The Ohio Casino Commission levied a $5 million fine against Kalshi prediction market for unlicensed sports gaming.
The action comes as some GOP lawmakers press to change much of the 2023 law that made sports betting a billion-dollar industry in the state.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is on record as saying that legalizing sports betting is his biggest mistake in office.
Plus we also take a look at key contested races ahead of the May 5 primary. And the race for governor heats up months before the showdown.
Guests:
- Jo Ingles, senior reporter with Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau
- Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter with The Columbus Dispatch
- Chrissa Loukas, statehouse reporter with Spectrum News
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to the All Sides Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we catch up on the political news of last week and preview the week ahead. I'm your host Amy Juravich. Joining us for the Roundtable this week, we have Jo Ingles, senior reporter for the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau. Welcome back, Joe. Great to be here. Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Welcome back Laura.
Laura Bischoff: Good morning.
Juravich: And Chrissa Loukas, Statehouse reporter for Spectrum News 1, making her debut on the round table this week. Welcome to All Sides, Chrissa. Hi everyone, nice to be here.
And there has been some news recently on the sports gambling front. The Ohio Casino Commission levied a $5 million fine against the prediction market, Kalshi, for operating illegally in the state. Laura, your colleague, Max Philby, wrote about this last week. What led to this action by the Commission, a $5 million fine against Kalshi?
Bischoff: I'm not sure about what specifically led to the action. It was, I think, having to do with them being illegally operating in the state. Kalshi was founded in 2018 by some MIT students, and it's a platform that allows people to trade on all kinds of things, sports, elections, current events, and apparently there's about 35,000 Ohio consumers that are using it.
Juravich: Yeah, and Chris said it was said that was it was not properly licensed. I it has actually responded to this. It seems like an unusual fine. Five million dollars.
Chrissa Loukas: It does sound like an unusual find. I have not seen any responses from Kalshi. I do know that if we go back to 2023 when we saw the governor legalizing sports betting, we have heard him several times say how he has regretted it. We're seeing some of the worries that are coming out of sports betting regardless of what's happening with that specific company.
And one of the concerns that the governor has basically said is have I now created a bigger problem for people who have addiction problems, for maybe financial problems. So we're seeing kind of like a little bit of a pushback, although our state did push forward back then.
Juravich: And Joe, what Chrissa just mentioned, Governor DeWine has been upfront saying that he regrets signing sports betting into law in an interview from last year. And he said it again recently, he called it a mistake. He said he wouldn't do it over again. I mean, that's unusual for a politician to say something like that, wouldn't you think?
Jo Ingles: I think though when it came up, he kind of reluctantly, if you look at it, he kind of reluctantly went along with it and so did some of the lawmakers. I mean there was a great push against it by some conservative Republicans actually because they, you know, they don't like the idea of gambling. It made them uncomfortable and I think that, you now, finally they got worn down.
They enough guardrails in here because There were some things added to the sports betting law to make it so that it had some guardrails, some safety. But that apparently isn't enough.
Juravich: Now, recently there were bills introduced, it's called the "Save Ohio Sports Act," and they would put some guardrails on the state's sports betting system, they're likened to, they say the sports betting is a freeway with no lines on it, no speed limits, no off-ramps, so they want to put some guards on it. Can anyone outline a couple of the guardraills? Yeah, so um
Bischoff: Under this bill that I guess there's three lawmakers unveiled, it would require gamblers to place their wagers at casinos and prohibit all betting on college sports and cap the amount and the frequency of the bets and limit the ability of sports bets to advertise or offer financial incentives. They wouldn't be allowed to use credit cards, no prop bets. So this is, this is a lot of guard.
Juravich: No credit cards. Is that a debit card, then, or you have to put cash somewhere? I'm not sure how they do it at the casino. I'm a gambler, so...
Bischoff: But I will say that gamblers will bet on anything. These prop bets, it's very curious. It's will this player make X number of baskets in the first quarter? Will this baseball player throw how many fastballs? It is very specific and it's almost limitless, all the different variations that you could come up with.
And sports betting, ginned up, I think, a billion dollars in revenue last year, according to the Ohio Casino Control Commission. I really think the horse is out of the barn on sports betting. And I think Ohio would have a hard time putting it all back into casinos.
