Rooster in Review: Tales from the crypt
The Ohio Ballot Board gives another example of why the Republican Party is unfit to govern.
I attended the Ohio Ballot Board meeting yesterday to observe the latest pathetic attempt at preserving ill-gotten, gerrymandered Republican power.
The Republican majority, above all else, has proven over the past decade that it’s unfit to rule. Our education rankings have tumbled while our economy remains pedestrian despite diverting all our liquor proceeds into a slush fund ostensibly aimed at attracting the kind of industry that used to be the backbone of our economy.
Hell, earlier this week, thanks to a law passed in 2022 by our gerrymandered legislature, Ohio accepted a bid from an out-of-state fracking company to poison more of our public parks for the sake of private profit.
Needless to say, the Ohio Republican Party has gotten addicted to the power. And like any recovering addict will tell you, that kind of extreme abuse only leads to oblivion.
Not that any of our Republican rulers give a damn about that, as we saw yesterday at the Ballot Board.
House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) held court before the meeting to convey to voters what was actually about to happen:
The Patriots Caucus was alerted first that LaRose was set to put language onto the ballot that was so backwards to the intent of the anti-gerrymandering amendment proposal, it even left Republican staffers stunned.
It was somehow even worse than that, as Senator Theresa Gavarone doubled back to insert language that made it seem the proposed amendment would create a gerrymandered Ohio, rather than rid us of the ancient anti-American practice.
From Sam Levine of The Guardian:
But the language approved on Friday by the Republican-controlled Ohio ballot board misrepresents the proposal – instead leading voters to think they have less power in the process. It says the commissioners would be “required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio”.
The GOP-approved summary also misrepresents how difficult it would be to remove a commissioner from the panel, telling voters the proposal would “prevent a commission member from being removed, except by a vote of their fellow commission members, even for incapacity, willful neglect of duty or gross misconduct”.
But the proposal expressly says that commissioners can be removed from “wanton and willful neglect of duty or gross misconduct or malfeasance in office, incapacity or inability to perform his or her duties, or behavior involving moral turpitude or other acts that undermine the public’s trust in the commission and the redistricting process”. It says that only the commission can remove a commissioner after giving public notice and holding a hearing with public comment.
It’s one thing to read about these acts in the press. It’s another to observe them in person and watch politicians with a vested interest in the status quo smirk at calm, professional testimony that details why they’re full of shit.
To further drive home the absurdity is the cryptic presence of Bill Morgan, the ancient-looking figure on the far left of the header photo. Morgan is a retired banking lobbyist who shuffles into Ballot Board meetings and offers no words besides “Yes” to Republican motions and “no” to Democratic ones. Some people on social media thought a corpse had been wheeled into the meeting—and had I not seen him in person, I would have thought the same.
Obhof is a heavy metal fan, a pro wrestling fan, and a licensed BBQ judge. He’s a so-called “nice guy,” according to most people in Capitol Square circles.
Unfortunately, Obhof also has the dubious distinction of recently joining the Secretary of State’s office as chief legal counsel, which means he had an influential role in crafting the hobgoblin language at hand at yesterday’s meeting.
Thanks to Hilltop Husband, I didn’t realize until later that Obhof was about to commit a biological act of terrorism in that bathroom. He didn’t want me realizing that in real time as I waited for him outside, incorrectly thinking he just had to take a piss.
“This is what you do?” Obhof asked dismissively, as if me busting him up inside a bathroom stall would have been less dishonorable than his day job of spitting in the face of Ohio citizens.
He didn’t have any answer to that retort, except to continue crying about me wanting to ask one of the most influential lawyers in state politics some questions on camera.
All things considered, I think I treated him with more respect than he deserves—a mistake I won’t make again should we ever cross paths again.
