The gremlins they keep
Ramaswamy strategist Jai Chabria is the bridge between John Kasich's crooked 40-year data center tax abatement deal and the present.
Last week, we learned former Ohio governor John “No. 1 Asshole” Kasich signed a 40-year sales tax abatement with the three biggest data center conglomerates: Amazon, Google and Meta.
Those secretive agreements that caught the current State Legislature by surprise will cost Ohio tens of billions of dollars.
The question becomes, which bureaucrats did the dirty work? Because it almost assuredly wasn’t Kasich in the mud.
One anonymous tipster pointed the finger at former Kasich Policy Director Merle Madrid, who now, coincidentally, works for Amazon after a multi-year stop with the Secretary of State’s office.
But Madrid is one of those guys who nobody says a bad word about, a rarity in Ohio politics. And I’m not saying that because we shared a couple of beers at the Bier Stube once upon a time.
In a conversation late last week, Madrid said he didn’t know what a “data center” was until the early 2020s. I believe him.
However, he did mention that the data center deal was unknown to him, even as a senior staff to Kasich.
That would seemingly implicate JobsOhio, the liquor-sales-slush-fund that Kasich ordained to sign shadowy, unaccountable deals with businesses throughout the state.
But there is another longtime Kasich aide, who, coincidentally, is now the senior advisor to the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign: Jai Chabria.
Here’s how Chabria self-flagellates himself while describing his role as “Senior Advisor to the Governor,” which he held from 2011 to 21016:
While he works on a number of issues which are important to Ohio’s future, Chabria has a concentration on economic development and job creation. Additionally, he has taken the lead on formulating Ohio’s gaming policies in a rapidly changing environment.
While touting his next job as a project manager at Mercury, a public relations firm, Chabria touted his role in creating the liquor slush fund that also serves as a sinecure syndicate for the politically connected:
He also focused on job creation for the state, playing a key role in the creation of JobsOhio, Ohio’s cutting edge private economic development entity.
Chabria and Kasich go back decades, with Chabria serving as a personal aide to Kasich while the duo worked at Lehmann Brothers. Their tenures overlap perfectly from Jan. 2001 to Sept. 2008.
As does their next stop at Barclays Capital, which hilariously only lasted two months, from Sept. 2008 to Oct. 2008.
With the decades-long relationship, the involvement in JobsOhio, and the focus on economic development, it’s hard to believe that Chabria was unaware his boss was selling the farm for pennies to Amazon, Google and Meta.
Chabria is the anti-Madrid, in that many Republicans have negative things to say about him. (Know something? Say something!)
Chabria, like many Ohio Republicans, followed Kasich off a cliff with his dead-end presidential campaign. If only that had been the last we heard from them.
Kasich now gets to actively defraud MSNow audiences, pretending to be the last sane Republican in America.
Almost as impressive, Chabria now advises Ramaswamy, the guy who pitches himself as a new era of leadership despite maintaining Kasich’s chief advisor, the endorsement of the current Republican governor, and the party that has unilaterally controlled Ohio for the past 15 years.
Kasich has ignored multiple requests from legacy media to defend the merits of the deal his administration signed.
Ramaswamy should be asked about his chief advisor’s role in the corrupt backroom deal. But as The Rooster reported last week, Ramaswamy didn’t cover himself in morning dew on the campaign trail throughout May.
Over the weekend, he got popped at Legoland in Carlsbad, California—likely on his way to the United States Men’s National Team game in Los Angeles.
Ramaswamy refuses to gaggle with credentialed Ohio political media, due in large part to his uncanny ability to say something out of touch or dumb every time he speaks off script.
Thus far, the Republican standard-bearer has been able to avoid saying whether the 40-year abatement deal is good or bad for Ohio, let alone what role his top advisor most likely had in crafting it.
It’s a sad state of affairs, to say the least.
Tony George eats shit on planned data center in Slavic Village
