I started this blog, and the videos that go with it, fifteen or twenty years ago for one reason. I needed a platform that would stand up to the tax increases coming out of the Lakota Local School District. I went to Lakota schools. I live in Liberty Township. Affiliation with a school district in your own community does not oblige you to throw money at it. That is a dumb way to run a household, and an even dumber way to run a township. School boards use that money, more often than not, for left-wing political control. I am getting ready to say more about who sits on those boards and who gets elected to them. I have been part of these campaigns forever. I am happy to see more people involved now than used to be.
This is a shout-out. I was pleased to open the mailbox and find Diane Hughes’s piece. Good on her. Good on Kristi Ertle. Good on Jamie and Todd Minniear. More people in the background than I am naming here are working this issue the way it has to be worked. For the 2026 Lakota levy, the answer is still no. It went down in flames last time. They went out, raised some money, raised enough to fight another campaign, and came back. I talked to Kristi Ertle about this very thing during the last campaign. They knew Lakota would return with a smaller swipe if they failed. They would break it up and make it look easier. That is what they are doing.
What Landed in the Mailbox, and Why It Matters More Than a Podcast
This is essentially a renewal dressed up for the 2026 ballot. Diane and the people around her have been very good about saying so. The mailer is great material. The bullet points are clean. This isn’t just a podcast or a blog that updates when I get around to it. It is a traditional mailer, which is still how a lot of voters in Butler County like to take in an issue. Your information is in the mail. They did a nice job pointing out why you should not vote for this thing.
Paragraph two on that sheet is the whole argument. The original one-mill bond will pay off this year. For a $450,000 home, which is most everybody in Liberty Township and a fair description of what a house is worth around here, you will see $157 in reduced tax liability the following year. Stay with that number. Congratulations. You are about to get that money back if you do not hand it right back to the district.
I used to do this work by standing in the middle of it and saying no, no, no, and handing out statistics. They are doing a better job than I did. They are a better group. They stick together better. The information is nice and clean, and it arrives the way a lot of people who still vote in Butler County want it. Not everybody wants a website. Not everybody wants a blog. A lot of them want it in the mailbox, with the details on one sheet. There are your details.
The Math on a $450,000 House
Here is the line that matters. On a $450,000 house, you are voting this year to get tax money back.
Ohio measures these things in mills. One mill is one dollar of tax for every thousand dollars of assessed value, and residential property is assessed at 35 percent of market value. On the county auditor’s market-value scale that school campaigns actually use, that works out to about $35 a year per mill for every $100,000 of home value. A one-mill bond on a $450,000 house is four and a half times $35. That is $157.50. The mailer rounded it to $157. Either way, it is your money.¹
The district will tell you a different story, and you should hear it so you know what you are voting against. After voters rejected the big ask in November 2025, Lakota came back with a bond issue of about $223.5 million, listed at 2.20 mills, or $77 per $100,000 of market value, on the November 3, 2026 ballot. They say collections would not start until 2029, lined up with older bond debt rolling off at the end of 2028, and that the rate you pay would not go up. The Journal-News reported the other half of that sentence, which the district does not lead with. People opposing the replacement point out that a no vote is how you actually reduce the school property tax when that debt expires.² The mailer is aimed at the piece that pays off now. Let it pay off. Do not replace it.
A $100,000 evaluation is the figure newspapers still use, and it is the wrong way to measure real estate in Butler County. You cannot buy a tool shed for $100,000 anymore. They nailed it by putting a $450,000 house on the flyer. Some homes here are worth more than that. Some are worth less. That is the real number.
They Lost Big in 2025 and Came Back Smaller, Just as Predicted
Last November, Lakota asked for a bond on the order of $506 million, a sum both the district and Liberty Township Trustee Todd Minniear treated as the largest school levy request in Ohio history. It failed. Unofficial results had about 61 percent of voters rejecting it.³ That is not a close call. That is a community saying no.
I told Kristi, during that campaign, that a loss would not be the end of it. They would raise money and return with something easier to sell. Break it into pieces. Call it a renewal. Tell people the rate does not go up. That is the play, and it is the play they ran. The board voted in June 2026 to put the smaller facilities bond on this November’s ballot. The pro-levy campaign now says the rate you pay today is the rate you would pay tomorrow.⁴ That is the sales pitch. The answer is still no. If the old debt is about to die, let it die. Give the money back. If Lakota gets voters in the 50% range, they will be inspired to come back again thinking they are weakening the community.
