Local Democrats appoint a bunch of Republicans, act surprised at anti-worker results
Franklin County Commissioners and Columbus Mayor Ginther took turns appointing each other's Republican friends to the Regional Airport Authority Board. As a result, local workers are losing out.
The Columbus Regional Airport Authority Board of Directors is a bubbling cauldron of political incest.
Before we get into their dirt, and why it matters, let’s get a description from their website:
“The Columbus Regional Airport Authority is governed by a Board of Directors composed of nine business and community leaders. As part of the Board’s four-year staggered term, four members are appointed by the Mayor of Columbus with the advice and consent of City Council, four members are appointed by the Franklin County Board of Commissioners, and one member is appointed by both the Mayor and Franklin County Board of Commissioners.”
The current board members who were appointed by Andy Ginther are:
Jordan A. Miller, Jr. (Vice Chair)
Frederic Bertley
Kenny McDonald
Karen Morrison
The current board members appointed by the Franklin County Commissioners are:
Elizabeth Kessler (Board Chair)
Paul Chodak III
Mo Dioun
Ramon Jones
Joint appointee:
Corrine Burger
This group contains a number of diabolical business freaks, as you can tell from their titles and associations. A bit on each of them, starting with Andy Ginther’s picks:
Jordan A. Miller Jr. lives in Columbus and is a registered Democrat. He is the chairman and CEO of Adelphi Bank, and a retired chairman and CEO of Fifth Third Bank.
What is Adelphi Bank?
It’s the bank co-founded by County Commissioner Kevin Boyce, who is its Vice Chair. Other notable people on the board of Adelphi are Karen Morrison, another of Ginther’s appointees to the CRAA board who appears below; and Michael Coleman, former Columbus Mayor.
Frederic Bertley is the President and CEO of COSI. He has a very impressive resume and is probably the least suspicious person on the board. He owns a house in Columbus, but neither he or his wife appear to be registered to vote in Franklin County.
Kenny McDonald is the President and Chief Economic Officer of the Columbus Partnership. He lives in New Albany and is a registered Republican. If you were making a list of likely members of the Columbus Illuminati, this guy would be near the top. Right under Les Wexner, metaphorically but possibly also physically.
Karen Morrison is President of the OhioHealth Foundation. She does actually live in the city of Columbus, although her house is outside of 270. She is an unaffiliated voter according to the Franklin County Board of Elections, but she did vote a Democratic party ballot in the 2020 primary election. As I mentioned before, she sits on the board of Adelphi Bank.
Moving to the Franklin County Commissioners’ picks:
Board Chair Elizabeth Kessler is Partner in Charge at Jones Day. If you know anything about law firms, you know that utterly soulless deeds are required to attain that type of position. Kessler lives in New Albany and is a registered Republican.
Kessler’s father is none other than John W. Kessler, co-founder of The New Albany company. The other founder being Les Wexner, steadfast friend and benefactor of noted dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Elizabeth is a shining example for young people of what you can accomplish if you work hard and are born to Les Wexner’s business partner and the daughter of a former PUCO counsel/chairman of GTE.
Paul Chodak III is EVP and COO of Eversource Energy. He lives in Granville. His voting status is unknown, but we have some clues as to his politics.
In November of 2019, Chodak listed his employment as “self employed engineer” when he donated $1,000 to the primary campaign to re-elect Jim Justice, the Republican Governor of West Virginia.
Interestingly Chodak had just been promoted to EVP of Generation at AEP on January 1, 2019, so it seems highly unlikely that he was self-employed in November.
In 2021 he disclosed that AEP was his employer when he made a $1,000 donation to the DeWine Husted for Ohio campaign. So, is Paul Chodak III a Republican? I think we can put him in the dumpster with Elizabeth and Kenny.
Mo Dioun is President and CEO of The Stonehenge Company. He lives in New Albany. Strangely, though his wife is registered to vote at their New Albany address (and is unaffiliated), he is not registered there. If you do a simple search for his name, you actually get an address in Englewood, Florida.
That’s a 1.5 hour drive from Naples, one of the portals that leads directly to hell if you’re an Ohio man. Dioun has a long and tumultuous history in Columbus that could span an entire article of its own.
The condensed version is that his company purchased Little Turtle Golf Club in 2015. He and his wife then donated at least $74,250 to the campaigns of Andy Ginther, City Attorney Zach Klein, and various City Council members between 2017 and 2020.
Dioun also made significant donations to Kevin Boyce over the years, including at least $2,500 in 2016.
On June 21, 2019, Boyce held an event at the Little Turtle Golf Club. One month later, Mo Dioun contributed $2,500 to Boyce’s campaign for County Commissioner. And one month after that, Boyce recorded a campaign expense of $10,204.04 for the June event space, food, and drinks at Little Turtle.
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