Tag: Jennifer Gross

Jennifer Gross Goes to Washington: The importance of redistricting

When I say that Jennifer Gross is not very well-liked, I mean it in the manner of a compliment.  I think it’s a great asset to have people who don’t like you or who are very angry when your name is brought up.  Many people certainly dislike President Trump.  And I would say that I am one of the most hated people in the world.  People typically like you when you do what they want you to do, and their acceptance of you in some way is the way they gain leverage over your authenticity.  So, that makes Jennifer Gross an effective politician in a dynamic intellectual sense, where a static order has to compete, and they don’t like it.  In Ohio, Jennifer is my Representative in the 45th district, and she works hard to do so; I appreciate people who work hard.  And in the course of that work, she found herself in Washington, D.C. with Lee Zeldon, director of the EPA under Trump’s administration, asking questions directly to him about an issue I have been very concerned with regarding the EPA.  I would say that among Trump supporters and people who dislike RINOs, Jennifer Gross is very popular, so it depends on the crowd and what they want out of relationships, which often determines likeability.  I believe cordial relationships can be a liability.  However, it was interesting to hear about Jennifer’s trip to Washington, D.C., where she met with several Trump administration officials, including RFK, over MAHA issues.  So, once her plan was in place, Jennifer and I discussed a number of topics that we would typically talk about.  However, for this audience, I happened to record it so that others could share in the experience.  And, as much as I am concerned about the EPA issue, the conversation we had, which came straight from the Trump administration, was about the need for redistricting. 

The primary thing that Jennifer wanted to tell me about the Trump administration was that they weren’t a bunch of phonies.  The people working for Trump were all successful individuals in their own right, who could take or leave other politicians.  Jennifer can relate because she has always been very independent when it comes to politics, and that makes it hard for her to deal with when it comes to deal-making.  Much of politics is a collaborative effort, and I know several people I would call good friends who spend a lot of time collaborating with other politicians, only to accomplish a fraction of their wants and needs individually.  But that’s part of the process, and one of the reasons I thought the Trump presidency would be a good thing was his self-control over his wealth and ability to walk away from anything he didn’t like.  And his administration is very much the real deal, and Jennifer was pleased to report that they were not a bunch of phonies like we often learn people really are once these political campaigns are over.  So she couldn’t wait to tell me how authentic people like Lee Zeldon, Secretary Kennedy, and Commerce Secretary Lutnick were in real life.  It’s not usual to have people like this in any administration, and to meet them in real life after the honeymoon is over for Trump, doing everyday work, it was good to hear that they are everything they say they are.  Politically, many people dislike them as well, but, as all successful people must learn, that comes with the territory. 

The primary concern on everyone’s mind is the fairness of redistricting, so that Republicans can have more seats in Congress.  There are a few that we can pick up in Ohio, and several other states. The Trump administration is playing hardball on this issue, as it should.  Trump is right, Republicans should not play nice with Democrats over any election issues.  If we genuinely want a representative republic, which is what we are, we must trust the American people to choose who they want to represent them.  Not what a party wants us to adopt for their convenience.  That’s where things get tricky with playing nice to get along, and being a stick to poke in the eye of those who are too quick to compromise.  My point in the matter is that there is room for people like Jennifer Gross in politics and room for plenty of mainstreamers who enjoy the process of collaboration, if we didn’t have such a close margin of majorities.  I think that if we had guarded our elections more closely, there would be 60-plus Republican votes in the Senate and over +50 in Congress.  It is only close in America because of election fraud, and Democrat gerrymandering for many years has given them the appearance of a 50/50 country, when actually it’s a long way from being so.  Democrats are a minority party at best, filled with misfits and broken toys.  It’s one thing to have compassion for their poor state.  It’s quite another to have them destroy our entire society to appear fair.  In Ohio, there are 15 congressional seats, and Republicans have 10 of them.  There are opportunities in Ohio to improve upon that, and without question, Republicans should.  Don’t listen to the cries of Democrats, play hardball and defeat them everywhere. 

And if we did that, as Republicans, the world would be a lot better off.  As Jennifer and I discussed after her trip to Washington, fairness, or the appearance of it, often leads to inauthentic corruption, and righteous representation usually falls by the wayside as people who pay money for representation in the form of lobbyists end up running our government from the shadows.  And that is what we have been trying to get away from.  It’s what I always hoped would be the case from independently wealthy people like Trump, Secretary Lutnick, Zeldon, and Kennedy —that they would do the job for the right reasons. They could make a lot of money if they weren’t in politics.  However, as successful people, they can best represent the public that needs it.  And through redistricting, we can elect more people like that in the future, which would properly represent our actual society.  We don’t have an obligation to play nice with people who want to destroy our country.  And we owe Democrats no illusion of fairness.  If we can secure an additional 20 seats for the 2026 midterms, then let’s do it.  Meanwhile, it’s good to hear that Jennifer was being treated with sincerity by the Trump administration and that doing the right things for the right reasons was more than just an empty promise by politicians who usually disappoint us.  If too many people like you, that’s usually a bad sign, and that’s the case in any level of society.  And the Trump administration couldn’t care less; they can afford to be independent of such popularity concerns.  And because of that, they can actually accomplish some things.  Based on Jennifer’s report, they are willing to do the work and are solid in the promise category.  And these days, that is a scarce commodity.  One area we could significantly improve if we were more aggressive with redistricting. 

Rich Hoffman

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Racism as a Weapon of Marxism: The violence in Cincinnati was about more than name calling

There is a lot wrong with what the mayor of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, did after the fight that broke out in the streets after a music festival that became a grotesque example of violence from minority communities.  And the reason for it was perfectly uttered by city councilwoman Victoria Parks, who said in the aftermath, “They begged for that beat down!  I am grateful for the whole story.”  Regarding some white victims of a horrible beating, where a mob of attackers consolidated on them ruthlessly.  A young woman by the name of Holly ended up sucker punched and knocked cold in the middle of the street, leading to what everyone already assumes: it’s dangerous for white people to walk around downtown.  Otherwise, they might get attacked like these people did after a music festival.  And they might not live through the encounter.  The whole incident has brought up something much worse that needs to be discussed, and that is how Marxism has been taught in these communities of color to destabilize capitalism in America and how they have hidden it behind skin color to always have a destabilizing element present to undercut American society.  It’s not a matter of skin color that is the problem; it’s what people believe and how racism has given them a victimized status that is always ready to advance elements of socialism to a cityscape environment, to destabilize it.  As the city leaders were getting vast amounts of criticism from Senator Bernie Moreno, Vivek Ramaswamy, Jennifer Gross, and many others, they dug in even deeper on the mob rule elements and justification for the beatings that took place on July 26th in the small hours of the morning.  It doesn’t matter what camera angle you look at; there was no justification for the mob that broke out to do what they did, because it wasn’t about words and feelings.  What they did intended permanent harm to the victims and was brutally hostile in its intent. 