Lakota runs on about a quarter-billion dollars a year. That has not been enough for them. The more you give, the more they ask. The more they ask, the more gets wasted. Vote no, and you are not starving a classroom. You are declining to extend a debt the district already told you was on a schedule to end.
Public Education Mimics a Family and Still Fails at the Job
We have talked a lot about GOP politics. Put five people in a room, and you usually get five disagreements. Those five will talk about three of the others the minute the three leave. Human beings are built that way. Our minds construct themselves around a family structure. Parents. A household. Dinner. Whatever you watched together after dinner. Public schools try to mimic that basic arrangement. They have never captured it. Public education was well-intentioned and has failed at the human part of learning. That is what we are against here.
People bond up to achieve anything in a Republican Party, or even in an anti-tax campaign, from different points of understanding. We learned differently. We had different parents and different household rituals. It is hard to make that into a team. In politics, you still have to agree on something. The ballot card is that something. It tells you who to vote for. There is a barcode on it. Scan it, and it comes up on your phone, so you are not standing in the booth trying to remember the names.
I can tell you, going down that list, that there have been debates about every one of these people. Are they good? Are they pure? Are they the kind of people we should have primaried? Would a Democrat in that seat be better? Here is the thing you actually need to think about in this election. The Lakota levy, for sure. We are in a stage of American government where a lot of money has been confiscated. We have been taxed too high for too long. Government does not get smaller by itself. You have to take the rebates when they come due. That is what this levy vote is. It is about getting money back.
If you have a $450,000 house, the district’s argument amounts to this: can’t you give us that $157 so we can keep doing what we have been doing? Purple hair. Confused sexual policy in the bathrooms. Teachers who develop the wrong kind of relationship with students. A student is always in a weaker position than the adult in the room. Every school year we get angry at a school board for not taking a hard stance, and we ask where the moral authority went, and why people we pay good money to teach valuable things behave badly and then hide behind the institution when they are caught. Should we take money away from a system that lets us down like that? Yes. Should we take it back since the rate is already too high and needs to come down? Yes. You deserve that $157.50 on a $450,000 home. Diane and the gang put the reasons on paper. I think they do it better than I used to.
The Slate Card Is the One Thing a Party Can Agree On
When I show up at a local Republican picnic, I am friendly. I shake hands. That part is real, and it is good. I go to a lot of them. I do not go to all of them. I can’t attend everything, and I would like to attend more. You can be decent in the room and still, on the drive home, not like somebody very much. Most of that is not ideology. It is the way we learned to communicate inside a family. Families matter. Bloodline matters. Call it God’s design or call it the long argument I have been writing about in other places: the failure in the first household became everybody else’s failure down the line. A political system still has to get to something like fifty percent plus one. Otherwise you get a 20 or 30 percent faction deciding the election for everybody else.
I learned that lesson in 1992. I supported Ross Perot. He took about 19 percent of the vote, pulled it away from the Republican, and we got Bill Clinton, who should never have been president. Clinton was a disaster. Three candidates on the ballot will do that. You have to work it out with other people if you want a majority. There is a hard 50 percent of Republicans way over on one side, and people are standing on the line.
Nancy Nix and I have talked about this. Nancy is great. She is sweet. I love her mom. I love her sister. She knows how I feel about her. I love her husband. They are good people. I think Bob is probably more politically aligned with me than she is. She is a very nice person. My wife is a nice person. I would say my wife would probably be a Democrat if she were not married to me. It is impossible to live in a house with me, and share a bed with me, and be a Democrat. It could not happen. I do not like Democrats. I can still sit down with people. One skill I actually have, when applied to anyone outside myself, is leadership. I know how to bring people to the one thing they agree on and use that to get the direction right. That is what the Republican slate card is. That is why you vote to get your tax money back instead of penalizing yourself by renewing a subsidy to a progressive incubation factory. Lakota is a serious tax burden on this community. Take the money. Dial the tax back. Do not keep growing it.
They will say you are only paying the same money you have always paid. Give that money back to yourself and put it toward something else. It is not a lot of money in the scheme of one household. It is a lot of money when you multiply it by the households inside the Lakota district. They do not need it. They need to dial it back so the rest of us can get something that looks like budget control.
Running in the Black Is How You Get a Rebate
Republicans, whatever else you want to say about them, do not spend every dollar they get. They tend to run in the black. That is how you get options. Ohio just showed the trick at the state level. On October 1, 2026, Governor Mike DeWine signed the bill suspending the state gas tax for 90 days. The gasoline tax is 38.5 cents a gallon. The diesel tax is 47 cents. Lawmakers covered it with $725 million out of the General Revenue Fund so road and bridge work would not stop, and they did it because the state was running ahead of its spending. Collection drops to nearly nothing from early October through January 2, 2027.⁵ A lot of work in the background made that possible. George Lang and plenty of others put time into it that they will not brag about. The man who carried a lot of that is more modest than I am. He will not tell you how much work he did.
