Senator Bill Reineke of Tiffin and Senator Jerry Cirino of Lake County. But in Huffman’s eyes, the choice was never about qualifications; it was about control.

Bill Reineke has spent his legislative career carving out a niche as Matt Huffman’s ultimate loyal foot soldier. He is the quintessential, uninspired “yes-man”—a legislator whose defining characteristic is an unwavering willingness to carry whatever toxic, unpopular, or heavy legislative baggage Huffman throws at him.

When Huffman was serving as Senate President and needed a reliable puppet to front contentious bills that threatened to alienate key constituencies, Reineke stepped up without hesitation.

During heated caucus meetings where rank-and-file members dared to question executive overreach, Reineke’s support for Huffman remained unconditional. He is predictable, manageable, and entirely dependent on the party apparatus. In short, he was Huffman’s dream candidate.

Then there was Jerry Cirino.

Cirino is an old-school, headstrong, stubborn Italian businessman who entered the legislature after a long career in the private sector. While Cirino certainly possesses his fair share of obvious character flaws and political baggage, he had one major asset that typically guarantees victory in legislative leadership contests: money.

In Ohio politics, each caucus maintains a shared “caucus bank account”—known as the Republican Senate Campaign Committee (RSCC) in the Senate, and the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee (OHROC) in the House. Members are expected to raise money and write massive checks to these entities, which are then used by caucus leadership to defend vulnerable incumbents and attack Democrats in general elections.

During his time in office, Cirino poured money into the RSCC, contributing more than twice as much as Reineke. By every traditional metric of legislative politics, writing the biggest checks to the caucus war chest earns you the keys to the front door.

Furthermore, Cirino possessed a characteristic that was worrisome for Huffman: right, wrong, or indifferent, he was never afraid to go against the grain. In a legislative body where compliance is prized above all else, Cirino’s independent, often abrasive demeanor was viewed by Huffman not as a sign of leadership, but as an existential threat to his unilateral control over the legislative agenda in Columbus.

Huffman knew that if Cirino won the gavel, the Senate would no longer be a seamless satellite office for Speaker Matt Huffman’s personal legislative vision.

So, Huffman went to work ensuring that Cirino’s financial superiority would be rendered entirely worthless.

The Finance Chair: Real Leverage, False Confidence

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In April, The Rooster reported on the tragicomedy that has been COTA’s installation of the Bus Rapid Transit lane on West Broad.

It came on the heels of COTA’s shock firing of Derinda Jones, the LinkUs Project manager, with a COTA spokesperson laughably claiming that construction would begin in October as scheduled.

Pullin also claimed that COTA isn’t behind on the W. Broad BRT and they still expect to break ground in late October or early November.”

Maybe they’ll arrange a picture with local politicians in hard hats in late October or early November. But there is no way they’ll be breaking meaningful ground by then, and The Rooster expects to have the public records to prove that soon enough.

On Friday, COTA admitted to The Columbus Dispatch that the groundbreaking would be delayed.

It does not appear that we’ll be getting the Bus Rapid Transit lane by Dec. 2028, either:

Justine Belizaire, a vice president and senior program manager at HNTB, told the board then that the agency's goal of starting construction on West Broad this October was "aggressive" and reaching their launch date of December 2028 would be "extremely aggressive".

This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy. We’re talking about installing a bus lane—not going to the moon in hydrogen-powered shuttles—and yet there will not be a single bus lane operational roughly four years after Central Ohio voters approved the LinkUs project.

From my vantage point, this is more smoke to the probable fire that COTA CEO Monica Tellez-Fowler’s days are numbered, with Mayor Suburbs likely to duff the replacement hire in his search for a dutiful lackey to install ahead of next year’s contested mayoral race.

The notorious conman eclipses 40 percent of 2026 outside of Ohio

Earlier this week, The Rooster crunched the numbers on the unprecedented amount of time that Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has spent outside of Ohio.

At the time of publication, he had spent 38.9% of the calendar year outside the Buckeye State.

On Monday, Ramaswamy boarded his $10 million private jet for a 48-hour stay in Aspen, Colorado, likely for the Aspen Institute’s summit where rich perverts like Ramaswamy got face time with Republican governors to pitch the gospel of more tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy.

On Wednesday, Ramaswamy returned to Ohio, only to board the private jet for a jaunt to Cleveland to accept the endorsement of the Ohio Manufacturers Association, where he promised to “unleash a golden age of manufacturing” upon our polluted backwater outpost of a state if only we elect him as our next governor.

Ramaswamy flew back to Columbus, but only for a moment, before flying to New York City, where he has remained as of this writing at approximately 11 a.m. Friday morning.

It’s worth remembering that Ramaswamy’s phone number includes a New York area code. And it’s where he lived after graduating law school, only returning to Ohio in 2020 when he decided to enter Republican politics.

Ramaswamy’s previous travels have seen him land at Teterboro, New Jersey, which is also a stone’s throw from the Big Apple.

Does Ramaswamy maintain a residence in New York City, especially since his net worth has doubled during his campaign?

It’s the kind of question that would be worth asking if Ramaswamy’s handlers weren’t working overtime to ensure he never gaggles with the remnants of Ohio’s political press.

Regardless, Ramaswamy’s time in New York means he has spent 86 of a possible 206 days in 2026 outside of Ohio, a staggering 41.7% of the calendar year.

In Ramaswamy’s defense, he’s not hiding his disdain for everyday Ohioans and our hardscrabble lives in flyover country.

I assume that my time outside of Ohio would only increase if I were a billionaire. But I would simply spend my time doing literally anything else than running for governor.`

This week in Ohio Man…

An Ohio Man thought he had the perfect crime in paying an Indonesian youth to commit heinous acts of torture and sexual abuse against monkeys in order to sell those videos for obscene profit.

From Lucas Daprile of cleveland.com:

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An Ohio man was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to funding and distributing animal torture videos.

On Tuesday, Nicholas Dryden, a Cincinnati man who used the name Niko Bellic online, received the sentence after pleading guilty in the Southern District of Ohio to charges of conspiracy to create and distribute videos of animal cruelty.

Prosecutors said Dryden and his codefendants paid for a minor in Indonesia to create videos “depicting acts of extreme violence and sexual abuse against monkeys,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.

Normally, I would say that most Americans don’t understand how long nine years in prison would be on the psyche. But in this case, nine years doesn’t seem long enough!

I think Mr. Dryden has lost his right to participate in a functioning society.

This week in The Rooster…

It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC. And frankly, it was one of those weeks that showcased the unique depth and scope of Ohio’s fifth-ranked political blog.

We’d be honored if any of you freeloading hogs in the parking lot considered this moment as a divine sign to throw some rubies into the coffers and help sustain the train of psychic damage delivered onto Ohio’s corrupt political class:

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Here’s what you might have missed in your inbox this week:

• Data: Vivek Ramaswamy has spent nearly 40 percent of 2026 outside of Ohio. The Rooster crunched the numbers to show that above all else, the notorious conman doesn’t appear to love spending time in the state he seeks to govern.

• A knife for Husted, a pardon for DeWine: Killing the competition for Vivek Ramaswamy. Columbus-based operative The Elephant in the Room returns to shed light on the possible machinations that went into Governor Mike DeWine appointing Jon Husted to the United States Senate.

• The $40 million public schools swindle that can’t be blamed on Republicans. A job-hungry bureaucrat with the Columbus City Schools allowed a third-party vendor to treat the district like a personal ATM.

• Senator Michele Reynolds’ sex pest problems just got worse. Reynolds has previously escaped scrutiny for her role in the murder of Ohio State student Reagan Tokes. Things only got more bizarre from there.

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

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. What I learned debating fascists on a phone sex hotline… “We started calling it baby prison:” Private equity’s impact on chain daycares... Prioritizing profit over public health, corporations target Black and Latino children with “junk food” marketing… At the bottom of the biggest underground cave in the world… Her rape kit had a DNA match, but in San Francisco, that’s not enough.

Statehouse lobbyist Andrew Havas recently resigned as the Franklin County Captain of Senator Jon Husted’s campaign after revelations that he had been jailed in a case involving sexual misconduct with a minor.

Havas, who also serves as the Franklin County Republican Party’s vice chairman, has been a major donor to State Senator Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester).

Campaign records show Havas has donated $19,778.75 to her coffers, with multiple Republican sources describing Havas as Reynolds’ “right-hand man.”

In accepting Havas’ resignation, a Husted spokesperson told NBC News that he had not made the campaign aware of his criminal history. On Instagram, Havas’ wife contested the situation to The Rooster, saying that Havas had “consensually dated” the 15-year-old in question.

The age of consent in Ohio is 16.

As of this writing, it’s unclear if Reynolds has distanced herself from Havas as Husted’s campaign has done.

As of this publication, she hasn’t issued a statement about his involvement with her campaign, whether she knew about his criminal history, or her plans, if any, for his nearly $20,000 in donations.

By comparison, Reynolds donated $1,000 from Leslie Wexner to charity within hours of The Rooster bringing the billionaire’s donation to her attention at the Statehouse.

