Your 2024 Ohio Primary Autopsy
The good, the bad, and the ugly!
My most pervert-coded behavior is my love of Election Night. I’ll devour the maps for the next month because I enjoy seeing how campaigns assemble winning coalitions. Please remind me of this fact the next time I talk about moving to Hocking Hills and starting a Maoist militia movement.
My poll worker noted that yesterday was a slow day, which, to him, made sense because there were no controversial issues on the ballot. That turned out to be a prognosis for the state as a whole.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, about 18% of registered Ohio voters participated in yesterday’s election.
That’s kind of insane, considering that these races involve the State Legislature, United States Senators, and County Prosecutors. But I know that some politicians feel it’s no loss if people who don’t care or understand politics stay away from the ballot box.
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Now, let’s sift through the wreckage of yesterday’s results!
Frank LaRose closes his campaign by asking, “Who do you trust?” then finishes third in his own precinct.
If only Frank LaRose had the sense to subscribe to The Rooster. I declared his Senate campaign dead on April 14th, 2023—months before he officially declared. At the time I noted all that was left to do was laugh at what was to come.
LaRose didn’t heed my advice. He instead squandered an early lead on name-ID, infuriated both moderates and MAGA disciples within his party, closed his campaign by asking voters, “Who do you trust?” and then promptly lost his own precinct by double digits.
What followed was a campaign so stunningly inept that it left me, his No. 1 internet hater, completely flabbergasted.
Look at this timeline I originally compiled on December 20th, the day after Donald Trump endorsed Bernie Moreno a mere 24 hours after telling LaRose he was unlikely to enter the contest:
April 13th: LaRose introduces Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a chief rival of Donald Trump who would soon eat shit in the presidential primaries, to the Lincoln Breakfast hosted by the Summit County Republicans.
May 4th: LaRose tells Republican donors that Trump’s endorsement “doesn’t mean as much as it used to.” The comments are secretly recorded and immediately leaked to the press.
June 2nd: LaRose disgraces his Secretary of State office by campaigning to raise the Constitutional threshold in an August Special Election. After Republican strategists tell politicians to make the campaign about anything other than kneecapping the proposed abortion amendment, LaRose tells a crowd of supporters that it’s “100% about abortion.”
June 13: The Rooster crashes an Ohio Ballot Board meeting. Press Secretary Rob Nichols commits battery to keep me from his boss to no avail. LaRose runs like a bug into a secured stairwell.
July 7th: LaRose teases new campaign signage, a rip-off of DeSantis, who is still plummeting in the polls as more voters get to know him.
July 9th: One of LaRose’s neighbors drops a dime to The Rooster about seeing LaRose shooting a senate announcement ad featuring “sweat” rings as fake as his jogging.
July 17th: LaRose announces his campaign with a stereotypical “I’m running—literally!” ad that a communist blogger had spoiled a week prior.
July 17th: His first campaign conference call with statewide grassroots supporters, already riddled with technical gaffes and swaths of silence, is ambushed by a prankster playing Garfunkel & Oates’ song “The Loophole” about the Evangelical anal sex loophole to virginity. The debacle makes the national press.
Aug. 8th: Issue 1, the Special Election that LaRose had entered as a partisan hack in an attempt to seed his Senate campaign, goes down in flames at the feet of Ohio’s hog voters.
Aug. 10th: LaRose says he “respects” what then-Vice President Mike Pence did on January 6th, which assuredly got back to Trump.
Aug. 14th: The Rooster publishes an exposé about the Twitter account of longtime Secretary of State press secretary Rob Nichols. The tweets showed Nichols attacking private citizens while exuding extreme divorced dad energy. It also showed that Nichols was no fan of Donald Trump.
Aug. 16th: LaRose fires longtime press secretary Rob Nichols like a dog for his anti-Trump tweets.
Aug. 30th: The Rooster publishes a report highlighting low morale in the Secretary of State’s office and high turnover of election professionals. The report also drops a dime on the odious Alex Pavloff, a LaRose staffer who’s deluded himself into thinking he's Karl Rove when he should be seeing his son for the fourth time in his life.
Sept. 7th: Despite ethical questions, LaRose announces plans to move the Secretary of State's office (for the first time in 20 years) into the same building that houses his campaign’s lawyers.
Oct. 4th: The Columbus Dispatch publishes its exposé on turnover and low morale in the Secretary of State’s office.
