Shady Statehouse Suspects: Rep. Al Cutrona and the Dream European Vacation
Shady Statehouse Suspects: Rep. Al Cutrona and the Dream European Vacation
A sloppy $20,000 campaign expenditure and a dream European vacation have the Youngstown-area Republican in the crosshairs of his political opponents.
I don’t have a problem with State Rep. Alessandro “Al” Cutrona (R-Canfield) outside of his bog-standard Republican politics. He dresses like a guy from the Youngstown area, which I enjoy. We’ve always been cordial with each other at the Statehouse.
But on April 22nd, the Patriots Caucus wire fluttered with a tip about forthcoming news about Cutrona. Intrigued, I reached out to another Twitter associate with connections into Youngstown-area politics.
This was our conversation; my texts are in blue:
A day later, on April 23rd, The Rooster received a tip from another Statehouse player who is too old to know how to screenshot their computer screen without taking a picture with their phone’s camera:
The tip drew my attention to two expenditure filings totaling $26,000.
$20,000 to “Great Dominion Strout LLC” on August 10th, 2023.
$6,600 to “THZ Strategies LLC” on November 28th, 2023.
Curiously, neither filing included an address, which is amateurishly sloppy, to say the least.
A couple of days later, I did Cutrona the courtesy of asking him about the expenditures, in person and without my camera, to gauge his reaction. He said those expenditures were for consulting and had already been cleaned up.
Point blank, I asked him if he had paid any campaign cash to his girlfriend, Logan Church, the political director of CatholicVote, who spends her time lobbying for nonsense like this:
CatholicVote political director Logan Church to discuss the threat that Title IX poses to women and girls, and why Catholics -- not to mention all Americans - must vehemently oppose them?
This February, the Department of Education submitted final touches to its new Title IX rule requiring K-12 schools and colleges to enact policies covering ANY KIND of sexual orientations and gender identities. Moreover, the Biden Administration will soon announce additional new changes to Title IX that many fear will undo decades of progress for female athletes, while exposing women and girls to the dangers of biological men in their private spaces.
Church was romantically linked with the late State Rep. Don Manning, who died at 52 in 2020 and whom Cutrona succeeded via appointment to the State Legislature later that year.
She also served as campaign manager for the successful candidacy of current Congressman Max Miller (R-Rocky River).
Cutrona, in that brief encounter, denied there was anything shady about the expenditures. He also denied any money went to his girlfriend.
Yesterday, however, longtime Statehouse lobbyist Bobby Ina filed a public records request with the Secretary of State’s office:
Sometime between our first conversation and yesterday, Cutrona updated the filing.
He replaced “Great Dominion Stout LLC” with “Great American Strategies LLC.”
Unlike the previous listing, which didn’t include any address, Cutrona’s campaign updated the form to mention that Great American Strategies LLC is run out of Warrington, Florida.
Great American Strategies LLC's listed business address is a one-million-dollar residential house owned by Church’s father, the other partner in the LLC.
More interesting, however, is that Cutrona’s girlfriend is a managing partner, which you can see in the bottom right of this filing report:
To complicate matters for Cutrona… 13 days after he wrote that check to his girlfriend, she posted a thank-you for a dream vacation across Europe:
Cutrona proposed to Church late last month.
In a phone conversation with The Rooster, Cutrona said he believed this to be political machinations against him.
Cutrona, along with State Rep. Monica Robb Blasdel (R-Columbia) and former State Rep. Tim Ginter (R-Shelby), are competing in a hotly contested appointment process to replace State Senator Michael Rulli when he expectedly vacates his seat later this month.
Rulli, for the uninitiated, is expected to become the Ohio Sixth Congressional District’s Represenative in a Special Election on June 11th.
In our conversation yesterday, Cutrona put the blame on his treasurer, saying it’s hard to find good help these days. He provided the following emails with dates on when he originally sought corrections:
The original date, Feb. 14th, 2024, comes days after David Skolnick of vindy.com raised questions about the sloppy reporting:
Cutrona spent $54,563.93 during the second half of 2023 with $20,000 to Great Dominion Stout LLC and $6,000 to THZ Strategies LLC, both for consulting fees — no addresses were listed on his campaign finance report for either company — as well as $7,000 to H&F Strategies of Chagrin Falls for advertising and a $5,000 contribution to the Ohio House Republican Alliance, the House party’s fundraising arm.
And, if you look closely at that first email on February 14th, you’ll see a double space after Great American Strategies LLC, right where the address is supposed to go.
Cutrona either edited the address out of the email or simply forgot. Whichever it was, he didn’t make the same mistake when it came to TH2 Strategies LLC, which was a legitimate expenditure to an LLC not owned by his then-girlfriend.
Cutrona’s second follow-up email to the treasurer, on April 27th, came days after I received my original tip about the trouble in the water for Cutrona and after when he told me he hadn’t spent any money on his girlfriend.
Last night, Cutrona said he have been mixed up on when we first spoke.
Cutrona painted these revelations—not from The Rooster, but other political players—as hardball politics expected of vying to replace Senator Rulli.
Maybe so!
But Rulli declared his Congressional run in December 2023, and Cutrona, in his best version of the story, didn’t try to update his sloppy expenditure filings until two days after a professional journalist asked questions in an article.
Cutrona then didn’t double back with his treasurer until four days after The Rooster received the first tip about the expenditure. He then falsely told me that I wouldn’t find any campaign money going to his girlfriend.
In Cutrona’s telling, the $20,000 to his girlfriend’s LLC is a legitimate expenditure. He said it would be easier to list the things she didn’t do for his campaign than the things she did. And he hasn’t paid her since but would still in the future.
Cutrona wouldn’t be the first Ohio politician to make a shady expenditure on an LLC controlled by a romantic interest or family member. But it certainly looks shady with the original filing that was amateurishly sloppy at best and criminal at worst.
Why go through all that trouble in the first place if the expense for campaign work was above board?
Well, as one sitting State Senator told The Rooster late last night, “This is bad. This is stuff people get indicted for.”
THOSE WMDs. How the “Queen of Canada” and conspiracy theorists splintered a small town… How writers survived fascism... Fox and the hedgehog… I have no mouth and I must scream: The terror of Tamagotchi… How did this climber get away with so much for so long?
I think her out of state nutball group is called “CatholicVote”
I laughed after seeing he's the primary sponsor on a Greek independence day bill, 6 months after being shown the "authentic Greek experience"