But what is clear is that Havas is far from the first man with questionable sexual conduct to find himself in Reynolds’ orbit.

Reynolds and her husband operate Nothing into Something Exit Program (NISRE), a non-profit, quasi-halfway house that works to integrate violent and sexual offenders back into society upon their release from prison.

That in itself is a noble pursuit. Everyone, no matter their crime, deserves a chance to return to society after their criminal debts have been paid.

However, a quick perusal of NISRE’s (woefully incomplete) tax filings and depositions shows that Reynolds’ business operates within a web of murky, if not illegal, ethics, self-dealing, and incompetence.

The most infamous example involves Reagan Tokes, the Ohio State student who sparked sweeping criminal justice reform in her name after the brutal rape and murder at the hands of Brian Golsby.

Golsby committed that murder while wearing a GPS ankle monitor while ostensibly on supervised release with NISRE.

In her deposition during the Tokes’ family civil suit against NISRE, Reynolds shifted responsibility of accepting Goldsby into the program onto Charles McLemore, the Vice President of Operations.

Reynolds passed the responsibility knowing that she had effectively hired a sex offender to monitor other sex offenders and granted him sweeping discretion in judgment with apparently no oversight.

In 2000, McLemore pleaded guilty when, as a 34-year-old coach, he impregnated one of his 14-year-old athletes.

Reynolds has continued operating NISRE into her first term as an Ohio State Senator. According to Ohiocheckbook.org, NISRE netted $1.9 million of taxpayer money in 2026 alone.

Reynolds and NISRE appear to be operating in the Ohio Republican wheelhouse of not outright illegal but still ethically egregious.

As a State senator, Reynolds holds massive sway over the budget for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the same organization lining the coffers of her private business.

It’s unlikely Reynolds, her pastor husband, or NISRE would welcome a tax audit. Because a simple review of NISRE’s (incomplete) tax filings shows several irregularities for an ostensible non-profit business:

• NISRE gave Reynolds’ mom a $10,000 interest-free loan for unspecified purposes.

• Her husband, Rick, has been paid $195,000 in “consulting fees,” despite claiming in the Tokes family’s deposition that he only worked “a couple hours a week.”

• NISRE has paid Reynolds $30,000 for car payments and rent to various properties she owns.

• NISRE has paid at least $99,000 to a vendor, M2 Social Enterprises, which Reynolds also owns.

• Reynolds has earned over $827,000 in salary.

And that’s only some of the eyebrow-raising expenditures after a simple review of still-incomplete tax records, which reference even more unspecified payments to Michele and Rick.

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Columbus City Schools (CCS) Superintendent Dr. Angela Chapman has made a name for herself by closing public schools to appease city developers and attempting to take away busing for the city’s high school students while raking in a salary of nearly $300,000.

Most recently, CCS leadership, including the Board of Education, has blamed the Republican-dominated State Legislature for having to make $50 million in cuts due to defunding at the state level, which resulted in hundreds of educators—and no administrators—losing their jobs and the promise of more public school closures.

Conveniently left out of this narrative was that Courtney Hale, the district’s Executive Director of Human Resources (with a salary of over $145,000), has cost the district a casual $40 million over the course of two years, with several more million to be lost in the upcoming year.

According to 112 pages of public records obtained by The Rooster, Hale has been mismanaging the district’s money regarding insurance practices and was swindled by the district’s third-party insurance broker, Aon.

Courtney Hale Complete Discipline File Redacted

3.55MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The investigation into Hale’s conduct ultimately led to the documentation of her firing as part of the “close of books” meeting—the Board of Education’s last meeting of the fiscal year, on June 30, 2026, which lasted three minutes and 56 seconds.

According to records, Hale had been signing off for Aon to do the work of an insurance broker, which is, in short, comparing benefit plans for the district’s staff and finding the best ones. Aon’s scope of work also included quarterly reports and keeping CCS up to speed on how much the benefits (primarily healthcare) plans were costing the district.

For example, if the district needed to kick in more money and dip into the ‘self-insurance fund’ to cover employees’ needs, it was Aon’s responsibility to communicate that to CCS, as well as monitor employee insurance usage and the impacts benefit plans have on the district.

Aon was found to not submit quarterly reports (a blatant violation of their contract), and when they did submit information and/or spreadsheets, data used was outdated and cherry-picked, painting the picture that employees were happy and healthy, and CCS was in a positive economic situation.

Aon also implemented multiple forms of compensation for themselves—which Hale readily signed off on, despite several needing Board approval—throughout their contract with CCS.

Hale not only let Aon take the wheel, but got out of the car, wished them safe travels, and started walking in the opposite direction.

She informed the district investigator her practice was to “let Aon handle” things because “[voluntary] benefits are complicated”, and readily demonstrated she had no real understanding of what Aon was doing, how they were compensated, or the impacts that their “services” had on the district, specifically when it came to managing and monitoring CCS’s self-insurance budget.

In fact, it never even crossed her mind to ask Aon a single question, including whether employee healthcare costs would be impacted for staff at all.

Coworkers noted that Hale was focused on keeping vendors (particularly Aon) happy rather than on the district's financial health or ensuring Aon was doing the job they were being paid to do. When others in the department voiced concern, Hale often gave the cold shoulder and fostered a hostile work environment.

In July 2025, a coworker of Hale’s noticed certain things weren’t adding up when it came to health insurance costs, and reached out to CVS and United Healthcare (the district’s vendors) for additional information and documentation.

After realizing the district was in serious trouble, particularly because of Aon’s practices and extreme lack of any oversight whatsoever, Hale told her coworker the district “has a ton of money”, specifically $400 million in reserves—a blatant lie likely whispered into Hale’s ear by Aon.

The concerned coworker reported this to Hale’s supervisor, Amy Grover, Chief Talent Officer with a salary over $172,000, before reaching out to Aon herself.

Hale told the concerned coworker to let Aon handle things, as they always have.

One month later, the concerned coworker sounded another alarm on the situation: Hale was signing contracts that should have been brought to the district’s Associate Legal Council, Wanda Lillis and then submitted to the Board of Education for approval.

Upon first raising this issue with Hale herself, Hale whined to her coworker that “Wanda hates me” and that she was “being difficult.”

A month later, Hale told the concerned coworker “whatever happens, happens” and that she was trying to get a job with Aon.

While this conduct is vastly inappropriate and against board policy, it was ultimately an unfounded allegation against Hale, as the investigator notes their relationship at that point was contentious, and “he said/she said” doesn’t really hold up in court.

However, an email in the obtained records shows there may be some truth to it:

According to Hale, this kind of interaction happens often in ‘the industry,’ and it wasn’t to be taken seriously.

Though this practice may leave Hale innocent by CCS standards, this, coupled with the extreme lack of oversight by Grover and Chapman, means the court of public opinion sees all parties guilty of pissing away taxpayer money and ultimately creating damage and harm to the city’s children, families, and communities.

A second coworker went on the record to share that Hale would sometimes utilize her cousin, a CCS consultant, to approach people on Hale’s team and inform them that Hale was taking Aon concerns to her supervisor, Amy Grover, and for her team to lie and take the blame.

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There is a distinct smell of desperation rotting the floorboards of the Ohio Statehouse this week, and it isn’t coming from the usual partisan bickering. It’s the scent of a backroom execution.

In Columbus, loyalty is just a commodity waiting to be traded, and right now, the highest offices in our state are being bartered off in the dark like stolen goo…

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Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy has used two private jets to gallivant outside Ohio in a historically unprecedented way in 2026.

Last August, Signal Ohio reported that Ramaswamy preferred to travel the state in a 2011 Cessna 750 Citation X with tail number N411NB.

In June, The Rooster exclusively reported that Ramaswamy had ditched his ~$5 million Cessna for a ~$10 million 2006 Bombardier Global 5000 with tail number N989DM.

According to federal flight records for the two jets, Ramaswamy has spent a staggering 79 of a possible 201 days outside Ohio in 2026. That equates to 38.9% of the year.

Ramaswamy has spent nearly 15% of the calendar year abroad, including the infamous July 4 flight to Paris after he turned his neighborhood holiday celebration into a campaign stop to overcompensate for hitting the tarmac before the first firework went off.

To compile the data, The Rooster cross-referenced the flight records with Ramaswamy’s campaign event calendar and his Twitter profile.

N411NB: Cessna Citation X

• Jan. 08-10: Turks & Caicos

• Jan 15: Teterboro, New Jersey

• Feb 25-26: Salt Lake City, Utah

• Feb. 26-March 09: Indianapolis, Indiana

• March 09-10: Terboro, New Jersey

• March 12-13: West Palm Beach, Florida

• March 15: Teterboro, New Jersey

N98DM: Bombardier Global 5000

• March 20-April 5: Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Greece, and Portugal

• April 11-12: Orlando, Florida

• April 18-19: Teterboro, New Jersey

• April 26: Raleigh, North Carolina

• May 6-7: Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida

• May 7-12: Hartford, Connecticut

• May 13: Washington, D.C.