Oct. 16th: LaRose posts lackadaisical fundraiser numbers in his first report that shows he took out a $250,000 loan. Political experts question the long-term viability of the campaign.
Oct. 30th: LaRose uses his Secretary of State newsletter to promote his Senate campaign.
Nov. 6th: The Rooster exposes that LaRose’s Miami County Captain, Pastor Jon Matthews of Piqua, is actually a fictitious alter-ego of LaRose’s sworn enemy.
Nov. 7th (A.M.): The Rooster publishes LaRose’s personal phone number, and he becomes the first Ohio Secretary of State to be recorded looking at a picture of Shrek’s penis on Election Day.
Nov. 7th (P.M.): Ohio’s hog voters run wild on LaRose again by enshrining abortion in the constitution and legalizing marijuana.
Nov. 15th: LaRose attends a fundraiser for fake abortion clinics run by renowned antisemitic kook Candice Keller. LaRose’s campaign doesn't publish the appearance, but LaRose is exposed in the background of an attendee’s selfie.
Nov. 29th: LaRose, in a violation of the Ohio Constitution, admits he added language to November’s Issue 1 at the behest of anti-abortion groups who thought it would hurt the abortion amendment’s chances of passing.
Dec. 4th: LaRose finally admits to campaigning in the Secretary of State’s office that he moved into the same building as his campaign’s lawyers.
Dec. 12th: After breaking the law by missing the deadline, LaRose finally posts his financial disclosure showing that he is not, in fact, “a thousandaire” as he had been claiming throughout his campaign.
Dec. 18th: LaRose says that Trump told him he most likely won’t endorse in Ohio’s Senate race, and if he does, it will “most likely” be for LaRose.
Dec. 19th: Donald Trump endorses Bernie Moreno.
LaRose could have dropped out that weekend, and nobody but the biggest freaks alive would remember that he had run for Senate.
Instead, he chose to limp to the finish line despite being a broke bum:
LaRose should have simply run for Congress against Congresswoman Emilia Sykes (D-Akron) back in his home turf of suburban Akron.
Unfortunately for LaRose, he had lifelong ambitions of being a United States Senator, which is how you know he’s a pervert who should be sequestered from polite society. And that’s the drawback to lifelong ambitions—you’ll do anything to achieve them, even if it’s humiliating yourself in front of your family for the third time in seven months.
Had LaRose dropped out or run a respectable campaign, maybe he could have considered running for governor in 2026. But he chose to try to play both moderates and Trump loyalists and burned every political bridge he had.
Maybe he will run for Congress in two years unless Sykes loses in November. But right now, it’s hard to envision him running for anything else. He certainly has no political future in Upper Arlington, the liberal oasis in which he’s chosen to raise his family.
At least there’s still the family’s beer business, which is the largest cancer distributor in Ohio. But knowing LaRose, he’s alienated that wing of the family and they want nothing to do with him, either. After all, Democrats buy beer, too!
Until then, he better get his ass back to the Secretary of State’s office and thank himself that he has a well-paying job that let him galavant around the state in search of his next political promotion. In the private sector, which LaRose has avoided his entire adult life, he would have been fired like a dog.
Weird Northwest Ohio hobgoblin couple down horrendous as area divorce attorneys rejoice
There was no Republican House challenger that I wanted to lose more than Sally Culling.
I like and respect State Rep. Haraz Ghanbari (R-Perrysburg) because he was one of the first State Legislators to shake my hand in the early days of my Statehouse exploration. I would have been cheering for him regardless of opponent since it’s a seat that even Jesus couldn’t win with a (D) next to His name.
And make no mistake, Ghanbari was a top target for candidates aligned with State Senator Matt Huffman, who increased the Republican index of Ghanbari’s district to prime it for a battle of Republican ideology.
Culling had the endorsement and campaign efforts of State Senator Theresa Gavarone (R-Bowling Green) and State Rep. Joshua Williams (R-Sylvania), two of the most odious members of the State Legislature. She also enjoyed puff coverage from The Toledo Blade, which as proven by my discussions with Blade owner Allan Block, was in the tank for Culling from the beginning.
There was also the fact that Culling was a British subject who once served on the Nottingham City Council. She was posting “God Save the King”—a pervert’s phrase if there ever was one—as recently as two years ago.