Juravich: Yeah, and so Governor DeWine did an executive order last year to prohibit prop bets for collegiate sports, but he stopped short of doing the same thing with the professional sports. But that was after there was the whole Guardians pitcher scandal in Major League Baseball. So it was really in the news at the time. DeWine has said that he didn't anticipate the amount of advertising that would be So, I mean, did he think, Chrissa, did you think a lot of people would do this or something? Well, I think...
Loukas: We have seen the governor, how he's been really faithful on taking actions when it has to do with kids and safety and health. So I'm not sure what he thought or he did not think. I do know that he has spoken about possibly initially funding the new stadium with gambling, sports gambling.
And we do have one of the bills, I was talking with Senator, one Republican Senator Bill Blessing, who has a... Proposed bill in the Senate right now and he has introduced to, he's proposing a 2% fee on all sports bets and use that money to basically fund schools, fund K-12. So I can't speak on what the governor was thinking but I do know that if this moves forward that would probably be something likely for him to back up since he has already proposed to. Fund the new stadium with sports betting funds.
Juravich: Yeah, and Joe, everyone's a fan of a syntax, I guess, right? Not everyone.
Ingles: Well, yeah, you know, the legislature is looking for new revenue every day. And so whether they will go to this, you got to remember that these sports betting companies also give money to campaigns and, you know, so there's another whole piece of it there.
But, you know, I think that Governor DeWine is not comfortable, as we said with this. I think some of the lawmakers who initially voted for it are not comfortable. So I think we'll see something how far they go and how much they're able to do is the big question.
Juravich: And just to end on, I mean, it's very popular. Laura was just saying, and people will find anything to bet on. Ohioans have wagered more than $24 billion since it went live in January of 2023. It's a lot of money. Holy smokes, that's a lotta money. Do we know how much goes to the state? I was gonna, I don't know how that works. No, we don't. It's just a lot. I do know.
Bischoff: I do know that, you know, the state relies heavily on sin taxes. That refers to taxes on things like alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, gambling. And all of these things are, you know, things that people enjoy and but also may not be good for the public.
And so, You know, the government has an interest in reducing the amount of tobacco that people use because it's and maybe alcohol and the rest of it is public health issues, but at the same time there's a financial incentive for
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. And with us this week, we have Laura Bischoff from the Columbus Dispatch, Jo Ingles from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, and Chrissa Loukas from Spectrum News 1. So Chrissa, this is something we've been discussing for a while, school vouchers.
You recently did a report about that and the state is appealing. A Franklin County court judge is ruling on the Ed Choice expansion program. It was ruled unconstitutional and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals or the 10 district rather, how do I say that? The 10th District Court of appeals is scheduled to have a hearing on the case on May 12th. So remind us, just catch us up a little bit on what was before this Franklin County judge. So he ruled the Ed Choice expansion unconstitutional.
Loukas: So this is an initiative that is basically helping parents to take their kids from public schools and take them to a private or a charter school. So this initiative basically was expanded and they said, you know what, let's just take more kids or give the choice to more kids to go to a public school.
Now the state is appealing Franklin County judges ruling who said, It's unconstitutional basically to pick and choose where that money's going to go. We also have about 90% of our kids in Ohio, they are in public schools. So I was basically, when I did the story, I was talking both with one Republican, Jerry Serino, who is a support, he supports vouchers and he says, you know what, we have to give that choice and we have give kids the choice to go from.
A public school that may not be working for them to a private or a charter school. But then we're seeing the coalition in Ohio who is basically trying to fund public schools and is saying, you know what, you're taking money from public schools and you're giving them to private. So there is a little bit of a conflict there where we're saying, and critics are saying, you know what, public schools are the ones who need. So we're waiting to see about what's going to happen next.
Juravich: Yeah, you talked with William Phyllis. He's the executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding. Long name, and he's also a former principal. He used to be a superintendent. So he linked the voucher expansion to higher property taxes.
And he also said that private schools Result the results are not no better than public schools. Does he have evidence to back up that statement? He says the private schools aren't doing that much better than Public Schools. He calls them. He called them
Loukas: Welfare for the rich. And this is what the evidence that he says he has, he's been in, like you said, in public schools for a very long time. What he's seeing basically is the need from the public schools and what they need to do and some of the money that basically potentially could help them even more.
And what he said basically was that they don't have, they don't know whether they're using the money. So when the money goes to a private school or a charter school. They don't obey the same rules as public schools. So what William was saying was that we don't know how they're using it. There are no basically rules for them on how to use it. And we don't know if they're using it for the kids or to create something else. That's where his concern is coming from.
