I thought it was going to be a secret for a while, but it was announced at the Nancy Nix fundraiser on February 21^st, 2025, that Michael Ryan, the Hamilton City Council member and Vice Mayor, was planning to run for one of the commissioner openings that were coming up in November of 2026.  I have felt for a long time that if only T.C. Rogers, one of the current commissioners in Butler County, had another friendly vote, lots of good things could happen for a community that has over 400,000 people and has the potential for some of the best economic output anywhere in the United States, or even the world for that matter.  If another commissioner could help with the critical free market philosophy, lots of upward mobility for a lot of people would be created.  Upon hearing this news, I first thought that Michael would be a perfect replacement for the current commissioner, Cindy Carpenter.  I haven’t been a fan of hers since she started, but her career path fell off the road last year when she was caught campaigning for a Democrat in Middletown, Ohio.   There is a lot of talk about Cindy winning eight straight elections even though she has a lot of detractors in the Republican Party.  I would argue that the reason she holds up so well to Democrat challengers is because she is essentially a Democrat who puts an “R” next to her name to win elections in a very conservative county.  I think this campaigning in Middletown for Democrats thing will hurt her now in ways she’s not used to, so I think she’s very vulnerable.   We’re in a new day of politics, and putting up with these RINOs has been something that Central Committees have not been willing to do, especially when they have an opportunity to get a MAGA type of officeholder.  And that is precisely what Michael V. Ryan is.

My wife has been very busy with family business lately.  To run a family well takes a massive commitment sometimes, and my wife is the kind of person who will drop everything at the drop of a hat to help my two daughters with life as it’s happening.  This leaves me going to some of these vital community functions by myself a lot.  And at Nancy’s fundraiser, I talked too much to too many people to find a seat in the vast crowd.  Nancy Nix always does a great job with these events, which are always well-attended.  On this particular evening, it was being held at the Elks Club in Liberty Township, which is a favorite venue of mine.  It holds a lot of people, and she always brings in big-time comedy acts to entertain people during a nice dinner provided by the Spinning Fork restaurant that facilitates the club.  The comedians were Jeff Jena, Dave Dugan, and Lou Santini, so they were not second-rate acts, so seating had some priority.  If my wife had been with me, we would have found a seat and held it near people we usually associate with.  But Jeff Jena was acting as the master of ceremonies, and he was getting impatient. People were still talking as it was time to serve dinner and start the show.  So I needed to stop shindigging and get to a seat.  I had been talking to Michael Ryan about several county and city topics, and he saw my dilemma and said that I could sit with him and his wife, along with others from city councils in not just Hamilton but also nearby Middletown. 

Michael and I have had a lot of discussions over the years about the potential of Butler County, and as a younger guy, he has reminded me of a lot of up-and-coming political people who are formulating the MAGA movement that is emerging behind Trump’s leadership in the Executive Branch, which includes J.D. Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Bernie Moreno.  These are different kinds of brilliant people who could be successful in any field they want to be in.  However, a personality type is emerging that is quite noticeable, and Michael Ryan, who I call “young” at 41 years old, has a lot of good stuff to give.  Once I heard that he was planning to run for that Butler County Commissioner seat that Cindy Carpenter occupied, I got excited and decided to get behind his campaign and help however I could.  As he and I were talking about his upcoming campaign, shortly after Nancy Nix gave him a full endorsement in front of the crowd that caused a little controversy, in a good way, he kept reminding me of a different version of Vivek Ramaswamy. I met Vivek years ago through Nancy Nix and a few other places at VIP events, such as a time with Mike Pompeo and again as he prepared to announce his race for Governor of Ohio.  Leading up to Nancy’s fundraiser, I was coordinating that big announcement with Vivek at CTL Aerospace, and I noted how different this new generation of politicians was as opposed to the past before Trump changed politics forever.  Michael Ryan fits this new, young, ambitious type of politician who runs toward capitalism, not away from it as Cindy Carpenter has all these years. 

So I appreciated Michael and his very nice wife Amanda letting me share in their date night as a third wheel.  We talked about many incredible opportunities for Butler County if only someone like him could fill that critical seat.  We spent a lot of time discussing the vertical taxi market, which I have been talking about with everyone with a mind to listen.  A lot of people haven’t yet put all the dots together, but Joby Aviation is right up the road of the aviation corridor of I-75 that Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to talk a lot about as his run for governor, and they are building eVTOL aircraft that are ready to go right now.  I told everyone months ago how it was going to go down. They are only waiting for regulation approval and can start shipping these air taxi vehicles worldwide.  China and Abu Dhabi are the first to market as they have much fewer regulatory environments to slow them down.  However, under the Trump administration, I’m just saying that those barriers to the United States will be removed.  And someone like Michael Ryan is just the kind of person with the vision to put their arms around it and bring top tech innovation to Butler County as a leader of this emerging new technology.  He understands the value of that kind of innovation, but that’s not the only reason I like Michael.  He’s just a good person who wants to do good things, and I enjoyed spending time with him and his wife, along with the table of fellow council members and community managers.  Michael and Amanda are the kind of people you want to see providing leadership and opportunity to people hungry for it, and Butler County is a prime place to have the most vibrant economy in a state that is going to be Trump’s example of turning a rust belt into a tech giant.  From my experience with the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign for governor, I know his plans for the state.  And to cascade off that, Butler County can be the leader of the state to have the best opportunities that many people can’t yet possibly imagine.  And with a commissioner like Michael Ryan, even the wildest dreams of the most optimistic people can’t even be imagined because such greatness has never yet been seen among the human race. But that opportunity is coming at us very soon, with Vivek Ramaswamy as Ohio Governor and Michael Ryan as Butler County Commissioner. 

Oh, and regarding Joby Aviation and why Abu Dhabi is the current leader in the eVTOL market. Joby’s S4 aircraft, which hauls a pilot and four passengers at 200 mph with a 100-mile range, could slash the two-hour car slog from Abu Dhabi to Dubai to a breezy 30 minutes—no emissions, and much less noise than a chopper. They’re tying this into Abu Dhabi’s Smart and Autonomous Vehicles Industry (SAVI) cluster, a big local initiative to lead in next-gen transport. Joby’s already got exclusive rights to operate in Dubai starting as early as 2025, and this Abu Dhabi move opens the door for zippy inter-emirate trips. They’ve been showing off the aircraft at events like DRIFTx in Yas Marina, flexing their tech to seal the deal.  This is not science fiction.  The only thing stopping us in the United States is having the kind of politicians who can take away the barriers to market saturation currently held up to the speed of slow government left to us by Joe Biden and Obama’s years of bureaucratic infrastructure. The eVTOL is the future of transportation, much more important than building any new highway or railroad.  And Butler County, Ohio can lead America if only it has the right politicians who can make it happen.  The money and investment are just waiting for the pin-headed politicians like Cindy Carpenter to get out of the way.

Rich Hoffman

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