It was hilarious seeing Culling whine about “xenophobia” and “bigotry,” which isn’t possible against white British people. It’s also rich considering those are two campaign staples of the Republican Party, though Culling undoubtedly doesn’t care when it’s leveraged against brown immigrants.
There was also the issue of her husband, Joshua—an alleged Politics Knower and Republican State Central Committee member whose ego is probably the only thing he couldn’t fit inside that swollen block of meat that he calls his head.
The Cullings are the types of people who want power and to be lauded for it. They no doubt thought their victory was assured, as evidenced by Culling lending herself $100,000 for the campaign. I have no doubts that at night, they plotted how she could one day be Ohio’s first British governor.
But then, a funny thing happened in recent weeks. People friendly with Huffman, who had originally declared Ghanbari to be a dead man walking, shifted their tone to conceding it would be a dog fight. Ghanbari is nothing if not methodical, and he certainly decided he wouldn’t be outworked in this campaign.
It turns out the reports of Ghanbari’s demise were greatly exaggerated as he cruised to victory Tuesday night. One source told The Rooster that Culling, who campaigned aggressively and nasty as anyone, had yet to call Ghanbari to concede the election as of this writing at 1:25 a.m. Wednesday morning. She didn’t even concede on social media, either.
But it was certainly a choice that Sally chose to highlight her first name, rather than her last, on her campaign signage and literature. Maybe that was because they knew the Culling name wasn’t exactly revered in Wood County.
In an added spice to victory, Mr. Culling, who was talking rampant shit on his Twitter page throughout the campaign, also lost his State Central Committee seat.
In defeat, Mr. Culling wrote on Twitter that, “Shooters shoot!” And they certainly do. But you can also learn a lot about a person by how they handle defeat.
That neither of the Cullings congratulated their opponents—or even thanked their voters and volunteers—gives you an idea about the psychic damage taken by this weird little hobgoblin couple.
Bon voyage to the Kenton Soldier!
One result that the Huffman side got right was that State Rep. Jon Cross (R-Findlay) was going out in a body bag.
Cross, despite being a successful incumbent who was endorsed by every elected official and business leader in the district, barely mustered a third of the vote in his loss to challenger Ty Matthews.
Matthews, by all accounts, ran a helluva campaign for a first-time candidate. But as one Democrat from the district remarked to me on Twitter, Matthews’ biggest asset might have been that he wasn’t Cross.
I like Cross despite being a Republican hobgoblin. He was entertaining and not afraid of the camera, which is more than you can say about most of his colleagues.
But his brash style apparently caught up with him. If I were advising him, I would have said that moving to Findlay voluntarily—even if your house burned down, as Cross’ did last year—never ends well for anybody. It also makes you look like you wanted to get the Hell out of Kenton, which doesn’t sit well with those who view Findlay as The Big City.
The upshot to Cross losing is that we’ll get nine months of him unleashed. And I hope he decides to burn the Holy Roller wing of the party to the ground any chance he gets.
If nothing else, we lost one of the most entertaining members of the Ohio House. The Rooster tips its cap to Cross and wishes him nothing but the best in his next adventure. Somehow I doubt we have heard the last of him.
Speaker Stephens took a couple of shots, but he’s still breathing…
Most Ohioans went about their day yesterday blissfully unaware that the Speaker’s Gavel in America’s seventh-most populated state hung in the balance. I’m almost envious of them.
But Ohio Politics Knowers, such as those brave enough to read The Rooster, knew Speaker Stephens and his “Blue 22” colleagues faced a hostile uprising from a coalition of kooks, bozos, grifters and stumblebums aligned with State President Matt Huffman (R-Lima).
It was a low-turnout affair that generally favors incumbents. Stephens’ allies took a couple shots, but it certainly wasn’t a bloodbath like State Rep. Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville) predicted.
Among the losses:
State Rep. Brett Hillyer (R-Urichsville).
State Rep. Jon Cross (R-Findlay)
State Rep. Sara Carruthers (R-Hamilton)
State Rep. Gail Pavliga (R-Portage County)
One source told The Rooster Hillyer’s loss separated a “good” night from a “great” night for the Ohio House Republican Alliance, the campaign arm aligned with Speaker Stephens.
Hillyer is a thoughtful guy, as evidenced by his refusal to vote for anti-transgender nonsense until the fateful override of Governor DeWine’s veto of HB-68.