I have said bad things about DeWine. I had a picture of myself with him this year, and people asked how I could do that. He was the lockdown governor. He put the health department in charge of ordinary life. He has been a RINO for years. All of that is true. I think of him as a Yellow Springs Democrat who ended up with an R after his name. Yellow Springs is a hard place to drive through without smelling marijuana somewhere on the street. It is a liberal pocket, Clifton Gorge over there with it, a peculiar little part of the state. The DeWines are nice people. Fran DeWine makes great cookies. I like them. I think he is a decent person. I do not think he is a very strong Republican. Over the years, I have worked with him. People I respect have worked with him. Sitting down with somebody is not the same thing as surrendering your own politics. Debate is good. People do not have to like each other. They can talk about each other when they are out of the room. I attribute most of that to upbringing, not a platform failure.
He signed the gas-tax suspension. I was proud of that rebate. He knows Vivek Ramaswamy is coming in to continue tax work that didn’t get finished this term. Vivek worked with Trump. I saw them in Vandalia. They are going to be close, and that will help Ohio. Over the next few years, there is a real chance to save a lot of money on taxes in this state and get business innovation moving, especially with the people who actually build things. The same logic applies in Liberty Township. You only get the rebate if somebody was willing to run in the black long enough for the debt to end.
The Names on the Card, and Why They Do Not Have to Agree
The card is strong. Warren Davidson is on it. I have talked to Davidson recently about the votes he goes against President Trump. At Vandalia, Trump said nice things about him and called him out to that audience, because Davidson is a sincere person. His office is at the end of my road. I can walk over there in about four minutes. If you do not know the building, it sits next to Right to Arms, where they sell guns. He is a solid congressman. He is on the card.
Jon Husted is on it for the Senate. I will do a whole piece on Jon, which he deserves. I was glad to see him out there saying what he has been saying. Diane Mullins is on it. She is a pastor. Does she get along with everybody who has been treated as mainstream for a long time? Probably not. I come out of what people call the religious right. I love those people. They are fire and brimstone on ethics and on law and order. They do not put up with much. They are not happy with Lakota’s moral position, and they do not want more money going to a school system that does not represent moral order. They like their churches. The churches do a good job.
Within about a mile and a half of my house in Butler County, counting quickly, there are nine churches. I have come to think of churches as a hidden part of good government. The more real church participation you have, and the more of those churches are actually around, the better the quality of the place. People can behave badly on Saturday and ask forgiveness on Sunday. That is at least better than having no ethics at all.
Put the people on this card in a room, and they will not agree on much. Thomas Hall and Jennifer Gross can fight about nine different things. I have watched them, over a long period, fight, then hug, and do good work together on the things that mattered. That is the job. Find the one thing they agree on. Do not build the meeting around the things they do not agree on. Warren Davidson and President Trump have had differences. I have talked to Davidson about those differences. He will tell you he is trying to be a free thinker and still be supportive. He is a good, honest man. There are good, honest people in this, even when they are not identical.
We can all agree that the Lakota levy is a disaster. Vote no on it. It does not matter where you enter the party. You can be right on the 50 percent line, half a step from becoming a Democrat. You can be a hard Republican. My wife is more than a 50 percent Republican. There are things, helping people who are down and out, where her instincts run softer than mine. She would probably like a lot of Lakota teachers because they are well-intentioned. Call her 60 percent, ten points into Republican territory. I am a 99.99999999 percent Republican. You can’t go much farther and still be in the conversation. Jonathan Edwards is conservative. That is where I am. I completely understand that point of view. My wife is nicer than I am. We are married, and we work it out. A lot of Republicans fit somewhere between those two spots. Bob Nix and I are probably close on most things. Nancy and I do not argue. I have never argued with her. She is too decent for that. We would still disagree on things. There have been times I was a no, no, no, and she brought me to a yes, not because she is nice, but because the logic was better and I was willing to hear it. You have to be willing.
All of these Republicans, and what we do together, comes down to the thing we mostly agree on. Stick to it. Build the party around it. They really did that in paragraph two of this mailer.