Juravich: Yeah, Joe, Laura, you both have been covering this voucher issue for a long time. But the expansion is kind of what this case is about, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Ingles: Yeah, because right now, even if you're a multimillionaire and your kid goes to a private school, you can get $600 a year. And you could be making 500 million a year or something, you're still getting that money. You get more if you make less, obviously, but the thing is that there have been different rules for public schools and private schools all along the way.
And we have seen some charter schools, some private schools that have failed. And those students have been, they come back into the public schools further behind than they were when they left them. So not all private schools are the same. And there are not a lot of standards in place for the private schools that there are for the public school.
Public schools have more oversight. There are far more rules for public schools. And I think that what Phyllis is talking about here is that when you've got all this money going to these private schools and you don't have the rules for them, you don't have the same playing field, so to speak, for them. What ends up happening is the taxpayers end up paying for it at the local level in the form of higher property taxes and the form higher maybe possibly income taxes.
Bischoff: There's also been, you know, it's clear that with the expansion of Ed Choice, the number of people accessing the vouchers exploded, but the enrollment in private schools did not increase at the same rate. And so really it is a way of shifting public money to assist families who have their kids in private and parochial schools. And so, and this is, it's very costly. You know, I think there were 88,000 students that were taking this, taking this up last school year and a cost of, you know, half a billion dollars to the state.
Juravich: And what you're meaning there is that the lawmakers, when they passed the expansion, they were saying more kids will go to private school, but that's not what they're seeing. They're seeing that the same kids are going to the private school. They're just using more state money.
Bischoff: Right, and you know, when you think about it, school choice started out as a movement to allow kids and families to pick better schools. You know, if they were in a neighborhood where their school was really faltering academically and was, you don't, you know. Your kids are in school for only a limited amount of time. You don't wanna just waste it with having your kid in some school where they're not learning. And so it started out that way. And but it's expanded exponentially in Ohio over the last 20 years
Ingles: Yeah and one thing too before you know a lot of times people beat up on the public schools but one thing we need to remember for public schools is they take everyone in their district right they take all the students there's no they can't they don't say no and a lot of students come to school with a lot needs that need to be met and they have to be met at the school inside the school by teachers and by you know people who are there.
And they're not necessarily subsidized, equipped. They maybe don't have the knowledge to deal with it. I mean, schools are having to be mom and dad to some of these kids. And it's a difficult job for a teacher to teach in a school. I'm sure it's hard in a private school too. But I mean anyone who thinks a teacher has an easy job, they should just go teach for a day and then talk about how easy it is because. It really isn't easy and you can hear the teachers talk about the situations they face and they face some really tough situations.
Loukas: One of the problems that came up when I was working on this story and I was really in awe was I was talking with parents as well and most parents don't want to go on the record, especially because we're TV and they don't want to show their face because they want to protect their kids and it's understandable.
But I love talking to them because you get to see the impact. One of the problems that parents were telling me who have their kids in private schools is that once that expansion came into play, they're seeing their private schools basically either taking away scholarships they used to use based on how much money that parent got from expansion.
They're seeing an increasing tuition. So I think we are going to see over the next few months especially, we may see some kids enroll back to public schools. But it's going to be interesting to follow and see what's happening with the population now, are you actually taking new kids in your schools or, or kids going back to public because the, of the increase of intuition.
Speaker 6: Hmm
Juravich: All right, well, coming up on the roundtable, we're gonna talk about the upcoming election and what gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton's campaign is saying about a 2019 visit police major house. That is when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
Speaker 7: You know, every day on "Up First," NPR's Golden Globe-nominated morning news podcast, we bring you three essential stories. At the heart of each story are questions. What really happened? What really mattered? What happens next? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and to follow the facts. Follow "Up First" wherever you get your podcasts and start your day knowing what matters and why.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. This is an hour where we talk all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us in the studio, we have Jo Ingles, senior reporter for the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau, Laura Bischoff, politics and government reporter for The Columbus Dispatch, and Chrissa Loukas, state house reporter for Spectrum News 1, making her debut on the roundtable this week.
So... Why vote in the May primary? There's nothing on the ballot, you say? Well, the candidates in contested races would beg to differ. The primary sets up the final slate of candidates for November and that includes statewide and state house races. Early voting is underway right now. There are some important competitive races. We're gonna highlight a couple a little bit later in the round table.
