Mike DeWine is Guilty as Hell

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

I’ve always understood why former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder got in bed with First Energy to pass HB-6, the notorious bill that Vox called “the worst energy law of the 21st century.”

Credit card bills were eating the man’s ass and not in the good way, either. He wanted a new deck on his vacation home in Florida. Oh, and he also wanted to return to one of the most powerful positions in state government.

Spearheading the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about) was light work for a career crook like Householder. Or so he thought.

The avarice is nuclear-level Ohio Man energy. Engaging in criminal plots to finance our tacky habits runs in our blood, and that’s no more evident than in Ohio politics.

I’ve always wondered what Governor Mike DeWine got out of the bill. People forget that when HB-6 passed, Householder had basically neutered DeWine to become the most powerful politician in the state. Had the FBI not tapped Householder’s phone hours after he returned to the Lincoln Chair, it’s plausible he would be running against DeWine for governor this year.

Since Householder’s arrest, however, we have gotten some insight into why DeWine thought this atrocious law was actually good public policy.

Yesterday, Jake Zuckerman of The Ohio Capital Journal reported that DeWine’s former campaign treasurer compiled a 198-page dossier that detailed why DeWine shouldn’t pick notorious lawyer Sam Randazzo for Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission. Randazzo, according to the report, had “opaque and undisclosed” financial ties to First Energy. We now know how prescient that was.

Being so crooked that a fellow Republican drops a 198-page dossier on your ass is a new level of corruption that I haven’t seen in state politics. So it makes perfect sense that DeWine ignored the voluminous advice and hired the fox to guard the henhouse.

Perhaps he made a whoopsie doodle. Nobody’s perfect, right? Even if politicians like DeWine have literally made a career out of such patronage.

It’s harder to extend the benefit of the doubt, however, when you look at a timeline of stories that have been reported about DeWine’s relationship to the corrupt energy conglomerate with a former CEO that green-lit $60 million in political bribes.

• May 2017: DeWine, then-Attorney General of Ohio, meets with Ohio House candidate Larry Householder. Two days later, FirstEnergy donates $250,000 to Generation Now, a dark money puppet organization at the center of the Householder indictment that has already pled guilty.

• June 2017: DeWine announces bid for governor.

• November 2017: DeWine asks First Energy to support his daughter’s (eventually failed) campaign for Greene County prosecutor. They oblige to the tune of $200,000.

• November 2018: DeWine defeats Democrat Richard Cordray for governor after loaning himself $3 million in the campaign’s home stretch to bury Cordray in negative ads.

• February 2019: DeWine appoints fossil fuel energy lawyer Sam Randazzo to chair PUCO over the objections of former staff and industry watchdogs.

• April 2019: Householder, Randazzo and DeWine meet at the Governor’s residency for an “energy discussion.”

• July 2020: FBI arrests Householder on federal racketeering and bribery charges.

• September 2020: McKenzie K. Davis, a lobbyist with deep ties to the scandal, registers to lobby DeWine for “COVID response.”

• November 16th, 2020: The FBI raids the German Village home of Randazzo.

• November 20th, 2020: Randazzo resigns as PUCO chairman.

• March 5th, 2021: Laura Bischoff of Dayton Daily News reveals First Energy pumped over $1 million into DeWine’s campaign coffers.

• March 2021: Neil Clark, a one-time powerful lobbyist indicted alongside Householder, dies by suicide while wearing a “Mike DeWine for Governor” campaign shirt.

• February 2021: DeWine refuses to explain the role of Dan McCarthy, his longtime senior aide and legislative director and former lobbyist for First Energy, in the passage of HB-6.

• July 23rd, 2021: First Energy admits it controlled Partners for Progress, a dark money group led by McCarthy.

• July 22, 2021: DeWine makes an undisclosed donation to the Boys and Girls Club as a way of getting First Energy off his campaign’s books.

• July 27th, 2021: DeWine says he “didn’t know” about First Energy’s alleged $4.3 million to Randazzo.

• July 29th, 2021: First Energy admits in court filings to bribing Randazzo with $4.3 million.

• September 2021: Dan McCarthy resigns for undisclosed reasons.

• February 2022: DeWine re-appoints Daniel Conway, a utility lawyer who rubber-stamped HB-6, back to the PUCO board.

And this is just a list put together by one mentally deranged blogger with a lifelong vendetta against corrupt government officials of any political stripe.

I’m no federal prosecutor, but seems to me that DeWine had the motive and ability to participate in the plot and was more crucial than Householder considering he could’ve scrapped the entire plan with a veto.

Hell, DeWine was still a candidate when he got his six-figure donation from First Energy to his daughter’s vanity campaign for Greene County prosecutor! Though, his word was probably golden with them considering the high crimes of theirs he inevitably ignored during his eight years as the state’s top cop.

Despite all the evidence—and again, we’re not in a court of law here unfortunately—the most likely outcome is DeWine wins re-election. Joe Blystone and Jim Renacci, his Republican opponents, will split the kook vote against him.

As for the general election, DeWine, as pathetic as it is, has a higher approval rating among Democrats than Republicans. And it’s not like Republicans voters will vote for a Democratic baby-killer to spite DeWine; most of them will hold their nose and vote for him anyway despite thinking he’s a communist dictator because he cared about stopping coronavirus for six weeks back in 2020.

The Wikipedia page for “List of United States state officials convicted of federal corruption offenses” names 11 former governors pinched by the FBI, with the last one being the recently pardoned Ron Blagojevich of Illinois.

I’m willing to wager there have been a lot more corrupt governors worthy of arrest than those 11 dipshits, which speaks to the ability of most to avoid being the lowest hanging fruit in the jungle.

But DeWine got pretty flagrant with this one. And don’t forget, back when he served as the Attorney General, he tipped off then-Speaker of the Ohio House Cliff Rosenberger about a federal investigation into his corrupt relationship with the payday loan industry. That investigation is still ongoing, though unlike Householder, Rosenberger at least had the decency to resign.

That would piss me off if I were an FBI agent. It would further enrage me that this joker had the gall to run for re-election at the age of 75 after he left a brazen money trail behind him in his latest corrupt endeavor. That’s the kind of guy that I would want to go after. I doubt like Randazzo or Householder would want to go down for him, either, once the reality of dying in prison starts to override their current hubris.

But it’s not like the FBI is a beacon of competence and morality. It’s much easier to entrap mentally ill persons into terrorism plots than it is to bring down a governor.

Sadly, cheerleading for the feds is the only political recourse we have against guys like DeWine. I’ll gladly eat my shoe if either of the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidates prove The Rooster wrong on that.

THOSE WMDs. It’s time to abolish Supreme Court confirmation hearings… Mississippi governor had his sights on a payout as welfare funds flowed to Brett Favre… Black Lives Matter secretly bought a $6 million house… Instagram therapists can resemble cult leaders… This is what happens when there are too many meetings.