The People Who Built the Piece, and Why I Am Glad They Did
There is a lot of good material on that sheet. They give you the reasons. I am not going to overdo it. Jamie Minniear, super. Todd Minniear, super. Kristi Ertle, super. Diane Hughes, super. One thing people can rally around is sitting in that paragraph and putting it in the mail. This is a great mailer. Great campaign work.
I remember when we used to fight a Lakota levy and I had to be at the center of it. I know how hard it is. They are doing it better than we did. We were learning. They are better at it than we were. I am happy to say that. I see a sharp hand in deciding to identify the hot issue: the $450,000 home and the $157 you get back if you vote no. I believe Kristi came up with that line. There is a lot of talent on this side of the issue. I love seeing them grow and get better. They are smart. They are the future of politics in Liberty Township and Butler County. I am proud they are affiliated with churchgoing people. They are solid. They did a good job pointing at the real issue—$ 450,000 value. Vote no. Get back $157.50. They even broke it out further down the card, which is better still.
Years ago, when I was in the middle of these fights, some people thought I was using Lakota to promote myself. I was writing books. I was on WLW. I will not pretend I never wanted the radio time, or that I never wanted the books and the other projects to move. I did not want to talk about a Lakota levy all the time. I did not want to be involved. I got involved because no one else was stepping up. That is no longer the situation. The bench is deeper. The work is cleaner. I am glad to be out of the center of it.
Vote No, and Give the Money Back to the People Who Earned It
The bottom line, for anybody who only wants the reason, is this. Why is the answer on Lakota still no? Because you want your $157 back. Lakota owes you that. They have not spent the money well. We already give them a quarter-billion-dollar budget every year, and it is not enough, and they keep asking. Vote for Republicans who run in the black. That is how you get options. That is how you get money back. That is why the state could suspend the gas tax. Republicans have been in power long enough and held the line long enough to give some of it back. The same thing is sitting in front of you locally. This one-mill bond is about to be paid off. It is time to get that money back.
Vote no. You get some of your own money back next year. That is a good vote. It is a big no for me. It is a huge no. Good work to everybody who built the case, and good work to Diane and the gang. I am proud of what they have done. They did it better than I was used to, and I love seeing that. If you are new to this fight, this is the issue. A school district is not entitled to a renewal just because a bond is about to die. Let it die. Keep the $157.50.
Notes
1. Ohio taxes residential property on 35 percent of market value. One mill equals $1 per $1,000 of assessed value, which is $35 per $100,000 of market value. A one-mill levy on a $450,000 house is 4.5 × $35 = $157.50. The mailer figure of $157 is that arithmetic, rounded. Lakota’s own 2026 ballot language prices 2.20 mills at $77 per $100,000 of county-auditor market value, which is the same $35-per-mill scale. See the district’s Resolution to Proceed, filed for the November 3, 2026 election; Butler County Board of Elections certification deadline: August 5, 2026.
2. Lakota Local Schools, board action of June 9, 2026, placed a bond of $223,483,492 on the November 3, 2026 ballot, average 2.20 mills, estimated at $77 per $100,000, first due in calendar year 2029. The district says an existing bond of about 2.2 mills ends as the new one would begin, so the rate would not rise. Journal-News, October 2, 2026, “Lakota Schools voters to decide on bond tax for new, expanded school buildings,” notes that opponents treat a defeat as the chance to cut the tax when the old debt expires. Both claims should be read together. “No increase” means they want you to replace a tax that is ending. A no vote is how the ending actually shows up on the bill.
3. Cincinnati Enquirer, November 4–5, 2025, “Lakota Local Schools’ historic levy fails.” The November 4, 2025 request, on the order of $506 million and described by the district and by Trustee Todd Minniear as the largest school levy ask in Ohio history, failed with about 61 percent voting no. Enquirer, October 28, 2025, “Lakota’s ‘last resort’ historic levy divides board candidates, voters.”
4. Pro-levy campaign site Vote For Lakota (lakotaforkids.com), and Lakota’s facilities page, “Lakota Board Approves November 2026 Ballot Issue for Facilities Plan,” June 17, 2026, updated September 12, 2026. The district’s line is that the 2.2-mill bond replaces expiring debt and does not raise the rate. Local share is given as about $223 million after roughly $77 million in Ohio Facilities Construction Commission co-funding, down from a prior proposal near $400 million. Early in-person voting in Butler County began October 6, 2026. Election Day is November 3, 2026, with polls open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Ohio photo ID is required.