But first I wanted to get to the governor's race. The New York Times had a piece about the governor race last week. It focused on Ramaswamy being the anointed Republican candidate and that he has endorsements. He has a big war chest of nearly 40 million dollars. But also they highlighted what we know here in Ohio, that increasingly competitive race is happening now with Dr. Amy Acton. So I just wanted to get a take on Laura, the New York Times piece. I mean, it was an accurate summary of the race at the moment, but it was kind of like when I read it, I was like, this is stuff we already knew in Ohio. So the New York Times just uh paying attention to our governor's race.
Bischoff: Yeah, I think the New York Times just sort of dipped its toe into one of the flyover states to catch people up on the Ramaswamy Acton contest. It did a similar dip the toe in and report on what all the controversies happening at Ohio State. So you know, nothing, nothing new, but you're really following the race. I would say you should probably read and listen to guests on the roundtable.
Juravich: And so it's basically like it putting national attention to the fact that Ohio might have a competitive race for governor here. A Democrat hasn't won the governor's office in 15 years. So what do you make of what's going on right now with Ramaswamy being the front-runner, Amy Acton, Joe, what's your thoughts on the governor race big picture? We haven't even made it through the primary yet, but it already feels like an intense race.
Ingles: Well, it feels like the primary's already been decided, for sure, because it feels like Ramaswamy is by far and away the Republican. He's got a couple of challengers, but they both have challenges right now. And so he's projected to win it. And of course, Amy Acton is on the Democratic side. So it feels like the Primary really doesn't have anything going for it.
And if you look for at least in that race and if you look at what's happening in the governor's race, we're starting to see The campaign go after each other Rather than their primary opponents. So Vivek Ramaswamy when he goes out on the campaign trail He's not talking about his actual opponents in the primary. He's talking about Amy Acton so and and the other way around too, so I think that's the thing we're seeing.
Amy Acton is putting up decent numbers for someone who doesn't have a lot of political experience, political people behind her. And so that's one of the things that money talks. But the thing that, we always make a big deal in the media about fundraising numbers, and they are important. But if you look at, where those, what the dollars, what the ads come in from, they come in from this dark money stuff, a lot of it. So even if you have a candidate that has huge fundraising numbers, when the actual ads come out and the money is spent, we find that a lot these independent interest groups are able to make a big contribution into the success of a candidate.
Juravich: There was a recent NBC news story by Henry Gomez that came out and it detailed a 2019 police report taken at Dr. Amy Acton's home over what was termed, quote, a domestic dispute. No one was charged, no one was injured, but it certainly raised some questions. Laura you reported on this. Do we know where this police report from 2019? I mean, where did it come from? How did like Henry Gomez? Did he did he find it? I don't do we know anything about that?
Bischoff: You know, it's a Bexley police report. You know campaigns often do research on their own candidate as well as their opponents. I haven't talked to Henry about the origin of the story. But this is a 2019 report from Bexley. At the time Amy Acton was the Ohio Department of Health director. And in the in the time since Gomez's story broke, you know, Eric Acton issued a statement saying it was his fault. There were heated words, nothing to see here, et cetera. There were no arrests, no injuries. Um, so, you know.
Juravich: You basically, yeah, in your story, but it was basically like detailing that the governor's race has turned a little ugly six months before even the November election. Is that surprising?
Bischoff: Yeah, actually, it is kind of surprising, because it might hint that the race is closer than you'd think in a state in which Donald Trump won by, was it 11 or 12 points last time around? I think it was 11. Yeah. So, and then Ramaswamy's got the Trump endorsement. So maybe, yeah, maybe it's closer than we think, and it's going to, maybe that's going to continue to be heated all the way through November. Um, yay for us political reporters, I guess.
Juravich: Um, yeah, so, well, and the report is seven years old and it was never reported about, um, back in, well according to Henry Gomez's story, no one ever reported on it back in 2019.
Bischoff: Well that's because, you know, we don't have reporters who are checking the Bexley police log every single day. Apparently the neighbors didn't start wagging their tongues about the health director having the police at her house.
Ingles: And there weren't any charges that came out of that either, as Laura just pointed out. So I mean, you know, even if you're checking the Franklin County, you know, logs, you're not going to, if there weren t charges, you re not going to see that at the county-wide level.
