Get dumped then, Issue 1!!!!!!

We know who won last night. Now let's see who lost.

Ohio is a dark place that’s full of terrors. I have labored over The Rooster for five years, covering this cesspit from every angle.

I predicted a 5-8 point victory because I was a coward. Well, I’ve never been happier to be wrong. I knew the race could be called early, but I didn’t predict getting a DM from The Rooster’s Special Election correspondent, Max Littman, telling me, “It’s over, bro” roughly 13 minutes after the polls closed.

But that’s exactly what happened! Here is what the map looks like as of this writing at 1:04 a.m.:

Issue 1 went down so hard that these bums lost Delaware County, a once-conservative bastion.

I guess Delaware denizens weren’t persuaded by offers of sharing store-brand Root Beer floats with creeps trying to lecture them in a parking lot.

Seeing the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Right to Life, the Farm Bureau, and the Center for Christian Virtue all get thrown in the dumpster together is something that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Shoutout to the Chamber, by the way, who waited until Election Day to disavow an insane pro-Issue 1 mailer sent by Ohio Right to Life that featured their logo:

That OCC logo is too high quality to have been ripped off the internet somewhere. These were professional designers with high-quality renditions of logos.

Most likely, the OCC is trying to disavow the flyers because the drag queen featured as a sex pest is looking to sue:

I hope Ms. Monde takes them for every penny she can. Absolutely disgraceful to think of two Republican media hobgoblins just randomly choosing her picture to paint her as someone looking to indoctrinate children and peddle sex changes.

With messaging like that, it’s hard to believe Issue 1 failed!

But that got me thinking. We know who won last night (Ohio democracy). But who were the biggest losers other than the voters who wanted to dilute our power?

I made a handy guide. You can expect a further deep-dive into Issue 1’s cataclysmic failure on Friday, too.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose

Secretary of State Frank LaRose had an idea; disgrace his office by campaigning for a partisan, anti-abortion initiative that would ingratiate him to the holy roller lobby to boost his nascent Senate campaign.

LaRose probably put 15,000 miles on his Chevy Equinox stumping around the state. And all those hours on our state’s decrepit highways, traveling to rooms filled with the mustiest, most-hardcore Republicans in the State?

And for what? Only to become the face of the most significant Republican defeat in Ohio in over a decade. Not only that, he also became the first Green Beret ever to be bullied by a handful of sign-waving liberals:

This is the same guy who bills himself as “battle-tested” in his Senate campaign. Once again, it shows that he’s not ready for primetime because he can’t even handle the slightest bit of pushback to his assault on democracy.

It’s part of why I declared his Senate campaign dead on arrival in April. He has no juice, and worse, he has zero political instincts. He thinks this campaign will ingratiate himself to the anti-abortion lobby, but nobody wants to hitch their wagon to a loser!

For all that work, Ohio Right to Life president Michael Gonidakis (more on him in a minute) couldn’t single out LaRose for praise without mentioning one of his competitors, Bernie Moreno.

From Henry J. Gomez of nbcnews.com last week:

Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, which supports Issue 1, singled out LaRose and Moreno for praise while expressing frustration that the special election had digressed into Senate race showmanship.

“Bernie Moreno and Frank LaRose have been pillars during this entire endeavor for Issue 1 from start to finish,” he said. “I don’t keep a running ticker of who’s at the most events, but I can assure you that no one is working harder than Frank and Bernie on this. For either of them to start nitpicking each other, I think, is rather unfortunate.”

Sure, Moreno wrote a $100,000 check and did some events, but LaRose guided Issue 1 through the legislature, sold the soul of his political office, and galavanted around the state, trying to sell it to voters.

And yet they’re both described as “pillars.” That’s hard times right there.

State Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Domestic Terrorist)

Senator Huffman (R-Lima) bragged to the Columbus Dispatch that legislative Republicans can “basically do what [they] want.” And you know what? He’s right! They can, as evidenced by them railing an August Special Election through the legislature mere months after they banned them, all without having to repeal the law to make it happen!

We got a rare treat last night: Huffman at the podium trying to make sense of a humiliating defeat. Naturally, he placed the blame on anyone but himself.

Huffman originally wanted this election in May, only five months from December when they initially tried to pass this nonsense. They’ve been plotting this election since January! You could have added another four months to the timeline—it wouldn’t have made a difference.

It’s also classic Huffman in that he says they’ll ask the question again but in a different “atmosphere.” My guess? They will try to limit early voting either before the November election or whenever they try to get Ohioans to dilute the power of their votes again.