There are very few people who get called as many names as I do.  Most of the people I know dislike me for some reason or another.  They might be nice to my face, but behind my back, they hate me very much and call me every name in the book, and even some in books that have never been written.  So I can say authentically that no amount of name-calling justifies the violence that we saw in Cincinnati.  It doesn’t matter what anybody said to anybody; nothing justifies a fight at that level. Remember, sticks and stones?  People would do well to teach that to young kids in school once again.  Instead, political movements like what we have experienced from Democrats have sought to use victimization status to weaponize entire groups of people, preferably by color, into doing their work of radicalism in overthrowing American society.  The things people say to me are that people wouldn’t say such nasty things about me if I fought people more.  But the truth is, I care so little for what people think of me that I don’t waste time on it.  To get violent with someone to convince them to change their mind, you have to care what they think, and I just don’t.  And for the people of color to react to something that a group of white Russians said to them that they believe provoked this level of violence, they would have to care what those white people thought of them to get upset about it.  I never get upset when people call me names because I don’t care what they think. 

And as far as conflicts, and I know Vivek Ramaswamy thinks this way as well, there is no reason to fight people with violence when you can destroy them with debate.  If you have to resort to violence to get your point across, you have already lost.  As I tell people who criticize me for my lack of engagement with my enemies, I say it’s because forcing someone to think something out of fear of a beating is an dishonest exchange.  I would rather want to know what they believe than to beat them into submission to make them think what I want them to.  The best tool for convincing people to accept your way about something isn’t to win them over the head with pain and suffering, but to convince them that what you think is in their self-interest.  So when there is violence like this, there is a lot wrong that indicates a very unhealthy society.  And racism isn’t the problem.  Racisim is the weapon of the Marxist movement in America that has been trying to advance socialism and communism in communities of color to use their lack of judgment to build armies on the street to drive through fear a social discourse, such as, white people aren’t welcome on the streets of Cincinnati, especially after dark unless they appease the tribal chiefs of the community like visitors from a foreign land.  Never forget, it was Republicans who freed the enslaved people, who fought a civil war to free people of color.  Democrats were fighting to keep people slaves, and that is still a problem, because people of color are still serving the political efforts of Democrats.  All the problems of this fight are Democrat problems.  Republicans have been the critics.

We’re talking about purposely not knowing what good conduct is in society and believing, because people on city council like Victoria Parks, or Mayor Pureval let them think it as social victims, that violence is acceptable as a means to restore to them as people of color, a restitution to the notion that all American society was built on the backs of slave labor.  Slave labor that those same Democrats utilized and fought a war to continue, against Republicans.  So racism in this case, and most cases, has been kept alive to drive forward Democrat complaints about the kind of society Republicans want to build, which then becomes a quest to destroy capitalism with Marxism, and that is the case with most race wars all across the world.  And people never get around to talking about it properly because Democrats need a hostile demographic that will fight for change, meaning a shift from capitalism to micromanaged socialism, or even communism.  A quick study around the world among most race troubles will have as its root cause provoked racism to create the ground troops for change, which is what was behind the fight in Cincinnati, Ohio, after that music festival.  White people aren’t allowed to say anything to people of color, otherwise they will get a beating down.  And that is the message of fear that is laying territorial claim to all that the taxpayer streets of Cincinnati belong to the mob, not the people with property value who pay for everything.  It doesn’t matter what anyone said to each other; there was nothing that deserved what happened.  The city was likely not well-prepared for the music festival.  It was Democrat incompetence on all levels.  But it wasn’t all because they were stupid.  Most of it was part of the planned attack against capitalist society by overt Marxists hiding their malice behind skin color to advance their diabolical cause.  And that was why there was violence in Cincinnati.  It’s not about fairness or equality.  It was exclusively about overthrowing our society and strengthening Marxist cells within American culture for power politics from a Democratic viewpoint.  And it is ruthless on all levels and can’t be tolerated. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Apoorva Ramasway is a Really Good Person: One of the big reasons to support Vivek Ramaswamy for governor of Ohio

There was never any question about supporting Vivek Ramaswamy for Governor of the State of Ohio.  But after meeting with him at his launch ceremony in West Chester, Ohio, I feel even better about it.  Of course, he is a great talent that can speak the peel off an orange.  But so can a lot of con artists.  The question everyone always wants to know about these kinds of things is how can they know they can trust him?  What makes a person trustworthy, even if they have the gift of gab?  After all, there are a lot of salespeople out there who can sell you just about anything who aren’t worth 2 cents as people.  So what makes Vivek Ramaswamy a good person, good enough to be made Governor of the State of Ohio?  Well, I have a proven tactic that I use to qualify people, especially adult people, that has worked for me over the years: I measure a person’s worth based on what kind of spouse they have.  They can sell pretty words to the public all day, but if they partner with a terrible person as a spouse, you should always question the person’s validity.  As a general rule, good people tend to attract other good people.  And bad, toxic people tend to do the same.  You don’t often find a toxic person choosing to be married to a high-quality person.  They are attached to them for a reason.  So judging a person based on the worth of their spouse is quite good as an accurate measurement, and I am thrilled to say that Vivek Ramaswamy’s wife is top-class and a very good person. Upon meeting Apoorva Ramaswamy, I found that I liked Vivek even more.  They are a nice couple who work well together in ways that are bigger than the jobs they do in life.

I don’t mind saying it, and there are certainly more that I can think of, but at this Vivek Ramaswamy event were some very good friends of mine who were part of setting up everything in the background.  And we are friends for a reason that goes beyond political considerations.  I know a lot of people, but I put more trust in these people for a lot of reasons, most of which start with their spouses.  For instance, when people ask me, “How can you trust George Lang?  He’s a RINO establishment figure.”  I can say to them that I can trust him in ways I wouldn’t trust other people, largely because of what I know him that is different from other people, especially people in a decisive Senate role.  Why George?  He has a wonderful wife in Debbie, who is just as solid as a person can get.  They are a good couple, and they are at an age where they travel a lot, and the fruits of a lot of hard work are emerging, and they are living a good life.  They work well together, and things were not always as good as they are now.  I remember when the political left was trying to throw George in jail just for knowing John Boehner.  Even in the toughest of times, Debbie has always been loyal to George, and as a couple, they are always trying to do the right thing, and I have come to know both of them pretty well over the years in ways that far exceed politics.  If George Lang had never been a senator and never was again, he and his wife would still be friends with me and my wife.  They are good people to know.

And why do I like her so much? People always ask me about Nancy Nix.  Well, what’s not to like?  She is as good as they get.  She comes across as a good person as a politician due to her many sincere desires for the world to be a better place, and I have come to know her over the years as a person with profound convictions toward biblical goodness.  But I’ll say that her husband Bob Leshnak is perfect for her.  Sometimes, it takes a while to find people who can work with them instead of against them.  When you are a person like Nancy who is naturally attractive and has a very outward projecting personality, you can attract a lot of bar flies.  But as a naturally good person from a good family, she knows how to sort through all that to find a great spouse in Bob.  He is good for her and doesn’t work against her, and they just come out as a good couple when you talk to them in any setting.  How can people be expected to manage your government financially or ethically if they can’t manage their own homes?  I could say that I know Fran DeWine a bit, enough to see that she makes the current governor of Ohio a far better person than he would otherwise be.  They are childhood sweethearts, which makes him a person that can at least be brought to reason because he has managed a long marriage to a good person.  I have met Melania Trump on several occasions and always said she is the key to why President Trump has become the kind of good person he is at this stage.  Spouses say a lot about the people we know, publicly. 

