Larry Householder’s lawyer is testifying against him
Ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, currently in prison on federal charges, is awaiting trial on state charges related to his receipt of an alleged bribe from two FirstEnergy executives.
One witness against Householder? His own longtime lawyer on civil matters, Scott Pullins.
In an interview Wednesday, Pullins said he was subpoenaed because he helped prepare ethics filings that prosecutors allege failed to disclose Householder’s illegal sources of income from FirstEnergy.
“There are some things that still have to be worked out there. I was interviewed by [the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation] two years ago by subpoena, with my attorney present,” he said. “The whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense. But a lot hasn’t made sense in any of these cases so far either.”
The jury is out on FirstEnergy’s alleged bribes
In related big news from this week, the trial of Ohio’s century ended with a whimper, not a bang. And it didn’t even really end.
As Jake reported from Akron on Tuesday, a jury was unable to make up its collective mind whether two FirstEnergy executives paid a $4.3 million bribe to capture a top state utility regulator.
All signs point to a retrial with a yet unknown timeline, an unsatisfying resolution for roughly half of what prosecutors call the biggest public corruption scandal in state history.
According to the one juror willing to clue in reporters after an eight-week slog of a trial, the breakdown was somewhere between 8-4 and 10-2 in favor of conviction.
You can read about the verdict here. And you can read Jake’s interview with another juror, the forewoman here.
“In the end, I’m disappointed that we did not come to a consensus because I felt that we should have sent these guys to jail,” the forewoman said.
Wondering what went wrong for the state? Stay tuned for a special edition of the newsletter later this week.
Vivek the trial balloon governor?
Recently, sports fans got an unexpected glimpse of a policy idea from Vivek Ramaswamy: closing some of Ohio’s 16 public colleges and universities as a way to save money.
The idea surfaced in a nearly year-old video that Ramaswamy’s campaign republished on social media – just as two of those schools were playing in the March Madness men’s college basketball tournament.
“Vivek not a MACtion guy,” Doug Gottleib, a college basketball coach and former media personality, wrote in a glib post on X that referenced the name of the athletic conference for one of those schools, the University of Akron.
The Cook Political Report, a widely read nonpartisan elections intelligence service, then explicitly cited the rollout of the university proposal as an example of the “Whack-A-Mole” controversies that Ramaswamy has served up to Democrats over the past year. Cook downgraded Ramaswamy’s chances in this year’s Ohio governor’s race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”
Read more from Andrew about how the university closure proposal is a callback to the provocative style that helped Ramaswamy gain traction as a presidential candidate, and why Democrats now think it’s one of their biggest assets in this year’s election.
Voting season begins
There are two big election milestones coming up in the next few days.
First, voter registration for the May 5 election closes on Monday, April 6. Andrew compiled some quick tips explaining what Ohioans need to do to register, and why they should double-check their registration just in case.
Second, Ohio’s 28-day early voting period begins on April 7. That’s when county boards of election will mail absentee ballots to voters who’ve requested them. Ohioans also will have the option to vote early in person.
Trump’s voting executive order
President Donald Trump issued a sweeping executive order Tuesday aimed at tightening rules around mail voting. But it’s unlikely to affect Ohio’s upcoming primary election, according to state and local election officials.
“We’re assessing the Executive Order to determine its impact on Ohio, but we don’t believe its directives are logistically or legally possible to implement before early voting begins statewide next Tuesday,” said Ben Kindel, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, which represents county boards of elections, agreed, citing the tight timetable. He also pointed to the near-certainty that the order will be challenged in court.
As we’ve previously written, Trump had telegraphed plans to crack down on early voting in ways that could affect Ohio’s longstanding mail voting procedures. The executive order follows through on those signals.
The order would federalize who can receive a mail ballot by creating a federal list of eligible voters and designating the U.S. Postal Service as a gatekeeper of which voters states can send ballots to. States would use that list to determine eligibility.
It gives federal agencies and states at least 60 days before an election to implement those changes – a timeline that makes it impractical for Ohio’s imminent primary.
The order also directs the U.S. Attorney General to prosecute elections officials or entities found to have provided ballots to ineligible voters.
Legal challenges likely will complicate the order’s implementation.
Potential issues include U.S. constitutional provisions giving states broad authority over elections procedures and a federal law that limits how and when voter rolls can be purged.
Schools of thought
In case you missed it, Andrew also recently highlighted several public K-12 educators whom Ohio Democrats recruited to run in key, open legislative districts.
That article focused on school funding issues and other frustrations with Columbus that these educators said prompted them to consider running.
But here are some of the political dynamics behind the districts they’re targeting that help explain why we’re focusing on these races to begin with.
One candidate is running for Ohio’s 27th State Senate District, which covers the outskirts of the Cleveland/Akron area. The district is Democrats’ best pickup opportunity in the state Senate this year, but it won’t be easy. Trump won it by 6 percentage points in 2024.
The two Republican-held House districts where Democrats recruited educators to run are Ohio’s 35th and 52nd. Both are in Northeast Ohio, and Trump won both by margins in the low single digits in 2024. They’re among the six or so Republican-held seats that Democrats are trying to flip this year.
If they’re successful, it would break the veto-proof legislative supermajority Republicans have held in Columbus for more than a decade.
In the news
Fracking in Ohio: State officials voted last week to open more than 8,700 acres of publicly owned land, including a state park and two wildlife preserves, to oil and gas developers for fracking. Jake Zuckerman has details here.
The Ohio College Comeback Compact helped adults who had completed some college courses but never earned a degree or credential get back into a classroom. Now it’s ending. Signal’s Amy Morona has more.
Democrats have recruited public school educators to run for key Ohio legislative seats. Signal’s Andrew Tobias talked with them — and a Republican teacher running, too.