5. Governor Mike DeWine signed House Bill 519 on October 1, 2026, suspending Ohio’s 38.5-cent gasoline tax and 47-cent diesel tax for 90 days, funded with $725 million from the General Revenue Fund so state and local road work would continue. The pause runs from about October 4, 2026, through January 2, 2027. Cincinnati Enquirer / Columbus Dispatch, October 1, 2026; Ohio Senate President Rob McColley, September 30, 2026. The bill moved after Vivek Ramaswamy called for the holiday. A surplus on that scale is what “running in the black” looks like when a party decides to give money back.
6. Butler County Republican slate for November 3, 2026, includes Vivek Ramaswamy for governor, Jon Husted for U.S. Senate, Warren Davidson for Congress in the 8th District, Nancy Nix for county auditor, Michael V. Ryan for county commissioner, Jennifer Gross (House District 45), Thomas Hall (House District 46), and Diane Mullins (House District 47), along with the statewide row and the judicial row. Ohio Republican Party Butler County slate card, September 2026; Butler County GOP, “Who’s on the GOP ticket?”; Cincinnati Enquirer, October 1, 2026, “Who’s running for what in Butler County.” Sheriff Jones is not on this ballot line, but he remains part of the law-and-order bench this county has relied on.
7. Ross Perot took 18.9 percent of the national popular vote in 1992. Bill Clinton won the presidency with 43.0 percent of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes; George H. W. Bush took 37.4 percent. The spoiler lesson is the one I have used ever since. A faction that doesn’t get to fifty doesn’t get to govern. It gets to crown the other side.
8. On teacher misconduct: every year, in districts all over the country, cases come out of schools in which an adult used a position of authority over a minor. Those cases should be read as allegations until a court finishes them, and as convictions where a court already has. The point for a levy vote is not any one case. It is that a community paying a very large tax has a right to expect moral order from the institution, and a right to stop extending debt when that order is not there. The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce holds public records on certified-employee discipline.
For Further Reading
Lakota Local Schools, Resolution to Proceed on the November 3, 2026 bond issue, Butler County, principal amount $223,483,492, 2.20 mills, $77 per $100,000 of auditor market value.
Journal-News, “Lakota Schools voters to decide on bond tax for new, expanded school buildings,” October 2, 2026.
Cincinnati Enquirer, “Lakota Local Schools’ historic levy fails,” November 5, 2025, and “Lakota’s ‘last resort’ historic levy,” October 28, 2025.
Vote For Lakota, lakotaforkids.com, pro-levy campaign page for the November 3, 2026 bond.
Lakota Local Schools, “Lakota Board Approves November 2026 Ballot Issue for Facilities Plan,” June 17, 2026.
Butler County Board of Elections, elections.bcohio.gov, for early-vote hours, polling places, and photo-ID rules. Early voting opened October 6, 2026.
Ohio Republican Party, 2026 Butler County Republican slate card; Butler County GOP, “Who’s on the GOP ticket?”
Cincinnati Enquirer, “Gov. DeWine signs bill to suspend Ohio gas tax for 90 days,” October 1, 2026. House Bill 519.
Ohio Senate, Rob McColley, “Senate Approves Gas Tax Suspension,” September 30, 2026.
Federal Election Commission, 1992 presidential general election results, for the Perot share and the Clinton plurality.
Butler County Auditor, for the parcel-level tax bill on any house in Liberty Township or West Chester. The mailer’s $450,000 example is the right scale for this township. The $100,000 example used in older newspaper copy is not.
Rich Hoffman
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About the Author: Rich Hoffman
Rich Hoffman is an author, political consultant, and strategic advisor based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the creator of The Politics of Heaven—a unique framework that connects biblical theology, ancient history, and modern power structures to explain how moral alignment and spiritual forces shape global events. Blending real-world political experience with deep research into archaeology, UFO phenomena, and suppressed historical narratives, Hoffman offers compelling commentary on topics ranging from ancient civilizations and the Dead Sea Scrolls to modern populist movements, paranormal continuity, and leadership strategy in chaotic environments. As the author of The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and the forthcoming Politics of Heaven, he brings a grounded yet provocative voice to media discussions, supported by firsthand experiences and a cross-disciplinary approach that bridges science, history, and theology. For interviews, speaking engagements, or expert analysis, visit richhoffmanbooks.com or contact directly via phone at 513-307-5815 or email at rhoffman@richhoffmanbooks.com. If you’ve seen the movie, Disclosure Day and want to talk about it and the implications of Presidnet Trump’s UAP disclosures, let me know and we can bring some color to your coverage. https://richhoffmanbooks.com/media-inquiries-broadcast-topics-and-contact-info/?frame-nonce=ad51e7ecba I do have a firsthand UFO encounter to discuss.