My camera, affectionately called the Swamphouse Shooter, caught Hillyer telling an activist that he was “undecided” on the vote before entering the chamber. With campaign season around the corner, Hillyer voted for the override to protect himself.
You can see the results in the immediate aftermath in this photo that should live in infamy. State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), the hobgoblin spearhead of the anti-transgender movement, celebrated while Hillyer looked like he had just walked in on the mailman banging his wife.
The lesson is it’s better to die on your principles than betray them and die anyway.
The other loss that (sort of) surprised me was that of State Rep. Sara Carruthers (R-Hamilton). As I’ve written before, I have come to respect Carruthers, an early supporter of my work at the Statehouse. She is independently wealthy but chooses to serve in the Statehouse and generally cares for people less fortunate than her in a Republican sort of way. She is an adult in a room that has an increasing amount of children.
Yet, she lost to Diane Mullins, a woman who would be better suited to handling snakes and speaking in tongues in a backwater revival tent.
In this video, originally clipped by Ohio Legislative Watch, you can see Mullins promising to regrow a woman’s arm through prayer while ranting about transgender demons and promoting the debunked conversion therapy.
It’s not even clear that Mullins understands she’s coming to the Statehouse, since she repeatedly referred to Nancy Pelosi on the campaign trail.
It’s a shocking result to anyone unfamiliar with Butler County. I love the city of Hamilton—it’s the most underrated city in Ohio. But there is something deeply perverse with that county’s politics. They are obsessed with subjugating the rest of us to the biggest kooks in America.
It’s hard for me to fathom that people looked at Carruthers and Mullins, and chose to go with a woman who thinks you can regrow an arm through prayer. That is not the type of person who will be successful in government! But that’s the id of the Butler County primary voter, and this is the environment that Republicans have cultivated in the state for the last 20 years.
I can promise you this much: Mullins will begin her service in the gulag as far as I am concerned. Carruthers’ loss will be avenged, and I will do my sworn duty to provide clips to the masses about what an insane little freak that Butler County put into the legislature.
The one shining grace to Senator Huffman, a domestic terrorist if there ever was one, successfully returning as Speaker would be his having to deal with people who are completely detached from reality.
As it stands, the proxy war between Stephens and Huffman continues. There will undoubtedly be snakes in the Caucus who pledge to Stephens in private but plan to vote for Huffman on the House floor, if it ever comes to that.
The wild card in November will be if Democrats can successfully flip a couple of seats currently held by Republicans. Given the Republicans in those race, Stephens might be better off hoping the Democrat emerges victorious.
Sherrod Brown gets his wish
Sherrod Brown’s camp made it clear that they hoped that Bitcoin aficionado Bernie Moreno would emerge from the Republican Senate primary.
They got their wish. Like the 2022 primary, the apparent late surge by State Senator Matt Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls) turned to ash in the wind.
Dolan spent $13 million of his own money in his past two Senate efforts and only has two second-place finishes to show for it. The 2024 race was also another sharp rebuke of the Country Club wing of the Ohio Republican Party, as Governor Mike DeWine and former U.S. Senator Rob Portman entered the fray late to make their case for Dolan.
The Trump takeover of the Ohio Republican Party is complete, and unless President Business Deals croaks, he will have an outsized role in selecting our next governor in 2026, no matter the result of the 2024 presidential election.
I understand why Brown wanted Moreno as an opponent in the toughest fight of his electoral life, even if I’m not sure I agree. Brown will certainly be praying the economy doesn’t tank before November because if it does, a dead dog with an (R) next to his name will be able to beat him.
Shayla Favor triumphs in hotly contested Franklin County Prosecutor’s race
Columbus City Democrats won a proxy war with their Franklin County counterparts on Tuesday.
Councilwoman Shayla Favor defeated Franklin County Prosecutor Chief Deputy Counsel Anthony Pierson for the most powerful prosecutorial seat in Ohio.
Despite the win over Pierson, whom I reluctantly endorsed, we at least got the comical act of City Democrats circling the wagons over Pierson using standard campaign tactics.
Pierson’s personal sample ballot said nothing untrue. It was a sample ballot entirely comprised of Democrats while noting that they were recommended by the Franklin County Democratic Screening Committee.
City Democrats were crying like losers because they knew how easily kindly Franklin County Democratic voters could be bamboozled by a stranger handing them a piece of campaign literature in the parking lot outside their precinct. They were alarmed because they knew the traditional Franklin County Democratic Party sample ballot plays an outsized role in low-turnout affairs like the one we saw yesterday.
