LOVELAND MAGAZINE

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Tag: Ohio Elections Commission

  • LaRose uses state newsletter to promote Senate campaign

    LaRose uses state newsletter to promote Senate campaign

    Loveland, Ohio via Ohio Capital Journal

    Left to right, forum moderator, Bloomdaddy from WTAM Radio, Bernie Moreno, Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, OH Sec. of State Frank LaRose. (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)

    BY:  

    Frustrated former employees told the press that in their office “everything revolved around” Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s run for U.S. Senate. Now LaRose appears to be using the taxpayer-funded office’s newsletter in that campaign.

    As a state official, LaRose isn’t supposed to use state resources in his political campaigns. And as secretary of state, it’s especially important that he wall off politics from his official duties because LaRose administers elections — including those in which he’s running.

    However, as he seeks the Republican nomination to take on Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown next year, LaRose has become an increasingly hard-edged partisan as he seeks the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who continues to attack the underpinnings of democracy itself.

    In addition to ignoring state Supreme Court orders regarding partisan gerrymandering, LaRose championed a measure in an August special election that would have made it almost impossible for citizen-initiated amendments to make it onto the ballot, much less into the Ohio Constitution. The measure failed badly, but LaRose and his allies tried to force it through ahead of a vote on an amendment protecting abortion rights that takes place a week from tomorrow, and an anti-gerrymandering amendment that is expected to be on the ballot in 2024.

    Substantial ethical questions also have arisen as LaRose juggles his senatorial ambitions with his duty to conduct secure, fair elections in Ohio.

    The Columbus Dispatch earlier this month reported on high staff turnover, with one former staffer telling the paper “Everything (in the secretary of state’s office) revolved around the Senate run.”

    Last month, NBC4 reported that LaRose was moving the secretary of state’s office from its location of 20 years and into a building where he had also registered his campaign with the Federal Election Commission.

    Then earlier this month, the Capital Journal reported that LaRose almost certainly recorded a campaign interview with election denier and conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon from the same building.

    LaRose refuses to answer questions about such activities. But he claims to have no campaign headquarters while he soon will be running his state office from the building where his campaign is registered.

    If LaRose uses people working on state time or uses state offices in his campaign, it could violate a section of Ohio law prohibiting the use of state resources to raise funds for a campaign.

    Paul Nick, executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission, this week said his agency needs to know more about LaRose’s new office arrangements.

    “The Commission doesn’t pass judgment without first gathering and evaluating all of the facts,” Nick said in an email. “Determining whether a public official’s agency may relocate to the same office building as that official’s campaign headquarters requires deeper inquiry. We would encourage the Secretary of State to contact us for guidance on such questions.”

    Philip Richter, executive director of the Ohio Elections Commission, said his agency would have to be asked in order to look into the matter.

    “The only way for the Commission to take action on the statute is if an affidavit of complaint is filed with the Commission that would start the Commission’s processes on addressing those types of allegations,” Richter said in an email Thursday.  “The Commission cannot simply commence an investigation without the filing of a complaint.”

    Now LaRose appears to have used his office’s newsletter to promote his campaign.

    The Oct. 20 edition of the Secretary of State’s “Week in Review” offers updates about the coming election and it notes that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. There are also blurbs about LaRose’s travels and activities during the week.

    But the newsletter also has an “In Case You Missed It” section. It contained the top of an article by The Marietta Times that prominently featured the political message LaRose wants to convey to people who will be voting in the GOP Senate Primary.

    The second paragraph said LaRose “also confirmed his credentials as a conservative Republican who wants to make Sherrod Brown a former U.S. Senator, not the incumbent. Brown has been Ohio’s senior U.S. senator for a dozen years and the only Democratic statewide elected official in Ohio, with the exception of a few nonpartisan judicial races.”

    The newsletter then linked to the full story, which quoted LaRose bashing Brown for allegedly helping to make the country “weaker, poorer and less secure,” and the Biden administration over the economy and border security.

    LaRose’s office didn’t respond to questions about the newsletter.

    The state auditor is responsible for policing misuse of state resources. A spokesman said Thursday that a law regarding politicking in taxpayer-funded newsletters applies only to officials with “political subdivisions” such as counties. The law prohibits them from publishing a newsletter that “supports or opposes the nomination or election of a candidate for public office.”

    Marty Schladen
    MARTY SCHLADEN

    Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

     

  • Governor appoints former lawmaker to elections board who hyped up 2020 voter fraud claims

    Governor appoints former lawmaker to elections board who hyped up 2020 voter fraud claims

    Christina Hagan-Nemeth. Source: Ohio General Assembly.