• May 14-18: Scottsdale, Arizona

• May 22-25: Salt Lake City, Utah

• June 11: Nashville, Tennessee

• June 11-14: Carlsbad, California

• June 16: Chicago, Illinois

• June 21: Bowling Green, Kentucky

• June 23: Washington, D.C.

• July 4-12: Paris, France and Geneva, Switzerland

• July 15: Atlanta, Georgia

• July 18-19: Hilton Head, S.C.

Using the latter two sources, we were able to eliminate two extensive out-of-state trips from the flight logs: April 26 to May 5, when Ramaswamy’s jet moved from Columbus to Florida, and May 26 to June 10, when Ramaswamy’s jet and unknown passengers went to Hartford, Connecticut.

We were also able to eliminate certain campaign events that didn’t feature Ramaswamy and overlapped with his apparent travel.

For example: March 28, when Ramaswamy’s running mate Rob McColley headlined the Lake County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner while Ramaswamy was in Greece.

And on April 18, when McColley, not Ramaswamy, was the Fayette County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner, Ramaswamy was in the New York City metro area, where he lived for years after graduating from law school.

The Rooster also didn’t include Ramaswamy’s June 26 flight to Parkersburg, West Virginia, in this tally, since it was in service of a campaign fundraiser hosted by Jim Vuksic, the owner of Powerflo Solutions, a Southeastern Ohio company that profiteers on data centers.

All other documented travel aligns with gaps in Ramaswamy’s campaign and social media timelines, including a three-day jaunt in June to Carlsbad, California, where a random Twitter user spotted him at Legoland:

Some of this out-of-state travel would be expected of a gubernatorial candidate, even one not as allegedly rich as Ramaswamy.

For example, as The Rooster previously reported, Ramaswamy jet-setted to Washington, D.C., in May—a month when he largely did nothing after securing the nomination over Hitler connoisseur Casey Putsch—to meet with the U.S. Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “Doctor” Mehmet Oz.

A day later, Ramaswamy boarded his private jet for a four-day excursion to Scottsdale, Arizona, where, at least part of the time, he met with executives at Turning Point USA, the billionaire-funded propaganda network ostensibly aimed at winning the hearts and minds of American college students.

Ramaswamy headlined a Turning Point USA event on Ohio State’s campus in April.

We also know that one of his two trips to Salt Lake City, Utah—the one from May 22 to 25—was to keynote a data center summit.

However, most of the items on the out-of-state itinerary don’t appear to have any connection to Ramaswamy’s increasingly competitive campaign for governor.

For example, last Wednesday, July 15, Ramaswamy took a day trip to Atlanta, Georgia—a time and location that coincided with the World Cup semifinal between Argentina and England.

Just this past week, from July 18 to 19, Ramaswamy traveled to Hilton Head, South Carolina, a luxury vacation spot preferred by hordes of Ohioans—albeit not ones who travel there by private jet.

There are also three international vacations through nine countries. Individually, they would be bucket-list trips for many residents in a state where the median annual income is approximately $70K.

Ramaswamy spent an estimated $145,000 on jet fuel for those international trips alone.

Campaign records show that, since Dec. 30, 2025, Ramaswamy’s campaign has spent $129,644 with TDPX Aircraft Solutions, the registered owner of the Global Bombardier 5000.

The Rooster’s Ramaswamy dossier

Earlier this year, it probably seemed so easy for the Ohio Republican Party. All they had to do was ride the luxurious coattails of the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy to victory, as he bought the airwaves and shrieked about Dr. Amy Acton being COVID Hitler.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed that the Ohio Republican Party’s Twitter account has shifted to calling her a drunken, pill-popping maniac based on that one night she got into an argument with her husband in Bexley.

If I were Dr. Acton’s campaign, I would hire a yokel and give him a pair of pervert glasses and ask Ramaswamy to share that famous American dietary staple, a cheeseburger, with him at one of these little county fairs that he’s attending.

But I understand the consternation among Democratic voters at seeing these anti-Acton ads on various television and streaming platforms, as well as on FlightRadar247 when you’re tracking Ramaswamy’s latest jaunt on his private jet.

It’s worth remembering that Ramaswamy is going this negative this early because he already blew $25 million on propaganda ads that failed to move the needle an inch on his likeability, which is about 20 points underwater with independents.

I’m not saying to bet the farm on Dr. Acton. Just that it’s not a bad thing that Ramaswamy has to spend this kind of money, this early, to marginal, if any, effect.

I would bet the farm that Dr. Acton’s team will go on the offensive after Labor Day when Normal People tune into the election—and it’s not as if they’re going to lack content when it comes to the conman.

This week in Ohio Man…

I have a cum laude degree from the prestigious Twitter Law University, but I rarely descend from the mountaintop to dispense 100% credible legal advice.

But I’m doing that today to say it’s not worth catching a felony case for scamming hardworking citizens with fake Pokémon cards, as Miami Township residents Gage Quick and Ana Stowers are about to learn.

From Hannah Race of WHTR.com:

According to court documents, the victim was shown pictures of the card, which appeared to be in a case in mint condition. The victim then agreed to make the transaction on June 28 in the New Palestine Police Department parking lot.

In court documents, the victim said that when the sale took place, Stowers was allegedly driven to the police department by her boyfriend, Quick, who stayed in the car as the transaction happened. The victim said he received a mix of cash and a wire transfer totaling $1,200, along with the card.

The victim said within the following days of the transaction that he went to a comic book store, hoping to sell or trade the card. That’s when he was advised by a staff member that the card and PSA grading were both fake, according to court documents.

Shoutout to the victim for having the courage to go to the police. I’m not sure if I could have swallowed the shame after getting scammed by a guy with that kind of haircut.

This week in The Rooster…

It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC.

• Underreporting in the Underworld: High Bridge Consulting’s phantom paper trail. Columbus-based Republican operative Elephant in the Room returns to spill the beans on some light tax fraud that implicates Speaker of the House Matt Huffman and Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe.

• Ohio Democrats need one weird trick from Rep. Joyce Beatty. With Sherrod Brown and John Kulewicz correctly blasting Leslie Wexner, Ohio Democrats could get a boost from Rep. Beatty if she’d go to the Justice Department, review the unredacted Epstein Files, and tell us what she learned.

• The Epstein Class picks Vivek Ramaswamy. Thirsty Epstein associate Elon Musk, who is also currently poisoning Memphis with unregulated data center pollution, has dropped $5 million into Ramaswamy’s campaign coffers.

• The Rooster’s July Mailbag. My dream statewide ticket in 2028, the specter of Chinese cars, intriguing state legislative races and yes—another Marion story that will damage my future political prospects.

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

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. Someone used AI to write an unauthorized biography of me; I don’t recommend reading it… The Box Office bounces back: Hollywood banking on a $10 billion year… She knew he wasn’t real, and she loved him anyway… The accidental cartel queen… How to decode the archive inside ancient tree rings.

WARREN COUNTY — I saw The Odyssey last night. I had never considered that Odysseus might have felt bad for tricking the Trojans like that.

Anyway, welcome to the July Mailbag. This dispatch is written from Great Wolf Lodge, a place that will feel the full weight of the National Guard in the first 100 days of my governorship. Just unreal specimens afoot, with me being chief among them.

The mailbags are always fun to write (and hopefully read) because I enjoy interacting with the community, even if they seem intent on damaging my future political prospects by repeatedly asking me to discuss my youth in Marion, the City of Kings.

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

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

Another Marion Story?

In the late 2000s, I once met a nice Marion woman at a now-defunct bar whose name I can no longer remember, while listening to a white man in a crocodile-skin suit named “Clay Diddy” perform some sort of karaoke song.

This girl and I hit it off, and we had the type of night you’d expect from two Marionaires who stumbled upon each other in a seedy bar while obliterated. She smoked Marlboro Reds and said her favorite restaurant was BW3’s.

The next morning, after I dropped her off, I realized we never exchanged numbers. So, I looked her up on Facebook. Turned out that she was married to a troop who was deployed in Iraq.

I still feel bad about it over 20 years later.

First-time writer, long-time reader. I’m a subscriber because I enjoy your work and agree with most of your takes. One place I think you’ve missed the mark, though, is the idea that Zach Klein is a Republican in Democratic clothing. There are plenty of valid criticisms of Klein.

I think he’s gone from chasing power to overcorrecting and becoming overly cautious politically. I think it’s dumb that he hasn’t returned Wexner’s money. But I don’t think he’s a closet Republican.

If he were, he’d likely have run for Attorney General or even Governor as a Republican by now. The usual rebuttal is that Franklin County is too blue, so he had to run as a Democrat.

But when Klein was getting his start in politics (in college and law school) Republicans still held considerable influence in Franklin County. If he were really a Republican, that would’ve been the better path from the beginning. Criticizing him is fair game, but I don’t think his being a Republican wearing a Democratic label adds up.

I was in eighth grade crying because the Supreme Court stole Al Gore’s presidency in what might have been the most consequential election of our lives. Klein was celebrating that outcome while volunteering for that shitbag Pat Tiberi’s Congressional campaign.

