A game of inches

The final, scrambled push to stop a sweetheart bond deal for the Cleveland Browns fell apart at the goal line. And a Cleveland-area Democrat played a decisive role.

From left to right: State Rep. Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville), Browns owner Jabroni Jimmy Haslam, and State Rep. Chris Glassburn (D-North Olmsted)

The Ohio House Republican supermajority passed HB-96, the budget bill, yesterday.

It’s the typical antisocial thuggery you might have come to expect from the gerrymandered junta.

The budget slashes public school and library funding, claws back $4.3 billion from fiscally responsible school districts while calling it “tax relief,” and expands the school voucher program while cutting Medicaid expenditures when the federal government drops funding below a 90 percent share.

It also does needlessly cruel things like killing gender-affirming mental healthcare for minors and banning government buildings from putting tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms—a personal jihad of State Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria), perhaps the most divorced legislator in Columbus.

But all that stuff came baked into a Republican supermajority led by Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima), who, in my opinion, should be rotting away in federal prison while subsisting on nothing but bread and water for the rest of his rotten days.

Starve the poor. Funnel more money to the rich. This is the ethos that guides the House Republicans, and that will continue until rural voters either die en masse or awake from their 20-year coma.

However, we had a solid chance of screwing the Cleveland Browns out of their sweetheart $600 million bond deal for a new stadium that will likely cost the public $1 billion.

Unscripted floor action is rare in the House of Representatives. If something goes to vote, you can generally tell it will pass if it comes from a Republican or fail if it comes from a Democrat.

Yesterday, State Rep. Ron Ferguson rose to do what he does best: try to sow chaos on the House floor. He would have succeeded if not for the betrayal of three inconsistent colleagues (more on them in a bit).

Ferguson offered an amendment to HB-96, which would have stricken the Browns’ deal from the budget.

House Majority Floor Leader Marilyn John (R-Shelby), ever the faithful lackey to Speaker Huffman, tried to extinguish the fire by moving to table the amendment, a colloquialism for “throwing it in the trash can.”

I expected John’s motion to carry the day, easily. However, something funny happened. John’s motion failed by a 49-49 vote, with State Rep. Cecil Thomas unable to vote due to being absent from his chair.

That in turn set the stage for something improbable: A straight up or down vote to kill the Browns’ bond deal in the cradle.

Logically speaking, Ferguson’s proposed amendment should have passed 50-49 when Rep. C. Thomas returned to his seat. However, the vote failed, 49-50, which is as close a margin as I can remember seeing for something that consequential:

Oe left: The 49-49 vote to table Rep. Ferguson’s amendment, which failed. On the right: The 49-50 vote on Rep. Ferguson’s amendment, which inconceivably also failed. (In short, the good votes are red on the left and green on the right.)

The vote was even more diabolical than it looked at first glance.

Republican legislators Matthew Kishman (R-Minerva) and Tom Young (R-Centerville) voted to table the amendment but switched their votes to kill the Browns project on the final ballot.

Those gains were killed by three legislators who inexplicably voted against tabling the amendment, and then voted to kill the amendment at the goalline:

From left to right: State Reps. Tim Barhorst, Taxin’ Ty Matthews and Chris Glassburn

• Tim Barhorst (R-Fort Loramie)

• Taxin’ Ty Matthews (R-Findlay)

• Chris Glassburn (D-North Olmsted)

Of the two Republicans, I can’t say I’m surprised. Barhorst is a nice guy on a personal level, but he’s not looking to rock the boat after his infamous suicidal leadership challenge to Huffman in January.

Matthews is a freshman with a military background, which means he’s used to taking orders. And I’m not surprised he lacked the resolve to knife Speaker Huffman’s pet budget project when the chips fell.

The biggest disappointment, in my opinion, came from Rep. Glassburn. It’s a bitter pill to swallow knowing we could have killed the Browns’ pipe dream in its cradle had Glassburn voted with every other member of his caucus.

Sure, Glassburn is not in an enviable position by representing Cleveland and Brook Park. But he’s in a gerrymandered Democratic seat! And I refuse to believe that a Trump-voting suburb of 18,000 is some driving force in his political calculus.

But watch this video from two weeks ago and tell me this is a man who truly believes in the Browns project being what’s best for the beautiful taxpayer:

One running theory I heard was that Glassburn wasn’t aware of how consequential his vote would be. And maybe so! But he could have easily changed his vote on the official record after the fact if that were the case. Legislators do it all the time. And yet… Glassburn let his vote stand in infamy for eternity.

Glassburn, at first glance, is a freshman Democratic lawmaker. But this is his second rodeo in the Ohio House of Representatives, and he’s about as connected to Cleveland politics as anyone in Columbus.

My Cleveland friends warned me about Glassburn. Don’t trust him, they said. He’s as insider as they come, they said. You’ll see when the moment comes, they said.

Some examples of his antics over the years:

• “He was the map drawer for the Democratic Caucus [in the last redistricting cycle,” said one friend. “And he ended up with a seat.”

• Former Cleveland County executive Armond Budish, Glassburn’s longtime mentor, created a $100,000-salaried position for him in 2015. Budish has also helped subsidize Glassburn’s rise through the political ranks from School Board to City Council.

• In 2018, Glassburn, then a North Olsted City Councilman, played an influential role in killing a parks and recreation levy.

• The Cuyahoga County Democratic Party gave Glassburn’s consulting firm, Project Govern, roughly $60,000 in consulting contracts last year.

According to my Cleveland friends, Glassburn is also allied with slimy Cuyahoga County councilman Martin Sweeney and the laughably corrupt David Wondolowski, who is president of both the Cleveland Building Trades and Cleveland Port Authority.

The Wondolowski connection is especially telling, considering Wondolowski betrayed Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb to endorse the Brook Park scam in January. But I’ll have a better idea soon enough.

Sadly, this has been the story of my political life. I always expect the worst from the Republicans, so I wasn’t surprised to see someone like State Rep. Tex Fischer (R-Boardman Twp.) trash the proposed stadium deal last week on camera and then turn around and vote it through the House.

I expect cowardice and duplicity from the Republican Caucus. It’s nothing new.

And I’ve never been someone who believes “both parties are the same” because I move further away from nihilism the further I move into my sobriety. Nevertheless, there always seem to be easily corruptible Democrats who are willing to betray their colleagues and go along with Republican schemes.

The most infamous example would be the HB-6 legislation, which would not have been passed into law without the aid of 14 Democratic legislators.

I don’t think we’ll be lucky enough to see anyone imprisoned over this Browns deal because, God willing, Governor Mike DeWine will be the adult in the room and issue the line-item veto on the scam.

But it sucks to see Glassburn betray downtown Cleveland and his Democratic colleagues who all did their part yesterday. And I take no pleasure in reporting that he proved his Cleveland critics were correct in their skepticism.

This was an easy vote. And he failed the test.

THOSE WMDs. Some White House pool reports are no longer making it to the official distribution list… Gavin Newsom’s pivot to nowhere… The battle to make Tim Burton’s Batman… McMansion wars: Inside the nasty neighbor-versus-neighbor feuds of Forest Hill… The noise next door.