Welcome to the Heat Dome
Welcome to the Heat Dome
Ohio ratepayers continue to pay the price as something called "a heat dome" envelops the state.
Barring the indictment of a prominent politician in Ohio, the Wednesday dispatch will be June’s Mailbag.
If you have any burning questions you want answered about any subject under the sun, you can submit them anonymously through my Jotform.
I won’t be able to answer them all, but I promise I’ll get to most.
Until then, enjoy the show!
Tick, tick, tick, Sleepy Tea…
Mike DeWine’s greatest political talent is his ability to shift from an aw-shucks grandpa to a ruthless political operator, depending on the needs of his current situation.
Back in April, Jake Zuckerman of cleveland.com reported FirstEnergy funneled $2.5 million in dark money to back DeWine’s gubernatorial campaign in 2018 against Democrat Rich Cordray.
DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney acted as if it was out-of-line to insinuate our dear governor didn’t respect
Via Ohio Capital Journal:
“Regarding your question regarding why donors to independent expenditures might not engage candidates directly on the independent expenditures, my guess is that this goes back to the fact that it is illegal for candidates to coordinate with 501 (c)(4) independent expenditure groups.
“I would guess that entities that frequently make such donations are aware of those legal restrictions. I don’t believe you were trying to accuse the Governor of illegal conduct, as he follows the law, but I would vociferously push back on any such innuendo as there is no basis for it.”
That’s the kind of smarm that can earn the big bucks as long as you can sleep at night knowing you’re shoveling horseshit for duplicitous politicians.
Unfortunately for DeWine and his communications expert, another revelation dropped yesterday that showed DeWine was in the mud soliciting money from FirstEnergy:
From Jake Zuckerman of cleveland.com:
COLUMBUS, Ohio – About a month before the 2018 election that would launch then-Attorney General Mike DeWine into the governor’s office, he sent a text to FirstEnergy’s CEO – indicted earlier this year on bribery charges – looking for a cash injection to help put him over the top.
“Chuck. Can u call me?” DeWine wrote to company CEO Chuck Jones on Oct. 13, 2018, adding that a teachers’ union gave a million dollars the day before to a group backing his Democratic rival.
[…]
Beyond the fundraising, the texts depict DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted as powerful insiders lobbying for House Bill 6, legislation that bailed out the nuclear plants while also providing FirstEnergy a roughly $50 million per year “decoupling” revenue stream.
DeWine won the 2018 election thanks in part to FirstEnergy’s support. The company that year gave $2.5 million to State Solutions, a dark money arm of the Republican Governors Association, internal records show. It also gave the $500,000 to the RGA directly. It provided $75,000 through another 501(c)(4) to support the governor’s daughter in a local prosecutorial race. And in 2019 it gave $300,000 to the pro-DeWine Securing Ohio’s Future 501(c)(4).
I'm starting to feel that my original article, “Mike DeWine is Guilty as Hell,” written in April 2022, will age as smoothly as Jon Husted’s Botox-swollen forehead. And that was only the information I could gather as a then-alcoholic blogger. I assume the federal government has more resources than I did.
That bailout from FirstEnergy, whose executives were already spinning the wheels on what became the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about), was no small thing.
In retrospect, it’s hilarious that DeWine needed a bailout from FirstEnergy and a personal $4 million loan in the campaign’s closing days to defeat Cordray, who was hardly an inspirational candidate full of charisma.
But even with that help, it’s not as if DeWine smoked Codray. DeWine won by a little over three percent of the vote, so it’s not out of the question that FirstEnergy’s dirty money played a pivotal role in that election.
It’s also not a fun experiment to work through what would have happened had Corday managed to beat DeWine. It would have been enough to carry the rest of the Democratic statewide ticket to victory and would have put a major dent into Ohio’s slide into a reactionary cesspool.
Would it have been enough to stop HB-6 from passing? Well, I’m not so sure because FirstEnergy also feted Cordray throughout the campaign.
From Dave Anderson of energypolicy.com in November 2018 (emphasis mine):
FirstEnergy has poured money, food, and beverages into the race for governor in Ohio, where Republican candidate Mike DeWine and Democrat Richard Cordray have both voiced general support for efforts to bail out nuclear power plants owned by the utility’s bankrupt subsidiaries.
DeWine received a large in-kind contribution of food and beverages for a campaign event from the CEO of FirstEnergy Corp. in October. Outside lobbyists and political operatives employed by the bankrupt FirstEnergy Solutions also gave thousands of dollars to Cordray’s campaign last month.
Cordray and DeWine met separately with FirstEnergy at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in September. Both candidates also offered statements supportive of efforts to prop up the plant over the summer, after DeWine made an earlier visit in July. FirstEnergy Solutions announced plans to close Davis-Besse and its Perry nuclear plant in March, unless it receives financial support for the plants from state lawmakers in Ohio.
It’s clear that FirstEnergy much preferred DeWine and Husted over Corday and Theresa Fedor.
I also don’t think Cordray and Fedor would have been as active in appointing a corrupt utility lobbyist like Sam Randazzo into the chairmanship of the Public Utilities Commission.
But it shows how FirstEnergy, who was already plotting HB-6, was willing to play both sides of the fence to guarantee its passage. I am still trying to understand why the federal government allowed them to keep operating instead of liquidating the company.