On alleged daycare fraud, DeWine puts out fires, ignores arsonists
On the heels of a viral YouTube video that politically revived the issue, Minnesota’s alleged, multi-billion dollar public daycare fraud scandal has prompted handwringing from Ohio’s Republicans suggesting that perhaps some of that fraud is happening here too.
Consider:
- Keith Faber, the current state auditor and attorney general candidate, released a letter Tuesday offering to use his office to look for fraud given the “recent national attention.”
- Jon Husted, the incumbent senator running for election to his first full term, shared last month a YouTuber’s 43-minute video of visits to purportedly empty daycares. Husted praised the “pretty amazing work exposing fraud in Minnesota.”
- State Rep. Josh Williams, also a congressional candidate, said Dec. 30 that “widespread public reports” allege several daycare centers are “fraudulently billing” the state of Ohio.
- Ken Blackwell, a former secretary of state, said last week that “40 daycare centers operating across [Columbus] have now been linked to the same defunct shell organization.”
Left unsaid, by the political elites at least: Most of the Minnesotans arrested were Somali-Americans, and Ohio trails only Minnesota in terms of its Somali-born population.
Recently, Gov. Mike DeWine has taken to the airwaves with a simple message: The fraud ain’t there.
The state pays public daycares based on children who attend, DeWine said at a press conference Monday, not just those who enroll. Attendance is verified by a digital sign-in system that requires a known guardian to enter a secret PIN and take a picture of themselves at pickup and drop-off. The state audits the facilities regularly. There have been instances of fraudulent actors but no evidence of a wide-scale problem.
DeWine wants to correct the record. But when asked, he made clear he won’t talk about who’s distorting the record in the first place.
“I’m not gonna – I can’t go there,” he said. “…But there has been some connection I’ve seen on social media from people who say, ‘Well, there’s a lot of Somalians in Ohio too. There’s Somalians in Minnesota. Therefore, Ohio probably has a huge problem.’ I don’t think that’s fair.”
As governor, DeWine has studiously avoided Republican-on-Republican rhetorical violence. One rare exception: In 2024, he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times disputing the baseless “vitriol” from now-President Donald Trump and his allies that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people’s housepets.
Does he see commonalities between the racially loaded political episodes?
“I’m not going to go there,” DeWine said. “My job … is to share with the people of the State of Ohio the facts.”
Pick two
For all the Ohio politics completionists out there: The major parties’ 2026 candidate slates are nearly finished following a few announcements this week.
On Tuesday evening, GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Vivek Ramaswamy announced he’d picked Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his 2026 running mate.
And on Wednesday morning, presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton said she’d chosen David Pepper, who led the state Democratic Party from 2015 through 2020, as her number two.
That means both McColley’s and Pepper’s names will appear on the ballot as lieutenant governor candidates in the primary election in May.
The two men share a couple of other commonalities: Both are lawyers – Pepper went to Yale Law while McColley went to Ohio State University. Both are experienced political hands who will add insider perspective to these outsider campaigns, since neither Ramaswamy nor Acton have ever held elected office.
They also offer some contrasts. McColley is a low-key speaker who doesn’t court public attention. Pepper has built a national following among diehard politics fans thanks to his prolific social media use and frequent media appearances. Their X (formerly Twitter) use helps tell the story: McColley authored four tweets during the month of December, while Pepper regularly fired off more than four a day during the same time. It’s easy to see McColley staying in the background in a hypothetical Ramaswamy administration, while Pepper seems like he’d have a more public-facing role.
Whom a candidate picks as lieutenant governor ultimately doesn’t make that big of a difference electorally. But the job itself can carry heavy influence – depending on how much latitude a governor chooses to grant. For instance, Gov. Mike DeWine let Jon Husted oversee the state’s business attraction strategy, including picking leadership at JobsOhio, the state’s economic development arm. DeWine then appointed Husted to a vacant U.S. Senate seat a year ago.
