The many lives of Carl Setzer: Ohio's most intriguing Congressional candidate
From a doomsday cult to international craft beer titan to long-shot Congressional candidate, Setzer hopes to awaken the echoes of the Democratic Party long dead in Northeastern Ohio.
This dispatch is too long for email. Please open your browser and view in full.
A raging nationwide debate within the Democratic Party has landed in Ohio’s 14th Congressional District, which encompasses the state’s five most northeastern counties.
Should the party lean on experienced candidates, with the institutional know-how to repel Trumpism? Or should the party seek a new generation of candidates, willing to conduct themselves outside the traditional confines of business as usual?
Former Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill represents the former camp. Even if his last campaign featured an infamous, ambiguous Facebook post that made it seem like he banged former governor Bob Taft among “50 very attractive females” while lampooning the perceived excesses of the #MeToo moment.
Carl Setzer, a political newcomer raised in a right-wing Christian doomsday cult and former craft beer pioneer in China, among other titles, represents the latter camp.
On paper and by almost any traditional metric, O’Neill should be considered the favorite to win the primary and likely face longtime Republican incumbent Dave Joyce in November.
But that would be unfair to Setzer, the kid from Painesville, who, despite his political noviceness, has led seemingly multiple lives that led to this particular moment in our shared history.
In recent weeks, The Rooster sat down with Setzer at the Ohio Statehouse to discuss his personal history, his vision for the Democratic Party, and what makes him built for our current times.
Setzer moved back to Ohio after the pandemic, and private equity gremlins wrecked his internationally acclaimed Great Leap Brewing, which he had built from scratch in China after he and his wife left otherwise lucrative careers.
That Setzer is running for Congress wouldn’t surprise him in his youth. That he was doing so as a Democrat, however, would.
How the right wing grooms young men of distinction with their eyes on the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court
Setzer points to “The Colonel” as an influential figure in his youth and told The Rooster that he was groomed from a young age with the intention of seizing power to benefit their Christian sect.
Setzer pointed to another Ohioan in J.D. Vance as someone who also almost assuredly went through the same process, though through a different pipeline.
On Y2K, which didn’t go as the doomsday preppers thought (or, frankly, hoped)
Readers of a certain age will remember the Y2K hysteria, which, in reality, turned out to be no big deal, other than some airport departure and arrival terminals displaying their pertinent dates as “1900” instead of “2000.”
It was a sigh of relief for most normal Americans, who, it must be said, didn’t belong to a doomsday cult that had been stockpiling weapons and other necessities in preparation for the thread of society disintegrating.
Thankfully, Carl was young enough that the missed prophecy served as a stepping stone on his way back to normalized society.
Setzer’s message to MAGA voters: Are you any happier?
The Rooster, as a policy, is skeptical of former Republicans running as Democrats.
But Setzer blew through those doubts over our 90+ minute conference. In fact, I walked away thinking that Setzer’s Christian nationalist background would be an asset in talking to disaffected MAGA voters who won’t be asked to vote against their golden god in this election cycle.
For example, Setzer is pushing a “Consumer Bill of Rights,” which strikes at the heart of the righteous anger Americans feel when they know they’re getting ripped off seemingly at every turn.
From Setzer’s campaign site:
As American consumers, we should have the right to a master control that instantly disables microphone and camera access across all apps and all layers of a device’s operating system.
As American consumers, we should have the right to unsubscribe from all subscriptions universally, at any time, from a centralized control point.
As American consumers, we should be required to give explicit consent to any payment that is automatically set to auto-renew at checkout.
As American consumers, we should have the right to claw back funds drawn by any company or subscription with which we have not interacted for more than 30 days.
These are things that everyday Americans can understand a lot easier than “tax credits for starting a small business in an economically disadvantaged area” or whatever the hell it was that Kamala Harris ran on.
Setzer understands the anger without presenting himself as an angry guy. He is a breath of fresh air in a Democratic race where the other option is a grown man who threw a fit because sex pests suffered consequences for their actions in 2017.
Setzer carries The Rooster’s Complete & Total Endorsement, and we hope to have more coverage with him—in his neck of the woods—before the May 5 primary.
Donate to Setzer’s campaign
Learn more about Setzer on his official campaign page
Follow the Setzer for Congress campaign on Instagram
The long-rumored Columbus Monthly profile hits the press, with Senate Majority Communications Director Jon Fortney almost in tears
