It wasn’t a surprise that Lynda O’Connor had an embarrassing defeat on the Lakota school board. She shouldn’t have run for another term after the mess she caused over the last few years. Her brand was down in a big way and instead of trying to right the ship, she dug in and alienated all the people she should have been working with. The voter turnout was unusually high for a Lakota school board race, but that is largely due to the increased interest from the scum bags and pot-smoking losers who voted to kill babies and legalize drugs, who went in the direction of Julie Shaffer and Doug Horton. During the election, I saw all of them as the same, but it was Lynda who I felt had personally betrayed me, and I couldn’t support her. This hold your nose, and voting for someone who has done a lousy job isn’t an excellent way to conduct elections. Lynda deviated from the original plan and decided to move to the hard left and work against Darbi Boddy, and after two years of mismanagement, the results were evident in the election. Unfortunately, Lynda dragged Russ Loges down on the ticket because the GOP was split and not united behind the candidates. When you don’t have the Central Committee lined up with the desired outcome, it’s never a good thing. And it’s even worse to tell them to deal with the party leadership picks and to accept bad behavior. Lynda O’Conn0r was horrible as a school board president, especially after all the support that was thrown her way. She used people to get power, then abused that power overtly to destroy a popularly picked school board member in Darbi Boddy and cause problems between her and Issac Adi. And the results were evident well before voters cast a vote on how election night was going to turn out.

I was in Japan, far away from Ohio when it became apparent to me what the cost of Lynda seeking re-election was going to have on Butler County politics. Over the previous two years, we had seen a couple of incidents where party leaders had abused their power to attack upcoming talent or long-standing respected leaders. Such a case was what Sherrif Jones did to Roger Reynolds, essentially sticking the label of a felon onto the former auditor for entirely personal reasons, which then of course alienated the base of the Republican Party. Then, of course, Darbi was a popular pick, and Lynda went on a campaign of personal destruction against her, which resulted in two years of bad branding. I told Lynda on a phone call about a year ago how to fix it, and she ignored the advice. She dug in and name-dropped a few people she thought was important then continued to support horrendous behavior on the school board and aligned herself closer to Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper. And in the process, she made herself indistinguishable. People who don’t understand these things so well put their support behind her believing they had control of the party and the people in it like some kingly aristocrat and they resorted to a lot of pushing and shoving to get everyone aligned, which was not going to work with the Tea Party types in the Republican Party. Then, to make matters worse, they sought to destroy the Tea Party of West Chester to make their point more vocal, which essentially sealed the fate of Lynda O’Connor in politics. She had used the West Chester Tea Party to advance herself as a brand for the Lakota school board. And when she turned against those values, she lost the only real support she ever had.

After I returned, I attended a Central Committee meeting in Liberty Township after there were some political shenanigans in West Chester with their Central Committee, and it was obvious that the establishment types were going to screw everything up. The RINOs wanted appeasement, and the MAGA types wanted authenticity, so there was going to be an impasse, and it was just going to have to play out. Republicans everywhere, locally and nationally, have gotten into a lot of trouble trying to appease evil, and it has caused them to work with Democrats on all kinds of Marxist issues and has essentially pulled the country away from its foundation and more toward socialism and Marxism all because they wanted to “hold their nose and support the party.” For the preservation of a party that only wanted to live, not actually to represent voters’ values. That has left people who have values and want to see those values supported in politics hungry for accurate representation. That’s why Trump is running for president as opposed to all the other Republican offerings they have tried to give us over the last few decades. And with all the excellent work that has been done, a lot of people in the Republican Party didn’t get it. I explain it to them voluminously, but they don’t have the mind to listen. They think they know better, and the best they can give you is to hold your nose and put up with what your “betters” can provide you. They emphasized that they knew better what that was, and everyone should get in line and deal with it. Support Lynda because she didn’t want to challenge Ann Becker for the open West Chester trustee position because Ann was in trouble over trans rights, so Lynda screwed up and ran again after two years of serious mistakes, and everyone thought it was going to work out great?

A political party either represents voters, or it doesn’t. There have been times that I have loved being affiliated with the Republican Party and have been very proud of what we have had in Butler County. But then, after these last few years, since Trump has been out of office and everyone has snapped back into their true natures, we have seen a lot of embarrassment that reminds me of the old Bob Shelly days with Michael Fox. Party politics, arm twisting, deception, all the kinds of things that made people run to Ross Perot or Donald Trump. And they will continue to run because they don’t want to support the politics of the machine. I’m not interested in politics to hold my nose and vote for some loser, all for the “party.” I want to see things run well with constitutional value. But don’t lecture anybody on supporting the endorsed candidates as a base of loyalty to the Republican Party. Lynda went after Darbi, and the party should have helped the “Republican Endorsed” person. And Sheriff Jones worked to destroy the life of a very popular Republican in Roger Reynolds, and nobody stepped in to help him. And nobody stepped in to save the West Chester Tea Party when a media campaign went against them and essentially destroyed them for the time being, at least their meeting venue. When the RINOs decide to fight the actual base and future of the party, nobody should have expected good results for Lynda. Lynda had to earn those votes. Instead, she went on a crusade of personal destruction and acted as if she were entitled to the position purely off the backs of party affiliation. And some of the back-bending endorsements from people I know were concerned that they would be cut off from the money machine, were reprehensible. And the results reflect just how bad it was. When the approach to an election was filled with such ridiculously stupid behavior, the results should surprise nobody.

Rich Hoffman