Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy reported that he cut his campaign another $5 million personal check last month, according to his latest state campaign finance report. Added to earlier personal loans, Ramaswamy has now personally kicked in $36.3 million.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, meanwhile, reported this week collecting $6 million in contributions in September – twice as much as Ramaswamy received from individual donors. That’s enough to pay for a few weeks or so of statewide TV advertising. The candidates’ next campaign finance report – the last disclosure before the Nov. 3 election – is due on Oct. 22. – Andrew Tobias
Obamacare rebate checks from Trump are in the mail
Brue Hoyt did a double-take when he got a letter from the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday. Was it junk mail? Did he mess up his taxes?
Then he opened it – it was a letter bearing President Donald Trump’s signature along with an enclosed $1,500 check.
“For years, the Biden Administration overcharged you to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov,” the letter said. “That money belongs to hard-working Americans, not the Government, and now, I am returning it to you!”
Hoyt looked it up and realized he was one of an estimated 65,700 Ohioans to get what the Trump administration is terming an “Obamacare rebate check.”
“I didn’t even know this was a thing until I got this,” Hoyt, who owns a pest control business in Columbus, told Signal Statewide.
Hoyt is among the estimated 950,000 people across the country to whom the Trump administration is mailing these checks. They are hitting mailboxes – including in many states with hotly contested U.S. Senate races like Ohio – just weeks ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Read our full story on it here. – Andrew Tobias
Making sense of the Statehouse
What happens in Columbus doesn’t stay in Columbus. At Signal Statewide, we track what lawmakers are debating — and what it means for your town, school or small business. Our team explains complicated bills, asks tough questions and puts the focus where it belongs: on everyday Ohioans. If our reporting helps you stay informed, have better conversations, or feel more in control of what’s going on in Ohio, we hope you’ll support it.
🤍 Invest in Ohio. Invest in local news.
Takeout on the AG races
We’ve spent a lot of time writing about the U.S. Senate and governor races this cycle. We’ve spilled less ink about the Ohio Supreme Court, attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state races.
To that end, I spent some time last week sitting down with the two candidates running to be Ohio’s next lawyer: Republican Keith Faber and Democrat John Kulewicz.
We talked about their backgrounds, priorities, abortion, Flock cameras and warrants, the culture wars, health insurance denials, and, at one point, even the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
You can read a broader overview on the race here. And for the true die hards who want the interviews themselves, you can find them both below:
Candidate Keith Faber said Ohio’s current abortion laws are ‘probably’ unconstitutional
Candidate John Kulewicz wants to get away from ‘spicy’ culture wars
– Jake Zuckerman
Early voting has begun
Ohio voters are requesting far fewer mail ballots than they did for the last midterm election. As I wrote this week, 601,277 Ohioans had requested absentee ballots heading into the start of early voting on Tuesday, compared to 812,198 at the same time four years ago.
In-person early voting, meanwhile, was up sharply across the state, although it’s an open question whether the greater in-person early voting will eventually make up for the fewer mail ballots.
The drop in mail voting marks the continuation of a trend, perhaps intensified by President Donald Trump’s efforts to get the U.S. Postal Service involved in screening election mail. The move away from voting by mail is causing some elections officials to worry about longer voting lines through Election Day. Read more here. – Andrew Tobias
Gas prices fall after GOP maneuvering
Ohio suspended its gas tax for 90 days, and early data shows prices are falling.
The pause has alleviated a 38.5-cents-per gallon (unleaded) markup since it took effect on Sunday.
Today, gas costs $3.74 on average, per AAA. That’s lower than it was a week ago ($4.24) and a month ago ($3.91) but way higher than it was a year ago ($2.94). The current national average is nearly $4.37.
We’ll keep an eye on this to see if Democrats’ warnings play out that gas stations and oil companies will pocket the bulk of the savings while blaming the dozens of other variables that drive gas prices upward, especially the ongoing war in Iran.
– Jake Zuckerman
Two years of Signal Statewide
We launched the Signal Statewide newsroom two years ago on a hope and a dream – and about a month ahead of the November 2024 election.
Since then, our newsletter list has grown to more than 40,000 subscribers. Here are a few of our favorite stories from the Signal Statewide team, stories that we first broke or highlighted along the way in the newsletter.
My favorite articles include this one highlighting the rapid expansion of addiction recovery homes in Scioto County and the struggles local officials faced in regulating them, as well as this one I co-authored with Jake about an explosion of medical debt lawsuits filed by Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine. Both shone a spotlight on critical issues affecting small-town Ohio that you don’t hear about in political campaign commercials. – Andrew Tobias
One of my most memorable stories came from compiling and analyzing all of the “campus culture” complaints filed by Bowling Green State University students in 2025. When viewed together, these 40 reports – many of which included anti-LGBTQ+ comments and racial slurs – showed one example of how broader national tensions can often unfold at a college campus. – Amy Morona
Two favorites: One about two oil men, both named Bob, who say waste from the fracking industry has breached their oil wells and could hit an aquifer next. And another that first revealed the runaway nature of a lucrative tax credit for data centers in Ohio, later prompting Gov. Mike DeWine to freeze new issuances of the program. – Jake Zuckerman
What we’re watching
- The Rooster is on trial today. Blogger D.J. Byrnes – some combination of a reporter, prankster, communist commentator and Statehouse gadfly, with an impressive Substack following – is facing trial for alleged harassment in municipal court in Willoughby. He’s accused of sending a lewd, naked, digitally altered image of Shrek to Ohio Senate Finance Chair Jerry Cirino while taunting him for a political loss. Byrnes faces up to six months in jail in a case with major free speech implications.
- We have our first statewide Ohio candidate faceoff on the calendar. Kulewicz and Faber – the attorney general candidates – announced they will debate at Youngstown State University on Oct. 19.
- Vice President JD Vance is coming to Lima on Friday to campaign for Jon Husted and other Republican candidates. President Donald Trump is coming back to do the same in Youngstown on Monday night.
In the news
ODOT avoids liability for 2017 Toledo overpass death after Ohio Supreme Court ruling. Republicans on the Ohio Supreme Court nixed a lawsuit brought by the mother of a man who died after teenagers threw a sandbag off an overpass. The family blamed ODOT for failing to put up protective fencing. Read more from Jake Zuckerman.
Where Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy are campaigning at Ohio colleges: Ohio’s gubernatorial candidates are popping up at university football games, off-campus bars and college auditoriums across the state, with plenty more visits planned before Election Day. Read more from Amy Morona.
How a tool to fight blight became a suburban tax strategy in Ohio. A look inside the once-obscure use of “TIF districts” (tax increment finding) that has mushroomed in Ohio, and the critics who say it’s like the right hand stealing from the left. Read more by Anna Staver of Cleveland.com.
