Good riddance to my old friend Jena Powell

She'll leave a legacy of being fundamentally dishonest with voters while bullying Ohio's most marginalized communities.

You might not know that State Rep. Jena Powell (R-“Arcanum”) whipped my ass in a Statehouse race back in 2018. You can watch the critically acclaimed documentary about that suicide mission on YouTube.

It’s a small consolation knowing that Jesus Christ, the King of Zion himself, would have suffered a similar fate in that district had He been branded with that diabolical (D) next to his name.

Had I won by some miracle, I would have focused on issues that could have passed a Republican-dominate House chamber. Things like right-to-repair for agricultural equipment, reliable broadband internet, and fighting private school vouchers that hurt rural public schools the most.

I also like to think I would have lived in the District that elected me and not embroiled myself in a residency scandal while actively trying to deceive voters about my living 75 miles outside my district, as The Rooster broke the story one year ago today:

You can read the damning case against Powell over here.

It’s an open Statehouse secret that Powell resides in Mason with her realtor husband.

State Rep. Rodney Creech (R-West Alexandria) and State Senator Steve “The Good Doctor” Huffman (R-Tipp City) have joked with me about her not living in her district. Huffman went as far as to call her “a fraud.”

For all her denials of the “claims” against her residency, she’s never had an answer about her owner-occupancy mortgage or why she worked so hard to deceive voters about her whereabouts in the first place.

Monday night, however, The Rooster broke some news about Powell withdrawing from her 2024 re-election campaign:

Powell made the news official Tuesday morning.

Powell faced a Republican primary opponent in Baptist minister Jonathan Newman of Troy. I had been working some Republican sources in the last week trying to determine how serious of a threat Newman posed to Powell, but the answer is obvious now that he was never a threat.

Newman is, in fact, Powell’s handpicked successor who won’t have to face what would have been at least a bitterly contested hobgoblin hoedown for the open seat upon Powell being termed out of the House at the end of 2026.

Unsurprisingly, Powell wasn’t honest with her constituents about her political machinations to circumvent an open election. Her move all but ensures the Evangelical movement in Miami and Darke County will have another faithful theocrat in the position for another eight years.

Powell’s retirement also comes on the week when the Ohio House is set to begin the process of overriding Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of the heinous HB-86 legislation.

DeWine’s veto, while praiseworthy, was immediately tempered by ensuing executive action that would cripple transgender people’s ability to seek proper medical care for their gender dysphoria.

Those actions, along with a ban on non-existent sex change operations for minors, weren’t enough to change any minds in the Ohio Legislature ahead of a primary season in which their foremost objective will be to prove they’re the biggest freak on the ballot to voters who think Joe Biden is an avowed Marxist.

Other than abortion, Powell’s one singular idea in the past six years in the legislature has been legislation forcing transgender people to participate on sports teams opposite of their gender identity.

That legislation got coupled into the so-called SAFE Act, spearheaded by the odious State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), into HB-86. The only thing stopping today’s override vote would be an act of God via inclement weather that ruins Republicans’ ability to travel from the hinterlands to Columbus.

It’s legislation that, in 20 years, will age about as well as that one Supreme Court decision that led to 70,000 forced sterilizations. Unfortunately, being on “the wrong side of history,” as the saying goes, won’t do anything to help the transgender children, teenagers, and adults who suddenly find themselves as the latest out-group on the tip of the spear of the Republican Party’s never-ending cultural crusade.

She will cloak her actions in “protecting women,” as if she didn’t abstain from a House vote to end the spousal exception to rape just last month. At least State Rep. Bill Dean (R-Xenia) was honest about his belief that a husband couldn’t rape a wife in their shared domicile. Powell was too cowardly to put her barbaric beliefs on the record.

Powell routinely posted pictures to Instagram that weren’t taken in Darke County in an attempt to deceive voters about how much time she was spending in the district that elected her.

I’ve been asked numerous times what’s next for Powell. My guess is she’ll fuck off to Warren County and enjoy a lavish existence as the wife of a local real estate tycoon.

Just last year, she published photographs of herself in Breckenridge, Aspen, Georgia, California, Seattle, Nashville, Key West, London, Switzerland, and Florence. That’s probably more time than she spent in the Statehouse as one of the most disconnected members of the House Republican Caucus.

I’ve read The Bible enough to know that Jesus had a lot to say about those who accumulated wealth while actively working against the disenfranchised. But Powell won’t be worried about that on her dive back to Mason, likely eating lukewarm Panda Express in her car like somebody in the throes of unparalleled clinical depression.

Rep. Powell celebrated HB-86’s original passage by eating Panda Express in her car while driving back to Mason. She is, like most of the Statehouse Republicans, fundamentally boring as a person.

Powell won’t be lucky enough like Click to be dead in the ground to see her anti-transgender nonsense unwound like abortion in Ohio.

In 20 years, Powell will look just as crusty as all those fundamentalists who preached that gay marriage would lead to America recognizing beastiality. She will look like the glasses of old milk that stood in the way of civil and gay rights back before any Republican voter knew what a transgender person was.

We owe it to the transgender community to keep fighting. Hopefully, by this time next week, I’ll have a list of ways we can help our brothers and sisters against the full weight of the state government trying to crush their existence.

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