After the meeting, LaRose and Senator Gavarone didn’t even have the decency to meet with legacy media to defend their blatant partisan hackery. That’s because they wanted as little as possible attention paid to this hobgoblin shindig. They only want their actions as a feather in their caps for their future Republican campaigns—LaRose for State Auditor and Gavarone for Secretary of State.
But try as he might, you only need about 30 seconds to put psychic damage on LaRose, a natural born loser who finished last in his own precinct among Republican voters in his party’s primary earlier this year:
You’ll notice Senator Gavarone scurrying behind LaRose’s entourage at the end of that clip, probably to escape me from asking her on camera why everyone on Capitol Square seems to think her and State Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) are having an affair.
But as I said in Friday’s dispatch… you just have to laugh at these antics even more. Thanks to our tumbling education rankings, most hog voters can’t even read!
And as one well-respected labor lobbyist told me yesterday, our side has a simple job: To relay to voters that it’s “Yes on Issue 1.” Nothing more, nothing less, because at the end of the day, only losers like LaRose and Gavarone think politicians should pick their own voters.
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The Chapo Trap House Appearance, now free of charge!
Back in May, I crossed off a career milestone by appearing on Chapo Trap House, the premier podcast of the Dirtbag Left, to discuss Ohio’s sewer of a political system.
You can now access that episode for free, as everything we talked about—from HB-6, to Mayor Coleman banging that Chinese spy in his car, to that corrupt bum P.G. Sittenfeld—is still pertinent today.
You can read some commentary on the episode over here.
This week in Ohio Man…
Horrible news out of Stow, Ohio, as it appears an Ohio man killed a woman over a rudimentary dispute in a Taco Bell Drive-Thru before he died by suicide.
From John Lynch of wtrf.com:
A motive for the shooting may never be known, Stow police Chief Jeff Film said Thursday during a news conference.
The shooting occurred about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in the northeastern Ohio town, which is a suburb of Akron. Witnesses said Megan Keleman, 25, of Stow, pulled in front of Jason Williams, 53, of Cuyahoga Falls, to get in the drive-thru line. Williams then blew his horn and struck the rear of Keleman’s vehicle, and she asked the restaurant workers to call the police.
Williams got out of his car and shot Keleman, then shot himself moments later. Both were alone in their vehicles, though Keleman was traveling with her dog, who was not harmed.
This is another harrowing example of how AR-15s (rightfully) earn most of the headlines about gun violence in this country, but it’s actually the deluge of handguns that cause a lion’s share of the senseless violence.
Killings like this don’t happen in other countries. And our State Legislature doesn’t care to stop them, which is another example of why we need to vote “Yes” on Issue 1 in November.
This week in The Rooster…
It was a brisk week of business, with a free special dispatch coming on Tuesday thanks to the arrest of one of the biggest losers in Ohio.
The game done changed. Trump’s margins slipping in Ohio would mean bad, bad things for down-ballot Republicans as Senator Sherrod Brown faces a new electorate after Sleepy Joe’s exit.
It was all good just a week ago. The Rooster broke the story about restaurateur Bobby George being arrested on rape and attempted murder charges, and why the story is even bigger than it may seem at first glance. This special dispatch was presented free for all thanks to the generosity of the members of the Patriots Caucus.
The dance of the lizard cabal. The Devil is busy, but the Ohio Republican Junta is even busier. Featuring news on Dusty Dave Yost, Bitcoin Aficiando Bernie Moreno, Columbus’ latest killer cop, and more.
Ballot Board Boogie. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the most pathetic loser in Ohio politics, stoops further into the gutter as a partisan hack—and why that won’t matter as the Republican Party faces hog justice in November.
THOSE WMDs. Behind the scenes at Shen Yun: Untreated injuries and emotional abuse… Why your cat thinks you’re a huge, unpredictable ape… 14 valuable collectibles to look for in thrift stores… Why toilet paper keeps getting smaller and smaller… Political parties are divided on abortion rights—American women aren’t.
Will there actually be a contested primary for auditor then since Brian Stewart is interested too?