Juravich: And the Gomez story quoted Governor DeWine as being disappointed and concerned that he wasn't notified about this at the time. Do we know if that, is that standard? Was she, was it someone who worked for you? Are you supposed to tell your boss that the police came to your house?
Bischoff: I would think if you're working for the governor, you would definitely want to let him know that the police came to your house.
Loukas: I think when you're in public office and you're serving, you know, people, you have to be transparent and basically make sure that your boss at this moment, the governor, should know about maybe a detail like that. But I think some, after the primary, I think we're, I'm so interested to see what's going to happen because I know we have the front runners right now and it's Amy Acton and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Some of the concern they both have some concerns coming up from community members. Some are saying Ramaswamy has never held office so they are concerned about that and then some others are were concerned about Amy Acton during the pandemic. Of course she she was really favorable on some of her actions that she took back then but there were also some state house Republicans who did not really favor pandemic restrictions. So I think after the primaries, when things are going to get more heated.
Juravich: There's also some news last week, Governor DeWine was debunking a Ramaswamy ad that says that Acton, when she was Ohio health director, was responsible for postponing the 2020 primary election. And he said, basically he said I told her to issue the order, the decision was mine. So DeWine is saying it was his decision and the ad makes it sound like it's her decision. So is this just more like, yeah.
Bischoff: I think he's trying to set the record straight. That was how it was. It wasn't, she wasn't kind of canceled the primary without the governor saying, do it.
Ingles: And I remember back then that I was doing stories, everyone was, about how they couldn't even get poll workers at the polls, because a lot of the poll workers were older folks who were very susceptible to COVID. And you got to remember this was at the time where there were a lot questions about COVID and not a lot answers.
It was before the vaccines even came You know, there were a lot of people who were afraid of it and then you get You know, there was the concern of getting a lot of voters who might be in one place who could, you know, spread COVID. And there was also the concern that a lot of voters would be disenfranchised if you held the election, because there was this public health threat and you're basically keeping them at home because you're not providing them with a way that they can participate in the election. There were a whole lot of questions. It was not an easy situation back then. I'm just trying to remind everyone what the.
Bischoff: It's yeah, it's kind of easy to Monday morning quarterback it but Joe's right. It was very Unprecedented
Juravich: Just to back up real quick, Ramaswamy does have two GOP challengers in the primary, as Joe was saying, so it's Kasey Pooch and Heather Hill. Tell me a little bit about their campaigns. I hear more about Kase Pooche than Heather Hill, just anecdotally, but are they expected to take votes away from Ramaswamy?
Ingles: I know I don't think so. I'm not anticipating that they're going to take much away I mean Heather Hill over the weekend there was a falling out with her lieutenant governor candidate so she's changed lieutenant governor candidates. Casey Pooch has said some things that are very controversial in his social media post and that's attracted him to some folks but it's cell. Made others steer clear of him. Neither of the candidates have shown that they are formidable candidates against Ramaswamy.
Loukas: My most recent interaction was with Casey Pooch because there was this huge thing that happened with a restaurant. He had an event planned and that event got canceled and then the restaurant owner, the family posted on social media saying we are against anyone who is basically either racist, or supports Nazis, and... Talking about Adolf Hitler and where that came from was, I believe back in August, Casey Putsch had published a video asking about, let's see what are the good things that Adolf Hitler did. So that was one instance where possibly the family saw because I only spoke with them off the record, but the problem came after they canceled. But. You know, it's a private restaurant, they reserve the right to cancel.
Juravich: Our reporter, George Shilcock, for WOSU News, interviewed the restaurant owner, Lescheta Lane's owner, who basically said to him that they, you know, it was a person who was renting the restaurant, they were gonna have an event, and then she found out these things later, and so then she decided to cancel the event, and Casey Putsch decided to move the event to a park. Right, so it was just, yeah.
Loukas: To be fair, what Putsch told me was that it was a misunderstanding. He spoke to me about his last name and what it means to overthrow the government.
Bischoff: He also challenged Ramaswamy to a game of cowboy and Indians and said not the feather kind, the dot.
Juravich: Oh, fascinating. Okay. So yeah, there's.
Ingles: There are so many things, and I don't think we want to give all the things that have been said on social media the oxygen of the show, but there have been a lot of things that have been controversial that KC Butch has said during this campaign.