At Vivek’s West Chester event, I got to talk to him in great detail, but that wasn’t new.  I could also walk around with his wife and talk to her one-on-one.  And I found it interesting that she had a good relationship with Representative Jennifer Gross, who is too Tea Party for many people.  It says a lot about Apoorva in a good way and about Vivek with the doors closed.  Apoorva was a very classy woman, full of life and spirit, and I kept thinking she would be an ideal First Lady of Ohio.  She comes across well in all the right ways.  But what is most apparent is that she and Vivek are a power couple that feeds off each other.  We’re not talking about a couple of people climbing through social power to achieve a status through won elections.  These people are personally good and want to share that with others in a leadership way.  This is a much different set of standards than the traditional power couple that only share their desire for public power, and once that is not in their lives through a lost election or bad financial times, their relationship breaks apart.  Spouses aren’t helping each other if they plot divorce behind their spouses’ backs and are always jealous of the other people in their lives because they are insecure in the foundations of their relationship.  When you meet people who have people in their lives that they are building families with and who are willing to walk through all the fires of life together, you can know that there are unique qualities you can trust in them as public servants.  And that is undoubtedly the case for Vivek Ramaswamy and his wife, Apoorva.  They will still be a good couple once the days of politics are done, a few decades from now.  They will be defined by what they do together rather than what they convince people to give them in the form of trust and social management.  They are good because they are good, and they work together, which is the best trait of all.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Ding Dongs in Columbus: A Review of Governor DeWine’s State of the State speech

Before I get into the obvious homeless guy on 3rd Street in Columbus who was standing on the corner a block south of the Statehouse, completely nude, with his ding dong and buttocks clear for all the world to see, as if he were getting ready to shower at a YMCA, I have to talk about the fantastic book I bought from the Statehouse gift shop that I have had my eye on for several years now, The Art and Artistry of the Ohio Statehouse by Dayna Jalkanen.  Every time I go to the Statehouse, I think about getting it, but time is always short, so I never do.  I love the Statehouse and the intentions of the work that is supposed to be done there, of republic-style representative government, and I had just told a story to similar people about my thoughts on Governor DeWine’s speech where I stood in the rotunda with DeWine giving out pictures with a lunch buffet set up in the middle of the room where senators, representatives, lawyers, lobbyists, cutthroats and even media personalities were at work saving the world from their perspective.  Even the “Rooster” was there dressed in his backpack and poorly attired shorts, deliberately showing disrespect for the process as he runs a government blog checking the antics of the powerful with a kind of Marxist mentality of “bringing them all down.  During this visit, I had a little more time to make it to the bookstore, where I was there with Jennifer Gross, the Ohio Representative from the 47th District, and her son, a brilliant young man.  I explained to many people that DeWine’s speech this year was horrible, worse than usual, and uninspiring.  And there was a thick blanket over the whole State of the State address as Columbus conspiracies were awash in speculation and scandal.  But as I have said before, the Statehouse is there, grand and has deep roots in history.  It intends to inspire people to greatness even if they fall short, as was apparent under this current flock of politicians.  So, I wanted to get the book to remind myself of the worth of it all.

As I checked out the book at the counter and spoke to Jennifer about all the perils of progress during legislative proceedings, I reflected on what I had just said about DeWine’s speech and why it was so bad.  Governor DeWine was clearly in a lame-duck stage of his term.  He was on the outs with the Trump campaign over several controversies.  But the biggest one is that DeWine isn’t a Republican, especially not a Trump Republican.  He’s a product of FDR’s New Deal and some Johnson version of a Great Society where the government was there to do what parents couldn’t or wouldn’t.  And that was the entirety of DeWine’s speech on the State of the State on 4.10.24.  The whole thing was about how the state of Ohio could take care of children in ways their parents would fall short of, and everything he mentioned required more legislation and tax money spent without scrutiny on the next generation without any real expectation of success.  As I had just said in the rotunda, everyone in that room thought they were doing the right things, including DeWine.  They all had the best of intentions.  Nobody thought of themselves as evil.  Yet there was evil everywhere, and why?  It’s a challenging game where you must go to Columbus to work with others to make things happen.  You have to build relationships and get things done.  But in compromising with other people to get things passed, most people find themselves changed forever in the process, and they aren’t the same people who were elected, and they don’t survive the meat grinder of politics intact. 

Whenever I attend a State of the State speech, I always like to sit in the gallery where all the lawyers, aides, and lobbyists sit because I want to hear how they talk to each other.  They all have some specific thing that concerns them most about the government.  It might be renewable energy, social programs, or even Rob Portman’s retirement status, and how many boards he is sitting on for advice.  I was sitting next to one of his former aides who went on and on about how much influence the former senator still had in the business world, which I had to snicker about.  I’ve known Rob Portman for a long time, especially at the beginning of his political career when he was in his 20s.  Rob Portman shouldn’t be advising businesses about anything; he doesn’t have the horsepower to understand the field or how it works.  But in that gallery, I heard many stories about things those people wanted to impress upon each other as they were caught up in the moment.  All dressed up to listen to the Governor give a speech about saving children from their parents.  I explained it later by identifying the problem for what it is: all those people at the speech had the power of government at their fingertips, and they had to decide how to use it to help people.  And that’s where the evil comes in: when people don’t have the right thoughts about things, how can they decide to use government the way it’s supposed to, not how their feeble minds interpret it?  DeWine intended his speech well, as everyone listening did.  But where can they apply government power to the right purposes?  That’s what I wanted to think about as I bought that book and why I took a little extra time talking with Jennifer about those kinds of challenges this time. 