There’s just always something… off… about people who were diehard conservatives in their youth. If that makes me a bigot, so be it.

Like, I’m glad Klein had an epiphany. But he’s still sending his children to private schools and accepting voucher money, while also defending Wexner and working in the most Republican-coded position in politics.

Maybe it’s unfair to say he switched to Democratic politics to run for office. But any politician who uses a ring light as much as he does deserves to be humbled at every opportunity.

What’s the status on Leslie Wexner—will he ever be deposed by a competent, well-prepared attorney?

Well, he was deposed in the Dr. Richard Strauss class action lawsuit against Ohio State, though it looks like that tape will never see the light of day.

But don’t forget, two groups of Epstein survivors are currently suing the Wexner Foundation in New York. So, his time in the blender isn’t done just yet.

In the meantime, at least we have Vice President J.D. Vance spreading misinformation that Epstein and Wexner were “funding” Ohio State football for the past four decades.

Like, how are you the Vice President and a self-declared Buckeye diehard who doesn’t know basic stuff about Wexner at this point?

But what’s wild is that Wexner being a sugar daddy to Ohio State football was like the one thing that could have absolved him of his sins in Central Ohio’s court of public opinion, and he never did it because he’s more interested in lingerie for teenagers.

Will Chinese cars ever be sold in the USA?

The next Democratic president with legislative majorities needs to unleash the Chinese automobile floodgates to devastate the Republican protected class that is automobile dealers.

But yes, I think they’re inevitable. Especially now that Trump’s idiocy has driven the Mexicans and Canadians into President Xi Jinping’s waiting arms.

What state legislative races should we be paying attention to?

The hunt for 40 Democratic seats in the Ohio House is officially afoot, with Dems needing to win five of these eight races to hit that margin.

Democrats are listed first, with their websites linked:

• Megan Coy vs. State Rep. Mike Dovilla (R-Berea) in District 17

• Noah Spinner vs. Mike Kahoe in District 31, a seat currently held by term-limited State Rep. Bill Roemer (R-Richfield)

• Samantha Salamon vs. Vik Sandhu in House District 35, currently held by Taylor Swift wedding attendee, State Rep. Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Twp.), who is running for State Senate.

• Rose Lounsbury vs. State Rep. Andrea White (R-Kettering) in District 36.

• Daquan Neal vs. Mark Campbell in House District 39, currently held by term-limited State Rep. Phil Plummer (R-Vandalia), who’s running for State Senate.

• Krista Allison vs. State Rep. Jim Thomas (R-Jackson Twp.) in District 49.

• Mike Baker vs. To-Be-Determined in House District 52, a seat held by term-limited State Rep. Gayle Manning (R-North Ridgeville), who will likely be appointed to the State Senate next week after her son, Senator Nathan Manning, vacated the race to accept an appointment to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

• Shelby Kimball vs. State Rep. Brian Lorenz (R-Powell) in House District 60

The top target is Rep. White in District 36. I don’t have any animosity toward Rep. White outside of her politics, and I’m looking forward to shaking Lounsbury’s hand at the Statehouse in January.

Two other candidates that have impressed me in steeply gerrymandered Republican districts:

• Laalitya Acharya vs. State Rep. Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon)

• Katie Wagner vs. Pastor Rep. Jonathan Newman (R-Troy) in House District 80.

What’s wild about the State Senate side is that I’ve talked to several sources that I respect, and none of them agree on the top pick-up opportunity, which is what I like to see:

• Stacie Baker vs. State Senator Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester) and her army of body doubles in District 3

• State Rep. Joe Miller (D-Amherst) vs. State Rep. Gayle Manning (R-North Ridgeville) in District 13, a seat recently vacated by sitting State Senator Nathan Manning.

• Mike Roberto vs. State Rep. Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Twp.) in District 27, a seat currently held by term-limited State Senator Slave Shackle (R-Hudson).

I was reliably told yesterday that State Senate candidates have polled higher than Dr. Acton and Brown in these districts, which, given their Republican lean, is music to my ears.

Another Senate candidate that has really impressed me:

• Cara Jacob vs. Zac Haines in Senate District 7, a seat currently held by term-limited Senator Steve Wilson.

Ramaswamy will be a drag in these types of districts, and Jacob is a top-tier candidate. I’m not saying—I’m just saying.

As a recovering alcoholic, what’s your take on NA Beers and NA spirits? They’re all the rage. I know some purists won’t touch them because they have trace amounts of alcohol, but they’ve been helpful for me in social situations.

I like the NA beer more than the NA spirits because it’s cheaper. NA spirits are the same price without the alcohol. It’s like paying $15 for a cup of apple juice. No thanks.

I roll the non-zero alcohol because I’m the type of guy who could crush six trace-alcohol beers in an attempt to feel something if things took a turn for the worst in my life.

I also understand anyone who feels like it’s playing with fire. But I agree that they’re clutch for me in social settings or watching the big game at home because I can drink two or three and can go about my business like a normal person and not want to call my cocaine dealer while ripping open Beers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Last week, I walked into the Old Towne Tavern on a whim to watch the first half of the United States vs. Bosnia in the World Cup Round of 32.

I ordered a non-alcoholic Michelob and looked over and noticed two well-known Statehouse gremlins sitting two seats down from me. I got the urge to stress to them that I was drinking a non-alcoholic beer, but then I realized it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the Republicans thought I was back on the sauce.

Who is going to win #OH09?

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The notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy and I have more in common than you think at first glance.

We’re both mentally ill addicts who have harnessed the power of being annoying to professional gain. I’d like to think I’m a lot more honest about it, though.

He’d never admit it, but in my unprofessional opinion, you have to be mentally ill to have an alleged $2 billion and want to run for governor to make the material conditions worse for working people. You have to be addicted to money and power to even accrue $2 billion in the first place.

As for the annoying part, well, consider that Ramaswamy is only running for governor of Ohio because of the Complete & Total Endorsement of Donald Trump, which was arranged by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles due to Ramaswamy beeing deeply annoying to Trump and fellow D.O.G.E. co-founder Elon Musk, a South African ketamine addict with no friends, wife, or adult children who love him.

From The New York Times on Jan. 20, 2025:

Mr. Ramaswamy’s position in Mr. Trump’s orbit has been tenuous for weeks as he irritated the president, several of Mr. Trump’s aides and, crucially, Mr. Musk. Mr. Musk has been sharply critical of Mr. Ramaswamy in private conversations.

Being so annoying that they exiled Ramaswamy to Ohio was actually a stroke of luck for him. D.O.G.E. was successful in that it fired several Inspector Generals and opened the federal government to graft and embezzlement that will only become known in scale if the Democrats seize the House and the Senate in the November elections.

It was a failure by every other metric, to the point that it became a drag on Tesla stock as nationwide protests at dealerships erupted across the country before Musk threw up his hands, declared government a lot harder than he’d thought it would be after the deficit exploded under his watch, and went back to inciting racial pogroms on his Nazi den of a social media platform.

But hilariously, thanks to our broken tax code and the Republican-juiced Supreme Court that gave us Citizens United, the world’s first trillionaire can drop $5 million into a gubernatorial election in a state in which he does not even live.

From The New York Times on Wednesday:

But they seem to have buried the hatchet: Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, donated $5 million in May to back Mr. Ramaswamy’s bid to be governor of Ohio, according to a campaign-finance filing made public on Wednesday.

This is a political gift to Dr. Amy Acton, but only if she comes to her senses as starts bludgeoning Ramaswamy over Epstein, Wexner and the data centers—as I advised her to do on April 6.

If she’s queasy about going after Wexner and his longtime friendship, financing and rumored romance with Epstein—she’s been offered a reprieve in Musk underwriting Ramaswamy’s campaign.

In 2019, Musk said Epstein was “obviously a creep” and claimed that he had tried to lure him to Pedophile Island numerous times, which Musk rebuffed.

If you recently woke up from a multi-year coma, I’d suggest you sit down. Because Musk was lying through his teeth, Epstein’s emails show he tried repeatedly to visit Pedophile Island and party with Epstein.

From The Guardian in Jan. 2026:

In November 2012, Epstein sent Musk an email asking “how many people will you be for the heli to island”.

“Probably just Talulah and me. What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” Musk replied, in an apparent reference to his former wife Talulah Riley.

Musk followed up with an email on 25 December in response to another Epstein message that encouraged him to visit and offered use of his helicopter.

“Do you have any parties planned? I’ve been working to the edge of sanity this year and so, once my kids head home after Christmas, I really want to hit the party scene in St Barts or elsewhere and let loose. The invitation is much appreciated, but a peaceful island experience is the opposite of what I’m looking for,” Musk wrote.

It’s hard to believe that Musk would be later divorced after he was spending Christmas morning fantasizing about partying with the world’s most infamous pedophile.

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The Friday dispatch will be the July Mailbag.

You can submit your questions anonymously through the Jotform.

An eclectic mix of political and non-political questions always makes the mailbags fun to write and (hopefully) read.