The role also is what you make of it: Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel has been less involved in state government operations, but the former Ohio State football coach has spent much of the past year launching and promoting a youth fitness initiative.
Making their debuts
Both campaigns held events on Wednesday to tout their new additions.
Acton and Pepper held a quick “affordability roundtable” – taking a page from Sherrod Brown’s playbook – at a cafe in Bexley, where Acton lives. Afterwards, the duo did a round of interviews with Columbus media outlets.
Before he joined the ticket, Pepper said, he’d been a campaign volunteer, providing advice and policy research. Despite their healthy string of election losses, he said he believes 2026 will be state Democrats’ best chance to win in 20 years.
“One, we have the best top of the ticket since that time, in Dr. Acton and Sherrod Brown. Two, it’s the second term of a midterm of a president who’s struggling,” he said.
Acton cited Pepper’s background as a lawyer and elected official.
“I just want somebody with integrity, who cares,” Acton said.
Meanwhile, Ramaswamy showed off McColley at an event in Cleveland Wednesday evening. In contrast to Acton’s private roundtable, Ramaswamy held a rally-style event featuring a speaker lineup and a few hundred attendees.
In his speech, Ramaswamy repeated pledges to cut taxes and slash housing and energy regulations. He said he will push to increase educational standards and “dismantle” the bureaucracy in public schools.
He said McColley would help him make his vision a reality.
“If your goal is to translate this into words … then it will require me as a governor to work with our legislature to quickly, rapidly, surgically, unapologetically enact this vision into legislation. In order to do that, I’m going to need a governing partner to help me achieve those legislative victories.”
“There is nobody better to help me do that than Rob McColley,” Ramaswamy said.
Dems find treasurer candidate
Democrats have taken a step toward finally fielding a full slate of statewide candidates.
On Wednesday, Seth Walsh, a Cincinnati City Council member, announced he is running for state treasurer.
Walsh was appointed to city council in 2022, replacing Greg Landsman after Landsman was elected to Congress. In an interview with Signal, Walsh described himself as a “budget guru” who is hands-on with setting Cincinnati’s $2 billion budget. He said that work, plus his prior experience running an $85 million community development organization, will set him up to oversee Ohio’s $276 billion portfolio.
“Obviously, this is a larger scale. But it’s next level in terms of the experience I have, and I have the wherewithal to take it to that next level,” Walsh said.
Walsh, 35, said Democrats approached him about running in mid-December, shortly after he was elected to office. He said he’d never thought about running for statewide office before.
“This was not on my 2026 Bingo card,” Walsh said. “But I’m excited about the opportunity.”
Walsh is the only Democrat running to replace outgoing Treasurer Robert Sprague, who’s term-limited and running for Secretary of State. Three Republicans have filed to run: state Sen. Kristina Roegner and a pair of former state lawmakers, Niraj Antani and Jay Edwards.
FirstEnergy whistleblower will speak
You might remember a story last month from Jake Zuckerman and Arielle Kass about the legal effort to squelch the testimony of a top FirstEnergy accountant at the political bribery trial of the former CEO that’s set to begin later this month.
Summit County Judge Susan Baker Ross over the holidays rejected the motion. This means Jason Lisowski, who became one of the first insiders to flag an alleged $4.3 million bribe from the company to a top regulator, will testify.
In the news
Where are Ohio data centers located? The Columbus region made Ohio a top national location for data centers. Now they’re increasingly spreading out across the state. Check out this map.
Running mate, selected: Gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has picked seasoned politico and Ohio Senate President Rob McColley as his lieutenant governor. McColley has represented a rural district in the Toledo area since 2017. Andrew Tobias has more.
Running mate, selected part II: Dr. Amy Acton has picked a veteran of state Democratic politics as her running mate on the 2026 gubernatorial ticket. David Pepper is a Democratic operative from Cincinnati who was chair of the Ohio Democratic Party from 2015 through 2020. Read more.