    BY: JAKE ZUCKERMAN – Ohio Capital Journal

    Gov. Mike DeWine appointed a former lawmaker to a state board that oversees political campaigns who has publicly amplified debunked notions of election fraud in 2020.

    Christina Hagan-Nemeth, who served in the Ohio House before mounting two unsuccessful congressional bids, was appointed Tuesday to the Ohio Elections Commission. Her term runs through the end of 2026.

    A review of her public social media posts and talk radio appearances show she amplified the unsupported and repeatedly discredited claim that President Joe Biden somehow stole the election from Donald Trump. With the appointment, she now sits on a panel responsible for reviewing allegations of campaign finance violations and other offenses. The commission can levy fines, make criminal referrals, and intervene in campaigns at politically sensitive junctures.

    “The American people are entitled to an honest election,” Hagan wrote on social media Nov. 7, 2020, the day TV networks first projected Biden would win enough states to clinch the electoral college.

    “All legal votes should be counted. If you think these are controversial statements you must not agree w/safeguarding the sacred value of our individual votes as Americans.

    Ten days later, she made similar comments.

    “I’ve never prayed for fraud. But I have prayed that if it exists and especially to the degree to which its exposure can change the media’s projected outcome of the election…That it should be brought to light in a profound and irrefutable way,” she wrote. “I’m on team #EveryLegalVoteShouldCount.”

    Hagan, a Republican, did not respond to a phone call, text, or message to her personal Facebook account.

    DeWine has walked a tightrope since 2020 of denying the existence of widespread voting fraud but refraining from criticism of Trump — the leading proponent of the “stop the steal” movement. Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Jan. 3, 2021, DeWine refused to answer when asked why so many people believe that widespread election fraud occurred in 2020.

    He didn’t answer questions about Hagan’s statements, only noting through a spokesman that her appointment was recommended by Republican leaders in the state House and Senate.

    On Jan. 6, 2021, a crowd of hundreds of Trump supporters, swept up in his claims of a stolen election, violently stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to halt certification of the 2020 election. Over the course of about seven hours, the attackers injured 114 police officers and caused about $1.5 million in damages, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report. Several officers died in the aftermath, including four by suicide. A Trump supporter was shot and killed after crawling through a transom window toward members of congress.

    Two weeks later, Hagan posted to her Facebook page an article written by Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ organization. The article depicts some Jan. 6 rallygoers as “peaceful protesters who desperately wanted to be counted.” Others, it states, weren’t peaceful but “were just as concerned about the future of elections after what happened in November.”

    Discussing the one-year anniversary of the riot on a conservative talk radio show, Hagan mocked a comment from Vice President Kamala Harris comparing Jan. 6 to other hallowed days in American history like 9/11 or the attack on Pearl Harbor.

    “I think the most dramatic word that we can accurately use [to describe Jan. 6] would be a riot, but not even, because there were really — nothing was defamed, nothing was attacked to any degree,” she said.

    In February 2021, Hagan shared an article from a conservative news outlet about the Supreme Court’s review of election fraud lawsuits.

    “SCOTUS now adds ELECTION FRAUD LAWSUITS to List of Cases To Be Considered… Not Loving the timing… But better late than never,” she said.

    She made similar comments a few days later, saying it “could get interesting” that the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider voter fraud cases in three states Biden won. The Supreme Court denied the request to consider the cases later that month.

    On a few occasions, she has accused Democrats of election fraud. In May 2020, the U.S. House passed legislation that would have prohibited states from requiring any form of identification to obtain an absentee ballot. Hagan said this shows that Democrats are trying to “rig the next election.” She made similar comments on talk radio about two bills that would overhaul election administration via prohibiting voter identification requirements, reinstating parts of the Voter Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court, and more.

    “They are always, always aiming to undermine,” Hagan said. “And every single word that comes out of their mouth is orchestrated for that intentional destruction.”

    Elections commission

    The Ohio Elections Commission is a seven-member panel comprised of three Republicans, three Democrats, and one independent.

    On Tuesday, DeWine also appointed John Lyall, a Democrat, to serve on the commission.

    As recently as last week, Hagan circulated petitions to run for congress, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. But on March 4, she publicly announced she wouldn’t run for the seat.

    She first won office to the Ohio House in 2010 at the age of 21, where she served for eight years, the constitutional maximum. In 2018, she lost in a congressional primary to current Rep. Anthony Gonzalez — one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in connection with Jan. 6 and has denounced the idea that the election was stolen.

    At the time, she used a campaign ad calling for a need to “secure our borders” and stop illegal immigration from Mexico. Snopes, the fact checking website, later reported the ad used footage from an Italian TV network showing Moroccan immigrants crossing into Spain.

    Trump endorsed Hagan in her 2020 run for the same seat, according to WKYC.