Joyce Beatty can help Ohio Democrats win in November with this one weird trick

As you might have seen, longtime Columbus Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty recently dropped a gigaton of psychic damage on Donald Trump by suing to remove his name from the Kennedy Center.

In politics, especially in this era, it’s wise for politicians to repeatedly tell people about their victories. And Beatty has certainly done that.

On Instagram alone, she’s posted 43 times about her battle at the Kennedy Center since June 1.

Here she is on the Don Lemon Show. Here she is on MSNOW. Here she is with Rev. Al Sharpton. Here she is with Rachel Maddow. Here she is on CNN. Here she is in the Atlantic. Here she is in the Washington Post. Here she is in The New York Times.

Here she is, just last night, participating in the well-explored short video format, “preparing for her Netflix documentary” about her fight to remove Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center.

I don’t blame Beatty for spiking the football. Politics is like blogging—it’s inherently an act of ego and self-promotion, and I’ve been known to spike a football or two in my time, as well.

But this game is also about “What have you done for me lately?” And it’s important not to get too high on your own supply. It’s not like Trump collapsed like a dying star when his name came down.

If Beatty would like to continue putting psychic damage on our deranged cheetoh of a president, she won’t have to look far for a salient, bipartisan issue that, coincidentally, is much more localized than Trump’s name on an arts center in Washington D.C.

MEHDI: “How scared are Trump and his inner circle about the content and impact of the Epstein Files?”

SWAN: “We got their focus group data — people brought it up spontaneously. It came up higher than crime, data centers… some of the most salient issues were lower than Epstein.”

[via the Tennessee Holler on Bluesky]

The Rooster excoriated Beatty for her deafening silence on Jeffrey Epstein and his strongest soldier, Central Ohio anorexia magnate Leslie Wexner, on Friday, February, 13.

A little over 12 hours later, Beatty announced in an Instagram post that she was donating Wexner’s money—but not his wife’s—to charity.

She hasn’t mentioned Wexner or the Epstein Files since.

However, her Democratic colleagues did rebuff her effort to join them for the press conference after Wexner’s deposition in New Albany on February 20.

Read into that what you will.

On April 6, The Rooster explained why Dr. Amy Acton wouldn’t be bludgeoning the Republicans on data centers or Wexner anytime soon.

Thankfully, former Senator Sherrod Brown learned a couple of things in his 2024 loss to Bitcoin aficionado Bernie Moreno–namely, that you have to hit these perverts where it hurts.

Brown has pounded Central Ohio airwaves with ads from Wexner’s deposition, correctly labeling Wexner as Epstein’s “co-conspirator.”

Democratic Attorney General nominee John Kulewicz also got into the mix yesterday, following The Rooster’s reporting of formerly jailed sex pest Andrew Havas donating $12,986.42 to Auditor and Republican Attorney General nominee Keith Faber, and tying that to Faber also accepting tens of thousands of dollars from two other political figures with problematic sexual misconduct allegations against them.

“[Ohio Republican Attorney General nominee Keith Faber] has taken over $50,000 from Les Wexner, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein,” Kulewicz wrote on Facebook.

“Then, after he was called out for it, Auditor Faber stiffed charities on the money he pledged to donate.”

What will Beatty do?

By their own admission in court, State Republicans targeted Rep. Beatty as a pliable, self-interested dealmaker when they decided to gerrymander Ohio with laser precision after they rode the racist Tea Party backlash to Barack Obama’s presidency back to power.

Fifteen years later, Beatty still holds her seat in a district that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un could win with a (D) next to his name. She will cruise to re-election in November by margins that would make Jong Un blush.

She should spend the time from August to November using her federal powers to go to the Department of Justice to review the unredacted Epstein Files and tell Central Ohio exactly what happened in our backyard for nearly 40 years.

It’s something that Congressional Democrats have been doing since February.

Technically, any Ohio Congressional Democrat could do that. But Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Cleveland) couldn’t even be bothered to attend Wexner’s deposition despite sitting on the Oversight Committee.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo) doesn’t have the internet.

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Cincinnati) is probably too busy fantasizing about sniping a Palestinian child and watching their head explode into pink mist like a punctured balloon filled with McDonald’s chicken nugget slime.

And Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Akron) is probably too busy fantasizing about being the “first couple in Congress” with her husband, Franklin County’s most obviously corrupt commissioner, Kevin Boyce.

No, it has to be Beatty. It’s her district, and she’s the only one with the clout, charisma, and now national credibility who can leverage this story back into the press.

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The Friday dispatch will be the July Mailbag.

You can submit your questions anonymously through the Jotform.

An eclectic mix of political and non-political questions always makes the mailbags fun to write and (hopefully) read.

Some housekeeping items that you might have missed over the weekend…

• As Patriot Wire members learned first, State Senator Nathan Manning (R-North Ridgeville) is vacating his Ohio House seat after Governor Mike DeWine appointed him to the 9th District Court of Appeals.

  • The Republican Senate Caucus is expected to appoint State Rep. Gayle Manning (R-North Ridgeville) to finish the term. Manning is already running for her son’s vacated seat, and an Aug. appointment will allow her to run as the incumbent in November. She faces State Rep. Joe Miller (D-Amherst), a longtime Social Studies teacher in the region.

  • N. Manning’s exit is a major blow to Speaker Matt Huffman, who, it must be noted, has never supplied a solid alibi for April 19, 1995. The 52nd House District will now be a likely Democratic flip without the “Manning” name in the fray. Whoever the local Republicans appoint will face Democrat Mike Baker of Elyria

    • Said one House Republican to The Rooster: “[The Democrats’] path to 40 seats [in the House] is wide open.” Breaking Huffman’s supermajority would be no small thing—especially with the anti-Huffman faction, already 13 strong, likely to grow after losing seats in November.

Senator Jon Husted, who has a diarrhea-splattered blanket where his brain is supposed to be, suffered some unfavorable headlines over the weekend.

Husted’s Franklin County campaign captain, Andrew Havas, resigned over revelations that he was jailed after allegations of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old when he was 22 in 2008.

NBC reported that Havas later pleaded down to a simple misdemeanor assault charge and was sentenced to 90 days in Mahoning County Jail.

His wife, meanwhile, didn’t seem to see anything wrong with her husband “consensually dating” a 15-year-old:

It’s weird then that Havas would resign—and that Husted would accept it—if being jailed over “consensual dating” of a 15-year-old in a state where the age of consent is 16. But I understand how it’s easier to blame the fifth-ranked political blogger in Ohio rather than a husband.

Still, if Havas’ conduct is unbecoming enough to cost him a volunteer role with the Husted campaign, it’s not looking good for the several Republicans with Havas money on the books.

Some highlights:

• $19,778.75 to State Senator Michel Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester); he’s also co-hosted fundraisers for her, per multiple sources.

• $12,986.42 to Republican Attorney General candidate Keith Faber

• $9,202.52 to Vivek Ramaswamy and Rob McColley

• $7,500 to State Senator Al Cutrona (R-Canfield)

• $5,789 to House Finance chairman Brian Stewart

I believe in second chances. I believe in third, fourth and fifth chances, too. I also believe that it’s never too late for someone to change.

But none of that can happen without atonement. And judging by his wife melting down on my Instagram account, it’s evident that Havas doesn’t concede that it’s impossible for a 15-year-old to “consensually date” a 22-year-old. Can’t say that I’m shocked he found himself in the orbit of influential Ohio Republicans.

This, however, is a great example of why the State Legislature gets the Hell out of Columbus from late May to December in election years.

Unfortunately for Senators Cutrona and Reynolds, they’ll have to come back to Columbus for a single session to appoint Gayle Manning to her Senate seat. I’d suggest they donate that molester money to charity before then.

Anyway, the main event today is Columbus-based Republican operative The Elephant in the Room, with some revelations about Speaker Matt Huffman, House Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe, and High Bridge Consulting that might interest the federal and state tax collectors.

As always, freelancers at The Rooster have been compensated at a fair market rate for their labor, an arrangement made possible through the generosity of the Patriots Caucus—the brave and noble soldiers who sustain a unique voice in Ohio politics.

Underreporting in the Underworld: High Bridge Consulting’s Phantom Paper Trail by The Elephant in the Room

Power in Columbus is rarely wielded by the people whose names are printed on the ballot. True control lives in unvouched invoices, unmapped corporate pipelines, and the deliberate silence of shadow ledgers.

It is an architecture built entirely on the convenient assumption that regular citizens will never take the time to audit the receipts, read the fine print, or cross-reference the public disclosures.

For the last three weeks, this column has systematically dismantled that assumption.

We began by mapping the establishment's foundational architecture, tracking the corporate-fueled Money Machine that keeps Ohio’s ruling class entirely insulated from the electorate's actual desires.

Next, we turned our attention to the psychological infrastructure of the status quo, pulling back the curtain on the Strategy Group’s fake polling racket—a manufactured reality weaponized to freeze donors, intimidate potential challengers, and rig primary contests long before election day.