But the answer to that question was at the corner of 3rd Street, just one block south of the Statehouse as I was leaving.  There was security everywhere around the Statehouse because of the governor.  I was leaving the Senate, and there were plenty of police.  But then there was this 6’ 6 man of color standing there with his pants pulled down around his ankles, underwear, and all oblivious to the world around him.  I don’t think he knew his ding dong was hanging out in full view to all the cars and pedestrians moving by him.  I’ve seen homeless people all over the world, and they are caused by too much government destroying the personal initiative of individual people.  And here was this guy, an apparent creation of a nanny state government rotting away in full view of everyone just a block from where all the rules of Ohio were made.  And nobody was doing anything about it.  He was violating public decency standards.  He was probably violating many drug laws.  But he was a person of color, and nobody wanted to be called a racist for pointing out his bad behavior.  So, everyone just ignored him and went about their way.   No doubt, several children that day had their lives ruined by seeing that naked guy on the street corner on a sunny April day in 2024.  With all the grand ideas proposed by many governors over the years, the reality is that the quality of life for people only gets worse the more that the government tries to replace good personal conduct with more laws, which aren’t even enforced a block from where DeWine gave his speech.  And all the people talking about big, fancy ideas in the gallery were already in their cars on their way home, driving past all the problems none had the guts to deal with.  Which is how evil works in those kinds of gatherings.  Well-intended people who use the power of government to do what they lack as people, and it migrated into society to show itself in that homeless guy so disconnected from reality he was nude on a street corner in the capital of Ohio, which should be a showpiece of excellence.  The Statehouse certainly lives up to the lofty expectations.  But the people in it, inhabiting it, don’t.  And they hide their lack of courage behind procedures and fancy speeches.  Yet they always fall short because their minds aren’t up to the task, and they don’t have the guts to increase their intellect where they can help people like that guy instead of making more of them by default. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

A Conversation with Representative Jennifer Gross: Fighting the Big Bad Wolf of Government

Rather than just talking about what she has been doing over the last few months, Jennifer Gross and I decided to meet on camera to share with an audience her latest achievements. As an Ohio Representative for the 45th district, Jennifer has a lot going on regarding the legislative agenda, and I think she does an excellent job of keeping the dialogue vivacious. If Jennifer and I didn’t meet like this, many people would never know some of the really good things she is working on because our current media culture is garbage run by young kids and editorial departments worshipping at the alters of Karl Marx. They often don’t understand the issues someone like Jennifer is working on and can only judge job performance based on some leftist ideological radicalism. When people talk about freedom, rights, and the Constitution, it is lost on them what Jennifer Gross is talking about. It is saying it nicely that they aren’t sophisticated enough even to have a conversation about these types of things, such as the validity of digital currency and its dangers, government health care being out of control, and the trouble with 5G bandwidth that is being pushed onto the world to allow for a massive corporate surveillance state. The theme of the discussion between Jennifer and me in this particular meeting was the challenge of having a viable government with limited powers that don’t end up like the Big Bad Wolf in the Little Red Riding Hood story, where the wolf eats grandma and is laying in wait in her bed to next eat the kid. I enjoy these kinds of meetings, so I thought it would be a shame to have it lost to just a couple of people talking about these things in the privacy of a meeting. Instead, sharing these things with the world in how they choose to digest the information might help people learn more about what’s going on, so Jennifer and I turned on the camera and just talked, letting people listen to everything we had to say.

Because the media situation is so bad, a path to correcting our social dialogue will require outside-the-box approaches, and I consider what I do to contribute tremendously to that objective. The present media doesn’t have the mind to cover some of the topics Jennifer discussed with more than a few hundred words of media coverage and some choppy clips to fit into television coverage. Instead, my approach is that people interested in these kinds of things have lots of mass media available to them to consume, so when they make a choice, they expect a lot more from the source material than they would otherwise get. One of the significant disadvantages for Jennifer is that she has a lot going on; she is a representative for the freedom movement as a State Representative, but how can you fit the complexity of her political position against a backdrop of social tyranny and big government expansion that seeks to hide its goals with rapid change, centralized authority, and a controlled opposition through the media? It takes time to explain many of these things to people, and through the traditional media, the details never get to the ears of the people who want the information, which is also by design. So I do what I do to help bridge that gap, and people obviously appreciate it. 

And the talk Jennifer and I had was very informative, especially regarding the Big Bad Wolf metaphor. That is essentially what’s going on with the desire of the government to grow and expand. It wants to eat us all. But, we have to recognize that is its goal and avoid being eaten before it’s too late. The push to impose on all people a digital currency controlled by central banks, who also then control our government is dangerous. And the best regulator is competition and a free market. Of course, corporations want an easy bake oven on financial controls. Just like the Big Bad Wolf wants to eat, the logic and intelligence of the human race should then indicate otherwise. That is, the purpose of government is to function for our needs as a civilization, but we need debate from representatives like Jennifer Gross, who will question whether or not grandma is actually grandma or whether it’s truly a wolf in disguise. Where Jennifer is on most of her issues, from digital currency, health care reform, or broadband resistance driven by government instead of private sector options, is in noticing that grandma has some big teeth. “My, what big teeth you have, Grandma.” Of course, the children’s story is very relevant to our current condition, and the wolf wants to ease our minds about its dangers. Because the wolf intends to eat us all, it’s what wolves do, and we should always be cautious in dealing with them. They expect us to trust them and play that against us for their own recourse. And it’s up to representatives in government like Jennifer Gross to keep those big bad wolves in check. Of course, the Big Bad Wolf of government will want to placate our fears, to call our alarms a conspiracy theory, and to attempt to diminish our caution in favor of their intentions. But the Big Bad Wolf has already eaten Grandma and intends to eat the rest of us, and often all we have left to our defense is someone to ask the obvious questions and disrupt those intentions with caution. 

It would have been a shame to relegate a conversation like the one Jennifer and I had to just a lunch meeting. So we shared it with the world for the world to advance itself accordingly. Not even corporate talk radio gets into the weeds of these types of matters these days, so using outside-the-box media methods, such as this one, can let everyone know what Jennifer Gross has been doing as their representative and what the reasoning behind her actions is. I think the digital currency push is one of the most dangerous we have seen in our lifetimes. China is making a power grab in finance, technology, and medicine to collapse America essentially and to pick up the ashes with an already built infrastructure of a police state, which is what they presently have. We are being seduced into compliance. They intend to eat us all, unsuspecting and debating social fairness while they prepare for our ultimate destruction through the lazy minds of the masses and a representative government that can’t even explain it to the public what is going on because the media culture is already sympathetic to the Chinese objectives. Often, like Jennifer Gross, all that stands between complete annihilation and civil society are representatives who fight in the trenches for our best interests. But people never get a chance to know what she is doing to that effect. Yet, the video meeting we had together showed a side of Jennifer that a lot of people would never see otherwise, and to understand what she is doing to keep the Big Bad Wolf of government, an already captured asset of the Chinese government, in a lot of cases, from eating us all. And I am proud of the work she is doing and that she continues to want still to do it. Its people like her and the willingness to ask the obvious questions to the Big Bad Wolf that keep us free and viable as a society in that constant struggle to work with the government for the benefit of the people but to keep the government small enough so that it doesn’t eat everyone in a complete act of destruction and mindless hunger that can never fill its belly. 

Rich Hoffman

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“The Disrupter,” Jennifer Gross, Gets an Award: Standing up for what’s right when it costs the most to do so

At the Patriot Awards at the end of May 2022, Jennifer Gross, my State Representative, received the Ignition Award. When I talk about Jennifer, I refer to her as “The Disrupter,” and she likes it. I don’t mean it in a negative way when I say it. I think she satisfies a much-needed role in Ohio politics. On the one hand, there is stoic politeness that is part of the process of writing and voting on new legislation. Bridgebuilding with others is very much a part of that process, and often, politicians find that by the time they compromise with everyone to get something done, there isn’t much left of their original idea. And during her first term as a House Rep for the 52nd District in Ohio, she has caused consternation. I wouldn’t say she’s made enemies because she is a very likable person. But she’s too independent for many people’s liking  in the Statehouse.