Juravich: And it's certainly getting his name in the news, isn't it? All right. You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. And we're talking this week with Chrissa Loukas from Spectrum News 1, Laura Bischoff from the Columbus Dispatch, and Jo Ingles from the Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Bureau.
I wanted to talk about the primary election a little bit. There are there's a lot of talk about elections and election integrity and we do have some contested races. So I wanted to start with the secretary of state on the talk about election, election integrity, election security, free and fair elections. The secretary of State race is actually contested on both sides.
There's two Democrats and two Republicans running and only one candidate from each ticket will move on to November. There is a libertarian candidate running as well, named Tom Press. So let's talk about this basically. Joe, on the Democratic side, you did stories about the Secretary of State's race, right? We're gonna start there. The former lawmaker, House Minority Leader, Alison Russo, is running against Dr. Brian Hambly, a cancer doctor from Cincinnati. He's been on the campaign trail for a long time.
So when it comes to a statewide office like this, Republicans have held it for years, right, so. Talk to me about these two Democratic candidates running for Secretary of State.
Ingles: Well, Alison Russo is still a state lawmaker, but she was the leader of the Ohio House Democrats up until last summer. She said that she waited a while to jump into the race because she wanted to shepherd the budget through the process. She didn't want to leave and have someone else come in at that time.
She jumped in, I believe, in August. But by that time, Dr. Hambly, who is a cancer surgeon out of Cincinnati, he had been out there campaigning and he had making some points that tend to pick up some of the Democrats, for example, the redistricting issue. If you remember, Alison Russo was on the Ohio ballot board and so was the minority leader in the Ohio Senate And both of them kind of went along with the redistricting plan that was adopted back in 2024, as I have the right year.
Anyway, they went along with that plan and they have been criticized for it because it's allowed Republicans to say that the plan, the redistricting plan right now, the redistributing map was bipartisan. Of course, I've asked Alison Russo about that, and she said, well, the reason that they went along with it is they were shown maps that were a lot worse for Democrats, and they also felt that, I think that was 2023, actually, and in 2024 was when they went to the ballot with the redistricting amendment, and it failed. So that, you know, but she said there was the opportunity for that ballot issue to pass the following year and send it all back. So she had reasons why she voted for that, but then Dr. Hambly has been talking about that a lot and he's critical of how she handled that, so. Yeah.
Juravich: Yeah, let's hear a little bit from him about that.
Speaker 8: First, Representative Russo unfortunately voted with Republicans in 2023 for unconstitutional gerrymandered maps. I believe that was a mistake. Second, I think, especially for Secretary of State, corporate PAC money is an upstream problem in our democracy. These corporations have far too much power. That's why I have committed to raise more money than any Democrat ever for a down at office and to do it without taking one dime of corporate PAC money.
Juravich: And then here is Alison Russo's response.
Speaker 9: I felt like I made the smart and the right decision at the time because the reality is our redistricting process is absolutely broken. It was not going to function the way that it should. And so the choice I had to make was do we continue to put the pen in the hands of this Republican majority who refuses to draw fair districts and allow them to continue to gerrymander more? Or do we make some negotiations? And those negotiations were key because they restored the citizen-led referendum process. And it actually gives us a pathway to breaking the super majority in 2026.
Juravich: And any other updates on that race on the Democratic side? I know that both candidates have said that no matter who wins, they're going to support each other when facing the Republican in November.
Ingles: Yeah, they've both said they'll support each other. And there have been other points where they have kind of clashed on things, but it's been a nice race, really. I mean, you haven't had a lot of dirt flung like you have in the governor's race. And they have debated the way that redistricting's handled, the way the Secretary of State's office is handled, and voting rights kind of things. And so it's been, they've been debating issues. There is a lot of support on social media behind Hambly, even though he's a challenger, and he has been out there for a longer period of time getting his name out there, so.
Juravich: And your colleague, Sarah Donaldson, covered the GOP candidates and the Secretary of State's race. Its current state treasurer, Robert Sprague, he is term limited in that office. So he wants to take Frank LaRose's place as Secretary of state. Here's a little bit of audio from Robert Sprague.
Speaker 10: If we declare election day a holiday, I'd like for us to go back to in-person voting with an exception for everyone that has a valid absentee excuse.
Juravich: And he is facing retired Air Force intelligence officer, is it Marcel Stribich? Stribitch. Stribic. Stribcich. And let's hear a little bit from him.