But mostly, they were upset because they got caught asleep at the wheel. Pierson used standard, time-honored campaign tactics, and it’s comical to see the likes of City Council President Shannon Hardin call it dirty, Republican-style campaign tactics.
But it didn’t matter, anyway. Favor won on the backs of Black voters and those from poorer districts within the county. And now she’ll be the only county prosecutor in Ohio with jurisdiction over the Statehouse.
Make no mistake: I would love to be wrong about Favor. Unfortunately, I have lived in Columbus long enough to know that you can never take campaign rhetoric as anything but that.
I have grave concerns about her having zero trial experience—especially after we’ve had a dead man as a prosecutor for the past four years and an office rife with incompetence.
But Favor came to power on council via the cocktail circuit. She abandoned the post when she likely realized it was controlled by the monied interests that actually run Columbus. My suspicions are that she will be the exact kind of prosecutor that Pierson would have been, albeit without any of the professional experience.
But as I said before, we’ll know we have a prosecutor worthy of the responsibility when Statehouse Republicans follow Texas’ lead and give legislators the ability to transfer any Franklin County-based charges to courts within their district.
Other odds and ends
State Rep. Rich Brown (D-Canal Winchester), who carried my Complete & Total Endorsement, defeated Republican-in-Democrat-clothing Stephanie Hanna for Common Pleas Judge.
Christine Cockley defeated multiple respectable candidates in one of the most hotly contested Democratic primaries to emerge in the Ohio House District 6 Democratic Primary, a seat currently held by State Rep. Adam Miller (D-“Hilltop”), who doesn’t live in the district.
State Rep. Elliot Forhan (D-Cleveland), who burned bridges and alienated allies in his own caucus, lost to Beachwood City Councilman Eric Synenberg.
Ohio House 10th District, currently held by retiring State Rep. Dave Dobos (R-Hilltop), presents one of the best chances for Democrats to flip the District. In that race, which is still unofficial, Mark Sigrist leads party favorite Sarah Pomeroy by 24 votes.
State Rep. Derek Merrin (R-Monclova Twp.) defeated former State Rep. Craig Riedel (R-Defiance County) in the Ohio Congressional 9th District for the right to be thrown into a woodchipper by longtime Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur. I can’t wait to see Mr. Mayor, himself a career politician, in a competitive General Election for the first time in his life.
State Rep. Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) successfully defeated a challenger from his right flank.
State Senator George Lang (R-West Chester), who carried my Complete & Total endorsement, threw certified freak Candice Keller in a dumpster somewhere in Southwest Ohio. Let us pray that this is the end to Keller seeking political office in Ohio, though I imagine we’re not that lucky.
State Senator Niraj Antani (R-Miamsburg) finished 10th in an 11-candidate field in the Ohio Second Congressional District. Antani raised an impressive amount of money but couldn’t beat the carpetbagger charges while mustering 1.7% of the vote. Longtime readers of The Rooster are familiar with my illustrious feud with Antani over the years. But I have come around on him despite the fact I’ll see him in Hell with the rest of the Ohio Republican Party. His going to Congress would have been amazing for The Business Line and led to me needing to open a D.C. Bureau. Expect him to run for Secretary of State when he leaves the Senate at the end of the year.
State Rep. Kevin Miller (R-Newark) successfully defeated fake-farmer rich kid Daniel Kalmbach, who used his father’s money to buy a $1.2 million house on Buckeye Lake, days before the election.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley decisively defeated a challenge from his left flank in Matthew Ahn. It was a sad albeit predictable result.
State Senator Michael Rulli (R-Salem) defeated State Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus (R-Paris Twp.) in the Ohio Sixth Congressional District Republican Primary. However, the final result of 49 percent to 40 percent was much closer than most observers thought it would be.
THOSE WMDs. Robert Downey Jr.’s third act: Oppenheimer is just the beginning… Uncovering the higher truth of Jay Shetty… Why (most) sofas are so bad… Of course America fell for Liquid Death… The best way to make black beans uses the whole can.
A lot of outside money enabled Mullins win over Carruthers. I’m in Hamilton a lot and I heard that residents got a lot literature against Carruthers by Mullins. Carruthers deserved to loose, her support of Hb68 and then talk to members in the butler county LGBTQ community about how she supports them - as if nothing happened - is sickening.
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