On the other hand, many are very critical of the political process and see all the compromises that have to go on as evil and part of doing the devil’s work. All the bridgebuilding that goes on with lobbyists and other members of the House and Senate is what many say give politics a bad name because the people they are supposed to be representing are not part of that process. From my perspective, Jennifer Gross does an excellent job threading the needle of all those forces to do what she thinks is an excellent job for all the people in her district, even if they didn’t vote for her. And she is certainly deserving of an award for going above and beyond when it counted most during 2021 and 2022. 

Things did get very hairy several times during the fall of 2021 when Joe Biden, the illegally inserted president who had no authority to do so, issued an executive order mandating that OSHA manage mandatory vaccinations and that all federal employees, anybody who touches a federal contract which is nearly impossible these days because the government sticks its nose in everyone’s business to such a large extent, would have to get mandatory vaccinations. This was a huge problem. It was detrimental for the government to insist that people put medicine in their bodies to work. It was undoubtedly a sensitive exploitation of the standard Chamber of Commerce position of employer sustainability. Employers needed to maintain their rights to regulate their own workforce and impose the things required for their business, such as proper PPE like steel-toed shoes, gloves, and safety glasses. The Biden order made it hard for Republicans to defend employee rights and still support the Chamber of Commerce’s position of employer obligations. Suddenly, the way the Covid vaccine shot was being proposed was meant to split those elements and put them in combat with each other. It was a complicated issue to navigate politically, which was part of the federal plan to take over the entire industry with ill-defined rights. It took months for the legislature in Ohio to respond correctly, and by the time they did, it was too late. The saving grace in the matter turned out to be court cases that were striking down the mandate in federal court as being what we all knew was unconstitutional from the beginning. Yet, that didn’t stop the federal government from trying. 

Before the Biden administration issued their executive orders mandating vaccine mandates, in September of 2021, Jennifer Gross sponsored H.B. 248, the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act in April. It was introduced to get in front of the problem, but it received a lot of pushback. Many legislators were upset by Jennifer’s approach to the bill and her unwillingness to do the kind of team building that was required to get that kind of legislation to move through the House. At that precise time, Jennifer was way in front of what was acceptable criteria for the validity of the vaccines. Many in the House leadership were not comfortable with the testimony that Jennifer was offering showing that the vaccines might be potentially dangerous. Like the election fraud issue, challenging the premise of the mandatory vaccines was a political nightmare because many wanted to believe that an answer to a major pandemic could be solved through institutionalism, not individual free will. So even Republicans were split on the matter.

Meanwhile, the tick-tock of the clock was pushing toward mandatory enforcement, and the House was stuck on how to proceed. Defend the individual person or the company where people are employed. Could people just vote with their feet and leave their companies only to jump out of the frying pan and into the pressure cooker. Either way, individuals were being imposed upon by the federal government. Jennifer’s positions, which sounded really radical at the time, turned out to be correct, which is the contents of the Robert Kenndy Jr. book, The Real Anthoney Fauci, where the danger of the vaccines, the government position on Covid, and the origins of Covid under bioweapons direction from the Department of Defense have all turned out to be true. At the time, nobody but Jennifer Gross even considered doing anything about standing up for individual people in a case of blatant government tyranny and extreme overreach.   

Jennifer can afford to be a disrupter, upset House leadership, and challenge them healthily. She has a nice husband. They are not in debt, and she has no care in the world at all to become wealthy. They are a happy couple who are not beholden to many people in the world and are free to make their own personal choices, which made Jennifer free to take a position on the vaccine mandates. When things really got heavy in those challenging moments of government overreach coming straight out of the White House, Jennifer showed what kind of person she was, and we are lucky to have her. There were a lot of lessons learned during that episode that everyone is much more prepared for going into the future. When things got really heavy, and it mattered most, Jennifer Gross was willing to disrupt a process that the Biden administration was clearly exploiting for power grabs meant to erode away the constitution through the nature of the bureaucracy of state government. And without Jennifer, there wouldn’t have been much discussion about pushback. When federal judges were thinking about what to do on this executive order ruling, there is no question that the national debate that Jennifer Gross was a part of bringing the legal questions that they had to consider to the front of the discussion. And when those judges saw how the case was shaping up, with state representatives like Jennifer Gross pushing back against vaccine validity when Ohio State University was going the other way, its clear that the value wasn’t in the legislation that would be passed in the House to become actual law, but that the debate was in constitutional validity which the judges saw would shape how history remembered the matter. And when it was most dangerous to have those opinions, Jennifer wasn’t afraid of the consequences. She did what was right, even if it cost her to do it. So in that context, Jennifer Gross, “The Disrupter,” did Ohio an excellent service. And the political world is much better off for it, and she certainly deserved the award she received at the Patriot Awards. 

Rich Hoffman

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Jennifer Gross Endorses Jim Renacci: The Overton Window in Ohio Politics

I’ve never been a “no government anarchist.” My thoughts on government management have always been a small but active legislature that is contentious, honorable, yet tenacious. Those who have read my Gunfighter’s Guide to Business know I view most group-oriented behavior as a competitive match, not an opportunity for back-slapping and friendship. Our republic form of government has been unique globally, and now that we understand the nature of the attack against our country, we can better understand the threat that has always been there. I have thought about this kind of thing a lot over the last year, especially while visiting Mt. Rushmore. I found that place to be a temple of intellect, and the bookstore they have there is better than a gold mine of infinite wealth. My thoughts on the matter have matured up to the present with this visit to the Statehouse of Ohio. The challenge has been to create as open a market as possible for business and individual rights while still defending the sovereignty of our states and nation from foreign aggression. Which, of course, is hard to do in an open market global economy. The hostile forces to the United States have attacked not the concept of any nation-states but the essence of our very economy. This corporate board room government within a government type of thinking is challenging the very nature of our Republic form of government. Understanding the nature of that attack is precisely why I have been pointing out Ohio politicians I know who are doing the job correctly, in their own unique way, so that we can see examples of how our republic government should look. And a fine example of how government should look can be found in my State Representative Jennifer Gross, whom I recently had a chance to visit at the Statehouse. 

