Overview:
Ohio politics news and insights from the State Signals newsletter. Plus, Christian conservatives are targeting mobile sports betting.
It was policy week for Ohio’s two main candidates for governor.
Democrat Dr. Amy Acton unveiled what her campaign calls its “affordability agenda” – a roll-up of previously announced and new policies aimed at addressing Ohioans’ rising cost of living.
And Republican Vivek Ramaswamy held a campaign event in Ottawa County to address a notably non-“red meat” topic – the environmental health of Lake Erie.
Both rollouts show how the candidates are targeting middle-of-the-road voters despite the proximity of next month’s primary election. Acton faces no opponent in the Democratic primary, while Ramaswamy’s focus strongly suggests he is not concerned about his opponent, Republican Casey Putsch.
Here are details on both candidates’ plans.
Vivek by the lake
Ramaswamy and his running mate, Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, spoke to more than 100 people in a packed event hall on Tuesday in Lakeside, a lakefront resort community along Lake Erie in Northewest Ohio.
The event was billed as a town hall focused on “Protecting Lake Erie” and followed a private roundtable discussion that Ramaswamy held earlier in the day featuring Chris Winslow, a lake expert with Ohio State University.
Ramaswamy hasn’t unveiled a formal plan for the lake. But he revealed some of his thinking on the issue and, in both his comments and in his response to audience questions, suggested he’s still seeking to learn.
“I’m a conservative. But part of being a conservative means that you conserve the gifts that you have been given,” Ramaswamy said.
In response to one question, Ramaswamy said he opposes building wind turbines in Lake Erie. He described them as economically and environmentally inefficient and a potential safety hazard in the event of a tornado.
Another audience member, Kelly Frey, asked Ramaswamy whether he’d commit to funding H2Ohio, the program Gov. Mike DeWine launched in 2019 to target the fertilizer runoff from farms that caused the 2014 toxic algal bloom that rendered Toledo’s drinking water unsafe for consumption for three days.
“Yes,” Ramaswamy responded, going on to specify he’d support funding programs demonstrated to work.
He declined to give a specific answer to a follow-up question from Frey about consumption limits on perch and walleye imposed by neighboring states.
“That’s a holistic discussion that I want to understand the rationale of what other states are doing there,” Ramaswamy said.
Frey, a retired sanitary engineer with Ottawa County, said in an interview on Wednesday that Ramaswamy seemed to at least understand the basics. He said he was pleased that Ramaswamy is committed to H2Ohio, which DeWine has unsuccessfully pushed to become permanently funded through a voter-approved bond issue.
“Everybody up on that podium always says the things folks want to hear when they want to get the vote,” Frey said. “But the question is, what does he do when he gets there.”
Democrats noted that DOGE — the federal cost-cutting initiative Ramaswamy co-founded — has made deep cuts to NOAA, the federal agency that funds much of the research monitoring Lake Erie’s water quality and fisheries.
‘ActON affordability‘
That’s the punny name (from the same people who brought you “Dr. Pepper“) for Acton’s newly announced platform to tackle the rising cost of living.
Acton’s grab bag of proposals includes:
- Passing an earned-income tax credit for qualifying households
- Making it easy to enroll and stay on the rolls in Medicaid while targeting “waste and fraud”
- Using Medicaid to negotiate drug purchases through a single pharmacy benefits manager
- Forgiving medical debt
- Cracking down on secondary market fees on event tickets
- Re-instituting energy efficiency programs abolished by the notorious House Bill 6
- Requiring data centers to pay for their own energy costs
“We’ve been giving tax breaks to the wealthiest at the expense of all the rest of us paying for it, and people are really needing some money back in their pockets,” Acton said during a campaign event in Columbus on Monday.
Acton’s campaign didn’t release cost estimates for her proposals. But they would have a cost – for instance, DeWine unsuccessfully pushed a similar but less expansive tax credit plan last year that would have cost the state an estimated $450 million a year.
Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has called Acton’s agenda too costly and has field-tested unflattering comparisons to Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City.
“We have money, we have tax money and income. But we have to pick what we’re going to fund and what we’re not going to fund,” Acton said, later highlighting Ramaswamy’s plan to eliminate the state income tax as something she’d avoid. “We are choosing to prioritize everyday Ohioans in every way.”
