It's all about trust
City Council candidate Tiara Ross is still being dishonest about her various scandals.
The German Village Society hosted a city council forum on Tuesday night. It was a rough-and-tumble affair, according to reporting from WOSU’s George Shillcock.
Apparently, I made a mistake by not attending because resident John Clark confronted the establishment’s ordained candidate, Tiara Ross, about her ticket and cheating scandals that The Rooster broke over the summer.
You can view the entire exchange in the six-minute video below:
Ross admitted that accruing nearly $4,000 in unpaid parking tickets and driving on a suspended license for over a year was “a mistake, full stop.”
That was a decent start, even if I’d argue that it was several mistakes over the course of 18 months. But her answers only went downhill from there.
Ross hilariously claimed that The Rooster’s reporting had nothing to do with her decision to suddenly pay her 48 outstanding tickets and restore her license.
If that had actually been the case, perhaps she wouldn’t have driven to that infamous residency hearing in a car with tags that had expired six months ago and then lied under oath about not knowing her license had been suspended.
But what irks me about her defense is this total fabrication that I “followed her for days,” even to her grandmother’s house during the Christmas season.
I do not own or operate a motor vehicle. I cannot pedal as fast as she likes to drive, even if I wanted to.
Plus, her timeline doesn’t make any sense. I did not know the name “Tiara Ross” until she declared her candidacy on January 16.
Yet, somehow, I followed her “to her grandmother’s house” in December 2024? Huh?
She got caught because she was sloppy.
She hadn’t updated her voter registration, credit card registration, or the address on her license after moving, which initially led to the residency challenge. Had she done any of those things, the challenge wouldn’t have been filed, and perhaps she would still be driving uninsured around Columbus today.
I guess we’ll never know!
Once I got her license plate number, which I obtained by standing in the parking lot after a candidate forum on Refugee Road, I paid $200 to a private detective to run her license plate report, which listed her license as suspended.
You can view that report here:
Public information obtained in public places led to Ross’ downfall on the tickets. It’s not my fault that she made it easy.
More bizarrely, however, she also tried to claim that she accrued parking tickets outside her complex building because it’s “new” and “people kept parking in there without passes.”
Her complex, the Library Park III on Grant Avenue, opened in the spring of 2022—two years before Ross moved in, one day before the legal deadline to establish residency to run for Council.
It’s a private garage that requires a badge to enter. Ross’ lease, which her lawyers provided to The Rooster at the residency hearing, notes that the complex has an “active towing contract,” which will remove “vehicles not authorized to park in the parking lot.”
The lease notes that Ross has a designated parking spot:
She didn’t park in the private garage because she found it more convenient to park on the street and accrue tickets that she didn't think she would ever have to pay. And had The Rooster not gotten involved, she might have been right.
As for Ross’ comments about the law school cheating scandal, you’ll notice that she didn’t deny any of it. Just that the “information shouldn’t have been released.”
As I originally wrote, I wouldn’t have published those emails if it were a one-off scandal. I never cheated in school (and I have the grades to prove it), but it’s not as if I was a bastion of integrity in my youth.
I published those emails because cheating in a prestigious law school competition appears to be still in line with the character of the woman running for public office in 2025.
She escaped consequences then, just as she thought she would when she decided to run for council in a city of a million people while driving uninsured and on a suspended license.
And as this exchange shows, months later, nothing has really changed for Ross. Even after her consultant gremlins have massaged her answers, she can’t help but paint herself as the victim of a witch hunt while peddling other half-truths and outright lies while trying to explain why we should trust her.
It’s almost hard to blame her, though. Her team clearly feels that she has this race in the bag due to the Franklin County Democratic Party’s sham endorsement process, despite 59 percent of the votes going against her in the primary.
And make no mistake; it could work!
Columbus Education Association refuses to endorse Councilman Emmanuel Remy
The Columbus Education Association, which represents our beautiful teachers in Columbus City Schools, endorsed Jesse Vogel for City Council District 7 on Thursday.
The more shocking news, however, was that the CEA refused to endorse incumbent city councilman Emmanuel Remy, who is running unopposed.
Last week, The Rooster broke the news that Remy, whose wife is a CEA member, had withdrawn his children from the district and enrolled them at St. Francis DeSales High School.
More damningly, Remy is also taking advantage of Ohio’s voucher program, which Statehouse Republicans have exploded in recent years as part of their never-ending quest to siphon as much money as possible from public education.
And make no mistake—union leadership would have endorsed him anyway since he’s running unopposed. That’s how things work in this city. But any labor union worth a damn is driven by its membership, not its leaders.
“The endorsement of Jesse Vogel coupled with the lack of endorsement of Councilman Remy shows the rank and file power of Ohio’s largest teachers union,” Kelsey Gray, a CEA member and CORE organizer, told The Rooster.
“Educators in Central Ohio are standing up to fight for public education and what is best for our members, our students, and our communities.”
Numerous unions within Columbus politics should take note.
Josh Williams joins the pedophile protection club
State Rep. Josh Williams (R-Sylvania) is running in the Ohio Ninth Congressional primary in hopes of facing Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo) in the 2026 General Election.
Williams is in a precarious place, having to deal with my antics between now and then.
Still, it’s sad to see Williams go from a hardliner on Jeffrey Epstein and wanting the investigatory files released in a transparent fashion… to having to duck and weave on international sex trafficking because he’s afraid of saying something that might anger Donald Trump or his legions of adoring fans.
I think I got my point across in the video, but I regret not asking him why he, nor any of his Republican colleagues, has not signed Democratic State Rep. Karen Brownlee’s resolution calling on Congress to release the files.
Thankfully, I know where Williams works, and I can get him—and other members of Speaker Matt Huffman’s leadership team—on the record next week.
THOSE WMDs. Women in Gaza say they were promised food, shelter or work in exchange for sexual favors… The Trump family’s money-making machine… He grew obsessed with an AI chatbot, and then he disappeared into the Ozarks… I’ve gone to look for America… The murder that made me a true crime writer.
Tiara Ross is a lawyer. Why didn't she file a restraining order against you if you were following her for days? 🤔
Good job, John Clark!!! She ducked and weaved pretty good, but she is not the right fit for City Council. And her claims about being followed by The Rooster to her grandma's house at Christmastime are fairytale material and truly bizarre. I did get a good laugh over visualizing The Rooster pedaling like a crazy man behind her car.