Opinion: Bribery scandal runs deep within Ohio Republican Party

This week, federal trials begin in Cincinnati for the largest corruption scandal in Ohio history. We’re hopeful that the individuals who orchestrated this multi-million bribery scheme will finally be held accountable.

We know that top-level GOP politicians and operatives took millions of dollars from dark money groups connected to FirstEnergy and used that money to enrich themselves and fellow public officials.

Over the coming days and weeks, we’ll hear about the misdeeds of Larry Householder and Matt Borges. But the scandal reaches much deeper within the Ohio Republican Party, including current elected officials with higher political ambitions.

We know about Mike DeWine and Jon Husted, or public officials #1 and #2 as they are known in federal court documents, and their deep connections to the scandal.

From high-level staff who were involved with the dark money groups at the center of the scandal; to massive donations from FirstEnergy to their campaign coffers and the campaigns of their families; to the lobbying they personally were doing behind the scene to get HB 6 passed, the lines between DeWine and Husted and this scandal run deep.

But other Republican politicians have their own skeletons in the closet when it comes to the state’s biggest bribery scandal.

Dave Yost, allegedly the state’s top cop, has yet to take any meaningful action to hold his friends in the Ohio Republican Party accountable for the bribery scandal. Which makes sense when you remember that his campaign manager was Matt Borges, who gave Yost a $10,000 donation after he got his piece of the pie from the dark money scheme. Yost himself said, “It would be foolish for anyone to accept campaign contributions from these defendants,” before he was publicly shamed into giving Borges’ donation to charity.

Now that Yost has been subpoenaed to testify in the upcoming federal court case, we finally stand to learn more about what he knew and when about the scandal.

And there’s Matt Dolan, newly-announced candidate for U.S. Senate, who voted for HB 6 and told Cleveland.com in 2020 that he’d vote for it again.

FirstEnergy’s dark money group gave $85,000 to Matt Dolan’s dark money group, and probably not out of the goodness of their hearts.

Frank LaRose took more than $25,000 from FirstEnergy in 2018 and FirstEnergy still sits on LaRose’s top 20 list of political donors. As recently as 2021, LaRose was fundraising with the Strategy Group, who produced dark-money funded ads for the HB 6 campaign.

And sitting Congressman Mike Carey gave $100,000 to Larry Householder’s dark money group through his employer, Murray Energy. When FirstEnergy executives were texting about the donation, one put it pretty bluntly: “Mike Carey has all the paperwork.”

Meanwhile, the organization that is charged with electing all of these folks to higher office – the Ohio Republican Party – has taken more than $85,000 from FirstEnergy since 2018 and refuses to give that money back. It would be an interesting question for their new Chairman on what he plans to do with all that cash.

Working Ohioans, who have been fleeced by radical republican politicians for far too long, deserve accountability, and we’re hopeful that the Larry Householders and Matt Borges of the world will be brought to justice soon.

But we’re also hopeful that the Republican politicians who have empowered them or who stood complicitly by as they orchestrated illegal schemes will be held accountable, too – especially the ones who will be asking the voters of Ohio for a new job come 2024.

Elizabeth Walters has been serving as chair of the Ohio Democratic Party since January 2021. She is the first woman to head the Ohio Democratic Party and was unanimously reelected as chair in August to another four-year term. 

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Bribery scandal runs deep within Ohio Republican Party