Finally, we put a face to the machine, exposing House Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe as the definitive Statehouse swindler. As the primary target of our ongoing investigation, Dittoe has spent years operating as the ultimate backroom mechanic, quietly pulling the levers of institutional power from the immediate perimeter of the speaker’s podium.

But a political machine can manufacture all the dark money, rigged data, and institutional leverage it wants; it still requires an execution arm on the ground to deploy those resources.

It requires operational entities that can place bodies into legislative districts, oversee campaign operations, craft messaging strategies, and absorb millions of dollars in street-level expenses without leaving a conspicuous paper trail for reporters or regulators to follow.

This week, we are stepping directly into the fire to expose how an elite political consulting racket down in Columbus has been operating in flagrant violation of Ohio’s campaign finance laws for years by keeping its true revenue almost entirely off the books.

It is time to talk about High Bridge Consulting.

A Mirage on East Broad Street

If you navigate the Columbus political ecosystem for even a single afternoon, you know High Bridge. They are the premier, institutional campaign muscle for the Ohio Republican establishment.

They are the tactical unit that Speaker of the Ohio House Matt Huffman frequently and openly refers to as his “big gun” when he needs to protect an incumbent from a grassroots primary or drag an establishment-backed candidate across the finish line.

They are omnipresent, immensely influential, and whispered about with a mix of reverence and fear. Yet, if you log onto the Ohio Secretary of State’s online campaign finance database, High Bridge Consulting practically ceases to exist as a functional political operation.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s online search portal serves as the state’s definitive public ledger, tracking the financial lifelines of state politics. Because the digital archive only contains campaign finance reports from 2020 through the present day in 2026, it represents the complete modern footprint of High Bridge’s electoral operations. When you run a comprehensive query for High Bridge Consulting within that state database, the results are shockingly barren.

The official state record claims that over the last six consecutive years—encompassing multiple high-stakes, multi-million-dollar election cycles—High Bridge Consulting has brought in campaign consulting revenue from a grand total of three political clients in the entire state of Ohio: “Friends of Susan Manchester,” “The Republican Senate Campaign Committee” (RSCC), and the “Protect Our Constitution” political action committee.

When you isolate individual legislative candidate committees, the disclosure becomes downright farcical. State Representative Susan Manchester is the only legislative candidate in the entire State of Ohio who explicitly discloses paying High Bridge Consulting for campaign services on an official financial disclosure report over the last six years.

To demonstrate just how thin this public paper trail truly is, The Rooster has pulled the official state data. The entire public financial footprint of this political juggernaut is contained within a single, sparse state document, preserved here for public scrutiny:

I mean, the ledger reads less like the record of an elite political operation and more like a bookkeeping glitch.

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There’s a crisis in American politics with campaign finance laws—and not just a single oligarch being able to funnel $250 million into a presidential race under the guise of “free speech” and become a trillionaire two years later.

The laws around campaign spending are way, way too lax in Ohio and America.

State Senator Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) is the best example of the former; he spends campaign funds like a drunken sailor in a brothel, meaning his salary is north of $300K a year.

We now have a federal example, as if one were needed, in longtime Dayton Republican Congressman Mike Turner.

From Thomas Gnau of Dayton Daily News:

• $9,000 at the Dayton Engineers Club.

• $8,500 at the Monocle, a Washington, DC steakhouse.

• Over $7,600 at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington.

• Over $3,400 at the Pine Club, Dayton.

• Over $2,900 at the Oakwood Club.

• Over $1,900 at Osaka Japanese Steakhouse in Beavercreek.

• $1,900 at Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse in DC.

• Over $500 at Lanai at Mamala Bay, in Hawaii.

This complaint charges that Turner’s campaign spent in excess of $55,000 on restaurants and tens of thousands on lodging, including on the “Trump International Hotel DC,” but also in Dayton and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas where Turner has homes.

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here.

Turner is taking multiple people out to expensive meals and chalking it up as a “campaign expense,” likely after glibly mentioning to the table that he hopes he gets re-elected in November.

That he’s expensing a $500 dinner in Hawaii offers insight into how comfortable he's become with running this little scam.

The nastiest part, however, is Turner spending “tens of thousands of dollars” in lodging at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., which is a thinly veiled loyalty payment to the Big Man to curry favor with the party’s kingpin.

If we had the media environment we deserved, Turner would be grilled for the next four months about how, exactly, an $8,500 dinner at the Monocle in D.C. helped his re-election bid or why he’s spending tens of thousands of dollars in lodging in D.C. and Dayton when he has homes in both metro areas.

But that’s unlikely to happen in Ohio, a state of 11 million already condemned souls, with only a single Congressional reporter on Capitol Hill. (Shoutout to Sabrina Eaton of cleveland.com.)

But this is another example, again, as if one were needed, about the swindling that Republican politicians run on their primarily rural voters: The only thing they will ever get to own in the future is the liberals. Now, that might be enough for a certain kind of hate-filled simpleton, of which there’s no short supply in Ohio.

But it should be driven home to them that their beautiful Republican politicians feel much more comfortable in swanky steakhouses in liberal neighborhoods than they would ever feel living among their hog voters.

Ohio’s statewide election is just around the corner, and there may never be a better time to subscribe to The Rooster.

If you enjoy the social media presence, the on-the-ground videography, or even the occasional free dispatch—that’s all sustained by the brave and noble soldiers in the Patriots Caucus, the most feared bipartisan cabal on Capitol Square.

Members get a guaranteed four dispatches a week, chances to win free merchandise and books, free Statehouse tours, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing you’re doing your part to inflict obscene levels of psychic damage on Ohio’s corrupt political class.

Come bark with the freaks today!

This week in Ohio Man…

An Ohio Man likely learned a lesson this week about the dangers DNA services like Ancestry.com pose to murderers and other classes of wanted criminals.

From Mark Walker of nytimes.com:

For nearly 40 years, the clues sat in silence.

Some were left in an Ohio hotel room where John Warren, a 44-year-old auto parts salesman, was found dead in October 1985. Others turned up hundreds of miles away: his Oldsmobile abandoned on Florida’s Gulf Coast, and a scattering of belongings discarded behind a Cracker Barrel in northwest Georgia.

The pieces were never quite enough to arrest anyone. Detectives chased leads, interviewed witnesses and watched the case grow cold.

Now, investigators in Warren County, Ohio, have identified two men they believe were responsible for Mr. Warren’s killing, based on what they called a renewed forensic analysis.

One of them, Randy McAllister, 62, of Columbus, was indicted in June on charges of aggravated murder and murder.

To be clear, prosecutors have refused to clarify how they landed on Mr. McAllister and his since-dead alleged accomplice, whom they’ve also refused to identify.

But given they reopened the case in 2019 and resubmitted the forensic evidence for analysis at a later, unspecified date… there’s a good chance they nabbed him when one of his relatives submitted their DNA to a genealogy website.

It would appear that I have no murderers or stone-cold criminals in my extended family, as I submitted my DNA to Ancestry.com in 2018 like a rube. It’s probably best that you learn from me and don’t sell your DNA to a private company to do whatever they want with it, in exchange for a sketchy “ancestry” analysis that comes with several risks of exposing your personal information to scammers.

But hey, I suppose the upshot for me is that I can rest easy knowing my father or mother or any of their kin didn’t murder a traveling salesman in Middletown, Ohio, in 1985.

This week on The Rooster…

It was a brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, with two dynamite freelance pieces that The Rooster can afford to finance thanks to the generosity of the Patriots Caucus.

Please consider purchasing a membership for the full experience at The Rooster:

• The Armchair Quarterback and the Statehouse Swindle. Columbus-based Republican operative Elephant in the Room returns to shine light on the many ways Ohio House Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe profiteers on Republican House candidates.

• No surrender means no surrender. I ventured to Lake County on Tuesday and rejected two plea deals that would have seen me admit guilt in Shrextgate.

• Grifters… everywhere. What do Kirk Noden, Max Miller, and Frank LaRose all have in common? Their misdeeds were highlighted in The Rooster’s Thursday dispatch.

• Why is an ordained huckster advocating for mass surveillance in Cleveland? Cleveland-based freelancer Saint Claire returns to expose Pastor Aaron Phillips’ paid role with Mayor Justin Bibb and their common cause of Flock expansion throughout the city.

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

Until then… stay frosty, my friends!

THOSE WMDs. How U.S. soldier Jess Cunningham exposed a war crime in Iraq… The real-life mermaids of Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs… How Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” changed America… I played football in Guantanamo Bay—this World Cup is a stain on humanity… Why did Hana Sherif leave Arena Stage?

It appears inevitable that Cleveland’s future will be filled with Flock.

Despite the loud, nationwide opposition to mass surveillance technology—Flock being one of the most commonly discussed—automated License Plate Readers have long found a home in Cleveland.

Cleveland has used Flock cameras dating back to 2023, though on Tuesday, County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office said they were successfully used in 2017, so that’s weird.

One of Flock’s most diehard supporters is the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD), which quietly approved a $600,000 contract in Aug. 2025 without discussion during the CMSD School Board’s first meeting, held with a less public agenda.

