Inside the idiotic implosion that led to Matt Huffman's coronation
The vote was not nearly as "unanimous" as Huffman's supporters say it was—not that it makes any difference in what happens next.
Yesterday, I talked with one of my favorite state legislators, Rep. Richard Brown (D-Canal Winchester).
Brown is a good dude in politics for the right reasons. He could have been governor of a normal state.
But in Ohio, he’s about to exit the Statehouse and don the robes of a Franklin County Judge. He quipped that it was going to be a nice change of pace to work in a place where things like common sense, facts and a good-faith interpretation of the law actually matter.
If only I could be so lucky!
Eventually, we broached the topic of the day: The upcoming, Republican-only vote ostensibly to crown the next Speaker of the Ohio House.
"Barhorst’s team has been saying he has the votes,” I said.
Brown relayed a story about sitting in committee with Barhorst the other day and how Barhorst nonchalantly said he had 40 votes in the bag.
Almost equally unbelievable, Barhorst made it seem like it was light work to topple State Senator Matt Huffman (R-Lima), who, in my opinion, is a domestic terrorist.
I remarked that nobody could deny Barhorst had a set of balls on him. Even opposing Huffman would send Barhorst and his agenda to Siberia if the mission failed.
Despite my respect for Barhorst, I was skeptical that toppling a guy like Huffman would be as easy as his supporters were making it seem.
This is why, despite the Barhorst squad’s private assurances they had the votes signed and delivered, I was skeptical they could pull off the feet in a campaign that had barely existed in public for 24 hours.
Despite my disgust with Huffman, I’m glad I never lost sight that he would be a heavy, heavy betting favorite if Las Vegas took odds on the reactionary orgy that is the Ohio Statehouse.
About 30 minutes before the vote, I knew things were not going as well as Barhorst had hoped when a patriot alerted me that Barhorst was leaving voicemails offering various committee chairmanships in exchange for their support.
That kind of bartering would have already been done if he actually had the votes to topple Huffman at the goal line.
But even while skeptical of the odds, I could not have predicted the utter disaster in the Caucus vote. Barhorst failed to earn a nomination due to a series of laughably amateurish events.
Said one non-voting House Republican: “These idiots could fuck up a one-car funeral procession.”
The argument for Barhorst toppling Huffman was combining the remaining loyalists to Speaker Jason Stephens and a far-right coalition that did not want to live under the thumb of an eight-year Huffman Speakershership.
I could see the path, but I had a hard time believing that there were enough of the needed battle-tested soldiers who were willing to knife a vindictive asshole like Huffman, even on a secret ballot.
That proved to be a heady prognosis.
According to multiple sources, the Barhorst coalition relied on two wings: one led by Speaker Jason Stephens and State Rep. D.J. Swearingen and another led by State Reps. Ron Ferguson and Beth Lear.
Those familiar with the Statehouse will tell you it’s generally a bad idea to rely on Rep. Ferguson for anything. He is radioactive to anyone serious in the caucus, and multiple sources said that his inclusion in the coalition alienated multiple former Stephens supporters.
In the end, Ferguson and Lear could only cobble together a tawdry list of names to put firmly in Barhorst’s corner: State Reps. Sarah Fowler Arthur, Thad Claggett, Jennifer Gross and State Representative-Elect Diane Mullins.
Ferguson, for reasons only known to God, was put in charge of finding someone to officially nominate Barhorst, who sat in the front row with his speech in hand.
The nominator position was decidedly dicey because it removed the secrecy offered by the ballot and would put that person thoroughly in Huffman’s crosshairs. Originally, the plan called for Rep. Swearingen to nominate Barhorst, but it was thought that his previous label as a “Blue 22” member would sink the nomination.
In the end, according to multiple sources, Ferguson tapped Rep. Claggett, a taciturn pastor from Newark, to nominate Barhorst before the caucus.
But when it came time to nominate Barhorst, Claggett shockingly froze.
Gross leaned over and nudged him several times in attempt to spur him into action.
Instead, Claggett sat there, seemingly glued to his chair, unable to say a single world.
According to sources, he would later claim he “didn’t know what to do,” which might be true if he was talking about something more elaborate than standing and saying, “I nominate my good friend Rep. Barhorst.”
I think the more likely explanation is that Claggett sensed that Barhorst’s bid was a lost cause and basically shit himself when he was called upon to do his duty. It’s that or Huffman’s team got to him before the vote.
Regardless, Rep. Ferguson shouldered the blame since he was responsible for securing the nominator and ensuring they would have the stones to perform a required part of the mutiny.
To make matters worse for Barhorst—and to underscore how amateurish this attempt was—multiple sources said that he was unaware he could have nominated himself until after Huffman had already been declared the “unanimous winner” of the proceedings.
Prior to the vote, Huffman’s henchmen had said they would garner north of 50 votes in the 65-member caucus.
In the end, had Barhorst been nominated, it’s impossible to see how he would have gained more than 15 votes. He and his tiny cabal of loyalists had duped themselves into believing that toppling a master political manipulator like Huffman would be like a Sunday walk through the park. Ultimately, none had the stones to rub their thumb in Death’s eye.
In retrospect, it was a mistake to allow Stephanie Stock of the pro-polio group Ohioans Advocating for Medical Freedom and Chris Dorr of Ohio Gun Owners to lead the charge for Barhorst on social media.
Yes, the GOP lives more in fear of its base than Democrats. But Stock and Dorr are about as well-liked among Republican legislators as I am—maybe even less so. Allowing those two to be surrogates played well on the internet, but it gave pause to several Republican legislators weary of the friction in the last two years.
It signaled that, under Barhorst, the carnival barker wing of the party would be in charge. That message was doubly reinforced when Rep. Ferguson ran around trying to whip votes.
Through that lens, going with Huffman seemed like a good way to eliminate a lot of the nonsense that came with the job.
As for what comes next for Huffman, I’ll have more on that tomorrow, but for now, it’s hard to do better than this paragraph from Morgan Trau of news5cleveland.com:
Huffman will be a very different leader than Stephens. He is very focused on legislation around the private school voucher system. Also, he would likely eliminate the income tax, which could double the sales tax – he has support from big businesses. He wants to crack down on unions. Huffman wants to change universities to prevent so-called liberal bias and supported the August special election from the beginning, even suggesting that the amendment to raise the threshold could be made on a future ballot. His leadership team has said that voters didn't actually know what they were voting for when they legalized marijuana, so they should be able to change the policy.
Have you ever looked at a place like Oklahoma, which is near the bottom in every quality-of-life statistic for anyone who isn’t some fossil fuel tycoon and desperately wanted to live there?
Well, get ready because that vision will be unleashed full throttle in our state, with our only hope being a heart attack, a tragic auto crash, or the FBI having the “transactional” Huffman under 24/7 surveillance.
That’s not how the First Amendment works, brother
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