How to burn bridges and alienate allies

A masterclass taught by State Rep. Elliot Forhan (D-Cleveland).

I first met current State Rep. Elliot Forhan (D-Cleveland) last year in a Twitter direct message group for leftist soccer dads despite neither of us actually being fathers.

The nature of the conversations was what you might expect in a group of politically poisoned, middle-aged soccer fans. That was until Russian Premier Vladamir Putin made the fateful decision in February 2022 to invade Ukraine.

Nobody was pro-Putin in the chat, to be clear. But after the initial shock of the invasion, the conversation turned back to soccer and occasionally leftist domestic politics for everyone except Forhan.

Forhan, then only an Ivy League-educated lawyer, deputized himself as the group’s frontline war reporter, routinely sharing updates of military action that also included graphic, violent videos.

Eventually, one member made it clear to him that he was violating the decorum of the chat. Forhan didn’t stop. Another member took issue with him. Forhan didn’t stop. Then a third member tried to speak to him in private, but Forhan kept posting, seeing it as a moral duty to keep a bunch of American dads informed about a war halfway across the world they could do nothing to stop.

Unable to heed our one simple request, Forhan was booted from the chat with him bizarrely painting us as pro-Putin apologists. As you might imagine, I was surprised to learn a couple of months later that he had won a Democratic primary for a safe Democratic seat in the Ohio House of Representatives.

He punched his ticket to the legislature last November for a term that doesn’t end until Dec. 31st, 2024.

Given our limited interactions, you won’t be surprised to learn that I suspected Forhan’s tenure in the Ohio Legislature might be a disaster. But I admit that I never envisioned it going as bad as it did, with Forhan on the verge of being kicked out of the Democratic Caucus after his latest bizarre and violent outburst in front of colleagues who support 98% of his political agenda.

From Morgan Trau of ohiocapitaljournal.com:

In the 19-page document sent to House Democratic Leadership and obtained by News 5, Russo and her team called Forhan’s behavior abusive, erratic and inappropriate.

“Ultimately, hostility, profanity, and dangerous, violent remarks have unfortunately been the hallmark of Rep. Forhan’s tenure in the Ohio House of Representatives,” the document states.

[…]

Democratic leadership has counseled and tried to course-correct Forhan following incidents, the document says. Each time, Forhan would act aggressively and threaten “retaliation.”

From May through the summer, different labor groups reached out to Democratic leadership to express their concerns with Forhan’s aggressive and violent behavior, the document continues — providing evidence.

In June, Forhan showed up at another representative’s house unannounced to talk about complaints made about him. The female representative viewed this as hostile.

Following this incident, Forhan was counseled about appropriate social media behavior and was removed from his leadership position on the Government Oversight Committee.

Being a member of a superminority legislative party is actually a pretty sweet gig as long as you can handle never realizing any of your major policy goals. Just show up, keep your head down, and continue to cash your checks with full benefits while (correctly) blaming all of the state’s ills on the Republican junta that rigged both legislative chambers.

Forhan obviously couldn’t handle that.

The Rooster, after speaking with several Statehouse staffers and a couple of Forhan’s colleagues, can add some other information to Trau’s report.

• Forhan went to the house of State Rep. Juanita Brent (D-Cleveland) on March 29th and angrily banged on her door demanding to talk to her. The incident petrified Brent’s second cousin, who was at home at the time.

• Forhan got banned from a political event featuring United States Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Cleveland) after Forhan blew up on a staffer and got labeled “a security risk.”

• Forhan routinely threatened suicide in confrontations with colleagues, lobbyists, and labor groups.

As The Rooster reported last night on Twitter, Speaker Jason Stephens requested a special investigation into the abusive history of Forhan on Nov. 17th:

Forhan got the endorsement of the Cuyahoga County Democrats with the help of State Senator Kent Smith (D-Cleveland), who was then running for the county chairmanship. Multiple sources told The Rooster that Smith has come to deeply regret greasing the tracks for Forhan’s entrance into the Legislature.

Throughout the last year, House Democrats have compiled the dossier on Forhan’s behavior so that if the situation became untenable, the Caucus would have a long documented history in case Forhan tried to paint himself as the victim.

Last week, we hit that threat level when Forhan became incensed with State Rep. Mourina Abdullahi (D-Columbus).

Abdullahi and several other legislative Democrats were angry that Forhan had thrown House Democrats Chief of Staff Jordan Plottner under the bus in a video posted to social media. Forhan, who has been vocal about Israel’s war crimes in the ongoing siege to the Gaza Strip, put an Israeli flag in the hallway outside his office that Plottner asked him to place back in his office.

Forhan, who has the most bizarre stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict imaginable, namely that Israel is doing war crimes but he’ll “never stop defending Israel,” then became irate that Rep. Abdullahi didn’t 100 percent agree with his baffling position on the conflict.

Abdullahi, for her part, wasn’t mad about he conflict or the flag. She, like other Democrats, was just mad that Plottner had been targeted in a video he posted to social media. She, like other Democrats, feels like staffers shouldn’t be dragged into intra-party conflicts.

Eventually, State Rep. Jessica Miranda (D-Cincinnati), the House Minority Whip, entered the fray, once against trying to defuse a volatile Forhan. He instead attacked her to the point that the staffers in the Sergeant-of-Arms office came to observe the confrontation in case they needed to stop Forhan from escalating the situation into physical violence.

Since the latest incident, Forhan has taken to social media to post apology videos featuring energy usually reserved for hostage videos between two warring nation-states.

The videos are highly manipulative and don’t come across as somebody who is sorry for their actions. Otherwise, these apologies would have been made in private instead of public social media posts.

In a private conversation, I advised Forhan to stop coming to Columbus but continue cashing his checks until the end of his term, a la former State Rep. Bernadine Kennedy-Kent (D-Columbus), the last Democrat exiled from the caucus. I also advised him that his time in the State Legislature was already at an end.

“The voters will decide that,” he replied.

THOSE WMDs. How R.F.K. Jr. turned his public crusade into a private windfall… Lord of the Deep: The most successful shipwreck hunter in modern times… The rise and fall of MuchMusic… Living off the grid in the Colorado foothills… Internet sleuths want to find this pop song; they only have 17 seconds of it.