Speaker 11: The core issue is qualifying eligibility up front. And so when you don't do that, then you end up trying to mess with the process later and what they're really trying to do is mitigate risk.
Juravich: I don't know if anyone else wants to take the Republican side, or I can have Joe continue with the Secretary of State's race. Yeah, go ahead, Joe. So this is the Republican Side of current treasurer Robert Sprague versus Marcel Stribich.
Ingles: Yeah, Marcel Stribich has gotten some support out in more rural areas. I know I was in Fayette County a couple weeks ago and I saw all kinds of Marcel Stribich signs. I didn't see one Sprague sign. That may not mean anything, but he has gotten support in more conservative areas of the state.
And he talks a lot about, you know, Property, you know like taxes and you know Kind of sometimes he sounds like a libertarian with some of the things he says Robert Sprague everyone kind of knows him from being the treasurer He's got the you know more of the party line He's been and you you know, he's someone who's got The backing of a lot of the Republicans. In fact, I think all of the republicans who have endorsed him at the State House. I think all who have have endorsed have endorsed him. So he tends to be the party favorite here, but Stribich does have some support and I think it'll be interesting to see how much that is and where it comes from.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Coming up, we're gonna talk about the primary for the Ohio Supreme Court, and plus we'll talk a little bit about Medicaid. That is when we continue on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us in the studio, we have Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, Jo Ingles, senior reporter for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau, and Chrissa Loukas, State House reporter for Spectrum News 1, making her debut on the Roundtable this week.
Another important primary race for Ohio is for the Ohio Supreme Court, where Republicans currently hold a 6-1 majority. And Democrat Jennifer Brunner. Is the only statewide elected office holder who is a Democrat. There are four Republicans running in the May primary in hopes of unseating Brunner. So one of these four will go on to the November election. And Laura, you've been covering this race. Could you give us a rundown of the four candidates and talk to me about, is it unusual to have four candidates in a primary like this?
Bischoff: I don't think it's unusual in that since the Republican legislature added party affiliation to candidates for Supreme Court and appellate court races, that has proven to be very decisive for Supreme court races. The Republicans have won every race since then. And so I think that the Republican Party sees this as a great opportunity to knock out Brunner, who's only eligible to run for one more term before she's aged out.
So you got four Republicans, Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, Ninth District Court Of Appeals, Judge Jill Flagg Lansinger, Second District Court of Appeals judge Ron Lewis, and former Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Colleen O'Donnell. O'Donnell is the daughter of Terrence O'Donnell who was on the Supreme Court for quite a while, and then Jill Lansinger is tangentially related by marriage to former Ohio Supreme Court Judge Judy Lanzinger. And then Ron Lewis is very close to the DeWine family. I think his mom and Fran DeWine were good friends over the years, and he's very close to Pat DeWine. And so it's interesting that three out of the four have some sort of family adjacent connection to the to the court.
Juravich: And so there's four running right now. Are they mounting any sort of campaign? Are they gonna, I guess judges don't have debates. I don't know, like what will help people make their decision in picking between these four?
Bischoff: Well, I mean, they're doing interviews with with news outlets. We wrote a story that posted it statewide. And Colleen O'Donnell has a known Republican campaign manager. The other three, I think, are just managing their own campaigns. I don't I really don't know who's the front runner or who's got the edge in this. So it's going to be I'm curious to see how it's gonna turn out.
Juravich: I'll be curious to see, you know, the percentage of votes and because sometimes people don't know how to vote for judges or exactly what they're voting for if they haven't heard much from the judges. So it'll be interesting because it is for the Ohio Supreme Court.
Jennifer Brunner is also suing to overturn the partisan label law, which the which a new state law requires in general elections for appellate and Supreme Court candidates. So does Jennifer Brunner want the Rs and the Ds taken away from beside their names on the ballot.
Bischoff: Yeah, that that's the goal of her of her lawsuit.
Juravich: And so she basically feels that judges should not have a political party. Have you covered this at all, Chrissa?
Loukas: Just, I think I've touched a little bit about the Ohio Supreme Court recently tossing the ban on judges endorsing political candidates. So that has been a decades-long ban there where justices cannot basically choose a political affiliation or endorse a political party. But now we're seeing that tossed on the side. Yeah, I think it's Ohio is the only state that is actually explicitly choosing to do that, if I'm correct.