Huffman is now looking at his entire anti-abortion project getting unwound with one vote in November, making him the Republican who let abortion back into Ohio after the Supreme Court ignored 50 years of precedent by throwing Roe vs. Wade in the trash. It’s the kind of thing that could haunt a man to the grave.

State Rep. Brian Stewart (R-Ashville)

In retrospect, I should have realized that Issue 1 was cooked by how big of a role State Rep. Stewart (R-Ashville) played in pushing the legislation through the Statehouse.

Stewart famously declared that this had nothing to do with keeping abortion out of the Constitution or preserving Republican power. One of his colleagues immediately leaked Stewart’s memo to the press, showing how he was full of shit.

From David DeWitt of ohiocapitaljournal.com in December 2022:

“1. After decades of Republicans’ work to make Ohio a pro-life state, the Left intends to write abortion on demand into Ohio’s Constitution. If they succeed, all the work we accomplished by multiple Republican majorities will be undone…” Stewart wrote, and later notes that HJR 6 has the full support of Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue.

As his second numbered bullet point, he writes:

“2. Despite enduring a year-long circus in the Ohio Supreme Court, Republicans won a 67 seat majority in the House in 2022. Unable to win a statewide election, Democrats now intend to rewrite Ohio’s Constitution to put (retiring Republican Chief Justice) Maureen O’Connor and other unelected liberals in charge of drawing legislative districts, affecting not only the Ohio legislature, but control of the United States House of Representatives as well. That’s just in 2023.”

When that push failed, Stewart flip-flopped on the validity of August Special Elections, which he had declared he’d worked his entire career to ban when the legislature made that vote.

The truth is, these weren’t very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Aaron Baer, President of the Center for Christian Virtue

There is no more odious of a Statehouse lobbying group than the Center for Christian Virtue, a Holy Roller group founded by a self-described porn addict.

Nobody knows who funds them! In purchasing the old Dispatch building on Broad Street, they only described it as being purchased “through an affiliated entity.” Normal language from a normal group not involved in money laundering and tax evasion!

Baer is your typical conservative operator in that he lives in an affluent liberal neighborhood, in his case German Village, while trying to take Ohio back to the Biblical era.

He also drank the Issue 1 Kool-Aid because, for some reason only known to him and his White Jesus, he scheduled a victory party at the new HQ last night:

It’s so funny that the head of a teacher’s union is one of the biggest boogeymen available in their reactionary worldview. It turns out that most voters don’t feel like rehashing the peak of the pandemic!

Bear also made the mistake of getting addicted to the gerrymandered legislature. And he conflated Republican dominance in statewide elections with endorsements of his wildly unpopular policies, like when he tried to declare Ohio as a “pro-life” state simply because former Dayton mayor Nan Whaley lost to a legacy institution like Mike Dewine:

Well, we are about to find out how Ohio feels about abortion with a ballot also featuring legalized marijuana.

Baer’s side won’t take the hint. Instead, they will pump more out-of-state money into Ohio in attempts to make the abortion amendment about infanticide, genocide, and drag queens performing sex changes on children at public schools.

Not sure that would be the message I would go with when trying to win back independent and suburban voters! But that’s not my problem!

Michael Gonidakis

Michael Gonidakis decided to go on CNN at the nine o’clock hour because, like Baer, he had drank the Kool-Aid his group Ohio Right to Life peddled to voters.

He probably never imagined that every major news network would call the election against his side before he even appeared on air.

When Kaitlin Collins asked him to comment on why Issue 1 failed, Gonidakis hilarious deflected the question, saying there were 7,000 precincts left to be counted that could flip the vote.

It shows what a fantasy world Gonidakis has lived in throughout his career. Later in the interview, he said that “faith-based” voters would reject legal weed in November without mentioning that he is a registered lobbyist for two weed companies in the Statehouse.

Before Issue 1 got passed in the Ohio House, protests in the gallery broke out, and the Sergeants-in-Arms kicked everyone out. Gonidakis was incredulous that “everyone” included him, too.

And while he said last night that his group has always been “laser-focused on November,” we know that’s not the case. If they felt confident about their chances in November, they wouldn’t have lit $20 million on fire to be publicly humiliated.

THOSE WMDs. Death in a Glasgow hotel… They lost their kids to Fortnite… After Barbie, Mattel is raiding its entire toybox… The secret movement bringing back Europe’s wildlife… The story of Catherine the Great.