But frankly, we all should have been organizing against the issue—especially those on the Left—long before former Ward 3 Councilmember Kerry McCormack vacated his seat early to take a job at Flock.

Despite 2025 being a messy municipal election year that rarely discussed Flock technology, it became a focus for a group of Cleveland-area residents, many of whom seem to be part of literally every left-leaning mobilization in Cleveland, to attempt to beat back Flock legislation, referring to themselves as ‘Flock No’.

The next six months brought some discussion at the local level, mainly several pieces from Cleveland.com reporter Sean McDonnell and, interestingly, a piece in Crain’s Cleveland by Ohio State Representative Tristan Rader (D-Lakewood).

But as Cleveland City Council has communicated time and time again, there was very little evidence—and therefore discussion—of the technology's success or improved outcomes from Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration, other than the usual “we-used-it-when-we-locked-someone-up.”

Flock No persisted, but they encountered opposition from a pro-Flock organization, seemingly led by the Cleveland Clergy Coalition, whose Executive Director is Pastor Aaron Phillips.

The clergy coalition also registered at the same address as Sure House Baptist Church, of which Aaron Phillips is the Pastor.

Longtime readers of The Rooster may recall our earlier reporting on the apostolate that Pastor Phillips and the Cleveland Clergy Coalition.

Unsurprisingly, Pastor Phillips appeared time and time again throughout the uncovering of the inflamed, ruptured hemorrhoid that was HB-6, the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about):

Pastor Phillips has also been unashamed in his support for Flock.

About a week before the Safety Committee’s first vote on sending the Flock contract extension to city council, Pastor Phillips started a petition in support of renewing Flock’s contract:

Originally reported by Frank Lewis of Signal Cleveland, Pastor Phillips stated at the June 17 meeting (when the Safety Committee initially voted against Flock’s contract extension) that “Flock representatives had reached out to meet with his group and explain the technology.”

Lewis quotes Phillips as saying: “As it was explained to us, this is a great tool. We will always be on the side of safety and security.”

Phillips also delved into classic East Side vs. West Side rhetoric, according to Kimberly Perez of Spectrum.

“We want to make sure that these cameras aren’t just used in downtown and on the west side. We want these cameras used on our side of town as well.”

And after the second hearing on the Flock contract extension this past Tuesday, the Safety Committee reversed course and voted in favor of Flock’s contract, meaning the Cleveland City Council as a whole will now consider its potential extension on July 15.

Pastor Phillips, who identified himself as living at “2063 E 36^th St” (49:54) and serving as a pastor at “11318 Miles Ave” (50:09), sat before the Safety Committee to do what he does best—testify.

Pastor Phillips considers his work as a Vessel of the Lord as providing him with the authority to testify on how the Black community needs mass surveillance. But one could also say that, as a former prosecutor in Bill Mason’s office, he probably has some experience relevant to consider here.

What is that history, exactly?

Well, in another lifetime, Phillips played an important role in the corrupt Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office under the almost-indicted Bill Mason.

Prosecutor Phillips’s specialty was being brought in to use rather inflammatory characterizations against Black defendants, something permissible given that he was one of the few Black prosecutors in the office.

Or as Bill Mason was quoted as saying, “I liked Aaron. He had a lot of issues, but I worked with him because he had a lot of talent. He was able to get results in a courtroom.”

But his reign as the office’s Black prosecutor came to an end when he was finally caught taking money from defendants in exchange for a promise of some type of deal.

In September 2003, he was ultimately charged with bribery, attempted bribery, theft in office, obstructing justice, tampering with evidence, possession of cocaine and criminal tools.

He served six months of a 2.5-year sentence and lost his law license.

But he wasn’t down for long, as he had his ordained Baptist minister license to fall back on. And the man who built a career out of wrongfully incarcerated Black Clevelanders prepared to whore himself out in the name of mass incarceration political interests—though not literally, as Cleveland’s actual prostitutes have more integrity than Pastor Phillips.

In April 2018, slightly before his testimony in favor of Ohio’s precursor to HB-6, Phillips formed his own business, which he christened “Engagement Consulting Services, Inc.”

Though Pastor Phillips seems to lead both entities, Engagement Consulting Services, Inc. is at least supposed to appear to be different than the Cleveland Clergy Coalition.

However, both are registered at the same address, 2063 E 36^th Street, where Phillips has claimed in public testimony as his residence.

There’s one other place where that E 36th Street address appears: In Mayor Justin Bibb’s campaign finance expenditure reports starting in 2025.

In fact, since May 2025, Mayor Bibb has paid Engagement Consulting Inc., listed at the same address discussed above, $2,500 per month, for a total of $17,500 in 2025.

Bibb’s 2025 Semi-Annual campaign finance report:

Bibb’s 2025 Pre-General campaign finance report:

Bibb’s 2025 Post-General campaign finance report:

Is Bibb paying Phillips now, with both men aligned at extending a contract for mass surveillance that has been routinely abused by American police and cooperates with ICE?

Well, we won’t know until later this month when Mayor Bibb’s 2026 Semi-Annual Campaign Finance Report is due.

But it’s not too late, Pastor.

To quote 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

There’s a special place in Hell for someone who makes their nut undermining the Black community for mass incarceration interests.

But hey, all in the name of safety, right?

THOSE WMDs. The age of Damon Zex… Why did it take so long for Half Price Books to return to Houston’s Inner Loop… Why Messi keeps thriving as Cristiano fades: The GOAT’s always been the best… FanDuel sent a personalized message from Bryce Harper to a customer with a gambling addiction… The teenage millionaire hacker from London who was brought down by a takeaway order… The demon next door.

Recently, I received a tip that I should purchase a Post Office box to receive standard mail, non-explosive packages, and tips from concerned citizens who don’t want to submit that information electronically.

You can now do that at:

• The Rooster

  P.O. Box 44009

  Hilltop, USA, 42304

If you have any damaging information that could end the political career of Mayor Suburbs or Matt Huffman… please move to the front of line.

Suspicious and incompetent “organizer” appointed the Ohio Democratic Party Executive Committee for some reason known only to God and Kathleen Clyde

Yesterday, The Rooster reported on Kirk Noden, the shady co-founder of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) receiving millions of dollars per year to his strategy group that was ineffective, disorganized and borderline criminal in the most charitable interpretation.

Hours after publication, I learned that Ohio Democratic Party chairwoman Kathleen Clyde appointed Boden to the party’s Executive Committee… last week.

You can only hope that Trump’s crooked Department of Justice doesn’t find any credible evidence to use against Boden and the OCC at large, because if it does, you can rest assured that the Ohio Republican Party’s machinery of coordinated cacaphony will go into overdrive from now until Election Day.

If you know anything about Boden, or how this appointment came to pass… the Dirt Box never sleeps.

Yo, Conman! We already have a Geneva-on-the-Lake at home, and it’s actually quite lovely this time of year.

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Took the first excursion of my life to Lake County, the home of Ohio legend James A. Garfield, on Tuesday.

My pitbull attorney, the illustrious Billy “Bones” Livingston of Berkman, Gordon, Murray and Devan LLP, rejected two plea deals that required me to admit guilt for constitutionally protected speech.

Because “no surrender” means no surrender. It’s either exoneration or death.

The Trial of the Century—a phrase you’re hearing more and more—is slated for Oct. 8 at noon in the Willoughby Courthouse. Media will be allowed to attend.

There are multiple ways to support the crusade for justice:

• Subscribe to The Rooster for the full experience: Four dispatches a week, merchandise and book giveaways, free tours of the Statehouse, and more!

• Donate to the Freedom Defense Fund.

• Purchase a “Never Surrender” or “Chairman Rooster” shirt, with all proceeds going to the Legal Defense Fund.

I’d also like to make two additional shoutouts:

• Abundance Culinary in Cleveland Heights. Listen… I'm from Marion, so nobody is looking to me for food recommendations, but Chef Liu Fang put down a Chinese meal yesterday that I’ll be thinking about until my next time in Cleveland Heights. Those dumplings! Oh my god.

• I randomly ran into Matt Diemer of The Angry Democrat in one of those rest stops that Governor Mike DeWine renovated along I-71. Diemer has shown the consistency required to build something in Northwest Ohio—an area that needs as much media oversight as possible. Give him a follow!

Give Sherrod Brown this much: He’s hitting that waxy, CTE-riddled pervert where it hurts

In April, I sounded the alarm about Dr. Amy Acton refusing to bludgeon notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy and Ohio Republicans with data centers and Jeffrey Epstein’s strongest soldier, Central Ohio children’s lingerie magnate Leslie Wexner.

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If you’ve been following along with this column over the last few weeks, you already know that the political ecosystem down on Columbus’s Capitol Square doesn’t operate like a democracy, or even a meritocracy—it operates like a highly sophisticated, privately managed casino where the house always wins, and the “house” is a remarkably small circle of unelected gatekeepers.

In our first installment, we pulled back the curtain on the fundamental infrastructure of this racket, mapping out the jaw-dropping scale of Mike Dittoe’s money machine.

