Get dumped then, Frank LaRose!

Cue the funeral music for one of the biggest bozos in state politics.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose no doubt thought his Senate run would be easy. He was a decorated Green Beret who had already won two statewide elections. If this were 1996, he might have a point.

Unfortunately for LaRose, he came of age in the era of Donald Trump. The era that LaRose to prevent as a disciple to the despicable then-governor John Kasich:

If you told LaRose, who in March 2016 was a mere State Senator from Copley, that he’d be groveling at the feet of President Business Deals in seven years, he probably would have believed you.

Because even then, LaRose had already exposed himself as the kind of politician willing to say anything as long as it helped him earn his next political promotion.

But back on this timeline, LaRose has spent the last eight months groveling before President Business Deals as the only man who could save his floundering Senate campaign.

On Monday, LaRose told NBC4 in Columbus that he had spoken to the big man and was told that Trump “most likely” wouldn’t endorse in the race. If he did endorse, LaRose fully expected himself to earn that golden ticket to the United States Senate.

From Aaron Burd of fox8.com:

“Well, I think that you’re speculating on something that’s not going to happen,” LaRose said. “Moreno has been trying to convince people that he’s going to have Trump’s endorsement for months now. He’s been promising something that he can’t deliver. President Trump is most likely not going to endorse anybody in this race. That’s what he’s told me and others as it relates to this.”

Multiple Republican sources told The Rooster that was music to the ears of Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, who knew Trump’s endorsement was already in the works.

Trump dropped that hammer last night in his unique rude-boy parlance.

“It’s time for the entire Republican Party to UNITE around Bernie’s campaign for Senate so that we can have a BIG victory in what will be the most important Election in American History,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, which is Twitter for some of the most diseased freaks in the country.

If you listened closely in the minutes after that endorsement, you probably could have heard LaRose softly crying in the Chevy Equinox that got stolen from his garage earlier this year.

Trump lied to a veteran!? Who could have seen this one coming?

It’s a testament to the Ohio Republican Party’s gerrymandering and ability to win elections that a guy like LaRose became Secretary of State despite having zero political instincts.

Ironically, I, the neighborhood communist blogger, could have prevented LaRose from this humbling. If he had subscribed to The Rooster, he would have known that his Senate campaign was dead before he declared.

As I wrote on April 13 in an article titled, “RIP Frank LaRose’s Senate campaign.”

But where is LaRose going to go in this Senate field? [State Senator Matt] Dolan has the moderate lane. Moreno will have the Trump lane. They are both multimillionaires who have already proven they will spend their own money to win an election.

LaRose won’t have that luxury. He’s a troop, sure, but he’s not charismatic. And frankly, a lot of Republicans hate him as much as any Democrat.

[…]

No reason to think LaRose’s impending campaign will go any differently, especially with Trump campaigning for the presidency at the same time.

LaRose will pay a lot of consultants to tell him a lot can happen between now and 2024. Trump could die! (He’ll live to be 118.) The IRS could indict Bernie Moreno for tax fraud! (Highly doubtful.) Republican voters will come to their senses once they hear LaRose on the stump! (LMAO.)

LaRose will become the latest in a long line of ambitious but otherwise unremarkable candidates who boosted Trump’s presidential campaigns only to be cut in half by the buzzsaw they helped create.

You almost feel bad for the guy! Almost.

That didn’t stop LaRose from getting high on his own eternal polls, showing that he was leading the race on nothing but name recognition. But unfortunately for him, it takes more than vague recognition from voters to win a Senate seat.

But as I said in April, all that was left was to laugh at what was to come. And buddy, did we laugh!

When you look at the months-long downfall of the “LaRose War Room,” it almost becomes impressive in its ineptitude:

• April 13th: LaRose introduces Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a chief rival of Donald Trump who would soon eat shit in the presidential primaries, to the Lincoln Breakfast hosted by the Summit County Republicans.

• May 4th: LaRose tells Republican donors that Trump’s endorsement “doesn’t mean as much as it used to.” The comments are secretly recorded and immediately leaked to the press.

• June 2nd: LaRose disgraces his Secretary of State office by campaigning to raise the Constitutional threshold in an August Special Election. After Republican strategists tell politicians to make the campaign about anything other than kneecapping the proposed abortion amendment, LaRose tells a crowd of supporters that it’s “100% about abortion.”

• June 13: The Rooster crashes an Ohio Ballot Board meeting. Press Secretary Rob Nichols commits battery to keep me from his boss to no avail. LaRose runs like a bug into a secured stairwell.

• July 7th: LaRose teases new campaign signage, a rip-off of DeSantis, who is still plummeting in the polls as more voters get to know him.

• July 9th: One of LaRose’s neighbors drops a dime to The Rooster about seeing LaRose shooting a senate announcement ad featuring “sweat” rings as fake as his jogging.