It’s taken me a while to warm up to Jennifer Gross. During a rough election, she ran against my pick for that seat that Mike DeWine had screwed up with emergency power Covid rules. But in the short time Jennifer has been in the seat of the 52nd District; she has brought more of the Tea Party to Columbus than I would have thought possible. When I recently found her after Governor DeWine’s State of the State speech, she was very bubbly and enthusiastic, working the floor and talking to many different people. I know that many members of the House and Senate and many other politicians view Jennifer as a disruptive force and find her unsettling. I’ve heard lots of negative talk about her by several in the political class, but I have some other ideas about her that I wanted to confirm. So we spent some time together talking about the Overton Window and its role, which she more than understood. And we also talked about the challenger Jim Renacci whom she is one of the only official members of the Statehouse to endorse openly. I know there are a lot more, but I could see the pressure up close. At this event, where Jennifer and I talked, Governor DeWine walked around talking to people. People in the House and Senate know they need DeWine to sign bills they are working on. And DeWine needs them to, to look like he’s in charge. DeWine wants to take credit for the big Intel chip manufacturing plant coming to Ohio, announced just ahead of the primary for 2022. And he recently signed a controversial Constitutional Carry bill he would never have signed otherwise, except for Republican pressure to act more “conservative.” But the trade-off has been to show public support for DeWine in a very tight race against Renacci and other challengers. So there is a lot of double talk going on around the Governor. But Jennifer is not one of those double-talkers. She is right out in the open about it, and the Governor is well aware. 

And that is the value I see in Jennifer; she openly embraces that role of a disrupter, someone who will challenge the Overton Window on the political spectrum and yank it hard right away from the communism that has seeped into the process over the years. Back to the constitutional republic, we have needed and expected. Politics is not about friendships, it’s about doing the job correctly, and there is a real hunger from Jennifer to do a great job. She intends to represent all the people honestly in her district, including the people who didn’t vote for her, and that was the general vibe I picked up on as she showed me around where her desk was and other features of the House chamber. Things got pretty heated in Columbus as Jeniffer was on the front of legislation to prevent mandated vaccine requirements imposed by the Biden administration. We all learned a lot from that experience. It was a balancing act between a Chamber of Commerce view of the world, allowing corporate environments to impose rules on their workforce for their own needs and the individual’s rights. The workers have their own sovereignty. Jennifer represented the raw Tea Party small-government perspective against forces that didn’t want to be bothered with contentious debate during a government-imposed pandemic. But in hindsight now, after watching Klaus Schwab at the World Government Forum in Dubai recently, we see those vicious bandits plotting the demise of America out in the open. Their mode of attack has been through the corporate boardroom, our Chambers of Commerce, and our mom-and-pop businesses, dancing to ridiculous rules and regulations imposed by unconstitutional commerce clauses. If we ever needed a functioning republic to sort all these things out, it was now. And I have been increasingly happy that there is someone like Jennifer Gross who will ask the hard questions and force people to think out of the box without making it unnecessarily contentious. Jennifer walks that line quite well, I think. 

So how to put businesses first in Ohio and give corporations the autonomy to locate in our state and do great things is the problem of those lofty halls in Columbus. It’s why I wrote The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business and started passing out copies of it to people I talk to in the political world. We have to defend business and commerce, uphold law and order, and stand by our government and boardroom politics. We have to stand for executive-level leadership in business and politics. But we must also stand for individual freedom and to force the scum and villainy out of our lives without killing the host. Not an easy thing to do, and that is what that book is about, a guide on how to tell good from bad, right from wrong, and unprofitable activity from the driver of all things, profit and value. And to perform that task well, especially in organized government, I find great value in disruptive forces like Jennifer Gross. She will uncomfortably keep everyone honest without turning the dispute into a personal fight. Playing along to get along is not what makes any republic form of government great. But asking the right questions, most often the ones you don’t even know you need to ask, is the key to keeping a government working correctly. And in the world we have today, where the bad guys have been hidden behind the rules and regulations of corporate America and international partnerships, there is a significant need for more disruptive Overton Window types like Jennifer Gross in our grand Statehouse. I am glad to have her there, and I feel proud to have such an engaged representative with plenty of fire to fight the forces at work in our state for duplicity and malice. The need for good government is genuine, more so now than ever. And Jennifer Gross keeps honesty at the front of all conversations for the betterment of everyone. 

Rich Hoffman

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Thank Goodness for Jennifer Gross’ H.B. 248: Fighting Joe Biden’s Vaccine Mandates

It’s the question everyone who has a job or employs people are asking.  What are they supposed to do about the Biden executive order that makes government workers, contractors, or any business with more than 100 people mandating that everyone get vaccinations?  Worse even than that, it is how Biden’s plan pawns off all the work onto human resource departments to do their dirty work by using OHSA as an enforcement agency.  So now, several days after the initial executive order notification, most of the political commentary has reacted to how audacious the order was, how un-constitutional, how incredibly tyrannical it was.  But few have broken down the path to solving the problem which businesses and people want to know.  There are quite a few people indifferent to the vaccination, they don’t like hearing the government ordering people around, but they have the vaccination and are indifferent to the order.  Many people, a high percentage of most workforces, 10% to 20%, aren’t going to get the vaccination and would go to war with the government if any attempt at coercion is attempted.  It’s one thing for an out-of-touch communist-driven Biden administration to write some order on a piece of paper and give a little speech about it.  Doing it is quite something else, and it appears that Biden and his handlers want to provoke violence from that demographic.  They are almost asking for it.  So, what are any of us to do about it?  Here I offer some thoughts and direction that will help, especially relevant to the state I live in, Ohio.

As I said in the video above, I had a chance to talk to many people from the time I wrote this to when Biden made his announcement on Thursday, September 9th.  In that video, I mentioned the Ohio Attorney General David Yost was joining several other states in a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the executive order. Still, I was thinking of a talk I had in the presence of the Secretary of State Frank LaRose and was surprised how unified the state Republicans were against Biden.  Even DeWine was not supportive, which given the political situation, he doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room anyway.  But what was encouraging was that several direct actions were already hot in the statehouse to protect the people of Ohio from a mandatory vaccination and businesses from being imposed to do the work that the federal government couldn’t with forced compliance.  Hanging OSHA out to dry the way that Biden had, it was evident by the people I spoke to that the legal hurdles were ominous against the executive order, especially with the flow down of official procedures that OHSA would have to use to measure any compliance.  For instance, companies who deal with routine ISO audits understand how complex these things can be, and for OSHA, Biden had just signed them up for a nightmare that likely would never get settled between the White House and the agency itself. 

Aside from months and months of red tape in defining what OSHA would be doing as a compliance officer of forced vaccinations, Jennifer Gross, the House rep from my district, already had House Bill 248 cooking on the stove.  That bill is a total ban on forced vaccinations in Ohio.  There are some amendments that are needed, and the House has some idea how to get them applied to make everyone somewhat happy.  Thank goodness Jennifer had that process already started so that passage can be accelerated to match the language of this recent executive order.  That is the first path to providing exemptions that will further complicate what Biden’s people want to do with forced compliance.  From my understanding of the amendments, it will essentially give the people who presently don’t want to get the jab a means to preserve that right.  The trick is in getting businesses off the hook in doing the dirty work of government compliance.  There is also a Vaccine Nullification bill moving through the Senate that will go even deeper, especially now that the executive order’s language is known.  George Lang has been working on this one. It will further provide protections for businesses in Ohio to separate them from the burden of forced work demanded by the federal government onto businesses who don’t have such work as part of their business model, such as the obligatory testing requirement.  Who does that and keeps up with it, an already taxed human resource department?  Things like that will emerge as the legalisms get applied that the Biden administration either didn’t think of, or they hoped that businesses would jump offsides off a hard count.  I think they knew this executive order wasn’t going to fly, but they tried to spook Americans into jumping anyway. 