We showed how a single insider can systematically turn legislative control into personal equity.

Then, we shifted focus to the mechanics of the creative side, exposing the lucrative, data-churning margins of the Strategy Group Fake Polling Racket—a business model designed to scare vulnerable candidates into spending money they don’t have on data that doesn’t work.

But to truly understand how these two parallel lines of grift intersect, you have to look at what happens when the legislative session slows down and the election cycle heats up.

Today, we are taking a closer look at the seasonal migration of Cap Square’s infamous “campaign guru,” the staggering hypocrisy of his grassroots mandates, and how he leverages his status as the preferred campaign consultant for the majority caucus to secure legislative favors for his clients as a lobbyist.

The Art of the Institutional Sabbatical

For ordinary Ohioans, taking a “leave of absence” from work means dealing with short-term disability paperwork, burning through saved vacation days, or navigating an unpaid family medical emergency.

For Mike Dittoe, a leave of absence is the ultimate wealth-generation tool.

For years, Dittoe has occupied some of the most powerful, taxpayer-funded staff positions within the Ohio House of Representatives. Whether operating as the Speaker’s Chief of Staff, Communications Director, or a senior institutional advisor, he has held the keys to the state’s legislative apparatus.

But when the midterms or general elections roll around, sitting in a state office building becomes a financial liability. Ethics laws and public records acts are terribly inconvenient when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash waiting to be harvested.

So, like clockwork, the temporary exit is executed. Dittoe steps away from his official government salary and pivots seamlessly into the private sector as the preferred general consultant for competitive caucus races.

He doesn’t leave his Statehouse authority behind, though. He carries the invisible, heavy hand of the Speaker’s office directly into the campaign war rooms of nervous incumbents and wide-eyed open-seat candidates.

To these candidates, Dittoe isn’t just an advisor you hire; he is the gatekeeper you must appease if you want caucus financial backing, favorable committee assignments in the next General Assembly, or a prayer of survival on Election Night.

He assumes the comfortable role of the ultimate armchair quarterback, directing the battlefield from his luxurious penthouse office, which oversees the statehouse with a draconian-like (albeit stunning) view, while the candidate’s campaign treasury bears the compounding financial burden.

The Tollbooth

Once Dittoe assumes control of a campaign, the monetization strategy begins.

Modern campaign consulting at this elite level is rarely about a transparent, flat-rate monthly fee. Instead, it relies on a multi-layered matrix of interconnected revenue streams that ensures the consultant skims a percentage off nearly every single dollar a candidate raises.

If a candidate is out dialing for dollars until their voice cracks, that money isn’t just going toward winning an election—it is going toward funding the consultant’s lifestyle through an array of compounding tollbooths:

• The Baseline Retainer: Every candidate on the roster pays a flat, non-negotiable monthly consulting fee. This is collected continuously from the moment the contract is inked straight through to Election Day, establishing a massive, guaranteed financial floor.

• The Polling Markup: This is where last week’s expose on the Strategy Group racket comes full circle. When a campaign needs internal tracking data, Dittoe manages the transaction, routing the campaign’s money to the Strategy Group and collecting a juicy commission or markup on every single round of polling sent over.

• The Direct Mail Residual Loop: Competitive legislative races live and die by the mailbox. Because these campaigns require dozens of distinct, glossy mail pieces sent to tens of thousands of households over a two-month sprint, Dittoe collects passive residuals on every single piece of paper printed, stamped, and shipped.

• The Media Spend Skim: When a campaign cuts a television or streaming commercial, the real money isn’t in the production—it’s in the ad buy. The general consultant takes a percentage cut (a residual) of the total gross media buy. Every time a commercial airs during the local evening news, a fraction of a cent lands in the insider’s pocket.

• Digital Ad Markups: The exact same residual model applies to the digital space. Every programmatic banner ad, pre-roll video, and social media blast targeted at voters online features an embedded markup that feeds the consultant’s bottom line.

• The Win Bonus: To cap it all off, successful races trigger an automatic, fixed-sum financial reward. This “win bonus” effectively empties whatever remaining cash is left in the candidate’s campaign account the moment the polls close.

By scaling this exact architecture across dozens of competitive districts simultaneously, an operative can turn a brief, three-month sabbatical from public service into an absolute financial windfall, extracting more money in a single cycle than most Ohioans earn in a year.

The Ground Game Paradox

While the financial rewards of this system flow exclusively upward to the armchair quarterback, the actual physical exhaustion of the campaign trail is borne by entry-level field staff.

To avoid ever having to actually roll up his own sleeves, field operations are governed by brutal, unrelenting quotas.

To justify the massive investments flowing through the caucus, Dittoe’s operational model mandates that his field staff maintain a punishing pace, requiring each Campaign Manager to knock on at least 1,200 doors per week for their respective candidates.

Now, let’s give credit where it’s due: knocking on doors is far from the most glamorous part of winning an election, but door-to-door contact is undeniably one of the most effective campaign strategies in existence.

It humanizes a candidate to the voter, provides the campaign with invaluable, real-time feedback directly from the electorate, and forms the bedrock of any successful, robust grassroots operation. No one knows this fundamental truth better than Dittoe. He demands it because he knows it works.

Yet if you follow the money all the way back to the guru's private, manicured property, a glaring hypocrisy emerges. Safely removed from the grit and noise of the campaign trail, Dittoe’s own front door features a prominent, unmistakable, bright red “No Soliciting” sign.

Think about the sheer, unadulterated cynicism required to engineer that dynamic.

The strategist understands perfectly well how critical the doorstep interaction is for his own business model. He requires dozens of young, naive, underpaid campaign managers to grind out face-to-face metrics across Ohio, yet he posts an explicit deterrent to ensure his own personal peace remains completely undisturbed by the exact same grassroots tactics.

It is the ultimate double standard of the political class: rigorous, mandatory community intrusion for thee, but absolute isolation and privacy for me.

The Post-Election Harvest: Cashing In On the Official Side

But let’s be clear: the immediate financial windfall harvested from campaign invoices is actually just the appetizer. The true, long-term value of capturing a virtual monopoly over the majority caucus’s campaign operations is the accumulation of Dittoe’s unmatched reservoir of political capital.

When the dust settles on Tuesday night and the victories are finalized, the candidates don’t look at the entry-level field staff who walked hundreds of miles in the rain.

They look at the senior consultant, who, in their eyes, is the person who is responsible for saving them from the embarrassment of losing on election day. For a newly elected freshman representative, or a returning incumbent who just survived a brutal challenge, Dittoe is viewed as the primary reason they hold power.

This dynamic creates a profound, carefully cultivated sense of personal gratitude and intense indebtedness heading into the next General Assembly.

When the election cycle concludes, the temporary “leave of absence” ends.

The strategist shifts roles once again, either returning to the halls of the Statehouse or operating through elite, aligned lobbying entities like High Bridge Consulting.

When he walks the corridors of Capital Square during the official legislative session, his relationship with the lawmakers evolves.

Out of a desperate desire to “pay him back” for their success on election day, these grateful, indebted lawmakers become highly compliant vessels for whatever corporate or institutional agenda Dittoe’s lobbying firm is being paid to push.

This manifests in a highly predictable loop of legislative favors:

1. Carrying Priority Bills: Indebted members readily step up to introduce and sponsor complex, industry-friendly legislation drafted directly by the lobbyist’s firm.

2. Committee Room Amendments: Lawmakers quietly insert specialized, line-item amendments into pending bills to protect the private clients represented by High Bridge.

Budget Earmarks: During the high-stakes negotiations over Ohio’s multi-billion-dollar biennial state budget, these representatives willingly sponsor massive funding requests and targeted earmarks designed to enrich the firm’s clientele.

This is the perpetual motion machine of Columbus politics.

Senior positions in the Speaker’s office grant the insider the leverage to control the caucus. A strategic leave of absence allows them to skim millions from campaign treasuries while demanding grueling labor they refuse to tolerate on their own doorsteps.

Winning those campaigns creates an army of indebted lawmakers. And those indebted lawmakers guarantee the long-term profitability of the lobbying business, ensuring unprecedented political capital across the entire legislative body.Coming Next Week

But what happens when the machine gets sloppy?

The architects of this system believe they are completely insulated, protected by a network of friendly committees and compliant insiders. They assume that because they control the game, nobody is looking at the scoreboard.

They are wrong.

Next week, The Elephant in the Room is bringing receipts straight from the source. We have been quietly combing through countless pages of official campaign finance reports directly from the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, tracking the data trail left behind when the checks change hands.

What we found suggests that the public ledger tells a very different story from what’s actually happening behind closed doors.

We aren’t just talking about a clerical error or a misplaced decimal point. We are talking about a structural, multi-year evasion that appears to be in direct, flagrant violation of Ohio’s current campaign finance laws. We will break down the exact filings, the hidden entities, and the massive amounts of unaccounted-for cash that the Secretary of State’s database reveals.

The machine has been running on autopilot for a long time. Next week, we pull the plug.

Stay tuned.

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