Rooster in Review: Anger in the base
Plus, a cartoonishly corrupt Youngstown businessman appears to have pulled a multimillion-dollar heist in Washington D.C.
In June 2025, The Rooster sounded the alarm about Sherrod Brown meddling in the Ohio Democratic Party chairperson’s race to appoint a loyalist, former Portage County Commissioner Kathleen Clyde, to the position.
Brown had threatened Big Labor leaders, who were inclined to back State Senator Bill DeMora (D-Columbus), that he wouldn’t run for any office in the 2026 cycle if he didn’t get his wish.
DeMora’s rebel coalition collapsed after AFSCME president Joe Regola rescinded his support for the State Senator moments before he was about to deliver a campaign speech to the Ohio House Democratic Caucus on their annual retreat.
That led to Clyde being installed by a unanimous vote a couple of weeks later.
Yesterday, The Atlantic published a devastating profile of Clyde’s recent campaign stop “at a small bar in the Cleveland suburbs.”
Perhaps I should’ve expected the meeting to devolve into chaos. It was predictable, especially if you subscribe to the essential maxim that any room containing several dozen women of a certain age and Summer Shandy on tap is bound to get a little rowdy. Unfortunately, the chair of the Ohio Democrats did not see it coming.
[…]
“What are we going to do differently?” one woman asked, pointing out that the Democrats’ brand is terrible. Eventually, the microphone was abandoned, and another woman asked: “Why don’t the Democrats have a good message?” A third woman chimed in, a little frantically: “What can we do?!”
Clyde’s eyes were wide. She hadn’t expected friendly fire. “We do have a good message!” she sputtered. “Affordability!” But the women smelled weakness, and now, several of them were shouting at once. “How are you going to do that?” one demanded. “It has to be more specific!” From the back, an older woman offered: “We need smart!” Clyde assured the group that the party’s message was smart, and it was going to resonate in November. But moments later, she was off the stage and hightailing it back to Columbus.
This is what I was talking about with Columbus Council President Shannon Hardin during our sit-down at City Hall on May 1: In my opinion, large swaths of Democratic Party leadership do not understand the furor pulsing through the party's base.
The Atlantic’s reporting also jives with what roughly a dozen Democratic sources have fretted to The Rooster about Clyde’s leadership; that she and her hand-selected cadre of highly compensated consultants are out of their depth.
And sure, Chairwoman Clyde and her personal friends advisors aren’t answering my calls after they called me a sexist pig for last year’s reporting on her history of demeaning behavior with subordinates.
Still, by any objective measure, it should be a cause for alarm that she was reportedly unable to handle a small group of friendly, albeit surly grayhairs in a controlled setting.
It’s not enough to shout “Affordability!” in Ohio, where, at best, the Republican junta will have majorities in both legislative chambers and dominate the Supreme Court. Cutting and running—while knowing a national reporter was in the room watching—is a dereliction of duty.
Maybe it will work out for Chairwoman Clyde, in that the Republicans have nominated a gubernatorial reptile so repulsive, and fucked our state so deeply into the dirt it should qualify as corpse abuse, that she can claim glory if the Democrats sweep in November.
But if it fails… well, the Democratic leadership can’t say The Rooster didn’t warn them.
This week in Ohio Man…
If you follow national news, you’re probably aware that the Trump Administration has become so incompetent that they’ve lost a war against algae in the famous reflection pool in Washington D.C.
Longtime readers of The Rooster won’t be shocked to learn that there’s a cartoonishly corrupt Ohio businessman at the center of the deal.
From David A. Fahrenthold of nytimes.com:
A business tied to a longtime supporter of President Trump was given a no-bid contract to install a water-purification system in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this spring.
Now that work is coming under scrutiny after algae blooms have come back and turned the iconic pool in Washington a vibrant shade of green rather than the American-flag blue Mr. Trump says he chose.
[…]
Federal contracting records show that firm’s ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by John J. Cafaro, a donor to Mr. Trump and a neighbor to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida. The water treatment company also listed Mr. Cafaro’s Palm Beach mansion as its address in Florida corporate records, and listed his investment trust’s phone number and email in Ohio lobbying records.
As The Rooster reported on May 22, John Cafaro co-hosted a fundraiser for Senator Jon Husted, who has a children’s plastic cup of Kool-Aid where his brain is supposed to be.
And now Cafaro, who once pled guilty to paying “unlawful gratuities” to former Congressman Jim Traficant, has soiled a national monument after “earning” a $1.7 million no-bid contract for the job.
This is our government under Republican leadership! Yes, Trump is the most corrupt president in American history by a dispicable margin. But he creates a permission structure where less-talented grifters like Cafaro can also prosper.
And it shows why legacy press should have reported on an “unlawful gratuities” enjoyer holding a rank of respect at a Husted fundraiser last month. Husted should have had to answer for it then, as he’ll have to answer for it now in the halls of Congressional office buildings.
This week in The Rooster…
It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, right down to the wire with popping the notorious conman in his new private jet.
This type of work—including paying freelancers fair market value for their work and insight—is made possible by the Patriots Caucus, the most feared bipartisan cabal in Ohio politics.
If you enjoy the social media presence, the on-the-ground videography, or even the occasional dispatch… we’d be honored if you considered this moment to be a divine sign to purchase a subscription and help sustain the work.
The gremlins they keep. Former John Kasich henchman Jai Chabria, who is a senior advisor to the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign, is the bridge from the past to the present on Kasich’s 40-year, decabillion-dollar giveaway to data center conglomerates.
Double Dippin: Inside Mike Dittoe’s unaccountable money machine. Columbus-based freelancer Elphant in the Room drops their first installment into the public-private money machine of Ohio House Chief of Staff Mike Dittoe.
The JobsOhio scandals run deeper than one paramour’s pitiful podcast. Venture capitalist Mark Kvamme crawled out from his luxuriously appointed sewer to defend JobsOhio. He forgot to mention that he’s friends with Leslie Wexner, who made $2 billion in three months in 2025 by investing in the data center boom.
Every flight Vivek Ramaswamy took on his new private jet in 2026. The notorious conman worked hard to obscure his ownership of a new private jet to avoid unfavorable headlines about his jet-setting ways. But not hard enough to keep that knowledge from The Rooster.
We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.
Until then… stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDs. The Wal-Mart effect… The Parable Coffee debacle comes full circle with Palomino… Trump’s drug tactics don’t work: More cocaine is reaching the United States than ever before… An unflinching look at the Yorkshire Ripper… Oligarchs know just how they want the Supreme Court to rule—and they’re spending big money to tell them.
As a member of the "friendly, albeit surly grayhairs" class (although at 72, I rather remarkably have only a smattering of gray hair), my message to the DNC and the state Democratic party is to get out of the way.
There is a Democrat-aligned organization that better meets what I suppose the major political parties once did: advocate for Democratic candidates and support them. Blue Ohio is one of three state affiliates of Every State Blue. Its founders got tired of the parties, who should be qualifying and supporting Democratic candidates not doing so, so they rolled up their sleeves and came up with an alternate system.
You can thank them, in part, for why we have Democratic candidates running for all the executive offices and in elections in the reddest districts of the state.
Clyde exists to funnel campaign money to Brown. She isn't a leader. Clyde is a nice placemat without any vision for the future.
It's the biggest job she will ever have in her life and she is completely unqualified just like her predecessor. The Ohio democrats don't know what strategy means. They believe money will solve all of their lack of vision problems.
New ideas or direction is considered evil to the Ohio democrats.