Do we expect less? Never ending cycle of Statehouse scandal has jaded Ohio voters

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

Just another day at the Statehouse: Records recently uncovered thanks to the House Bill 6 scandal reveal that the campaigns of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, benefited from several million dollars in “dark money” expenditures, courtesy of FirstEnergy Corp.

That’s the Akron-based electric utility which at one time fielded 20 lobbyists on Capitol Square in Columbus, and which ... persuaded ... the General Assembly to pass a bailout of two money losing nuclear plants the company then owned.

It appears the dark money outlays were perfectly legal, and hardly the only dark money deployed then and since in Ohio for politicians of both parties. Still, the what-else-is-new shrugs the dark-money revelations prompted from some bystanders showed how accustomed Ohioans have become to special interests’ dominance of Ohio campaigns and legislation.

More:Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says FirstEnergy donations didn't influence his House Bill 6 support

In one sense, that’s not surprising.

Is scandal the Ohio way?

For a generation now, the General Assembly has ignored campaign and ethics reforms in favor of cheap shots directed – latest example – at transgender youths, or in bids to limit women’s access to abortion.

Time was, in Ohio, when at least a minimum level of respectability was expected of state officeholders, especially among Republicans.

In 1970, as previously noted, the Crofters scandal, which amounted to peanuts compared to the HB 6 affair, ended the political careers of two statewide GOP candidates. When the dust cleared, Republicans held onto just one statewide executive office (then-Secretary of State Ted Brown’s).

The issue in Crofters was the illegal loan of state money, via commercial paper, to shaky borrowers who were lobbying clients of campaign donors. (The donations at issue were legal and amounted to $22,500 – laughably small at today’s Statehouse.)

You have to wonder why Ohioans’ public reaction has been low-key and the legislative response (among Republicans) near zero to the revelation about the (also legal) dark money outlays for DeWine’s and Husted’s campaigns.

Do we just expect less?

Maybe it’s the deadening effect of a series of Statehouse controversies. The seeming attitude of despair among Ohio politicos about public ethics on Capitol Square as privately summarized by one officeholder: “They ought to put a sign on the Statehouse saying, ‘Everything on sale.’ ”

Maybe Ohioans’ seeming indifference to Statehouse scheming is because they’re used to it, or because they expect nothing better from elected officials, especially from the General Assembly, whose members’ hometown voters typically don’t know if their legislator is in a lobbyist’s back pocket or merely partying his or her brains out on the public’s dime. In Podunk, Ohio, “What happens in Columbus stays in Columbus.”

The link to lobbyist

That’s all the more so because of Ohio’s lame-o lobbying laws, which purport to police meals and drinks furnished legislators, and reveal “gifts” of gewgaw plaques and such, while failing to report clients’ overall spending (salaries and retainers) for actual Statehouse lobbying.

Ostensibly, utilities’ campaign contributions to a given candidate are more obvious, but not of course for the quasi-secret “dark money” outlays.

In contrast, anybody can readily discern, for example, precisely how much money special interests spend to lobby, say, California’s officeholders and agencies, thanks to that state’s lobbying law.

In 2023, according to detailed filings reported by the nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization CalMatters, four electric utilities operating in California spent nearly $13 million lobbying in Sacramento, for example.

Given that sum, and even discounting for Ohio’s smaller population, it’s worth noting that the General Assembly appropriation for Ohio’s Office of Consumers’ Counsel, which represents not only Ohio’s residential electricity ratepayers, but also Ohio’s residential gas, water, and telephone ratepayers, is $6.3 million dollars. (Contrast that with what FirstEnergy spent to pass HB 6: A minimum of $60 million,)

If you’re trying to find how much Ohio utilities’ spend on Statehouse lobbying? Good luck, because you’ll need it – or the help of subpoenas issued in connection with lawsuits or prosecutions, assuming any data obtained that way eventually become public through court filings, etc.

On the evidence to date, it’s hard to know what kind of Statehouse uproar would so anger Ohio voters that they’d rally around a genuine political reformer – Republican or Democrat. Whoever that might be, she or he doesn’t seem to be on Ohio’s horizon.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com