Juravich: Laura, judges historically have been politically neutral, so basically the Ohio Supreme Court in a 5-1 ruling said judges and judicial candidates can make political endorsements. What do you make of that?
Bischoff: The the court majority decided that that was a First Amendment right to free speech for political for judicial candidates. It tossed out a long-standing rule that prohibited it was like a judge and judicial candidate rule that prohibited them from from doing this. And Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy said in the majority ruling like judges don't give up their First Amendment right to engage in political speech just because they're running for office. So you know, that's that's
Juravich: Interesting. So could the current Supreme Court justices who are the Republicans, could they endorse in this race for their new colleague, basically?
Bischoff: Yeah, I believe so.
Juravich: Okay.
Bischoff: It may not be a good idea. That was a point that the majority made in the ruling was like, just because you can say it doesn't mean you should.
Juravich: Yeah, with that competitive race with four people, that could get interesting if they all endorse somebody different.
Ingles: Yeah, but we have seen the justices, even before this, we've seen the justice's take stands on issues that indicate where they would stand on something. For example, they've talked about being anti-abortion and have made that pretty clear. And the other thing is that while judges are supposed to be non-partisan, I think anyone who follows the news could figure out.
You know kind of where they might lean but the other problem the the thing that they had before they had these partisan labels on the candidates you saw this drop-off when people got to the Ohio Supreme Court races they didn't always vote in them because they didn't know the names they didn't know the party affiliations since they've put that in now that drop- off that big drop- doesn't exist so I think one of the arguments would be that that has encouraged people to vote in that race that wouldn't have ordinarily voted in that place.
Bischoff: Sure, it's a matter of giving voters a little bit more information.
Loukas: Right. There was a position from both parties about that, about tossing away the ban. And I believe Justice Pat Fischer said that it may create basically, it could have an immobilizing effect on the judicial system in Ohio. So I think we're going to see what happens. But, you know, we have to remember, justices are also people who have... Beliefs and ideologies, and they give an oath, so…
Juravich: All right, I guess we'll see. Yeah. We only have a couple of minutes left, and I don't know if we can do Medicaid in a couple minutes, but we'll give it a try. So Laura, you reported on changes coming to Medicaid and how that could cost Ohio up to $3 billion in state and federal funds over the next two years. Is the state doing anything to prepare for loss? Do we know how many people could be impacted?
Bischoff: So yeah, the federal big, beautiful bill imposes a bunch of changes on states on how they can raise money to help fund their portion of Medicaid. Medicaid is a public, it's a federal and state-funded healthcare program for about three million Ohioans. So it's covered a ton of people in the state. And so.
The state, there's two state lawmakers, actually three, who have introduced two different bills, one in the House, one in Senate that are companion bills, to change how Medicaid is structured. Right now we have a managed care organization system and they wanna change it to this administrative services organization. That would be a massive shift for Ohio. But they say it would save between 450 and $850 million. A year. And so with these federal changes coming, it may force a conversation of do we want to stick with the managed care organization model or should we do something else?
Juravich: Yeah, can Chrissa or Joe, can you quickly in about a minute explain where the cost savings would come in if they make this change because normally changing a program costs money to make changes.
Loukas: They're trying to take away the middleman and basically simplify the program, simplify everything and have, for example, if I'm somebody who depends on Medicaid, go in one place, have everything in one space, where the examples that they gave us during the press conference, bipartisan by the way, where both parties are supporting it, they said, right now we have two insurances on one side, another two insurance on the other, and then we have the programs. So, they're trying to simplify and reduce the costs. Mm-hmm
Juravich: Joe, do you have anything else to add? We have 30 seconds.
Ingles: Connecticut has gotten rid of the middleman, and Connecticut has saved about 800 million a year. So it can be done? The lawmakers are looking at that saying, yep, it can done, but let's be clear that this has an uphill battle ahead of it because a lot of lawmakers, you know, they don't want to do this.
Bischoff: Hinge on who's the next governor.
Juravich: That's very true. This has been the Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. Thank you to Laura Bischoff, politics and state government reporter for Columbus Dispatch. Thanks, Laura. Thank you. Jo Ingles, senior reporter for the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau. Thanks, Joe. Always fun. And Chrissa Loukas, state house reporter for Spectrum News One. Thank you, Chrissa. Thank you so much for having me. This has been All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.