• July 17th: LaRose announces his campaign with a stereotypical “I’m running—literally!” ad that a communist blogger had spoiled a week prior.

• July 17th: His first campaign conference call with statewide grassroots supporters, already riddled with technical gaffes and swaths of silence, is ambushed by a prankster playing Garfunkel & Oates’ song “The Loophole” about the Evangelical anal sex loophole to virginity. The debacle makes the national press.

• Aug. 8th: Issue 1, the Special Election that LaRose had entered as a partisan hack in an attempt to seed his Senate campaign, goes down in flames at the feet of Ohio’s hog voters.

• Aug. 10th: LaRose says he “respects” what then-Vice President Mike Pence did on January 6th, which assuredly got back to Trump.

• Aug. 14th: The Rooster publishes an exposé about the Twitter account of longtime Secretary of State press secretary Rob Nichols. The tweets showed Nichols attacking private citizens while exuding extreme divorced dad energy. It also showed that Nichols was no fan of Donald Trump.

• Aug. 16th: LaRose fires longtime press secretary Rob Nichols like a dog for his anti-Trump tweets.

• Aug. 30th: The Rooster publishes a report highlighting low morale in the Secretary of State’s office and high turnover of election professionals. The report also drops a dime on the odious Alex Pavloff, a LaRose staffer who’s deluded himself into thinking he's Karl Rove when he should be seeing his son for the fourth time in his life.

• Sept. 7th: Despite ethical questions, LaRose announces plans to move the Secretary of State's office (for the first time in 20 years) into the same building that houses his campaign’s lawyers.

• Oct. 4th: The Columbus Dispatch publishes its exposé on turnover and low morale in the Secretary of State’s office.

• Oct. 16th: LaRose posts lackadaisical fundraiser numbers in his first report that shows he took out a $250,000 loan. Political experts question the long-term viability of the campaign.

• Oct. 30th: LaRose uses his Secretary of State newsletter to promote his Senate campaign.

• Nov. 6th: The Rooster exposes that LaRose’s Miami County Captain, Pastor Jon Matthews of Piqua, is actually a fictitious alter-ego of LaRose’s sworn enemy.

• Nov. 7th (A.M.): The Rooster publishes LaRose’s personal phone number, and he becomes the first Ohio Secretary of State to be recorded looking at a picture of Shrek’s penis on Election Day.

• Nov. 7th (P.M.): Ohio’s hog voters run wild on LaRose again by enshrining abortion in the constitution and legalizing marijuana.

• Nov. 15th: LaRose attends a fundraiser for fake abortion clinics run by renowned antisemitic kook Candice Keller. LaRose’s campaign doesn't publish the appearance, but LaRose is exposed in the background of an attendee’s selfie.

• Nov. 29th: LaRose, in a violation of the Ohio Constitution, admits he added language to November’s Issue 1 at the behest of anti-abortion groups who thought it would hurt the abortion amendment’s chances of passing.

• Dec. 4th: LaRose finally admits to campaigning in the Secretary of State’s office that he moved into the same building as his campaign’s lawyers.

• Dec. 12th: After breaking the law by missing the deadline, LaRose finally posts his financial disclosure showing that he is not, in fact, “a thousandaire” as he had been claiming throughout his campaign.

• Dec. 18th: LaRose says that Trump told him he most likely won’t endorse in Ohio’s Senate race, and if he does, it will “most likely” be for LaRose.

• Dec. 19th: Donald Trump endorses Bernie Moreno.

My God! Even as his No. 1 hater, that’s a startling list. But it goes back to what I said at the beginning of the campaign: LaRose, for all his pomp and arrogance, is surrounded by unprofessional yes-men who don’t know what they’re doing.

An AI-generated image of Frank LaRose drunk driving his campaign off a cliff.

LaRose’s backup plan, according to multiple Republicans who spoke to The Rooster, was always going to be a gubernatorial run in 2026.

But LaRose’s lifelong ambition to be a United States Senator appears to have gotten the better of him. According to multiple sources, his campaign team was in shambles last night as they had genuinely thought that Trump was being honest with them when they told LaRose that he probably wouldn’t endorse in this race.

Normally, LaRose could drop out of the race during Christmas, and only the political nerds would remember that he ran for Senate by 2026. But LaRose has burnt bridges with donors and “favor bridges” with other Republican politicians.

Moderates already hated him. And now, Trump Republicans have even more of a reason to entomb him under a cornfield outside Pataskala.

While I won’t spike the football on his political career just yet, it’s hard to envision LaRose recovering from this disastrous campaign. Given where he was only eight months ago, you almost have to tip your cap at the way he’s gone out like Stan Chera.

THOSE WMDs. You deserve a much better grilled-cheese sandwich… “Pig butchering” is a new scam draining victims’ bank accounts… Nobody knows what’s happening online anymore… How Finald put traffic accidents on ice… When The New York Times lost its way.