All those mechanisms will be working in the background for the next several months, but I offer a more direct path to push back on.  I thought of the idea while speaking with Josh Mandel at a GOP event.  We were both in line to get some food, and they had run out of green beans, so we had a moment to chat about this topic. He’s running for the Rob Portman Senate seat, so I was surprised how much he was willing to make the election fraud that went against President Trump a campaign issue.  I was impressed with his ability to speak about it clearly and with conviction.  It’s something that more and more establishment GOP types have been willing to discuss openly.  Mandel might take that establishment tag personally, but he has been in some respectable GOP seats. He is running for the Senate, so it’s like I say, eventually, when you throw rocks, you win and find yourself in the establishment.  And that is precisely what’s happening with the admission of election fraud in the 2020 election.  Fox News might be afraid of lawsuits from Dominion for even discussing the possibility of election fraud.  Mitch McConnell may not want to shake up the system that has enriched him so much to take a moral stand against fraud even though it’s obvious and in front of our face.  But the trend among current officeholders now that they’ve seen the information coming out of Maricopa County in Arizona and Fulton County, Georgia, was that there was enough fraud to overturn the election, so the effort is picking up steam, politically.  Much more so now than there was eight or nine months ago.  And in another year, election fraud will be the talk of everyone. That’s where all this is headed, and the smart money knows it.

So rather than attacking Biden’s unconstitutionality with the forced vaccine mandates, and other terrors he has been a part of in such a short period, the best way to hit Biden, where he and the Democrats are weakest, is with election fraud.  They can’t defend election fraud, and many of them are guilty of being a part of it, even if they only have third-person knowledge and didn’t ask questions about the matter, hoping to benefit from the chaos.  By all accounts, we will find out that Biden should never have been president.  We will question everything he ever did while in the White House.  Yes, it will be a legal mess, but mixed in with this forced vaccination issue.  If you want to beat Biden on his audacity with the forced vaccine mandates, then the way to hit him and the Democrats, in general, is not to take the eye of the ball of election fraud.  I think they are trying to hide anyway because there is lots of evidence of election fraud.  The media is still making fun of the premise that Arizona and other states are exploring the idea of decertifying their elections.  For many in the establishment, this is an incomprehensible idea.  Yet, it is gaining steam.  The report that will come out of Arizona soon will make the case, and several states are talking about following them.  This won’t be laughable when Josh Mandel and the other senate candidates have their election.  It will be everyday talk.  So, we might as well start that process now and hit the Biden people where it hurts most.  Not so much in what latest unconstitutional imposition they throw at us, but in what they are trying desperately to hide.  Because that is where they are most vulnerable.

Rich Hoffman

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Why Mark Welch is the Best Vote for the 52nd Ohio House Seat: Like President Trump, a business background is the key

There is no question who I think the right candidate is for the 52nd House District seat in the Ohio House of Representatives, and that is Mark Welch. The reasons are well articulated in the below video when at the West Chester Tea Party Candidates Forum all the people running for office were asked to state what experience they were bringing to office. In my experience with these kinds of things I have reasoned that there are always well-intentioned people who enter public office, but what comes out on the other end is a mashed-up caricature of what went in. The pressures that come with any political office is enough to turn even the best people into sheer terrors. The ideologies that get them elected are shredded once they realize just how difficult public opinion can be in aligning those thoughts with the realities of anything with money attached to it. I wouldn’t say it’s the only option, but I think successful businesspeople are an essential criteria for any elected office. People should have had a few good decades of running a successful business before they ever seek an elected office, and Mark does. He talked about that experience a bit and how the success of Donald Trump as a president is further proof of the fact in the following clip.

Every time I go to these things, debates and forums where the public can analyze their options for elected office, I am always surprised by the naivete of the candidates. Whether its for a school board, trustee position, or for a house or senate seat, the things that candidates believe would make them a good representative in elected office are not the skills needed most often to do the job. Just being a good person, or a well intentioned one isn’t nearly enough, you have to be tough and to protect your ideas against the realities of nature itself, the human minds who have their own ideas about things and will try to persuade you and manipulate you infinitely into mistake after mistake. And with public office comes the responsibility of managing money, often vast sums of it. I have written enough material to fill many books on the failures of Lakota schools, and many other public education facilities because essentially they elect school board people who are well intentioned but not even closely competent to handle such large budgets or to even know to ask the question as to why any management of public money is in most cases illegal for them. We end up with a bunch of people who love children and want to see the best for them but they get eaten up in a system designed to loot off the taxpayer at every turn, and because they are so naive they just play along to get along which then makes them a detriment to their constituents, who are often frustrated that they have no other options to manage the money.

Having a business background prepares a political candidate for all the temptations of a public office, not just the management of money but the temptations that come with power. Every supervisor or manager from Burger King to P&G know that those working under them will have offers to sleep with co-workers, and to pick favoritism over one person for another based on a variety of reasons. People who are in charge of things get offers that others do not, and the more power you have, the more offers you get. There are always people willing to trade favors for benefits and as a businessperson you must understand how to deal with those temptations. I would say one of the best parts of President Trump that I recognized early on was that he had already made every mistake known to man before he ever entered public office. He was an international playboy on his third marriage, yet you could tell from his kids that he understood the value of things because they showed it in their demeanor. And I am happy to have been right about him, he’s great largely because nobody can tempt him where he doesn’t want to go. The unbuttoned blouses don’t steer his attention anymore, and he already has vast sums of money in the bank, he can’t be bought by any world navigator of malicious intent. He comes to work every day with a clean mind for the task at hand and he leaves the same way, because as a businessperson, he has been forged to such a hardened state.

These days I don’t trust anybody without such experience. Just being a parent who raised some kids and decided to fill their time with public service doesn’t come close to preparing for any position. Or a person who has been in the military. I have found that military service is not a good way to prepare for management. The candidate gets used to taking orders or giving them in a structured environment that is extremely expensive and can afford to be inefficient due to the vast amounts of money that taxpayers spend on military service. That’s not to say that such people cannot be good managers of money, but it certainly doesn’t give them some leadership advantage over two decades of a business background where every kind of problem and temptation a human mind could think of has had to be navigated in order to have any measure of success. Military service does not provide that kind of leadership and I see it every day where people with full careers in the military struggle to deal with the problems of an unstructured civilian lifestyle where people are free to think, do, and say whatever they want, whenever they want to. Any politician touting a military record is one that does not know what they are getting in to. A military record shows that the candidate can stick with a commitment, and can follow orders, but on the downside, it doesn’t prove that they can think outside of the box to solve problems or that they can handle the temptations that come with power. Quite the opposite, they are often ill prepared to deal with the unstructured personalities they will encounter as brokers of power where everyone they deal with is a smartass and a potential con artist.