Christian conservatives want to ban mobile sports betting
In the wake of criminal conspiracies alleged to have flourished via legal sports wagering books, the proliferation of sports betting media, and reports of betting-related threats to student athletes, Christian conservatives at the Statehouse charted a path to reining in sports betting in Ohio at a press conference Wednesday.
The most aggressive proposal, described by Center for Christian Virtue President Aaron Baer, would ban all mobile sports betting in Ohio. Instead, gamblers would need to drive to Ohio’s casinos to book a wager. It’s an idea that could win support from Ohio’s brick-and-mortar casinos at the expense of companies like Draft Kings and Fan Duel, which dominate the market.
Other pieces of the soon-to-be-released legislation would ban prop bets, live bets and parlays. It would also limit the wager size and frequency (Baer didn’t offer specifics) of bets and ban the use of “debt to bet” (i.e. credit cards); promotional bets; and advertising during broadcasts.
Standing alongside Baer were Statehouse Republican Reps. Gary Click (a former pastor) and Riordan McClain, both of whom voted against the 2021 legislation that established the sports betting program in Ohio, and Rep. Johnathan Newman, a freshman.
Various lobbying campaigns to legalize “iGaming” – allowing table gambling via smart phone – have failed over the past few years. We’ll see if the religious right can parlay the momentum into a full-blown backlash.
Ohio scrambles FirstEnergy trial team
Summit County Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross scheduled a retrial of ex-FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Senior Vice President of External Affairs Mike Dowling for Sept. 28. This follows the hung jury and mistrial declared last month.
Trial 2.0 will have a new lineup. Assistant Attorney General Matt Meyer, who led the state’s case for years, didn’t appear at a hearing Wednesday. Instead, Bridget Coontz, chief counsel and ethics officer for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, hammered out details with Ross and the defense.
She noted that Carol Hamilton O’Brien, one of the three prosecutors during the first trial, has permanently withdrawn following the extended illness and death of her husband. She said she didn’t know whether Meyer would be involved in the retrial.
“We are reconstituting our trial team,” Coontz said.
Ross seemed to criticize Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost for underresourcing the case and refused the state’s request to extend the timeline to get new prosecutors up to speed.
“I would like to put it off forever,” Ross deadpanned.
Checks in the mail
Sen. Bernie Moreno returned to Chillicothe last Friday to announce that about 570 former Mead paper mill workers will soon receive severance checks averaging roughly $2,000 each – the first installment of $5.5 million pledged by HIG Capital, the private equity firm that owned the mill before it closed last August.
As Andrew reported, a former union leader offered a more skeptical take, noting the remaining $4.5 million – due in 2030 – is contingent on the site being free of liabilities like environmental cleanup costs.
The announcement comes about a year after Moreno – incorrectly, it turns out – pledged that the mill would remain open for years to come.
“I sometimes tongue-in-cheek joke that I feel like I own a paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio,” Moreno said when asked if things played out as he’d expected. “Because I don’t think I put this much work into my own businesses.”
“You don’t see a mission accomplished banner behind me,” Moreno went on to say. “This is about fulfilling the first basic promise, which is to get some money in the hands of the people who got screwed over.”
Moreno isn’t out of the predictions business, though.
In response to a question about the Iran War, Moreno offered a prediction that the conflict would be over, and that oil prices would drop to pre-war levels, before July 4.
In the news
Tale of two candidates: Andrew took a look at the financial disclosures Acton and Ramaswamy filed this week. No surprise – they showed a stark contrast between the two. Ramaswamy, a billionaire entrepreneur, disclosed making at least $1.1 million last year in capital gains and dividends, while Acton, a medical doctor and former state official, disclosed making just 62 cents in interest on a bank account.
Running it back: At a campaign event on Monday, Acton pledged to support another attempt at a redistricting amendment in 2027. Voters defeated a redistricting amendment in November 2024, which Acton, like other Democrats, said was a result of confusing ballot language written by Republicans.
A message from the AG: Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Buckeye Institute CEO Robert Alt, in a joint op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch, called for legislation to apply more transparency and accountability requirements on JobsOhio in the wake of a public-funds-and-romance scandal.
