Fight night: All eyes will be on Ohio Tuesday as Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden share a Cleveland stage for their first debate. Seth Richardson has a primer with all you need to know, including what’s at stake for the candidates and what issues will – and probably won’t -- come up. And Peter Krouse takes a closer look at the logistics, and what the closely watched event will mean for Cleveland.
No profit sharing: Throughout the debate about whether to repeal House Bill 6′s $1.3 billion bailout of two nuclear power plants, one key question remains unanswered: How profitable or unprofitable are the plants? As Jeremy Pelzer found, Energy Harbor, the plants' owner, still refuses to tell the public the answer, and lawmakers have so far made no attempt to try to obtain such information.
Closed book: FirstEnergy is opposing the Ohio Consumers' Counsel’s request for an independent financial audit. “OCC has not shown how FirstEnergy Corp.'s alleged contributions to social welfare organizations are relevant to an audit,” wrote James Lang, a company attorney, in a Sept. 23 filing with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. The PUCO has given FirstEnergy until Sept. 30 to produce records demonstrating that ratepayer money was not spent on lobbying for House Bill 6, the nuclear bailout bill that’s now at the center of a federal corruption investigation.
In elections we trust: Secretary of State Frank LaRose said Ohioans will accept the results of the November election as legitimate, when he was asked about President Donald Trump’s comment last week that he may not leave office willingly if he lost the election, Andrew Tobias reports. “Large, massive numbers of Ohioans know they can trust their election result. When this thing is over, people will know it’s a true reflection of the will of the people of Ohio. And if a candidate chooses to not the accept the results, I think that will look ridiculous,” LaRose said.
Cheers: LaRose was asked about Trump’s comments during an appearance at a beer distributor in Columbus, where he announced Anheuser-Busch is manufacturing and donating nearly 3,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to Ohio polling places. LaRose knows the business – his family owns a beer distributor in Akron.
Elections lawsuit ruling: A federal judge has ruled Ohio’s system of verifying signatures on absentee ballot applications is not burdensome enough to be struck down as illegal, rejecting arguments made by a coalition of voting-rights groups that sued the state. Per Tobias, U.S. District Judge Michael Watson wrote on Sunday evening that while Ohio’s signature-matching requirements impose a “moderate” burden on voters, they have other options to cast a ballot if their vote is improperly rejected, including casting a provisional ballot on Election Day. The ruling is a blow to the voting-rights groups that filed the July 31 lawsuit, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio and the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
Batten down the ballots: A myth-busting series called “Election Truth” from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer tackled the question of what happens to voters' ballots after they are counted at the elections board. In this installment, Robert Higgs explains how ballots are kept under lock and key in case they are needed to resolve discrepancies that might arise.
Boxed out: “A federal judge sidestepped a ruling Friday on whether to place multiple drop boxes in counties across Ohio, saying that he instead will wait to see how a state appeals court handles the matter,” John Caniglia writes. In a seven-page decision, U.S. District Judge Dan Polster criticized LaRose and the state legislature for failing to come up with a solution sooner.
Supreme debate: Ohio Republicans on Saturday expressed pleasure at President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Sabrina Eaton writes, while Democrats from the state cautioned that her confirmation could change the court’s direction for decades and urged that the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg be filled by the winner of the upcoming election.
Obhof’s take: On Friday, before Trump announced his pick, Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof told reporters there is “overwhelming historical precedent” for the Senate to confirm the president’s nominee, noting that in the 29 times a court vacancy opened up during an election year, past presidents made a nomination all 29 times. Obhof, a Medina Republican, said this year is different from 2016, when Senate Republicans refused to act on ex-President Barack Obama’s court pick, because the White House and Senate are controlled by the same party. On Saturday, Obhof issued a statement praising the choice of Barrett.
Another poll for Biden: Biden had a 5% lead over Trump in Ohio in a Fox News poll of the candidates' standing in the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada released on Friday. Friday’s poll showed Biden with 50% support in Ohio, compared with 45% backing for Trump, Eaton reports.
Popular vote is...popular: Most voters in Ohio and three other Great Lakes states would like to get rid of the Electoral College system and decide the presidency by the popular vote, according to last week’s poll from Baldwin Wallace University. But as Eaton reports, Republicans, whose last two presidents, Donald Trump and George W. Bush, ended up in the White House after winning in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, are just fine with keeping the current system.
ICYMI: Here’s a summary of our coverage of the Great Lakes poll. Or you can go straight to reading all the stories here.
Republican for Ryan: A retired contractor who lost his bid to run against Niles-area Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in this year’s GOP primary endorsed Ryan on Friday instead of conservative Republican former state legislator Christina Hagan, who defeated him. The endorsement from Lou Lyras applauded Ryan for voting across party lines to get things done for the Mahoning Valley, and called Hagan “too extreme.”
Weekend coronavirus numbers: Ohio’s daily count of new coronavirus cases remained above a thousand Friday and Saturday, while Sunday’s total was 800. Friday saw 1,150 cases, and Saturday there were 1,115, which took the state above the 150,000 mark for total cases.
Acton appears: Dr. Amy Acton, the former Ohio Department of Health director at the center of the battle against the coronavirus, made a public appearance last week – well, a pre-recorded one, anyway – to accept an award from the Ohio State University alumni association, Max Filby reports for the Columbus Dispatch. “There is a contagion that I feel, sometimes that is more insidious than just the virus and we know what it is. We all feel it every day. It’s fear, it’s feeling uncertain, it’s ambiguity we are all having to tolerate. So I’m working on a project that I feel, to me, is the antidote,” Acton said, according to Filby, explaining her new role with the Columbus Foundation on a kindness initiative.
Five things we learned from the Jan. 15 financial disclosure form filed by Sandy O’Brien, a Rome Republican running for Ohio Senate District 32:
1. Her only listed source of income was the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.
2. She or a member of her immediate family runs R.P. McAuliffe and Son opticians and the Optical Center, Inc.
3. She has an IRA with American Financial Services.
4. At some point in 2019, O’Brien owed at least $1,000 to US Bank and Capital One.
5. She reported receiving no gifts in 2019 worth more than $75 (or at least $25 if given by a lobbyist) from anyone besides her family.
U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson has been named the “Champion Legislator of the Year” by the Motorcycle Riders Foundation.
Former state Sen. Lou Terhar
“I’m just praying that swarm of election correspondents doesn’t check down here, put a microphone in my face, and ask which way I’m leaning.”
-Jeff McNealy, a fictitious undecided voter from Canton while hiding in a drain pipe, as described by The Onion, the satirical website.
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