What I love about Mark Welch and George Lang for that matter is that they have been successful as businesspeople and like President Trump are at places in their life where they are still hopeful every day about the possibilities that are available. They are not bitter and always looking in the rear view mirror, but have so much experience in dealing with problems, problems that they have paid for on their own dime, not the dime of the taxpayer who often has to pay for political mistakes with vast sums of lost money tossed right out the window. Mark has been there and can see good from bad and can resist temptations when a lobbyist sends in some scantily clad 25-year-old chick into his office to get him to vote this way or that with the promise of a dinner afterwards. He’s at the place in his life where he can pass on that invite, because he knows the intent because he’s seen it before. And those temptations aren’t just directed at men, women get their share of the same, but the temptations come in different forms, but are just as bad.  Just ask the partiers on the Lakota school board what happens at night when they think nobody is looking.

A business background for me is the deciding factor in elections. If you get a chance to vote for someone who has been successful in business, vote for them. Even if they have some stories of bumps and bruises along the way, they will be vastly better than the newcomer to politics who hasn’t been in charge of much in their life up to that point. The newcomer will have to make all those mistakes and it will be on your dime, not their own. The businessperson will have already seen those temptations and had to make critical decisions at pertinent junctures just to survive and if they are able to show success in business at some future date, that means they have been vetted to reality and will likely know how to deal with trouble while in office. And that is the best trait that Mark Welch brings to the 52nd House seat that nobody else can claim, and why he should be the one to win it on March 17th in the upcoming primary.

Rich Hoffman

I Can’t Wait to Vote for Mark Welch: Sad to hear, Jennifer Gross has been a Never Trumper

After watching the debate performance at the West Chester Tea Party Candidate Forum between my pick for the 52nd House seat in Ohio Mark Welch, and his rival Jennifer Gross I was very impressed with both of their answers on the 2nd Amendment. I have known Mark for many years, before he ever ran for any office, so I know clearly where he stands on things and he has not been a disappointment. He’s had some temptations come his way as the West Chester Trustee who worked with George Lang to bring so much prosperity to the area and I know that I can trust him in Columbus where things get quite a bit more difficult. My comment to Jennifer was that I wish she wasn’t running against Mark because I’d love to vote for her for some other position. For me she was a bright spot of the evening and I enjoyed talking to her. Apparently, our paths have crossed in the past on projects and so talking to her after that event was a real pleasure. However, as an employer getting ready to vote for a new hire for an important House seat that means a great deal to our area, Mark is still my guy without question. And here are the reasons.

There is a lot of talk in this election about the establishment being some kind of maniacal force that must be overthrown, especially from Candice Keller. But I could write several books about all the work that has gone on behind the scenes with great leaders like George Lang, and Ann Becker to push out the RINO Republicans and build an Ohio Republican Party that is firm behind President Trump’s administration. That is why we recently had a big party for Trump in West Chester that drew a large crowd and Lara Trump herself came to Jungle Jim’s in Fairfield recently to help raise money for the Butler County GOP. Todd Hall as Chairman has done a great job in shaping the current GOP along with Sheriff Jones. I have done my fair share to help shape the kind of people we wanted in those positions and I am very proud of the result, of the people who are now office holders that would never have been if we didn’t start working to get real conservatives on the Central Committees. If there is anything really good that came out of the Tea Party movement, it was that, and the result is that we now have options at high office in the Statehouse like George Lang and Mark Welch, who were born out of the Tea Party movement and are now part of the Trump Administration as far as policy at the local level. So the establishment isn’t so bad anymore, I would say its actually quite good and I have no problem naming myself as a proud, Trump Republican.

In fact, I was never anything but a staunch Republican, no matter how much disagreement we may have had within the party, success does unite people in a great way and Mark Welch was there when it wasn’t cool, and he has done all the right things, and learned all the hard lessons to run that 52nd District seat wonderfully. But after checking out Jennifer’s background, I am not so sure about her yet. I’d need to see her vetted a bit before I’d vote for her in a key spot, something like a trustee seat, or even the school board. I really like her, she is a good personality and a sincere person, but her history as a Never Trumper concerns me greatly as indicated by some of her online postings shown within this article. I’m certainly never one to push away a potential friend or partner, even from former rivals. People learn things in their own way, and I am not rigid in accepting people who have seen the light into being part of a solution in the future. There were a lot of people who were Ted Cruz supporters in the last election that had a problem with Trump. There are of course the Ron Paul types whom I never was a blind supporter. I have never called myself a “libertarian.” I am a Republican in the purest form of it and likely always will be. But I don’t expect everyone to have those firm convictions.

That brings up my other issue with Jennifer, with all that said, she has made comments that she doesn’t associate with being a Republican which is a deal killer for me. It’s not just about party, but its about values. She obviously by some of her messages has some strong feelings about Mark Welch who is my friend because he has many of my shared values. Mark will clearly represent my Republican sentiments in Columbus the way I want to see. But since Jennifer doesn’t care much for Mark and obviously has stated that she no longer identifies as a “Republican” it breaks my heart to see that she’s not where I’d like her to be in life so I could give her a vote. Because I think she has the talent, certainly the charisma. But I’m not sure she can hold a note under pressure on the big stage. I’d need to see her support this current Republican Party and survive some pitfalls first. I understand that sentiments change and with success under Trump, things are much clearer than they were for people coming out of 2016. But I’ve always thought the same things and I know Mark Welch has too. He’s never been a different person. My experience with him is that he holds back a lot, he’s more a man of action than of talk so he doesn’t sell himself enough. But he’s relatively new to this political game himself. He started off as a trustee and has worked his way to where he’s now poised for a more complicated office. And its not about just straight up votes, its about team building for bill passage, and that means that you need to know how to work with the party in charge and not be some outcast that screws everything up. It’s a tough business and it takes a very likeable, and charismatic person deeply rooted in their own belief system to navigate the lobbyists, the pressures in the hall outside the chamber and the constant stream of negative emails because you didn’t vote this way or that. It always takes knowing how not to stumble over the media when they are trying to twist every word you say to play the gotcha game. I know Mark can play that game. Jennifer in my thoughts needs some practice.

When the smoke from this primary on March 17th is over, I hope to see more of Jennifer. I’d like to see her work herself into a party endorsement and to start building some bridges which is what a republic style of government requires. It wouldn’t take much to make me vote for her, just consistency and to fit into the team that has been building in Butler County in the GOP. While individualism is the key to representative government the passing of laws and the art of representation requires those extra team building skills, just as every corporate environment demands. Being a solid individual is needed to fend off the wolves who want to turn every politician into a corrupt specimen. But you must be able to win people over to your way of thinking in a republic and that isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. Its wonderful to say we should never have party politics, but in Columbus we have majorities and minorities and that is needed for all kinds of checks and balances, and that is the framework that anybody going for a State seat must navigate to do the good work that needs to be done. I can’t wait to vote for Mark Welch, he has worked hard and deserves it. And I look forward to getting behind Jennifer Gross at some future opportunity if such a chance presents itself.

Rich Hoffman