The Ohio Republican Party’s new leader
It’s often said a state’s governor is the de facto leader of that state’s political party. With that in mind, there’s a leadership change afoot at the Ohio Republican Party.
Two actions Republican governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy took this week show how he’s increasingly taken that mantle since securing the GOP nomination in May.
First is the case of a new proposed constitutional amendment that would require Ohioans to show a photo ID to vote in person. The proposal would make it harder to undo Ohio’s photo ID law, which has been in place since 2023. Voters would have to approve the proposed measure for it to take effect.
Ramaswamy called for the amendment in a Monday op-ed in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The proposal now appears to be fast-tracked. The two Republican state legislative leaders, House Speaker Matt Huffman and Senate President Rob McColley (who is Ramaswamy’s running mate), during a press conference on Wednesday laid out their plans to get the measure on the November ballot.
Second was a Tuesday news conference where Ramaswamy, again accompanied by Huffman and McColley, announced a three-prong plan to fight Medicaid fraud. It ultimately means Ramaswamy is campaigning to clean up what Republicans view as a major problem that occurred on Gov. Mike DeWine’s watch.
DeWine wasn’t invited to the Tuesday news conference, according to a spokesperson.
But the governor defended his record fighting Medicaid fraud during an on-stage interview on Wednesday at the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
After the event’s moderator asked him whether he was reconsidering his endorsement of Ramaswamy, given how much the two have differed on policy issues lately, DeWine seemed to more or less chalk up Ramaswamy’s actions to politics.
“We should not mistake governing for the campaign,” DeWine said. “If you take things that are said by me or other people, there’s a lot of stuff that’s said in a campaign.”
The governor went on to praise Ramaswamy’s business background and his stated commitment to growing Ohio jobs and increasing its educational standards.
DeWine also described his plans to open some kind of educational or policy center at the University of Miami after he retires from politics in January.
More on that photo ID amendment
The Republican-backed amendment would add Ohio’s photo ID requirement for voting to the state constitution.
But notably, it doesn’t apply the photo ID requirement to mail voting, as some Republicans have pushed for. Acceptable forms of ID would remain the same as they are now, although the measure, as written, would allow lawmakers to modify acceptable ID in the future.
Ramaswamy and other backers described the amendment as a way to give extra protection to the law should future lawmakers decide to rescind it, or if it were to be challenged in court, although it already survived a federal legal challenge from a Democratic elections law firm in 2024.
The amendment also could be good politics for Republicans in November. Polling consistently shows broad voter support for photo ID laws. But Democratic elected officials have opposed them, arguing the requirement unfairly burdens certain marginalized groups. An amendment could force Democratic candidates to pick sides while mobilizing supporters of President Donald Trump, who has pushed Congress to adopt a national voter ID as part of a larger federal elections bill.
Democrats pointed out Republicans’ potential political calculations.
“What I think is interesting is we’re not trying to make [voting] fairer or easier,” said state Rep. Phil Robinson, a Solon Democrat. “Instead, we’re trying to help a candidate who, on their side, may be struggling, and maybe they think this is a boost.”
McColley denied any political intent. He cited the polling showing broad, bipartisan support among voters for photo ID laws.
“Seeing this as turnout juice or anything like that is not backed up by the polling data,” McColley said.
Data center tax credit’s exploding price tag
The State of Ohio has been giving the big technology companies behind the data center boom here a far bigger tax break than once thought.
In 2024, the sales tax exemption cost Ohio $555 million, according to Andrea Lanom, a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Taxation. One year later, that snowballed to nearly $1.6 billion. That’s compared to the roughly $130 to $135 million forecasted by the state Department of Taxation in its biennial Tax Expenditure Report.
These reports have a narrow audience of budget wonks, policy makers, lobbyists, journalists and nerds, but they’re an important tool to assess how valuable any of Ohio’s 177 different kinds of tax breaks are to a given industry.
In this case, the likes of Amazon, Meta and Alphabet are saving hundreds of millions in taxes – far beyond what tax officials predicted.
As Jake reports, a Department of Taxation spokesperson attributed the inaccurate forecasts to concerns about taxpayer privacy and accelerating use of the credit.
Some lawmakers raised their eyebrows about the newly released data.
“There’s not a lot of things that take over $1 billion of our money, but, holy crap, the biggest tech companies in the world are one of them,” said Sen. Kent Smith, a Cuyahoga County Democrat.
Attorney General Dave Yost loses at voter fraud trial
A U.S. citizen was found not guilty Tuesday of illegally voting in the 2018 election when she was a lawful permanent resident of the United States.
The not guilty verdict for Maria Dearaujo – who immigrated to Ohio from Brazil more than 30 years ago and became a naturalized citizen in 2023 – amounted to another loss for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost after his office indicted her and five other lawful permanent residents (commonly known as green card holders) for voter fraud in October 2024.
One other suspect turned out to have died two years before Yost indicted him. Another, who was 78 at the time of her indictment, entered an intervention in lieu of conviction program. A 32-year-old Canadian native who moved here when he was two pleaded no contest. Two others await trial.
Dearaujo rejected a plea offer and took the risky approach of going to trial and testifying in her own defense. As Jake reports, trial evidence painted a far more nuanced picture of alleged voter fraud than Republicans have suggested.
Husted cashes out
U.S. Sen. Jon Husted filed his annual financial disclosure report last week. There’s not a lot new in it – although it does show he liquidated his stock holdings in a small Ohio bank for which he previously served as a board member.
Husted, a Republican, made $57,280 selling his shares of Heartland Bank, which the disclosure says was required after the Columbus-area bank was acquired by German American Bank in February 2025. Husted also made $27,575 in compensation as a board member and $117,700 in retirement payments from OPERS, the state public pension system.
His wife, Tina, made less than $1,000 each from three different gigs – her part-time work as a real-estate agent, as the owner of an art company and a job for Upper Arlington Schools.
Husted’s Democratic opponent in the November election, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, is due to file his own financial disclosure in August after successfully applying for a deadline extension on May 11.
Public comment opens re: fracking Wayne National Forest
Ohio isn’t the only one opening its public lands to frackers.
The federal Bureau of Land Management this week opened a 30-day public comment window on plans to open 2,794 acres of the Wayne National Forest in Southeast Ohio in September 2026. You can comment here.
This would be the first lease sale in Wayne since March 2017.
In the news
Vivek’s fraud plan: Republican governor nominee Vivek Ramaswamy unveiled a three-point plan to fight Medicaid fraud in Ohio. Per Andrew Tobias, Ramaswamy’s proposal includes asking the Trump Administration for permission to keep a larger share of any successful fraud recovery – which he suggested could be given directly to Ohioans – placing a higher enforcement priority during the beginning of his term as governor and restructuring how the massive program is administered.
Ohio man casts provisional ballot: Secretary of State Frank LaRose was forced to cast a provisional ballot following his overseas military deployment after his absentee ballot got delayed in the mail. Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles reports that LaRose mailed his completed ballot while overseas but cast his provisional ballot – those are counted after Election Day so they can get extra scrutiny from election officials – after seeing the first one wouldn’t arrive in time.
